Inadvertent Triple Feature

In which "The Final Girls" + "7 Chinese Brothers" = "Nasty Baby"

In the span of just a few days, and in order, we saw Alia Shawkat ("Wild Canaries") in a bit role in "The Final Girls." Our next DVD rental was "7 Chinese Brothers," in which Tunde Adebimpe starred as Jason Schwartzman's best pal. Two days later, at the Guild Cinema, there they both were as friends in "Nasty Baby."

Things settled down after that. Neither of them showed up in "Grandma."
  

One-Liners: The Cycle of Life

NASTY BABY (B) - Tired of indie films set in Brooklyn in which privileged young adults are stuck in arrested emotional and career development? Here, our cast members literally act like infants to get their point across. The result is a surprisingly effective comic drama from Sebastian Silva, the Chilean writer/director of "The Maid" and "Crystal Fairy."

Silva stars as Freddy, a gay filmmaker who is in love with Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) and who is trying to conceive a child with their friend Polly (Kristen Wiig), pursuing another version of the modern family. Feeling guilty about defying nature to have a child to raise with his boyfriend, Freddy is simultaneously creating a self-flagellating indie film (within the film) mocking his own hubris. He recruits Mo and Polly and another friend, Wendy (Alia Shawkat), to appear in the film, to literally act like infants (i.e., wearing diapers and crying). Several times during the film Freddy demonstrates his newborn's wail.

That's the main plot of the meandering first half of the film. We also are introduced to The Bishop (fine veteran character actor Reg E. Cathey from HBO's "The Wire" and "Oz"), a mentally disturbed man who likes to run his leaf blower outside Freddy and Mo's window at 7 a.m. The various interactions with The Bishop (he also assails Polly during one of her walks home) set an ominous tone from the start, and it's no surprise that the simmering dread will overflow at some point.

Until then, we settle in nicely with these characters. Wiig (like most recently in "Welcome to Me" and "Skeleton Twins") is compelling and organic, putting flesh on the spare bones of a vaguely sketched character who could have easily been a cliched 30-something with a ticking biological clock. Her apparent ad-libs are refreshing, and she knits the whole movie together with her charisma. Even Polly's noodling on a guitar (she's trying to learn Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You in the End," which makes for a fine theme song) seems unforced and natural.

Adebimpe has a more quiet charm, and he grows into the role of Mo, who is called on, reluctantly, to sub as dad when Freddy's sperm count is deemed too low. A road trip to meet Mo's circumspect family is perfectly rendered by Silva and carried out by Adebimpe. Prolific character actor Mark Margolis steals a few scenes as the nosy gay neighbor and father figure to the two men.

In the movie's final half hour, a remarkable event occurs (seemingly out of left field, but solidly foreshadowed), and the movie spins on a dime. The pampered life of middle-class Brooklynites becomes a lot less comfortable. These characters we've grown cozy with are suddenly sucked into a dire circumstance, and it's fascinating to watch the actors and the characters turn on their heels and react in a whole new way.

Silva once again delivers a finely observed comic drama with rich characters and a talented cast.

GRANDMA (B-minus) - Lily Tomlin is almost too good in this sometimes sharp, sometimes stumbling tale of a bitter, lonely old woman who accompanies her granddaughter on a daylong odyssey to an appointment for an abortion. At a slim 79 minutes, it's just winning enough to make it worth a $4 matinee on a rainy day.

Everyman writer/director Paul Weitz ("Admission," "About a Boy") melds "Thelma & Louise" with "Paper Moon" and lucks out with the casting of Tomlin as Elle Reid, still heartbroken after the death of her life partner a few years back and now emotionally pummeling younger women (Judy Greer is Olivia, whom Elle dumps unceremoniously after four months). When teenage Sage (spindly Julia Garner, resembling a dandelion or a bleached-out Little Orphan Annie) shows up on Sage's doorstep to beg for $630 to fund her abortion, Elle is shaken out of her ennui and, reconnecting with her early-wave feminist ideals, finds a mission that makes her feel alive again.

Elle is cash-poor and has cut up her credit cards, so she and Sage set out in Grandma's beater to collect on a few debts. The marks include local vendor Carla (a butch Elizabeth Pena) and an old college flame, Karl (a wonderfully gruff Sam Elliott), whose baby Elle aborted only to go off with another man to conceive Sage's mother. The most obvious source of money is Sage's mom, Judy (a sluggish Marcia Gay Harden), a high-powered businesswoman (she toils at a treadmill desk).

Elle's sarcasm carries the film, but too often it feels forced, as does the profanity. Rarely will you see such a gathering of foul-mouthed women in one movie. But it's vulgarity for vulgarity's sake, and the strain it puts on the actors betrays the flaws in Weitz's script. The flying expletives get wearying and ruin the narrative flow. (Grandma also delivers a crotch-shot with a hockey stick to Sage's baby-daddy, just to make Adam Sandler jealous.)

This is Tomlin's show, and she revels in the spicy dialogue. No one else would give quite the zing to one of the best lines in the film, when Elle tells Sage, who is fearful of confronting her mother, "I've been scared of your mother since she was 5 years old." Tomlin, however, also imbues Elle with a profound melancholy (especially in the riveting scenes with Elliott) but one leavened with a lacerating wit and an emotional longing. She has a heavy heart but a generous one. Young Garner is a literal and figurative lightweight in Tomlin's presence, looking very much like a child actor still searching for her voice. The supporting cast mostly come off as cardboard cutouts.

BONUS TRACKS
In the late '80s and early '90s, I joined other indie-music geeks in collecting the hand-crafted cassette tapes of the outsider artist and genius man-child Daniel Johnston, and one of his more memorable songs is threaded through "Nasty Baby":



The "Nasty Baby" trailer:


 
  

Curb Your Enthusiasm

7 CHINESE BROTHERS (B+) - God bless Jason Schwartzman.

Writer/director Bob Byington's gently observed character study of a shiftless, drifting slacker and his loyal bulldog trains its focus on Schwartzman's sad-sack Larry and waits patiently for magic to happen. The result is a sweet, sad and funny dramedy about Larry's relationships -- or his inability to fully embrace one, whether it's with women, his friends, or his grandmother (his last surviving relative). The movie has the bubbly, bumbling tone of the adventures of another Larry -- Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" from HBO.

What comes off as tossed-off improv was apparently closely scripted (see the bonus Q&A if you watch on DVD). But there is room for Schwartzman, a wonderfully droll but controlled comic actor, to let his personality carry the film. Schwartzman, a veteran of Wes Anderson's follies and the star of "Listen Up Philip" and HBO's wickedly funny "Bored to Death," takes that personality down a few notches to portray this sullen prankster.

Larry has an abrasive relationship with his grandmother (a welcome, witty Olympia Dukakis), who won't lend him money, even though she's apparently loaded. When he visits her in the nursing home, he banters with his best friend, Major Norwood (Tunde Adebimpe from the band TV on the Radio), an orderly who likes to pose as a doctor to pick up women. Their friendship endures even though Norwood does everything better than Larry and consistently reminds Larry of his own shortcomings. His most trusted companion is a lazy bulldog named Arrow (Schwartzman's own pet), who snorts, sleeps a lot, rides shotgun in the beater Lincoln that Larry drives, and endures Larry's stream-of-conscious witticisms.

Larry gets fired from Buca di Beppo for stealing alcohol to spike his Big Gulps (he's a functioning alcoholic), but, through the remnants of his charm, talks his way into a gig at the oil-lube place in the same strip mall. He crushes on the manager, Lupe, who pities him more than she desires him. Like at his previous job, Larry gets bullied by a muscle-head at the new place. Every night on the way home, he stops at the liquor store for his regular order that gets him through another night in front of the TV.

Little moments add up to a lot here. The opening scene finds Larry musing to Arrow, and demonstrating, how funny it is to hear a Frenchman drop random English words into a conversation. One of his favorite imitations is of a Southerner reacting to a story that he likes. (See the trailer.) He mounts a counter to show off his impersonation of a fat man exiting a swimming pool. It's this latter gag, repeated in the film, that captures the idea that Larry's shtick played out long ago, and he's just coasting along for his own amusement -- only even he is no longer amused by these gags. He's now a masochist who feels he deserves contempt for ending up a failure. When Norwood tops him yet again, in a very personal way, in the movie's climax, Larry is able to be downright magnanimous (perhaps he's finally just given up).

It's that self-loathing of Larry's, tinged with a bemused fatalism, that fuels this long enough to ride out the 76-minute running time. Schwartzman might be an acquired taste, but in Byington's assured hands, he gives a performance that gets under your skin. Larry isn't a minor character; he's just played in a minor key.

BONUS TRACK
GBV alert! The soundtrack features one of the great unrecognized pop gems, courtesy of Guided By Voices. "The Best of Jill Hives":

And, of course, the haunting title track:



The trailer:


 

The Dark Side

Two films that no one out there will ever see ...

WE COME AS FRIENDS (B+) - Hubert Sauper devastated us with his examination of capitalism's horrific effects on humans across the globe in "Darwin's Nightmare," about a decade ago. Here he flies a small airplane into the heart of Sudan for a disturbing look at the birth -- and exploitation -- of a new nation, South Sudan, after its 2011 declaration of independence.

Sauper has an unerring eye for detail, and he has an uncanny way of immersing his camera into situations and making it seem invisible while sucking the viewer into each scene. The new nation presents many opportunities -- democracy, hope for a better way of life for its citizens. But by now we know better than that. It's all about military strength and (what else?) oil, the lubricant of global money-changing. The natural resources lure the United States and China into a battle for the land beneath these people's feet.

If governments are after their oil, then the Christian missionaries covet their souls. A couple from Texas are comically cliched as they thump their Bible in the heart of Africa. The wife looks on condescendingly as a dark-skinned toddler wails while having his foot forced into a pair of clean white socks, likely the first time his feet have ever been covered. The husband preaches about the sin of nudity. (Many kids are lucky to have donated duds to go to school in.)

Sauper cleverly mixes the comical with the sad. A local politician's appearance on a local radio station is bizarrely funny. The rag-tag soldiers bumble through their drills. The locals' bewilderment at the outside world is both touching and at times wry. Sauper, whose rickety plane is a running gag throughout the film, takes a somewhat lighter tone than he did in "Darwin." Yet he has captured the heart of darkness here -- greed, avarice, violence. One local observes (twice) that the moon belongs to America, because that nation colonized it. It's a wild concept to him. But for him and his fellow Sudanese, the white man's burden has landed on their doorstep. 

STRAY DOG (B) - When Debra Granik made the powerful drama "Winter's Bone" in rural Missouri (with a pre-Hollywood Jennifer Lawrence), she discovered Ronnie Hall, a good ol' biker dude and Vietnam veteran. She was so drawn to him that she returned to film a documentary about the man with a heart as big as his gut.

Hall has his challenges on the domestic front, with a Mexican wife, Alicia, who has limited English skills and twin teenage boys. (His Spanglish is bad as mine would be if I tried.) And, of course, he must reconcile his past as a pawn of the war machine. During a therapy session he breaks down recalling the barbarity he engaged in while serving in Vietnam and his failings as a young officer. He's haunted by the thought that the simple act of forgiving himself would dishonor the memories of his comrades.

Yet, he's an ambassador to friends, family and strangers. Granik also follows along on a road trip with a couple of buddies as they visit a woman who lost a granddaughter in a recent war, pausing to pray before they leave. We watch him cut a fellow veteran some slack when he falls behind on rent at the mobile-home park Hall operates. Hall counsels his own granddaughter, pushing her to pursue a career rather than settle for a dead-end job and a slacker of a boyfriend who has gotten her pregnant. He reminisces with his own daughter, the result of a union with a Korean woman during the war. (In old photos he strikes a dashing figure, like a young Bryan Cranston or perhaps Errol Flynn.)

There's plenty of light fare here, too. Hall has a soft spot for his bevy of dogs and cats. He shares an overabundance of Viagra with two pals, urging them to "rise to the occasion." One discussion of his service is with two men, one of whom is, randomly, wearing clown makeup. The attempts to acclimate his wife's boys into rural American life (they're used to Mexico City) evoke chuckles (especially one boy's deadpan humoring of a trailer-park regular who is just certain that the boys must be so relieved to have escaped their awful country). As part of their English lessons the boys sing along awkwardly to "America, the Beautiful" and this word they keep hearing, "pussy," in a dictionary.

Another trip takes Hall and his wife and an entourage to the Vietnam Memorial in D.C., for a subdued reckoning. Other memorial services dot the narrative. Hall seems to be everywhere duty calls, a caretaker still trying to win the forgiveness of all those men he left behind.

"Stray Dog" is streaming at PBS.com under the umbrella of "Independent Lens."
 

Life Is Short: That Baby Goat Won't Milk

Life Is Short is an as-needed series documenting the films we just couldn't make it through. We like to refer to these movies as "Damsels in Distress." Previous entries are here , here, here, here, here, here here, here and here.

Milking goats and riding bulls. This story of devout Christians living a boring life somewhere in Texas is as dreadfully boring as depicted in this semi-dramatic rendering of non-actors mumbling their way through the dull days. Cinema verite has never suffered so much.

This is an enticing description of the film: "When Sara meets Colby, a young amateur bull rider, she is thrown into crisis, questioning the only way of life she has ever known. ... 'Stop the Pounding Heart' is an exploration of adolescence, family and social values, gender roles, and religion in the rural American South."

That would be intriguing if true. Here, adolescent Sara and amateur bullrider Colby have hardly laid eyes on each other or had an actual conversation for more than the first half of the film. Instead, we get tedious, repetitive depictions of goat milking, milk selling, Bible reading, religious lectures, bullriding and practice bullriding. There are two scenes of hair combing.

I was waiting for something to sizzle here, but I couldn't even get a simmer. I'm growing more impatient with filmmakers trying to find something significant in the lives of teenagers. I understand low-fi realism, and I have the patience for a slack pace in search of subtle insight. And I'm sorry these humble, well-meaning folks are trapped in West Texas under the yoke of Jesus. But if I'm going to be a fly on the wall, somewhere, at some point, there needs to be some shit for me to land on.

Title: STOP THE POUNDING HEART
Running Time: 101 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  51 MIN
Portion Watched: 50.5%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 52 YRS, 11 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 76.4 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Put on the classical music and did chores
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 100-1
  

How I Meta'd Your Mother

THE FINAL GIRLS (C+) - This spoof of horror films tries to subvert not only the original genre but the recent era of ironic horror-film spoofs. It's an interesting idea, but the filmmakers don't really pull it off in the end, instead descending into some of the same cliches up for ribbing.

With newcomers penning the script (M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller), a journeyman comedy director (Todd Strauss-Schulson) behind the camera and a shaky cast in front of it, "Final Girls" is a fun idea in search of solid execution. It's often difficult to tell whether some of the corniness is intentional. Keeping the audience off-balance is admirable, but this team fumbles a sophisticated concept.

Here it is: High schooler Max's mom dies. The mom was a struggling actress famous for starring in a pair of cult-classic horror films from the '80s ("Camp Bloodbath") that traffic in all the cliches spawned by "Halloween" and its successors. While attending a retro screening of "Camp Bloodbath," Max and her friends flee the fiery theater through the cinema's screen. They end up sucked into the celluloid and trapped in the original film, where Max gets to bond again with a young version of her mom while trying to outwit the machete-wielding killer. (The goal is to survive along with the film's "final girl," i.e., the last surviving character in every slasher film who finally slays the killer.) It's a movie within a movie within a movie. Sort of.

Taisa Farmiga (as Max) leads a cast from the B-list, each of whom calls to mind a more well-known actor. Mom is played by Malin Akerman ("The Heartbreak Kid"), a poor man's Cameron Diaz. The hunky love interest could have been a Hemsworth. The horny guy in the original "Camp Bloodbath" seems to be doing a Jack Black imitation. Of course, Farmiga herself is a poor man's Vera Farmiga (her older sister). The only refreshing turn here comes from Angela Trimbur, who sports a perfect Pat Benatar-inspired look as the horny gal in the cult film, the prototypical you-fuck-you-die hottie in the bikini top and short shorts. Thomas Middleditch (HBO's "Silicon Valley") could be channeling any of the men on "Friends" as the obnoxious fanboy grooving on the chance to dive inside his favorite bad movie.

The bittersweet opportunity for Max to get a second chance to bond with her mother (albeit with her mom acting as "Nancy," the naive virgin fated to pay the ultimate price for abandoning her chastity) morphs awkwardly throughout the film. At times, it's hard to tell whether the filmmakers are also trying to spoof an "Afterschool Special" or are going for genuine pathos. (Farmiga is not a convincing crier -- but is that supposed to be intentionally obvious?) Are the filmmakers expertly mixing genres and exploiting time warps, or are they merely in over their heads and struggling to have it all make sense? They unconvincingly de-age Ackerman (who is 37) so that she's believable as a teenager from the '80s; but is that a wink at the Hollywood convention of casting 30-year-olds as teenagers in slasher films?

Interest wanes when the story continually turns back on itself. The actors don't have the chops to either milk this as broad farce or find a fresh way to plumb the depths of this meta experiment. It's an interesting swing-and-a-miss.
  

New to the Queue

It gets dark earlier ...

A debut feature about a self-destructive 21-year-old dealing with serious family issues, "James White."

As a life-long fan of New Yorker cartoons, I would get a kick out of the behind-the-scenes documentary, "Very Semi-Serious."

I wasn't a fan of "Far From Heaven," and this one gives me a twee vibe, but I'll give Todd Haynes a look with the 1950s lesbian love story "Carol."

A drama about five Turkish sisters being held captive by their relatives, "Mustang."

An examination of border issues and the American drug war, "Kingdom of Shadows."

A documentary about Zimbabwe's attempts to craft a constitution under dictator Robert Mugabe, "Democrats."

After the bomb that was "The Comedy," we'll give Rick Alverson another chance with the tale of a creepy comedian on a failed tour, "Entertainment."

A documentary about corporations' abuse of tax laws, as well as the growing disparity between rich and poor, "The Price We Pay."

And ... having seen the first three, we'll eventually see some or all of the final movie in the blockbuster series, "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2."
 

Slackers

BUZZARD (B-minus) - This is a film to be liked or promptly dismissed, about a foul-tempered, directionless young adult who acts like he was raised by wolves. It plays like a suburban teen's attempt at making a real movie, which gives it a certain charm.

Marty Jackitansky (Joshua Burge) is a dead-end temp at a bank, and he specializes in extremely low-level scams, such as taking office supplies back to the store for a refund. He not only too lazy to actually work for a living, but he's also too lazy to come up with a scheme that will net him more than $30 or $40 at a time. As a crook, he's a disappointment.

Meantime, he sits around playing video games and perfecting a glove that has blades for fingers, like Edward Scissorhands. A task at work tracking down the folks who's refund checks were undeliverable gives him an opportunity for another score, and his mom inadvertently provides him with a system for cashing the checks. But he soon botches the execution, and fearing the wrath of his boss, he goes underground.

He crashes for a while with a co-worker, Derek (Joel Potrykus, who wrote and directed), a total dork who hangs out in his father's basement. But soon, he's on the run again, crashing at a fleabag motel and eventually trying one last time to cash the rest of the unclaimed checks. Paranoia creeps in.

This is the second collaboration between the star, Burge, and the writer/director, Potrykus. I've yet to see their debut, "Ape," about a struggling, offensive comedian. They are obviously determined to rip off the protective veneer of society and expose the seedy underbelly of society and its unglamorous losers, the folks who have to not only watch their dollars but count their pennies. Potrykus owes a big debt to Mike Judge. This plays like "Office Space" on zero budget and starring Butt-head. (Potrykus' Derek even resembles one of those bit parts that Judge likes to play in his own movies.) Yet it has a gritty '70s street feel to it, as well. (I won't compare it to "Mean Streets," but I'll parenthetically mention it and leave it at that.) Little touches (and some great acting in bit parts) add humorous detail; Potrykus creates a whole character named Kubiak, just so "Koobs" can pop up from his cubicle for a throwaway sight gag, his only scene. Other one-off shots -- such as Marty in a monster mask dozing off at a movie screening -- seem random but are memorable.

Burge is a compelling figure, a bug-eyed Steve Buscemi type with attitude to burn. (Some will turn him off after 10 minutes.) During one of Marty's binges, he takes just about every dollar he has left and splurges on a fancy hotel room. He dances on the bed and lounges in a white robe. He spends his last 20 bucks on a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, and Potrykus lets the camera role as Marty watches an off-screen TV and stuffs his face with pasta. We see him eat nearly the entire dish, in one extended, inspired take. Marty has his Scissorhands glove on as he pigs out, and his face is a kaleidoscope of expressions. That scene is the entire film in a nutshell.

"Buzzard" is propelled by a metal-sludge soundtrack deployed in machine-gun bursts as if a psycho-killer had just showed up. It tracks along with a sad sack who doesn't have the basic skills to keep from drowning in the capitalist system. He's a helpless boy who defaults to his basest instincts to survive. It's both sad and funny to watch. It would break your heart if he weren't so repulsive.

BONUS TRACK
The appealing trailer:


 

Ay, Spy

SPY (B-minus) - This intermittently amusing spoof is not funny enough to succeed as a comedy and is not clever enough to qualify as a smart takedown of the spook genre.

Melissa McCarthy and writer/director Paul Feig team up again after their success in "The Heat," but what was searingly funny in that earlier film just gets tiring here, as Feig's penchant for penning acidic put-downs and toilet humor provides diminishing returns, sinking this one early. McCarthy and Sandra Bullock were a perfect pair in "The Heat," but in "Spy," McCarthy struggles to bond with a handful of sidekicks and fails to truly click with any of them.

McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a dweeby CIA drone, who works out of a basement office serving as a guide for agents in the field. When her assigned agent, Bradley Fine (whom she crushes on, because he's played by Jude Law), is killed in action, Susan convinces the hard-ass boss, Crocker (an under-utilized Allison Janney), to let her take a crack at the case of a Bulgarian and an Italian scheming to broker the sale of a nuclear weapon to Chechen terrorists. Turns out, Susan has incredible hand-to-hand combat skills, and her computer acumen translates well out in the field.

Feig has a lot of ideas but he doesn't show a good command of them. One running joke has the boss foisting embarrassing undercover personas on Susan, mostly poor, ugly, single women. The dialogue is essentially a barrage of vulgar jibes between characters, so many that they lose their effectiveness as Feig seems obligated to top himself with each one.

The cast is fairly strong but they never gel as a team. Rose Byrne is entertaining as the evil Bulgarian Rayna Boyanov. She gives her all and flashes some great comic chops; but too much of the payoff here is just marveling at how foul-mouthed an actress like Byrne can be. Jason Statham milks laughs from his role as a boastful, crazy agent who has gone off the grid and keeps showing up at inopportune times. I've never seen one of his movies, so I assume he is spoofing his typical hero roles. Bobby Cannavale is wasted as the Italian bad guy, and Janney has been much better in her other comic roles (hell, she's funnier in the sitcom "Mom" than she is here).

A couple of minor players do their best with one-note roles. Miranda Hart mugs and spouts a British accent as Susan's fellow CIA dork, Nancy, a bumbling beanpole. Character actor Peter Serafinowicz lusts after Cooper as Aldo, another simple-minded Italian with a severe breast obsession. Beauties Nargis Fakhri and Morena Baccarin ("Homeland") are used as mere props, as is Fifty Cent in a cliched cameo during the movie's climax. And as for the narrative, the big third-act twist is telegraphed early on and comes as no surprise at all.

One hour in (at the halfway mark), "Spy" teeters on the edge of failure. It's to McCarthy's credit that she is compelling an enough entertainer to keep you tuned in. She and Byrne occasionally show flashes of the connection that McCarthy had in spades with Bullock in "The Heat." And there's no denying that Feig can spin some sharply funny quotes for his cast.

But too often the relentless digs between characters are just a mouthful of naughty words. "What a stupid fucking retarded toast," Rayna sneers at Susan. Rayna wonders aloud whether Nancy is employed merely because she's tall enough to reach things on the top cupboard shelf. Rayna also refers to Nancy as an "asthmatic Big Bird." When Susan uses the pseudonym Amber Valentine, Rayna cracks, "What are you, a porn star?" Clunk.

And too many of the jokes are just too easy.  Nancy's tall! Rayna has big hair! Both men and women are enamored of Jude Law's bedroom eyes. Janney spews the neologism "thundercunt." Yuk-yuk. One female baddie takes a frying pan to the crotch. Feig dresses Statham's undercover character in a newsboy cap just so that Nancy can remark wittily, "He looks like he's in the cast of 'Newsies'!" I lost count of the times a character had someone's crotch or ass in their face, and there are more references to bodily functions than you'd find at a Cub Scout retreat.

The bulk of Feig's humor involves characters endlessly mocking each others' looks. He had the audacity, in "The Heat," to roll out a series of albino jokes. Some certainly are funny; I admit audibly snorting when Rayna is accused of dressing like "a sexy dolphin trainer."

But the overall tone of the movie can be troubling. As much as Feig (who also made "Bridesmaids") is credited with opening avenues for female comedians, his world view is markedly misogynist. Here, Susan and Nancy act like giddy schoolgirls when a cute guy pays attention to them. No woman is complete unless she has a man who finds her attractive. Feig tries to mask that by conveying some deep female bonding, but that one trick is little more than a get-out-of-jail-free card.

But, then, it's not fair to review a comedy by taking its lines out of context and deadening them on the page. "Spy" might wear better during its inevitable wall-to-wall showings on cable a few months from now; a 10-minute snippet here and there might hit the spot. But on this first viewing, the two-hour assault on the senses is too often a mess and a chore.
 

Doc Watch: Phrasing

DO I SOUND GAY? (B) - This perfectly serviceable documentary has just enough of a curious premise and an entertaining tone to make it time well spent.

In a similar vein to one of our recent viewings, "Misery Loves Comedy," this examination of the way gay men talk argues a premise in circles until that premise is sort of beside the point, and well-chosen talking heads carry the story along to a satisfying conclusion.

Director David Thorpe makes it all about him, documenting his journey to craft a more masculine tone and come off as less stereotypically gay. Actually, this is a little too much about Thorpe, who also is moping after a breakup and wondering if, in his 40s, he'll find a life partner. Thankfully, Thorpe seems to lose interest in that angle about halfway through.

I've always been fascinated by the way people in cliques adapt their speech patterns until they all utilize the same patter and cadences. It happened during my childhood when Laurie S. moved in across the street, and she and my sister crafted not their own language but their own goofy banter. In my class, Jeff L created his own verbal syncopation (mostly with names -- TIM-may, MARK-ay, JEFF-ay) that got picked up by a lot of classmates.

And I've always wondered, why do so many gay men adopt such a campy, effeminate patois. Is there something common to the gay voice? Do gay men adopt it when they come out and join the club, so to speak? Thorpe, who came out in college, grills his childhood and college pals, and the consensus is that his voice changed as soon as he declared his homosexuality. One observes that she was cool with his lifestyle but the voice annoyed her.

Thorpe gathers a few celebrities to hash out the issue. George Takei, he of the booming tenor, assures Thorpe that a higher-pitched voice is nothing to be ashamed of. David Sedaris offers little true insight and seems more intent on projecting that sophisticated image of his. "Project Runway's" Tim Gunn expresses pride in his formal, fey vocalizations. Margaret Cho stand out as a token woman. Columnist Dan Savage -- who looks and sounds like an All-American straight dude -- is, as usual, the smartest and most perceptive guy in the room.

Thorpe ventures out to track down a Canadian linguist who is both insightful and entertaining and a couple of speech therapists, including a Hollywood guru who plays voice coach to the stars. We see Thorpe practice a lower, butcher voice. He checks in regularly with his two best friends for status updates over fussed-over home-cooked dinners. Thorpe also conducts some effective man-on-the-street interviews.

Finally, the director culls classic video clips of the pop culture touchstones of the gay performers, mostly comedians, who communicated in code but dared not come out in the '60s and '70s -- Paul Lynde, Rip Taylor, Charles Nelson Reilly, Liberace. He delves deeper, with the help of a film historian, to stitch together a theory of the role of the sophisticated gay character in classic Hollywood films and the curious phenomenon of animated film villains affecting a stereotypically gay way of speaking.

This all doesn't really cohere well, but it zips by in a tidy 77 minutes. There might be a more satisfying study of this topic that will come along, but for now, Thorpe has at least started a fascinating conversation.

BONUS TRACK
Speaking of banter:

Doc Watch: Underdogs

CALL ME LUCKY (B) - Barry Crimmins was the godfather of the prolific Boston comedy scene in the 1980s. He was also an angry man, railing in particular against U.S. foreign policy and the Catholic church.

Don't Google him. You'll enjoy this much more if you don't know his history. In the sure hands of Bobcat Goldthwait ("Shakes the Clown," "World's Greatest Dad"), a portrait forms of one man speaking truth to power on behalf of the powerless.

When we meet Crimmins, he's a grumpy man in his 60s holed up at a quiet farm in upstate New York. Clips from the '80s show him ranting onstage against the world in general, and against hecklers in particular. He comes off as a cross between Avery Schreiber and Fidel Castro. He managed to channel that energy into launching a comedy club at a Chinese restaurant and mentoring the likes of Steven Wright, Tom Kenny, Goldthwait, and Kevin Meaney.

You can just tell that some dark secret is eating away at Crimmins. Around the 45-minute mark, Goldthwait begins to remove the layers and expose the childhood trauma that haunts Crimmins and drives his longtime crusade against the source of that trauma.

Goldthwait knows how to spin a story. He's assisted by a strong crop of talking heads, joining them to fill in key parts of the story. Among the entertaining contributors, in addition to the comics mentioned above, are David Cross, Marc Maron, Lenny Clarke, Margaret Cho and Patton Oswalt. They all provide puzzle pieces to create an image of a complicated man. One gem of a clip shows Crimmins in the early '90s performing onstage with a fellow lefty, folk-punk singer Billy Bragg, inserting one-liners in music breaks as the crowd goes wild. (One observer compares him to Goldie Hawn on "Laugh-In.")

The second half of the film revolves around Crimmins' struggles -- both psychologically and on behalf of his cause. The problem is, Goldthwait is too close to the story and he loses control of the film. He belabors his points and drags the movie out to 106 minutes, about a quarter hour too long. The climax involves a trip to Skaneateles, New York (an Indian word meaning "beautiful lake surrounded by fascists," Crimmins quips), to Crimmins' boyhood home, where the filmmaker forces him to confront that childhood trauma. This, too, gets dragged out, wringing the emotion until it saturates the screen.

If not for that unfortunate tipping point, "Call me Lucky" could have been a great cinematic profile.

ONE BRIGHT SHINING MOMENT: THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER OF GEORGE McGOVERN (2005) (D+) - A depressingly amateurish production wastes an opportunity to do biographical justice to an important political figure of the second half of the 20th century.

If this has been knocking around your queue for the past 10 years, feel free to delete it with no qualms. Director Stephen Vittoria (who went on to helm two documentaries about Mumia Abu-Jamal) assembles a random rag-tag group of talking heads and mixes in some non-chronological and out-of-context video clips, stretching this out, improbably, beyond two hours. And the title is false advertising: we don't get to the substance of the 1972 campaign between the South Dakota senator and the incumbent, Richard Nixon during the depths of the Vietnam era.

The cast of commentators includes Dick Gregory, Warren Beatty and Howard Zinn. "Democracy Now's" Amy Goodman narrates in her most professional voice. Biographer Thomas Knock (whose first book about McGovern still hasn't been publshed) is on hand to repeatedly state the obvious and offer Wikipedia-level insight.

Vittoria is clumsy with his cinematography and editing. Some of the interview settings are starkly different than the rest, as if they were shot in a different format, like videotape. Video clips get repeated, for no reason, and some add nothing to the story.

McGovern himself, interviewed late in life, proves that he has almost zero charisma. Awkwardly, he reads from his old speeches, as if to announce the limitations of the video archive. It's a reminder that while he was a good man who was on the right side of the issues, it's no surprise that voters flocked to Nixon instead of the dove from Dakota.
 

Fever Dream

TANGERINE (A) - Sean Baker strikes again. The man behind "Starlet" -- an engaging study of disaffected young adults -- scores with his follow-up, a dizzying day-in-the-life of a transvestite hooker rampaging through the seedy neighborhoods of L.A. because she thinks her pimp cheated on her.

With the papal blessing of indie godfathers Mark and Jay Duplass, Baker grabbed an iPhone, hit the mean streets and unleashed a crazy cast of characters to produce what seemed to be a script with a lot of room for improvisation. (Baker wrote it with "Starlet" collaborator Chris Bergoch.) The result is exhilarating, one of the most vibrant movies you'll see all year.

The cast is led by two transvestite/transgender actors -- Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as Sin-Dee Rella and Mya Taylor as Alexandra -- as hyperactive sex workers embarking on a wild adventure on Christmas Eve in Tinseltown. Alexandra blabs about Sin-Dee's pimp, Chester, cheating on Sin-Dee while she spent a month in jail. That sets Sin-Dee off on a mission to confront Chester and also bitch-slap the "fish" (i.e., a biologically intact woman) he slept with.

Thus begins a raunchy romp, with Baker giving chase and shooting in extreme digital, with harsh lighting and washed-out colors. The bewigged Rodriguez and Taylor bounce off each other and exchange one-liners like coke-fueled maniacs, handling the rapid-fire dialogue and pop culture pot-shots like old pros. Every scene is a fresh thrill, enhanced by a pulse-quickening techno soundtrack. This is Scorsese's "Mean Streets" starring Lucy and Ethel on meth.

The B story involves Razmik, an Armenian cab driver with a wife and baby and a penchant for cruising for she-males. Karren Karagulian brings depth and pathos to the proceedings, making Razmik much more than a cartoon character railing against his nosy mother-in-law. His reaction to discovering that a hooker in his front seat is sporting actual lady parts is priceless.

Baker's genius is the way in which he creates a community that is both ridiculous and real -- and demystifies the extra-legal underworld. The characters ride buses and hang out at doughnut shops. Motel sex hubs are sad and degrading. There is more to Sin-Dee than her "Bitch, please" attitude and her hellbent craving for revenge. Alexandra, meantime, is a hapless mother hen, trying to keep Sin-Dee from doing herself in, while perpetually pitching her upcoming singing gig at a local dive.

As Chester, TV veteran James Ransone ("The Wire," "Treme," as well as Baker's "Starlet") gives a perfect reading of the comically undersized and under-capitalized playah/pimp. Baker juggles his characters and times his narrative for a perfect climax that brings all the principals together for a messy, but rather ordinary, showdown.

At a breathless 88 minutes, "Tangerine" -- like a scene from the trailer -- kicks down your door, grabs you by the greasy hair and drags you through its grimy world. It smacks you upside the head and reminds you what movies are supposed to do: tell entertaining stories, using any form and format that works.

BONUS TRACK
"Merry Christmas, Bitch!" Here's the trailer: