Philly Cheese

CREED (A-minus) - With just the right mix of homage and infusion, this reboot of the "Rocky" series celebrates the original while injecting fresh energy into the classic tale of a young boxer and an old trainer, each one battling some ghosts of the past.

Ryan Coogler, who splashed in 2013 with the impressive "Fruitvale Station," takes the reins as director and co-writer (with newcomer Aaron Covington) and modernizes the story in every way -- visually, dramatically, technically. It's a surprising tour de force that establishes Coogler as a powerful filmmaker.

"Creed" stars Michael B. Jordan as Adonis, the illegitimate son born after the death of Apollo Creed, the champ from the original "Rocky" film from 1977. After a prologue showing "Donnie" as a child being rescued from a juvenile-detention center by Apollo's widow, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), who then raises him in their opulent L.A. mansion. Adonis toils in a white-collar job, but he works out his issues by sneaking down to Mexico to fight on weekends. Soon, he quits his job and makes a pilgrimage to Philadelphia to recruit a trainer: Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), his dad's former rival turned trainer, who was in Apollo's corner when the aging champ was killed in the ring by Ivan Drago ("Rocky IV").

Adonis and Rocky meet-cute, and before long they are training in a South Philly gym. With sweet shout-outs to the original, the young fighter is chasing chickens around a pen and learning other old-school tricks from the Italian Stallion. Coogler pulls off the neat trick of calling back to the original without getting maudlin or sappy. You just know that, at some point, Adonis is going to run through the streets of Philly, and when he does, accompanied by a bunch of homeboys, it's magical. And if the eventual journey up the museum steps doesn't tug at your heart, then you're a hard human.

Some of Coogler's best flourishes are in the ring. Perched on the shoulder of his boxers, he manages an almost impossible verite, making it easily the best boxing film since the original (which now looks quite stagy in comparison.) The director's technique is natural and assured. He also makes smart choices that blanket the film in authenticity. He casts real boxers (including Liverpool's Tony Bellew as Adonis' main rival, Ricky Conlan) and corner men. His shooting on the streets of Philadelphia exudes a documentary feel. (If I'd seen this a month or two ago, it's likely I would have cited Coogler as last year's best director.) The pacing is expert, and all 133 minutes here are justified.

"Creed," like "Rocky," is not without a little sap. Adonis also has a meet-cute with his neighbor, Bianca (Tessa Thompson, "Dear White People"), a budding singer-songwriter who is gradually losing her hearing. A second dire medical condition crops up late in the film, and it could have easily derailed the story; Coogler doesn't let it. Rashad makes the best of a thankless role as the honorable step-mom and conscience. Stallone finds the sweet spot in connecting with his original performance; he's gritty and grumpy, melancholy and wise. ("Time," he intones, "takes everybody out. It's undefeated.") Jordan is solid as he carries it all on his sculpted shoulders.

This project could have gone horribly awry, a shameless exercise in nostalgia. Instead, a director with a unique voice and vision curates a cherished franchise and crafts a heartwarming and exciting film that goes toe-to-toe with the original as crowd-pleasing, throwback entertainment.
 

Mean Girls

BREATHE (B+) - This slow burn of a suspense film builds to a powerful conclusion, as a friendship between high school girls escalates into a rivalry.

Melanie Laurent (seen in "Inglourious Basterds" and here behind the camera for the second time) burrows deep into the psyche of two teenagers -- a good girl and a rebellious interloper -- establishing a deep bond that threatens to tear them both apart. Without hyperbole or horror-movie cliches, "Breathe" takes a rather calm approach to the intensity of young female friendships.

Suburban French teen Charlie (Josephine Japy) is a studious young lady living a mundane existence until bad-girl Sarah (Lou de Laage) transfers into her school and seeks her out as a friend. They fuse quickly, sharing a casual but combustible intimacy as Sarah drags Charlie toward the edge. But Sarah is unpredictable and unstable. She flips out on Charlie for introducing her to a friend as a "classmate" rather than as a friend.

When the inevitable fallout occurs, Sarah becomes an unrelenting bully. Charlie's asthma becomes an obvious metaphor for the the way in which Sarah took her breath away at first but then stifled her attempts to blossom. Charlie struggles to hold back a response until a shocking burst of violence that closes the film with a final haunting image.

Laurent joins a growing line of directors in recent years who have captured the dynamics among teenage girls during a critical phase of maturity. (See "It Felt Like Love" and "Girlhood" for two examples.) She has a facility behind the camera and knack for pacing. De Laage and Japy give bold, raw performances, unafraid of an intimacy that never feels exploitative.

Laurent eventually overplays her hand at the very end by relying on horror tropes that turn the drama up to 11, turning both girls into ogres. But the film is often compelling and beautifully shot.

HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994) (B) - This one, from a generation ago, ratchets up the intensity between its teenage heroines but also wigs out on over-the-top performances and pulpy fantasy sequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet future acting heavyweights Melanie Lynskey ("Hello, I Must Be Going," HBO's "Togetherness") and Kate Winslet, making their film debuts here as imaginative, sensitive girls who push the boundaries of friendship and sensuality in early '50s New Zealand. Lynskey is dark-haired and disturbed Pauline, a budding writer in a working-class home, and Winslet plays the prissier Juliet, the daughter of bourgeois Brits. Their connection grows into obsession and role-playing, with a shared love of Mario Lanza and a touching intimacy that horrifies their parents.

The girls role-play when they are together, occasionally exploring a heavenly fantasy world full of bright colors and their clay-model characters come to life and grown full size). They write each other religiously when apart (Juliet is sickly and spends time away in a TB ward). Juliet's parents threaten to take her back to Europe or send her off to South Africa, raising the stakes for the girls, desperate to stay together at any cost.

They hatch a scheme to murder Pauline's mother and use a stash of money to run off together. Will the parent push them over the edge? If you don't know the true story behind the script, you might get caught up in the building suspense.

Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings") is at the helm here, with longtime writing collaborator Fran Walsh dramatizing a true-crime page-turner. His pulpy production and extreme melodrama presage his worldwide success in bloated fantasy films. The over-the-top visuals have a cartoon quality that at times recalls Robert Altman's live-action "Popeye." One quick shot of the girls running on a pier and Pauline flying off into the water is breathtaking. Too often, though, Jackson seems to be merely showing off.

Both Lynskey and Winslet are called on to ham it up beyond reason. They scream and sob often, and Lynskey's brooding intensity and broad mannerisms scream "nut case" from the very start. (Don't forget her turn as the crazed stalker on the mainstream sitcom "Two and a Half Men.") Now accomplished, nuanced actors, they must look back at these performances and wince a bit. The adults all come off as both ordinary and monstrous, the enemies of these idealistic dreamers.

Flaws aside (Jackson has always been an acquired taste), this is a giddy expression of art and joyful storytelling. It's a historical artifact that launched two memorable careers. And it's an intense depiction of teen-girl bonding for the ages.
 

That '90s Uplift - Part II: The Spin Boom

"Oh, Ben, that’s the whole beauty of it! I see it like a diamond, shining in the dark, hard and rough, that I can pick up and touch in my hand."
-- Willy Loman to Ben, "Death of a Salesman"

ALL THINGS MUST PASS (A-minus) - Aside from my homes and the newsrooms I worked in, the place I most likely spent the most time in during the 1990s was any given Chicago record store - the chains, Tower, Rose and Reckless, the suburban indies, Rolling Stones, Beautiful Day, Val's Halla. In that era, CDs had displaced vinyl, as my collection ballooned beyond the 1,000 mark.

I was a record-store rat. I could spend hours at Tower Records' 28,000-square-foot megaplex on North Clark Street, usually emerging with fistfuls of discs. The record store wave was yet another bubble created and sustained by our immediate elders, the baby boomers (who also floated me generously in my first career -- the last golden age of newspapers, which funded my habit). The bursting of the music bubble has been a source of genuine sadness. When I upgraded to a new car a few weeks ago, I didn't even think to check to see that it came with a CD player. I just assumed it did. It doesn't.

Call it naked nostalgia. I'm an unreliable narrator for this post. "All Things Must Pass" tells the story of Tower Records, born in the 1960s in Sacramento, Calif., and run like a family business while expanding to L.A., then New York, Japan, London and, of course, Chicago (in 1991). A cohesive team of raggedy teens, under the lenient leadership of founder Russ Solomon, congealed in the 1970s and stuck together for a couple of decades, ending up as a funky middle-aged management team. As the opening cards tell us, by the late '90s Tower Records had annual sales of $1 billion from nearly 200 stores; but by 2006 the company -- saddled with the burdensome debt that had fueled the explosive growth -- had gone belly-up.

Colin Hanks (Tom's kid), in his debut behind the camera, assembled this valentine to the glory days of vinyl LPs, 45s, cassettes and compact discs -- tangible music, complete with cover art, protective sleeves and jewel cases. He sits down 80-something Solomon and his former loyal employees for lively interviews and reminiscences (they are heavier and jowlier, but better groomed than their young selves as glimpsed in old images). He mixes in a knowledgeable industry expert (Steve Knopper from Rolling Stone magazine) and a few rock legends stripped of their artifice: Bruce Springsteen, David Grohl (who worked at the D.C. store because it was the only place he could get hired without having to cut his hair), Elton John and exec David Geffen. We get video of "Rock of the Westies"-era John prowling the record bins, his detailed shopping list in hand, during the hour he had to himself every Tuesday morning at the Sunset Boulevard landmark before it opened for the day. Interviewed today, the rock star is truly saddened by the demise of the music warehouse, calling it one of the great tragedies of his life.

I know how he feels.

* * *

Bin binges are a way to mark history. I bought R.E.M.'s "Green" on Election Day in 1988 at Beautiful Day Records in La Grange. I visited the U.K. in 1990, and still have the plastic sleeve on the XTC disc I bought at Tower Records in London ("The Compact XTC: The Singles 1978-85," £11.99). I discovered Radio Birdman when some hipster store clerk spun "Radios Appear" on the store CD player at Reckless Records on Broadway, and, instantly hooked by the surf guitars in "Aloha Steve and Danno," I bought a copy on the spot. Undeterred by a terrorist strike on our nation, I spent an entire afternoon traversing Chicago and its suburbs to find an open record store on 9/11 to buy Bob Dylan's "Love & Theft" on its release date. Tower closed even earlier than they had promised me on the phone (the cowards!), so I drove across the city, the length of Lake Street under the L tracks, to Val's Halla, the hole in the wall in Oak Park, where it was business as usual, a dinky black-and-white TV on a shelf near the ceiling flashing news images of members of Congress reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

* * *

The film blissfully riffs on an outdated scene, and I was transported back to the stacks. On one level, this is what the documentary seemed like to me:  "Blah-blah-blah" ... footage inside a record store ... "Blah-blah-blah" ... footage inside a record store ... "Blah-blah-blah" ... footage inside a record store (CD listening stations!) .... But, I watched it twice, and it's more than that. It's a fond and surprisingly clear-eyed look at a movement, a business, and one of its visionaries.

Hanks is thorough in his research, presentation and attention to detail. He digs up John Lennon's 1974 radio promo for Tower's Sunset Strip store (an oldie but a goodie). He learns that the yellow and red colors of the logo were borrowed from that of oil giant Shell. The camera in archival footage zooms in on those great sale prices blaring from handmade signs: $3.88 for LPs that listed for $5.98 and $6.98. And there was the simple "Peanuts"-style font of the store's slogan: "No Music No Life." He celebrates Tower's art department and the publishing wing (Pulse magazine).

The filmmaker captures the emotion of several Tower veterans trying to describe the corporate takeover and purge of the old guard, the harshing of their vibe -- particularly with Bob Delanoy describing the inscription on the watch he was given on his way out the door (it said, in part, "We love you"). Another disciple of Solomon's chokes up completely, signals a timeout, shakes his head apologetically and just walks off camera. The giddiness of passionate hippie entrepreneurs had eventually fallen victim to over-exuberance brought to heel by Wall Street. (Like the baby boomers' indulgent boosterism of the newspaper industry, the housing market and their Reagan-Democrat trickle-down politics, that generation's goosing of the record industry was evidence that greed and materialism merely created the illusion of a prosperity bought on credit, one that masked a culture approaching burnout.)

Hanks shapes the narrative with a classic VH-1 "Behind the Music" arc. Exploiting the company's unsustainable debt load, the banks swooped in and seized Tower by the throat. Solomon was forced to step aside and let his unpopular son take over as a figurehead and puppet, overseeing the gutting of the company. No one interviewed is a fan of the faceless Betsy, the banks' hatchet woman. Solomon, never losing the glint in his eyes, says of her, "If I ever came close to killing someone ... with my hands ... it was her." Hanks doesn't leave us hopeless, though. An absolutely lovely coda (to the strains of the wistful title track by George Harrison), hinted at in the opening scene, assures the viewer that the spirit of Tower Records remains alive.

Solomon knew the significance of rock 'n' roll in the postwar era and how deeply meaningful it was to his young customers. Music played a significant part in people's lives, he reckoned, "And we were how they got it." Heidi Cotler, one of Tower's first female clerks (who survived years of sexism, ending up in an executive position), summed it up concisely and a little poetically: "It was here, we were part of it, we fell in love, then it went away."

***

"What are you building? Lay your hand on it. Where is it?"
 -- Ben to Willy, "Death of a Salesman"

I can mark the month and year of my buddy Ed's wedding, because it was held in Sacramento, and during that weekend I went to (the original?) Tower Records to pick up Dylan's "Time Out of Mind," carrying it back to the hotel room to play on my portable Discman. I placed the foam pieces of the headphones against my ears, pressed play, and my heart jumped at the piercing pulsing organ notes of the opening track, "Love Sick," with the haunting Daniel Lanois production and the opening line: "I'm walking ... through streets that are dead." I don't remember anything about the wedding itself.

That was October 1997. Since then, something significant slipped through my fingers.

Ed's marriage endured.

BONUS TRACKS
From the end credits, a new one on me -- the rootsy workout "Violent Shiver" by a young punk Benjamin Booker -- my latest favorite song:



Lennon's promo:



My own choice for theme song -- Australia's surf punks Radio Birdman slashing and burning through Roky Erickson's "You're Gonna Miss Me":


 

That '90s Uplift - Part I: The Spin Room

THE WAR ROOM (1993) (B+) - A new era dawned in 1992 when the Comeback Kid shrugged off his mistress's bombshell, stormed to second place in New Hampshire and then ran the table in the primaries before grabbing the presidency from a clueless, tongue-twisted Bush. Bill Clinton's campaign was run by a Felix-and-Oscar team of silver-tongued George Stephanopoulos and serpent-tongued James Carville.

This classic documentary from the legendary D.A. Pennebaker ("Don't Look Back") and Chris Hegedus ("Startup.com") leverages its deep access to provide an intimate glimpse inside the Little Rock hub of Clinton's ragtag collection of wonks. It preserves in amber the last presidential election of the analog age, one that rewrote the campaign playbook for everyone.

Stylewise, Pennebaker and Hegedus owe a great deal of debt to Robert Drew's landmark film "Primary," which employed the same fly-on-the-wall approach as he trailed John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey to VFW halls and church basements during another sea-change election. "The War Room" revels in quaint details of Americana and slathers the soundtrack with corny old political ditties, all the while acknowledging that Stephanopoulos and Carville were rewriting the rules of campaign strategy. As such, the film is a smart time capsule, but it also feels hopelessly out of date.

In a zippy 96 minutes, the filmmakers sprint through the entire primary season and the fall campaign, using newspaper headlines as shorthand to convey key plot points. They rely on sights and sounds and snippets of dialogue to move the narrative along to its happy ending on election night in November, when the staff were pinching themselves to make sure they weren't imagining it all.

Carville is the cover boy and the camera magnet. We get treated to the greatest hits ("It's the economy, stupid") but also to quieter scenes where he brainstorms strategy and counter-punches. He gets obsessed in late September with a video purporting to show Bush/Quayle campaign materials being manufactured in Brazil. He spitballs potential one-liners, including a few clunkers ("'Read my lips'? Nuh-uh, we're gonna read the facts!").

Stephanopoulos oozes that boyish charm as he scampers about, swimming in his cheap suits, snapping his gum -- he's 31 going on 13. We watch him handle the candidate expertly; he's a calming influence for Clinton, who is mostly an unseen character at the other end of the phone line.

Along with other faces now familiar as a generation of TV talking heads -- Paul Begala, Dee Dee Meyers, Mark Halperin, and rival Mary Matalin (with the charisma of a movie star here) -- the gang members ply their skills in a pre-digital world: landlines, a sluggish news cycle, conference tables plastered with daily newspapers. We listen in on strategy sessions and eavesdrop on the team members as they put out fires, craft clever comebacks, and invent the Spin Room.

Meantime, the filmmakers record random sights and sounds along the campaign trail. There's Gennifer Flowers seeming to sink Clinton with her shocking news conference (and smirking slyly at the infamous question about whether the candidate used a condom). Marching bands serenade crowds (including a brassy version of "Gimme Some Lovin"); line dancers boot-scoot to Bonnie Raitt's hit "Something to Talk About"); one rally's interpreter for the hearing impaired signs along to Van Morrison's "Domino"). The parties' conventions are utterly quaint. And, of course, there's the cartoon that was Ross Perot.

"The War Room" captures a specific moment in time, when the baby boomers completed their takeover of the culture, when the world was about to get much messier, zippier and complicated. In that battle for the White House, an oddball collection of strategists and foot soldiers bonded over a once-in-a-generation candidate surfing the zeitgeist.

Were they smart or just lucky? Clinton was the Natural, and he only had to squeak out 42 percent of the vote against Bush, a walking anachronism drowning in an economic downturn, and Perot, who siphoned votes from the president. When he finally rolls to victory on Election Day, the euphoria of his crew is contagious. It's something that can't be recaptured.

BONUS TRACK
"The War Room" has gotten the Criterion treatment. A second disc includes an 81-minute follow-up documentary that reunites the old gang to crow about their crowning achievement. It's a limp affair that adds little insight into the original film.
   

So I Don't Have To

In an occasional feature, we present capsule reviews from correspondents who go see the movies that we don't have an interest in seeing.  Today, veteran filmgoer Phillip Blanchard weighs in on yet another super-hero/career-reboot action extravaganza, "Deadpool":

I go to movies like this with my son. He’s now 18 and I still questioned my parenting watching “Deadpool.”

It’s a comedy superhero film and much of it is very funny. But while I generally don’t object to foul language or graphic cartoon violence, this is a bit much.

Ryan Reynolds is a step above most Marvel actors, and it’s always nice to see Morena Baccarin ("Homeland"). Despite the film's overdependence on shock language and mutilation, I was happy to see it. But I doubt I’ll see it again.

I did wonder why several parents brought their 10-year-olds to see it. Maybe I’m not such a bad parent after all.

GUEST GRADE: B

  

Be Mine

45 YEARS (A-minus) - This quietly devastating drama about a couple about to celebrate their 45th anniversary boasts one of the most powerful endings you'll ever see. But its creaky, deliberate first act threatens to derail the production and drive away impatient viewers.

It's refreshing to see a quiet drawing-room drama presented so confidently. Kate Mercer (the eternal Charlotte Rampling) is a spry, loving wife bounding around her country home in Norfolk, England, sporting jeggings and that weighted smile. Husband Geoff (Tom Courtenay, "Billy Liar, "Dr. Zhivago") bumbles about in a bit of a fog, peering out cluelessly from behind old-man spectacles.

A ghost hovers over their marriage. In the week before their big anniversary bash, Geoff receives a letter informing him that the body of his former girlfriend, Katya, has been discovered on a glacier in the Swiss Alps, where she had plummeted to her death while traveling in Europe with Geoff. What was ancient history, a tamped-down issue, is suddenly thrust front and center in Kate and Geoff's marriage. She wonders: Has he ever gotten over his old flame, a young love, who perished so tragically?

Working from a short story by David Constantine (who certainly owes a sizable debt to James Joyce's "The Dead"), Andrew Haigh adapts and directs his second major feature. His previous outing, "Weekend," followed a finely observed couple of days at the beginning of a relationship. Here, Haigh methodically shaves off layers from a calloused, childless marriage until he hits a nerve.

But the story meanders at times, suggesting a bit of padding of the short story into a 95-minute feature. Much of the "action" takes place in the couple's home, with claustrophobic scenes in the bedroom and the attic. Courtenay is essentially somnambulant, struggling to grasp the line between nostalgic and dotty. Rampling's Kate does her share of moping throughout the first half, as well. By all accounts, they get along fine.

It's difficult to discuss the second half of the movie without giving too much away. As the week passes and the big day approaches, it becomes clear that Geoff never quite got over Katya and that Kate has been blind to the possibility that she may not have been the sole focus of Geoff's affections and intentions. A devastating scene of Kate rooting around the archives in the attic tears the narrative open. And the final pas de deux between Geoff and Kate at their party at last lays everything bare, albeit subtly.

Haigh knows that he has an ending for the ages in his back pocket the whole time. (It compares with the climax of "Phoenix" for the best of 2015.) He has the patience and skill to craft a simmering portrait of a sclerotic marriage. After it finds a rhythm, "45 Years" serves up minor-key intrigue. Can Geoff prove that he has devoted this nearly half a century to his beloved Kate? Can Kate come to terms with the fact that she might not be his one true love? Is living a lifetime at another's side any better or worse than living only in another's heart?

Kate's friend Lena warns her to expect Geoff to break down in tears during his speech at the anniversary party, because men always are caught off-guard in the moment by truths and realities that women have known all along. As if on cue, that climactic scene does evoke some tears. It did in me, as the image of a particular lost love flashed in my mind. Weak as a clueless cad.

BONUS TRACKS
Presented without comment, from the retro soundtrack, two well-placed songs that end up telling the whole story:




  

[CENSORED]

WELCOME TO LEITH (F)* - This is not a bad documentary. However, there's no reason to watch this. I did so that you don't have to.

"Welcome to Leith" chronicles the attempt by white supremacist Craig Cobb to take over a town of a dozen or two souls by buying up property and populating the North Dakota burg with fellow white nationalists. He and his goofy sidekick come across as more bumbling than menacing as they spout racist rantings, fly the flags of the Aryan races and flaunt their weapons.

There's no way around the conclusion that this is a platform for hate-mongers. There might be arguments to be made for exposing this ugliness. This limp, uninspired documentary does not make that case. Any minor benefits to be asserted here are far overwhelmed by the hideousness of providing a forum to offensive provocateurs. The world is not made better by following them around with a camera. Cobb's taunting of a resident whose teen daughter was murdered is repulsive, and the airing of it holds no redeeming value.

Writer-directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker show no imagination in presenting the material. Handed a juicy story, they somehow manage to sap the energy and intrigue out of the narrative; the final act is clownishly anti-climactic. The young filmmakers show a weird obsession with time-lapse shots of clouds in the sky, to the point of parody.

There's a useful story to be told here, perhaps. This film is not it. Maybe no film is.

Honestly, find something more fulfilling to do for an hour and a half. Nothing to see here. Move it along.


* - We can't afford a researcher or archivist, but this might be only our second F grade.
  

Least of Eden

EDEN (B-minus) - This passionate brother-sister project from France sets out to tell the story of that country's house music scene of the past two decades, but it never finds a satisfying rhythm.

Director Mia Hansen-Love ("Goodbye First Love") penned the script with her brother, Sven, based on his life as a DJ struggling to break through to the big time but stumbling along perpetually, tripped up by drugs, bad luck, and mounting debt. Fresh-faced Felix de Givry ("Something in the Air") stars as Paul, puppy-dog cute and determined to follow his dream with his partner, Stan (Hugo Conzelmann). They spin "garage" music, a mix of house and classic disco.

Hansen-Love occasionally creates transcendent moments conveying the joys of the dance-club experience. Characters pogo on the dance floor, sometimes in slow motion, blissing out to the beat. Several times, her sound mix brings in the natural voices of the dancers singing along in unison to some of the era's defining tracks. The feelings of rapture are undeniable. That includes the trippy "Sueno Latino" that bubbles beneath the opening credits:



But Hansen-Love fumbles too often with her narrative choices. She chooses to sprawl across 20 years, aging her characters unconvincingly. (De Givry just can't pull off pushing 40.) She would have been better off either confining this to just a few years or going with a documentary. She constantly returns to Paul's low-key clashes with his mother, who wants him to finish his college studies and straighten himself out. Paul is a bit of a cipher, and it's difficult to fully give in to a recounting of his life story. She would have been better served with a more narrowly focused period piece (like Elaine Constantine's "Northern Soul," which stuck with the early '70s) and a shorter run time.

Another problem is Love's decision to cast similar-looking actors to play main characters. The love interests seem like interchangeable pixie chicks. When Laura Smet ("The Bridesmaid," "Gilles' Wife") shows up as the free-spirited Margot, her arresting presence makes everyone else melt into the background. Alas, Margot -- a temptation for Paul -- is a wasted opportunity, and she's gone too quickly. The film then drifts along, limping to a 131-minute finish. (An extended cameo by Greta Gerwig as a married love interest also falls flat.)

The director also drags Paul and Stan's entourage to New York and then Chicago, merely because she can name-drop big names from those local scenes, like Frankie Knuckles (whose "Whistle Song" is featured). Hansen-Love just doesn't have the skills to juggle so many characters over several eras. The death of one member of the inner circle carries little emotional impact.

But "Eden" is not without its charms. Some free-form scenes work up a delightful camaraderie among the scenesters, often revolving around awkward hook-ups and/or piles of cocaine. A running gag finds the duo from Daft Punk, Guy and Thomas, getting turned away by doormen who don't recognize the pair (who famously perform in masks), only for them to be rescued by someone who recognizes the underground superstars and invites them in.

Hansen-Love has a flair for creating a mood, and she is facile behind the camera. She's just too close to the biographical background here. She overreached in shooting for an epic. "Eden" is simply too tepid to be memorable.

BONUS TRACKS
A winning soundtrack features some classic tracks, such as the breakthrough hit from Daft Punk:



Crystal Waters with "Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless)":


 

New to the Queue

Creaking out of the gates ...

An appealing cast lures us to the latest Coen Brothers giddiness, "Hail, Caesar."

We'll give Chile's Pablo Larrain ("No," "Tony Manero") one more shot with another takedown of the Catholic church, "The Club."

From France, the sexual frustration of Army spouses in "Fort Buchanan."

Philippe Garrel ("Jealousy," "A Burning Hot Summer") takes a lighter tack with relationships with his latest, "In the Shadow of Women."

From Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu ("12:08 East of Bucharest" and the disappointing "Police, Adjective"), a quirky comic-drama about a buried fortune, "Treasure."

Also from Romania, Radu Jude's 19th-century Gypsy Western, "Aferim."

Oscar Isaac and Garrett Hedlund team up for a raw crime thriller set in the California desert, "Mojave."

Perhaps the final documentary centered on the world view of Noam Chomsky (now 87), "Requiem for the American Dream."
  

Best of 2015

It has hit me the past few months as I sit in movie theaters and grumble through the countless previews before the main feature: Why do they keep making the same movie over and over? It's all been done before and done to death. The other day, the previews included a cute Disney animated feature with a small child teaming up with a wise old man; Disney, again, CGI'ing the hell out of what used to be a simple classic ("The Jungle Book"); and, goodness, another Terence Malick wank, conveyed in mystical whispers.

It's time to play against type, looking past the tried-and-true filmmakers and instead seeking out fresh storytellers and actors, venturing outside the old comfort zone. Whom did I gravitate toward in 2015? Women, many of them newcomers, including a Persian lesbian, '50s bisexuals, military rats, disaffected teens discovering empowerment, and a couple of wisecracking transgender hookers. I rose from my 50-something, persnickety, Midwest suburban-bred, hetero easy chair and stretched my legs. I sauntered into a new life cycle, clearing out some old clutter.

I shrugged at a lot of my go-to guys from the past. I loved every movie Noah Baumbach made before 2015, but I thought "While We're Young" (starring Ben Stiller, ho-hum) was only pretty good, and "Mistress America," his parlor-room farce with younger gal-pal Greta Gerwig (my former It Girl), was embarrassing. The newspaper drama "Spotlight" was solid but not transformative. I couldn't bear the thought of spending two-and-a-half hours with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's slog of a western, "The Revenant," even though he topped last year's list with "Birdman." I skipped Guy Maddin's latest fever dream altogether. I'm looking forward to the coming Coen Brothers romp but won't raise my hopes too high. Do they or Wes Anderson or David O. Russell or Michael Winterbottom or Francois Ozon or (forgive me) Jim Jarmusch really have any insight left to reveal to me? And as for quirky or cutting edge artists, I'll take Sean Baker ("Tangerine") or (holy crap!) Kornel Mundruczo ("White God").

It's a new crew that I'm connecting with. I cried during "Room," "Girlhood," "Diary of a Teenage Girl" and "Carol." I sat in awe at the confidence on display in "Appropriate Behavior" by Iranian-American Desiree Akhavan and the military comedy "Zero Motivation" from Israel's Talya Lavie. And coming-of-age stories (a genre that somehow never gets stale) don't get more "I Am Woman" than "Diary of a Teenage Girl" (U.S.), "Girlhood" (France) and "Mustang" (Turkey). It wasn't long ago that Sofia Coppola and Nicole Holofcener and maybe a few others were wandering lonely in a vast desert, or Kathryn Bigelow was slumming as the token mainstream darling. No more. The old-boys network is finally breaking down.

That said, it was not a deep year for film, and I decided to limit my list to a lean, deserving ten titles, as opposed to previous years when I was shoehorning gems into a Top 15 or 20. Granted, many of my runner-ups (and my documentary and guilty-pleasure choices) were more in line with my white-male-elder experience, but in my Top 10, seven are clearly about women, and six were directed, written and/or co-written by women.

OK, bully for me, oh so enlightened. Or maybe just condescending. Depends on your perspective. The bottom line is, we're shaking up the lineup a bit and requiring the old guard to earn our continued loyalty. As a legendary geezer, Bob Dylan (whose recent albums never achieved heavy rotation), once succinctly put it, "It used to go like that; now it goes like this."

The world turns. The ground shifts. We adjust. Here are the best films of 2015.

THE TOP TEN

1. Diary of a Teenage Girl - This luscious period piece revives that '70s feel of the teen-angst wail, taking a creepy concept and converting it into a meditation on longing, loneliness and self-realization. A feminist howl. (Including the best screenplay, by Marielle Heller.)

2. Appropriate Behavior - A stunningly assured debut from Persian-American writer/director/star Desiree Akhavan, a smarter, tougher "Annie Hall" for the post-gender age.

3. Room - A perfect two-act play, centered around mother and son, about the wonders of the world and the horrors committed by some of the people in it. The most touching film of the year.

4. Tangerine - A dizzying day-in-the-life of transgender prostitutes on the sunwashed streets of L.A. on Christmas Eve, an odyssey that never lets up, like "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" on mescaline. (Including the best director, Sean Baker, shooting on an iPhone.)

5. Timbuktu - A harrowing tale of ordinary life under the yoke of religious fundamentalism. An extended long-distance tracking shot of the hero trekking across a stream is an indelible image.

6. Girlhood - Restless teenagers running in a pack. Captivating visuals. A narrative primal scream. A rhapsody in blue.

7. White God - An epic saga and a truly wild ride, a riveting amalgam of at least a dozen other movies. The biggest surprise of the year.

8. Carol - Elegant, tender and lyrical, Todd Haynes elevates an ordinary crush into a languid tone poem, subtly rooting his story with the wallflower rather than the alpha female. Written by Phyllis Nagy, adapting a Patricia Highsmith novel.

9. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck - A mesmerizing pastiche that examines the mind and heart of a tortured artist for the ages.

10. Wild Tales - From Argentina, six vignettes that are funny, clever, and exhilarating -- one of my favorite experiences in a movie theater in 2015.

BONUS TRACK

Zero Motivation - Technically a late December 2014 release in New York (but a film festival regular into 2015), this deadpan slacker farce is relentlessly funny ("Stripes" meets "Sgt. Bilko," from the Midwestern AARP perspective) and deceptively haunting. It could easily drop into the top five.

JUST MISSED THE LIST

 

• Mustang
• Tu Dors Nicole
• About Elly
• Phoenix 
• Anomalisa
• What We Do In the Shadows
• The Wolfpack 
• Results
• Jafar Panahi's Taxi
• Love & Mercy
• Slow West 
• The Mend

 

MORE TOP DOCS

 

• The Wrecking Crew
• Watchers of the Sky
• The Pearl  Button
• Revenge of the Mekons
• Call Me Lucky
• Heart of a Dog
• We Come as Friends
• Listen To Me Marlon
• No No: A Dockumentary
• Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll

TOP PERFORMANCES

 

• Rooney Mara in "Carol"
• Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, an inseparable team, in "Room"
• Kristen Wiig in "Welcome to Me," "Diary of a Teenage Girl," and "Nasty Baby"
• Big-eyed Bel Powley in "Diary of a Teenage Girl"
• Paul Dano in "Love & Mercy" 
• Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor romping through "Tangerine" 

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

(Good films where we just didn't click)

• The Look of Silence
• The End of the Tour
• Clouds of Sils Maria 

GUILTY PLEASURES

 

• The silly and charming "Murder of a Cat"
• Jeremy Renner powering the journalistic slow burn "Kill the Messenger"
• The stylized horror film "Alleluia"
• The sappy "Danny Collins," along with the rest of the Pacino trilogy, "Manglehorn" and "The Humbling"
• The highs and lows of a daredevil, "Being Evel"
• The bizarre, disturbing, deadpan "Buzzard"
• Jason Schwartzman doing that thing of his in "7 Chinese Brothers"

THE DUDS

• Stray Dogs
• Mistress America
• It Follows
• Dumb & Dumber To
• Duke of Burgundy
• 99 Homes

COMING ATTRACTIONS

(Wish I'd seen these)

• 45 Years
• In Jackson Heights
• James White

Stay tuned for reports on those last three titles once I catch up with them -- and plenty more -- as we forge ahead into 2016 . . .