Motor City Madness

DETROIT: WILD CITY (2011) (B+) - This thoughtful documentary toddles around devastated Detroit during the depths of the recession and discovers both despair and hope. The result is an errant snapshot of a city that might be in transition.

The only film on the resume of French filmmaker Florentine Tillon, "Wild City" is often visually arresting. The camera glides and floats, producing a dreamlike quality to the storytelling. Unidentified narrators from local neighborhoods are often presented as detached voices. Sights and sounds speak volumes. A decaying sign asks the haunting question "How would you survive the end of the world?" Tillon unspools a newsreel report about the auto capital from the early 20th century, and he segues from the narrator's booming oration declaring "Time marches on" to a shot of a modern strip mall and the gaudy storefront of Happy's Pizza.  That dry sense of humor lifts the viewer's spirits. 

And Tillon tells some fascinating stories from the dark corners of the industrial wasteland. The camera tracks blocks and blocks of abandoned warehouses and apartment complexes, ducking into dank structures and stumbling on fascinating scenes. One place contains a whole floor full of boxes of the same book, some inspirational paperback, many copies having been used as kindling by squatters. We also hang out with a couple of guys tossing expired appliances out the window of the upper floors of a ghosted apartment building. 

The most fascinating segments involve urban farmers, as Tillon taps into the nascent movement that has been drawing a lot of millennials to Detroit in the past decade or so. The filmmaker expertly contrasts that back-to-basics industriousness with the artifice of the gaudy, insular four-tower Renaissance Center that allows suburbanites to hide in the middle of the city, shielded from the blight during their workday. 

The film, oddly, can feel detached from the vast swaths of the populace. Buildings, landscapes and critters are more prominent than residents are. The overwhelming proportion of featured residents are white. It's as if Tillon purposely chose not to wallow in the plight of urban blacks. 

The final face and voice belongs to a black bartender. He eloquently captures the essence of Tillon's apparent thesis with this tale: Three hundred years ago, he points out, Canadians migrated to this undeveloped prairie and built an industrial kingdom that brought riches to the barons of business and created a secure middle class. Fifty years after that way of life collapsed, leaving a gutted urban homeland, as nature threatens to reaffirm its dominion, a new breed of pioneers is drawn to the challenge of creating a new community for a new age. 

This movie refuses to scoff at such audacity or at a grizzled bartender's willingness to welcome the next generation with open arms and, perhaps, a cold microbrew. 

Life Is Short: British Whimsy

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, here and here.

This is a cutesy slice of cheese, a quaint but melancholy story of an old woman who parks the van she lives in at various places along a street in a haughty neighborhood of London in the early 1970s. Maggie Smith plays the bug-eyed eccentric. Alex Jennings (calling to mind a young Ronnie Corbett) portrays the playwright who is telling the story, Alan Bennett, and for some reason the writer appears in duplicate -- one who lives the life, one who chronicles it -- both played by Jennings.

If Bennett (through director Nicholas Hytner, nine years from "The History Boys") has a point to make, he doesn't adequately convey it in the first third of the movie. Alas, it was there that I bailed. Perhaps the soothing subtleties were lost on me, but this retro quirk don't work.

Title: THE LADY IN THE VAN
Running Time: 104 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  47 MIN
Portion Watched: 45%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 53 YRS, 5 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 76.4 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Blogged about movies and went to bed.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 40-1
 

End Stage

REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM (B+) - Follow the money.

Legendary MIT professor Noam Chomsky has been the conscience of our system of government for decades, and as he starts to pull away from public life at age 87, he uses his last long-form documentary  chronicling the progression of our political system to the point I like to call Fourth-Stage Capitalism.

A trio of progressive filmmakers -- Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks and Jared Scott -- sits Chomsky down for a few extreme close-ups and his customary rants about the injustices and evils perpetuated in the name of the American people. They break it down into 10 neat chapters, the equivalent of two album sides of material for what is, in effect, Chomsky's greatest hits.

The main theme: How the wealthy have, in the parlance of the 2016 election, rigged the system to forever favor them. As the film progresses, the later chapters gradually raise the stakes, as Chomsky breaks down such fundamental topics as education (starving public schools to encourage the rise of charter schools) and the media (all together now, "Manufacturing consent!"). Our guide is sharp and even occasionally snarky. He tosses off phrases that concisely articulate his philosophy -- he makes a passing reference to our "residue of democracy," for example.

The filmmakers feel overly compelled to goose the production with animation and lazy visual effects. Old footage is invariably preceded by the white light of a film projector clacking away in the foreground. The graphics give off a slight whiff of "Schoolhouse Rock."

And the topic is pretty dense, even at a compact 75 minutes. But the star still manages to slice directly at the heart of our culture with his blunt rhetoric that begs to be heeded.

BONUS TRACK
Streaming on PBS under the "Independent Lens" banner:

DEMOCRATS (B) - This charming yet disturbing documentary spends a couple of years with the leaders of Zimbabwe's political factions as they try to hammer out a constitution under the dictatorship of strongman Robert Mugabe. Camilla Nielsson ("Children of Darfur") tromps around the African nation with Mugabe's snake-tongued proxy, Paul Mangwana (below, center), pushing the ruling ZANU-PF party's propaganda. On the other side, opposition party representative Douglas Mwonzora (left) keeps his cool in dealing with the various indignities of the process.

The pair lead a nationwide tour of town-hall meetings, with Mugabe's man always a step ahead of the game. The ruling party buses residents to each area's gatherings, where they robotically express their support for a form of government with extensive presidential powers.

Machiavellian drama abounds. The one-liners couldn't be better if they had been scripted by Aaron Sorkin.  “Democracies in Africa are a difficult proposition, because always the opposition will want more than it deserves,” says a surprisingly congenial Mugabe. Mangwana dresses down a reporter for asking "negative" questions and leaves the scribe with this simple warning: "The free press will feel my fist."

Nielsson finesses intimate access. Her observant camera captures the labor pains involved in trying to birth a democracy in a nation conditioned by a history of colonialism and then three decades of dictatorship. And some people thought the Wyoming caucuses were complicated.

Raunch 'n' Roll

We caught those Texas rascals the Supersuckers at the quirky venue Meow Wolf in Santa Fe on Monday night. Opening was the name-dropping guitar slinger Jesse Dayton. The 'Suckers were in cowpunk mode, with the core of their set calling back to their landmark album from 1997, "Must've Been High." Eddie Spaghetti and the boys can still bring it.

***

Dayton, a dynamic but raggedy guitarist, opened with an earnest set of songs that pay homage to classic country. While bragging about his work with Waylon Jennings, Hayes Carll and Rob Zombie, among others, he and his trio peeled off nuggets like "Daddy Was a Badass." His most rollicking offering was "I'm at Home Getting Hammered (While She's Out Getting Nailed)":

One of the Supersuckers' newer anthems is anchored by the memorable couplet: "She used to be pretty / Now she's just pretty fucked up."



The lead guitarist, "Metal" Marty Chandler, got to step out with Billy Joe Shaver's "Georgia on a Fast Train." Here's the original:



Their closer was worth the wait. It was the audience favorite "Born With a Tail":


 

Outlaw Chic

MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (B-minus) - This is a fascinating film from the talented Jeff Nichols, but it pretty much falls apart in the final reel, resulting in a huge disappointment.

Nichols flew out of the gates with the wonderful trilogy of "Shotgun Stories," "Take Shelter" and "Mud." Those first two starred Michael Shannon, who takes over here as Roy, a rough-hewn father who goes on the lam with his gifted young son pursued by the federal government and a cult that covets the boy's supernatural powers. A mature-looking Kirsten Dunst is the frock-wearing, pig-tailed mother. Joel Edgerton signs on as Lucas, a former sheriff's deputy who helps Roy and the boy, tender little Alton (Jaeden Lieberher, the imp from "St. Vincent").

Adam Driver is in full quirk mode for the role of Sevier, a government agent in charge of tracking the outlaws. Driver is back on his game after getting sidetracked by the thankless villain role in the "Star Wars" series. He provides both gravitas and subtle comic relief, as critical connective tissue for the narrative.

Like Nichols' previous offerings, "Midnight Special" is fat with foreboding. Young Alton suffers from visions and has powers of extra-sensory perceptions. On a car ride, he'll burst into Spanish, and it's just a matter of flipping the dial on the car radio to figure out that he's merely channeling a DJ's banter, word for word in real time. But more important, Alton similarly has tapped into government transmissions that contain top-secret information regarding the military and national security.

Nichols takes a little too much time setting up his premise (the run time is a bulky 1 hour 52 minutes), but his track record has earned him the right to demand such indulgence. Shannon burns with intensity, and Dunst unpacks a character slowly being leached of the cult's poisons. Edgerton is solid as the sidekick who must commit a serious crime in order for the men and boy to continue their journey.

The screenplay (also by Nichols) crackles at times. At one point Roy exhibits a tender side while assuring his son that he's not a burden: "I like worrying about you." The disdain for the shadowy cult, and the false salvation of religion in general, are summed up beautifully in one line, again from Roy: "Good people die everyday believing in things." Once the table is set by an unsettling first hour, we're ready to barrel toward a powerful reckoning.

Unfortunately, Nichols runs off the rails, as he gets overwhelmed by the sci-fi story and overly enamored of the special effects at his disposal. Alton has a penchant for shooting laser beams out of his eyes. A fantastical extra-terrestrial world magically appears. All the while, we're never quite sure what the government's after. Nor can we figure out why the surveillance and military might of the U.S. government can't track down a boy traveling the main roads in a Bondo-colored heap piloted by a couple of thugs.

By the climax, the viewer feels a bit conned. It's as if this were some classic Steven Spielberg thriller all along (perhaps with a Stephen King script). There are echoes of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and the rather cheesy ending has all the nuance of "E.T.," albeit tweaked with cool CGI effects. The ending feels like a cheat, and it makes the movie's two halves feel like one big bait-and-switch.

MOJAVE (C+) - There's no really good reason for this movie to exist. Billed as a thriller, "Mojave" tells the familiar tale of a privileged man going off to the desert to find himself, only to find trouble instead, this time in the form of a psychotic killer.

The uninspiring Garrett Hedlund borrows the shtick of Stephen Dorff in Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere" to play Tom, a disaffected actor who flees from the burdens of stardom and drives his Jeep out to the Mojave desert, seeking meaning. There he runs into devilish drifter Jack (Oscar Isaac), and the two immediately choreograph a cat-and-mouse game in which Jack will follow Tom back to L.A. seeking an eventual showdown.

Isaac is truly inspired as the philosopher madman -- inspired again by yet another version of an Al Pacino character, with a little De Niro head-shaving thrown in for good measure. Toss in Mark Wahlberg as a crazed producer who is partial to drugs and prostitutes, and you've got a movie that's a little too cartoonish for its own good.

Hedlund is essentially a cipher, providing little depth to his moping character who is unable to find happiness despite his beautiful French girlfriend and his comfortable lifestyle. Tom's opening scene boils down to this observation: "When you get what you want, what have you got?" But there's no payoff to that existential conundrum. Isaac has little to play off of and thus comes off as shrill and over-the-top. An early scene with the two men around a campfire is full of philosophical babble that leads nowhere.

This is the second effort as director for William Monahan, who wrote "The Departed" for Martin Scorsese. Here, he's flailing with ideas, and he shows little flair behind the camera. Isaac, as always, is fun to watch. There's a bit of suspense as to which man will come out alive. But by the end of the movie, it's rather difficult to care about the outcome.
 

New to the Queue

Still picky ...

Richard Linklater returns to his roots with the inoffensive college-baseball romp "Everybody Wants Some."

A documentary about the making of a 1965 film with Samuel Beckett and Buster Keaton, "Notfilm."

John Hawkes stars in a noir thriller about a private investigator avenging a murder, "Too Late."

A final feature from the celebrated Chantal Akerman ("Jeanne Dielman"), a documentary about her and her mother, "No Home Movie"; meantime, there's a documentary about Akerman, who died last year in an apparent suicide, "I Don't Belong Anywhere."

A moody family drama from the director of "Oslo, August 31st," Joachim Trier's "Louder Than Bombs."

From Brazil, an exploration of man and beasts, "Neon Bull."

A dinner party serving up a heapin' helpin' of existential horror, Karyn Kusama's "The Invitation."
 

Dear Mom & Dad ...

MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART (A-minus) - This lovely film from the Chinese Master Jia Zhang-ke elegantly unfolds across three decades to tell the simple story of a mother and her son.

Jia returns to his contemplative roots of his 2005 masterpiece "The World," as he continues to chronicle the evolution of 21st century China through deeply personal character studies. He hopscotches across three eras -- 1999, the present day, and 2025 -- telling the story of Shen Tao (Jia regular Tao Zhao), a wide-eyed college student who must choose between two suitors. She picks Zhang Jinsheng (Yi Zhang, also a regular) over his friend, Liangzi. Zhang is a wealthy entrepreneur, and a metaphor for the surge of capitalism in China.

Zhang names their son Dollar and seizes custody of the boy after their divorce. Liangzi, meanwhile, toils in the coal mines, to the detriment of his health. Dollar, about age 7, comes to visit his mother for the funeral of her father in the middle segment, and his prissy air of privilege rankles her. In the final segment, Dollar, now a college student, confronts his father, who has grown sullen and irascible, and a bit paranoid. Dollar wants to declare his freedom and maybe seek a reconciliation with his mother. The 2025 dialogue is in English and takes place mostly in Australia, another nod to globalization and a strain against China's culture and heritage. Dollar has forgotten much of his native tongue, and he finds a maternal fellow traveler in a middle-aged professor (Sylvia Chang), herself an ex-pat from Hong Kong. In a neat time-cheat, Dollar drives a vintage Chrysler Valiant (circa 1970).

Jia calmly unravels the spare narrative (clocking in at 131 minutes but never dragging). He's partial to explosions, eruptions and fireworks as indicators of breaks from the past. He also toys with the aspect ratio, as well. The first segment is confined to a nearly square letterboxed format; the middle segment widens to a standard ratio; the final segment -- depicting a relatively familiar-looking future -- blossoms into a widescreen format. His camera often sits still or glides slowly and sensually. This is a tender film at the opposite end of the spectrum from 2013's violence-packed "A Touch of Sin."

Shen Tao is moral center and anchor of the film. In the middle segment she hands her child a key to his childhood house, but -- corny as it sounds -- it might as well be a key to her heart. She knows that a mother-son bond eventually may give way to a father-son bond, but her connection to Dollar will always run deeper.

In the opening scene Shen Tao leads a troupe in a New Year's dance (she's a celebrated singer and entertainer); and that dance is echoed in one of the loveliest bookends a filmmaker could create. Jia is telling us that old-fashioned sentiment and homespun tradition endure. As does soulful filmmaking.

JAMES WHITE (B) - James is having a rough go of it. His father has recently died. He meets his father's second wife at the funeral. His mother is dying of cancer. And he generally can't get his personal life or career together.

It's not surprising that he acts out a lot. James is portrayed by Christopher Abbott, an exile from the early seasons of HBO's "Girls," where he was mostly a bland, goody-two-shoes plot device. Abbott reaches deep for the emotional pain that drives James as he battles to keep his head above water.

Cynthia Nixon (coincidentally, from HBO's first-gen gal-power series, "Sex and the City") has aged into the thankless role of dying middle-aged mother (like Laura Dern in "Wild"). Nixon, who just turned 50, wrings an un-embarrassing level of pathos from the part, tossing pride and decorum aside from some intense bathroom moments. She lounges comfortably in domestic scenes, especially when she is grooving to her slow jams -- Billie Holiday, Ray Charles.

Those tones clash with the harsher club music that plays as the soundtrack to James' extended fever dream. He has a habit of talking trash to women in bars and starting fights with bartenders and bouncers. His buddy Nick is helpless in trying to control him. Spiraling through a haze of hedonism and self-destruction, he strains every relationship he's in. A family friend offers him a writing gig at New York magazine, but James wakes up hungover on the morning of the interview, borrows his buddy's T-shirt and spectacularly bombs the meeting.

James develops into a pretty devoted son, honoring the "you and me against the world" bond with the woman who raised him alone. (Although the arc with his father is undercooked.) The main problem is with tone. The screenplay and the gritty visuals from debut writer/director Josh Mond are tough to connect with. James can be pretty despicable in the first half, and the raw depiction of his mother's decline might make you divert your gaze. If enough scenes make you look away, you might wonder why you've bothered to watch the movie at all.
  

Old Crush

HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS (A-minus) - This earnest romantic comedy mixes smart cultural observations with borderline-corny gags, and it's carried flawlessly by the endlessly engaging Sally Field.

Gidget is now a geriatric -- well, Field is 69 -- and she plays Doris Miller, an aging office drone and eccentric who has just buried the mother she lived with and cared for in that New York borough with the ferry and the fewest hipsters, Staten Island. Doris has a meet-cute in the elevator with her company's new artistic director -- John, who is about half her age -- and she develops an irrational crush. John is conventionally square-jawed and handsome without being too far out of reach; Max Greenfield (TV's "The New Girl") does a believable job of walking the line between studly and shlubby. Doris swoons during office fantasy sequences like a biddy Walter Mitty.

Director Michael Showalter (the spoofy "Wet Hot American Summer") co-writes with Laura Terruso (who has mostly written and directed shorts, including an early version of this film), and their sensibilities mesh well. They have a good ear for dialogue and a keen eye for the clash of cultures that ensues when Doris (by signing up for Facebook under an assumed name) worms her way into John's world. This is very much a story about friendship and about fitting in, and it's anything but a silly fish-out-of-water farce.

Whereas a movie like Noah Baumbach's "While We're Young" used all-caps and italics to emphasize the generation gap, "Doris" is sly and shaded about the topic. Doris is a total square on Staten Island, but she's just another hipster with cat's-eye glasses, clashing layers of clothes and poufy hair extensions in Brooklyn. She's an old-school OG blending in to the Old School movement. Like the young Williamsburg denizens, she knits sweaters, covets discarded household items, and bakes cornbread. When she shows up to a club in a neon yellow jumpsuit, the band invites her backstage after the gig and asks her to pose for their next album.

None of that is forced. It feels warm and natural while fraught with dramatic land mines. John gets a kick out of Doris and seems genuinely drawn to her, even if we can't imagine him developing romantic feelings for her. When Doris finally dolls herself up with makeup and a slinky black dress for a Thanksgiving gathering at John's loft, the impending heartbreak is palpable. In order to attend that feast, Doris must spurn the traditional get-together at the home of her dear friend, Roz (Tyne Daly), and it threatens to fray a relationship in which they interact like old spouses. Roz's teen granddaughter Vivian (voice actress Isabella Acres) provides just the right amount of agitation (and pure energy), abetting Doris' online subterfuge and earnestly cheering the old gal on in the dating world.

The supporting cast is key to giving the movie dimension. Stephen Root ("Office Space," TV's "Newsradio") brings depth to the role of Doris' brother, who shows genuine concern about the hoarding that has gone on in the home of Doris and their mother. Talented comedians like Natasha Lyonne (Netflix's "Orange Is the New Black") and Kumail Nanjiani (HBO's "Silicon Valley") play snarky co-workers who serve as a droll Greek chorus. Nanjiani gets off one of the best lines in the movie when, amid gossiping co-workers who are mostly confounded by Doris' quirks, he says about her: "I think she takes a boat to get to work."

But it's the tour-de-force performance by Field that makes the film and helps Showalter and Terruso join forces with a new generation of filmmakers working to subvert and evolve the rom-com genre. Field commits to the character, calling to mind her turn 28 years ago as the housewife turned standup comedian opposite Tom Hanks and John Goodman in "Punchline." Her Doris is an emotionally damaged, vulnerable older woman who has the courage to come out of her shell and (day)dream an impossible dream.

You root for Doris and you brace yourself for the inevitable tumble back to reality. The denouement here -- regarding her pursuit of John and her brother's concern for her mental stability -- feels rushed and too neatly resolved, but a clever ending makes it all right again. We don't know what eventually becomes of Doris, but it's a joy hanging out in Brooklyn for Gidget's sweet coming-out party.
  

RIP: Merle Haggard

Country legend Merle Haggard died today on his 79th birthday. We saw him about 10 years ago at a 4th of July bash with Willie Nelson in Roswell, N.M.

His ballad "Silver Wings" is two minutes of smooth perfection.

'Don't leave me,' I cried.

'Don't take that airplane ride ...'

Here is his original, followed the ultimate cover, by John Doe of X and the Knitters, with Dave Alvin pickin' the guitar:





And then there's my other favorite, "Misery and Gin," from when I discovered outlaw country music in high school:


 

Major Issues

Two of the most intense movies you'll ever want to see:

KRISHA (B+) - Trey Edward Shults turns family dysfunction into a darkly comic drama of such intensity it threatens to melt the screen.

The first shot is a close-up of the face of Krisha (Krisha Fairchild, like most of the cast, a relative of Shults), a 60-something woman quaking under the force of her demons, addictions and grievances. Over the next 83 minutes we'll watch her either manage to hold it all together or give in to those forces. And we'll revisit that intense close-up.

It's Thanksgiving Day, and Krisha is a prodigal child of sorts, ready to break an exile and impose her shaky sobriety on the rest of her clan, who treat her like a fragile wild animal. (Whatever caused her to lose the tip of a finger, now bandaged, is never explained, but the mind reels.) Shults himself plays her gruff, angry estranged son. The hosts in the Texas suburbs are Robyn (Robyn Fairchild), her husband, some in-laws and their various children. Most of the young adults are male, and they engage in relentless macho posturing and roughhousing, like Biff and Happy celebrating Festivus. There's a newborn at one end of the generational spectrum as well as Robyn and Krisha's elderly mother, wheeled in from her nursing home for the day.

Shults need not try too hard to season this stew, because it's a given that all families are psychotic. The biggest pleasures from "Krisha" emanate from the dark comedy, especially between Krisha and a sassy brother-in-law, Doyle (Bill Wise). Doyle is a sarcastic bastard with acerbic observations about everyone, but in particular the obnoxious stray dogs that his wife takes in and who add to the household turmoil. Wise has a biting way of delivering a one-liner while undercoating it with a thin layer of pathos. He and Fairchild are perfect together.

The question of whether Krisha will simply make it through the day without a relapse is fraught with true suspense. Shults crafts a menacing claustrophobia, shooting almost entirely in the house or through partial glimpses of the yard. Unfortunately, he gets a little shaky with climactic scenes and the cleanup and aftermath that follows. He keeps it real, but it eventually feels like a one-note drama by the end, and we're not sure what Krisha's journey has meant. His first hour, though, is magnificent. It would be nice to have another crack at the ending.

THE CLUB (B-minus) - This dismal examination of disgraced Catholic priests living in seclusion in a beach resort town in Chile puts forth a profoundly dismal view of human nature.

The four men live in a monastery with a nun, idling the time away and distracting themselves with the training and care of racing dogs. But it is so bleak and despairing that it presents a challenge to the viewer. In the final reel, when unspeakable violence befalls the dog --  quite graphically depicted -- it's tough to keep watching the onslaught of physical and psychological barbarism.

Director Pablo Larrain broke out in 2008 with the cult favorite "Tony Manero," and he disappointed with the meandering polemic "No" in 2013. Larrain definitely skews toward the morbid and the unusual. Here, the gruesome reality of the unforgivable sins of the Catholic church is presented mostly in rather tedious dialogue.

Early on, one of the priests is identified and confronted by an accuser from his past, and he commits suicide. The accuser refuses to yield in his campaign, though, and he and the townsfolk are painted as brutes and vigilantes. The church brings in a psychologist to counsel the other priests, and in session after session, the men spill their souls. They portray themselves as victims -- scapegoats and prisoners. One elderly priest is so infirm that he must have his diaper changed as if he were an infant -- unflatteringly rendered by Larrain.

As the mobs gather and the skies darken, a reckoning is inevitable. Cover your eyes and say a prayer for all of us.