We go back to 2004 for a scorching drama from Austria, and we revisit our youth with a classic teen romp.
FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982) (B) - A time-capsule film if there ever was one, Cameron Crowe's screenwriting splash is now a quaint slice of life about hormonally charged teens struggling with their social skills. It still has its moments, but it feels so 35 years ago. So quaint.
The story holds up pretty well, but part of the appeal now is to see so many fresh-faced actors who would go on to various levels of acclaim over the years. It's hard to believe that Jennifer Jason Leigh wasn't very good back then. You can see why Phoebe Cates -- nothing more than a girl-next-door sex object here -- would eventually walk away from Hollywood. Otherwise, it's Spot the Future Star: John Cusack, Anthony Edwards, Taylor Negron, Forest Whitaker, Eric Stolz, good ol' Judge Reinhold.
This is still Sean Penn's movie as the fried surfer dude Spicoli who does battle with his arch-nemesis Mr. Hand (a delightful Ray Walston). Seemingly throwaway lines like "Hey, I know that dude," "That was my skull!" and "You dick!" are still embarrassingly funny.
There's something about the empty boasts of Mike Damone (Robert Romanus) and his pathetic character arc that still resonate. He embodies the hopes and fears of many an early '80s adolescent boy. And the almost casual treatment of abortion -- here depicted on a level with a trip to the dentist -- is both unnerving and refreshing.
Even back in the day this was a cartoonish version of early Gen X'ers as depicted by boomers Crowe and director Amy Heckerling. It's now a fun little analog keepsake.
ANTARES (2004) (B-minus) - Opening with the scene of a car crash, this appealing nugget cleverly weaves the stories of three couples with connections to a soulless apartment complex in Vienna.
Director Goetz Spielmann takes these tales in order, affording them about 40 minutes each, occasionally looping around to previous scenes but from a new perspective, following the next tangent. Eva (Petra Morze) is a bored nurse who rekindles an affair when her lover blows into town. Her dweeby husband doesn't have a clue, and their glum teenage daughter doesn't seem to care. Eva gets to indulge her repressed desires -- blindfolds, Polaroids -- in some fairly daring sex scenes with Tomasz (Andreas Patton).
Next up in Sonja (Susanne Wuest), a pixie-like checkout girl with debilitating jealousy issues over her Yugoslavian boyfriend Marco (Dennis Cubic), who pastes up billboards by day and realizes Sonja's fear by night -- using the excuse of walking the dog to pop in for trysts with a neighbor woman while her adolescent son busies himself elsewhere in the apartment. Sonja fakes a pregnancy out of desperation, with near-tragic results.
Finally, that other woman, Nicole (Martina Zinner), is connected with an asshole real-estate agent, Alex (Andreas Kiendl), a jerk with no redeeming qualities. For viewers seeking out sympathetic characters, look elsewhere. No one comes off well at all, and the exercise here seems to involve stewing in drab misery. Yet there's something alluring and nagging about the lurid look-in on the love lives of three unhappy women and their inconsiderate, indifferent and abusive men.
31 May 2017
26 May 2017
A Colossal Mess
COLOSSAL (D+) - I can't imagine that this thing even looked good on paper, let alone during production. It's a muddle, and not even an inspired one.
For the first half hour there is some promise here as a meta-commentary about relationships, addictions, and alien invasions. Anne Hathaway is charming as Gloria, a bumbling alcoholic, kicked out of her New York apartment by a fed-up boyfriend and landing back in her family's empty home back in the town she grew up in. Jason Sudeikis is fairly engaging as Oscar, a childhood friend who hasn't seen Gloria since she went off to the big city to be an "internet journalist."
Oscar looks out for her, gives her a job at his bar, buys her a futon and a TV, and seems to care about her well-being. But he enables her alcoholism with after-closing drinking sessions with her and two buddies, dimwitted hunk Joel (Austin Stowell), whom Gloria is attracted to when she's had a few, and cranky old Garth (a misused, maudlin Tim Blake Nelson).
Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo started out with a fun idea (which led to a misleadingly entertaining trailer): a Godzilla-like monster is attacking Seoul, South Korea, and it appears to be controlled somehow by Gloria, mimicking her movements from the other side of the world. It turns out that Gloria can, at a specific time and place, trigger an appearance by the monster and either wreak havoc or spare lives.
There is some fun to be had for about 40 minutes, and you settle in with Gloria and Oscar. But then Vigalondo runs off the rails with his narrative, flying off into a ditch. The relationship between Gloria and Oscar -- friends only (though jealousy is a key plot point) -- turns dark and cartoonish. Neither fans nor detractors of graphic novels will buy into the goofy explanation of the origin of Gloria's secret powers.
This fails as both spoof and straight storytelling. The facile characterizations undermine the narrative at every turn. Gloria is that cute, Hollywood kind of blackout drunk. She's always repeating stories to Oscar, not realizing that she had already told him these things the night before during a binge. It's played not as a disturbing trait but as an adorable little wink between them. Gloria also manages to have perfect, full-bodied hair, with a shampoo-commercial sheen and perfect bangs, even when waking up in the middle of the day face-down in her own drool. "Days of Wine and Roses" this is not.
But then, this isn't supposed to be such a dour drama, obviously. Except that Vigalondo wants us to buy into the pathos and some sort of deeper message. He wants to have it both ways -- wacky and soul-searching -- and he fails to achieve either one. You think of others who might have pulled this off -- Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," for example -- and you realize that this isn't even a spectacular failure.
BONUS TRACK
The film opens with a lovely version of "Shake Sugaree" (later reworked by the Grateful Dead), by Elizabeth Cotten, with Brenda Evans on vocals:
23 May 2017
Now & Then (Part 2): A Final Journey
For our occasional series, we previously reviewed the latest from indie legend Jim Jarmusch, "Paterson." Today, we go back in time and revisit his early masterpiece "Dead Man." (Previous Now & Then entries are here and here and here and here.)
DEAD MAN (1995) (A) - There was a time when Johnny Depp could be a revelation. And when he signed on to give Jim Jarmusch mainstream credibility, the result was a win-win.
With his fifth major film, Jarmusch begins to put it all together, hitting his stride, while solidifying the new-age mysticism that will find him wandering off the beaten path in nearly every other film he'll make going forward. He even expands his comfort zone to tell a period piece from the Old West, set in the late 19th century.
Depp plays William Blake (like the poet), a nebbish who travels from Cleveland to the town of Machine, Ariz., to assume an accountant's job that he has been promised in that god-forsaken town. The train ride takes up an extended opening scene, in which a panoply of oddball characters come and go, one of whom (a coal-faced Crispin Glover) warns him about the perils of the new gig, just before a bunch of lugs start shooting from the train windows out at buffalo.
Upon arrival, Blake enters a dystopian factory setting and is promptly informed by the owner, Mr. Dickinson (Robert Mitchum in one of his final roles), that the position has already been filled, and he is asked to leave at the point of a gun. Blake then meets up with an ex-hooker, shacks up with her and, in self-defense, shoots her intruding lover (Gabriel Byrne), who happens to be Dickinson's son. Blake -- himself wounded near the heart -- flees on a stolen horse, a wanted man.
Thus begins his journey through some version of purgatory or the after-life. Weakened by his wound, he meets up with Nobody (Canadian character actor Gary Farmer), a wise but practical native American who nurses and guides the man named after the great poet, and helps him elude a three-man posse of lowlifes that Dickinson has sicced on Blake's trail. Nobody likes to rail against the "stupid" white men who are wreaking havoc over the sacred lands in their raw allegiance to capital and industry. Jarmusch here deftly avoids cliches with this mystical native. He doesn't have super powers or God-like insight, but he does know how to outfox the three headhunters, which includes a psychopathic cannibal (Lance Henrikson, "Alien") and a chatty sidekick (Michael Wincott, "Alien: Resurrection"). Another trio, living in the woods, includes Iggy Pop (in a dress) and a young Billy Bob Thornton (whose name is misspelled in the opening credits) workshopping an early version of Karl Childers from "Sling Blade." You can sense an influence in these wacky troikas (and going back to early Jarmusch (e.g., "Down by Law")) on both Quentin Tarentino and the Coen brothers.
Shooting in his familiar black-and-white, Jarmusch pays deep homage to America's frontier past while serving up this fable with a wry contemporary sensibility and a dry sense of humor. He is in command of his material, sure-handed behind the camera, and riffing as if he could no wrong. Like his lead character, the writer-director seems to be embarking on a vision quest and prying at the mystery of life and death. A haunting, eviscerating electric-guitar soundtrack by Neil Young ratchets up the tension at every critical turn.
Depp may strike some as too thoroughly modern to blend in with this cast of misfits, but, nestled chronologically between the camp of "Ed Wood" and the gravitas of "Donnie Brasco," brings soul to his character as well as a touch of child-like wonderment. Other cameos include Alfred Molina as a trading-post proprietor and John Hurt (more "Alien") as an irascible office manager.
Jarmusch, 11 years after his breakthrough "Stranger Than Paradise," is at his peak over these two hours, and after it made its mark, "Dead Man" stood as a landmark in independent Second Wave cinema. (Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum considered this "acid western" the best film for the 1990s.) And, like good poetry, it has withstood the test of time.
BONUS TRACKS
Let's take a crack at listing, in order, our favorite Jarmusch films. Some we haven't seen in a long time, so we might revisit this exercise down the road:
And here's the theme song from Neil Young:
With his fifth major film, Jarmusch begins to put it all together, hitting his stride, while solidifying the new-age mysticism that will find him wandering off the beaten path in nearly every other film he'll make going forward. He even expands his comfort zone to tell a period piece from the Old West, set in the late 19th century.
Depp plays William Blake (like the poet), a nebbish who travels from Cleveland to the town of Machine, Ariz., to assume an accountant's job that he has been promised in that god-forsaken town. The train ride takes up an extended opening scene, in which a panoply of oddball characters come and go, one of whom (a coal-faced Crispin Glover) warns him about the perils of the new gig, just before a bunch of lugs start shooting from the train windows out at buffalo.
Upon arrival, Blake enters a dystopian factory setting and is promptly informed by the owner, Mr. Dickinson (Robert Mitchum in one of his final roles), that the position has already been filled, and he is asked to leave at the point of a gun. Blake then meets up with an ex-hooker, shacks up with her and, in self-defense, shoots her intruding lover (Gabriel Byrne), who happens to be Dickinson's son. Blake -- himself wounded near the heart -- flees on a stolen horse, a wanted man.
Thus begins his journey through some version of purgatory or the after-life. Weakened by his wound, he meets up with Nobody (Canadian character actor Gary Farmer), a wise but practical native American who nurses and guides the man named after the great poet, and helps him elude a three-man posse of lowlifes that Dickinson has sicced on Blake's trail. Nobody likes to rail against the "stupid" white men who are wreaking havoc over the sacred lands in their raw allegiance to capital and industry. Jarmusch here deftly avoids cliches with this mystical native. He doesn't have super powers or God-like insight, but he does know how to outfox the three headhunters, which includes a psychopathic cannibal (Lance Henrikson, "Alien") and a chatty sidekick (Michael Wincott, "Alien: Resurrection"). Another trio, living in the woods, includes Iggy Pop (in a dress) and a young Billy Bob Thornton (whose name is misspelled in the opening credits) workshopping an early version of Karl Childers from "Sling Blade." You can sense an influence in these wacky troikas (and going back to early Jarmusch (e.g., "Down by Law")) on both Quentin Tarentino and the Coen brothers.
Shooting in his familiar black-and-white, Jarmusch pays deep homage to America's frontier past while serving up this fable with a wry contemporary sensibility and a dry sense of humor. He is in command of his material, sure-handed behind the camera, and riffing as if he could no wrong. Like his lead character, the writer-director seems to be embarking on a vision quest and prying at the mystery of life and death. A haunting, eviscerating electric-guitar soundtrack by Neil Young ratchets up the tension at every critical turn.
Depp may strike some as too thoroughly modern to blend in with this cast of misfits, but, nestled chronologically between the camp of "Ed Wood" and the gravitas of "Donnie Brasco," brings soul to his character as well as a touch of child-like wonderment. Other cameos include Alfred Molina as a trading-post proprietor and John Hurt (more "Alien") as an irascible office manager.
Jarmusch, 11 years after his breakthrough "Stranger Than Paradise," is at his peak over these two hours, and after it made its mark, "Dead Man" stood as a landmark in independent Second Wave cinema. (Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum considered this "acid western" the best film for the 1990s.) And, like good poetry, it has withstood the test of time.
BONUS TRACKS
Let's take a crack at listing, in order, our favorite Jarmusch films. Some we haven't seen in a long time, so we might revisit this exercise down the road:
- Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
- Dead Man (1995)
- Down by Law (1986)
- Broken Flowers (2005)
- The Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)
- Mystery Train (1989)
- Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
- Night on Earth (1991)
- The Limits of Control (2009)
- Paterson (2016)
- Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
- Permanent Vacation (student film, 1980)
And here's the theme song from Neil Young:
16 May 2017
Now & Then -- Dream Lovers: A Straight Story:
For our occasional series, here is the latest from indie legend Jim Jarmusch. In the coming days, we will go back in time and revisit his early masterpiece "Dead Man." (Previous Now & Then entries are here and here and here and here.)
PATERSON (B) - In which Jim Jarmusch tells a sweet little story, as if the modern indie master had been bought off by Disney and has hypnotized his entire cast to tell the humble tale of an ordinary bus driver who fancies himself a poet.
Jarmusch, the godfather of American second-wave filmmaking dating back to the early '80s, is now, an elder. His last film, "The Only Lovers Left Alive," was a classic quirky Jarmusch ensemble piece, and somewhat of a return to form after a decade wallowing in a bit of a funk (with the likes of 2009's "The Limits of Control"). Here, the clouds part further, and the filmmaker is downright happy-go-lucky as he follows an everyman named Paterson (an understated Adam Driver) who drives a bus in, coincidentally, Paterson, N.J., observes the world at arm's-length, and returns to his simple, charmed life every evening with his adorable wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani).
The pace and tone are inoffensive, almost dreamlike (I wondered at the end whether it wasn't "all just a dream") -- I couldn't tell you after watching it why it's rated R (a quick glimpse of rear nudity, one or two bad words, and one potentially violent scene, it turns out). I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been rated G, like David Lynch's "The Straight Story," a good point of comparison. Lynch had an elderly man riding a lawnmower across country; here, young Paterson drives mostly in a circuit, seeing the same faces and places every day, eavesdropping on the most ordinary of conversations. The oaths are mild here: characters are called a dumbbell or a numb-skull.
Adam Driver (HBO's "Girls," Kylo Ren in "Star Wars") is seriously sedated here, often with a wry smile and a far-off look, with that mystical presence that commonly anchors Jarmusch's later films (such as "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai," itself derivative of TV's "Kung Fu"). His poetry spills across the screen -- often in a draft form that gets edited in real time -- as Paterson intones the words. The poetry is rather ordinary. One of the best ideas here is that there is nothing mysterious or particularly literary about putting your thoughts to the page -- there's even the sly hint that the filmmaker might be suggesting that Paterson's poetry is not very good. Farahani is a fine foil, if a bit too cutesy; she brings to mind the French girlfriend of Butch in "Pulp Fiction," played by Maria de Medeiros. ("Zed's dead, baby.")
Cliches and laziness creep in here, though. The couple don't have a child, but rather they engage in baby-talk with one of those ubiquitous snuffling movie bulldogs. There's a generic complaining co-worker to greet Paterson every morning. Laura at times is a trite manic pixie dream girl, complete with folky artistic flair and mad baking skills. (Interestingly, Jarmusch plays a lot with shapes and designs -- concentric circles, stripes, a hypnotizing black-and-white harlequin guitar.) The recurring bit of Paterson having to straighten out his leaning mailbox every day -- only to have it lean back over moments later -- is straight out of a Capra film. There's a wise old bartender named Doc who plays chess against himself. There are odd references to the city of Paterson's pop culture history, as if lifted from Wikipedia. Our couple snuggles in a movie theater to -- nudge-nudge -- "The Island of Lost Souls."
There's no doubt, though, that Jarmusch is making a serious pitch here, even if he's speaking in riddles. There's something to the idea that this might have all been a dream; the movie begins and ends with Paterson waking up. He also could be in purgatory; when he wakes, he reflexively checks his watch, and while it's always a slightly different time, there's an element of "Groundhog Day" to the proceedings. Paterson and his wife are also following their dreams on separate tracks -- poet and country singer, respectively. (Others are chasing dreams, too, including a budding rap star whom Paterson encourages.)
There is an overall vibe of old-fashioned innocence mixed with hipster magical realism. Paterson and Laura are essentially sexless spouses -- what you might expect if Pee-wee Herman married Miranda July. (The cloying comic strip "Love Is ..." comes to mind.) Twins recur throughout the movie, as do waterfalls. Potential conflicts turn anti-climactic -- a bus merely breaks down rather than turning into a fireball; a gun gets pulled in a bar, but reason prevails; thugs cruising in a car seem to menace Paterson by coveting his dog, but nothing comes of the random exchange. It's a cartoon-like world.
This is a movie bathed in earnest innocence, with its heart on its sleeve. Paterson suggests that his love is so deep that, if he were ever to lose Laura, "I'd tear my heart out and never put it back." Paterson and Laura are mirrored by an ill-fated couple who keep showing up at Paterson's local pub (Laura kindly turns a blind eye to Paterson's fiction of walking the dog as an excuse to go drinking). Everett, dumped by Marie, at one point takes a stand and betrays Jarmusch's soft spot.
"Without love," he implores, "what reason is there for anything?"
Has the indie film world's bad boy gone soft?
BONUS TRACK
The soundtrack is full of wistful old country and R&B songs. This is a fine example, Willie West's "I'm Still a Man (Lord Have Mercy)":
PATERSON (B) - In which Jim Jarmusch tells a sweet little story, as if the modern indie master had been bought off by Disney and has hypnotized his entire cast to tell the humble tale of an ordinary bus driver who fancies himself a poet.
Jarmusch, the godfather of American second-wave filmmaking dating back to the early '80s, is now, an elder. His last film, "The Only Lovers Left Alive," was a classic quirky Jarmusch ensemble piece, and somewhat of a return to form after a decade wallowing in a bit of a funk (with the likes of 2009's "The Limits of Control"). Here, the clouds part further, and the filmmaker is downright happy-go-lucky as he follows an everyman named Paterson (an understated Adam Driver) who drives a bus in, coincidentally, Paterson, N.J., observes the world at arm's-length, and returns to his simple, charmed life every evening with his adorable wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani).
The pace and tone are inoffensive, almost dreamlike (I wondered at the end whether it wasn't "all just a dream") -- I couldn't tell you after watching it why it's rated R (a quick glimpse of rear nudity, one or two bad words, and one potentially violent scene, it turns out). I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been rated G, like David Lynch's "The Straight Story," a good point of comparison. Lynch had an elderly man riding a lawnmower across country; here, young Paterson drives mostly in a circuit, seeing the same faces and places every day, eavesdropping on the most ordinary of conversations. The oaths are mild here: characters are called a dumbbell or a numb-skull.
Adam Driver (HBO's "Girls," Kylo Ren in "Star Wars") is seriously sedated here, often with a wry smile and a far-off look, with that mystical presence that commonly anchors Jarmusch's later films (such as "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai," itself derivative of TV's "Kung Fu"). His poetry spills across the screen -- often in a draft form that gets edited in real time -- as Paterson intones the words. The poetry is rather ordinary. One of the best ideas here is that there is nothing mysterious or particularly literary about putting your thoughts to the page -- there's even the sly hint that the filmmaker might be suggesting that Paterson's poetry is not very good. Farahani is a fine foil, if a bit too cutesy; she brings to mind the French girlfriend of Butch in "Pulp Fiction," played by Maria de Medeiros. ("Zed's dead, baby.")
Cliches and laziness creep in here, though. The couple don't have a child, but rather they engage in baby-talk with one of those ubiquitous snuffling movie bulldogs. There's a generic complaining co-worker to greet Paterson every morning. Laura at times is a trite manic pixie dream girl, complete with folky artistic flair and mad baking skills. (Interestingly, Jarmusch plays a lot with shapes and designs -- concentric circles, stripes, a hypnotizing black-and-white harlequin guitar.) The recurring bit of Paterson having to straighten out his leaning mailbox every day -- only to have it lean back over moments later -- is straight out of a Capra film. There's a wise old bartender named Doc who plays chess against himself. There are odd references to the city of Paterson's pop culture history, as if lifted from Wikipedia. Our couple snuggles in a movie theater to -- nudge-nudge -- "The Island of Lost Souls."
There's no doubt, though, that Jarmusch is making a serious pitch here, even if he's speaking in riddles. There's something to the idea that this might have all been a dream; the movie begins and ends with Paterson waking up. He also could be in purgatory; when he wakes, he reflexively checks his watch, and while it's always a slightly different time, there's an element of "Groundhog Day" to the proceedings. Paterson and his wife are also following their dreams on separate tracks -- poet and country singer, respectively. (Others are chasing dreams, too, including a budding rap star whom Paterson encourages.)
There is an overall vibe of old-fashioned innocence mixed with hipster magical realism. Paterson and Laura are essentially sexless spouses -- what you might expect if Pee-wee Herman married Miranda July. (The cloying comic strip "Love Is ..." comes to mind.) Twins recur throughout the movie, as do waterfalls. Potential conflicts turn anti-climactic -- a bus merely breaks down rather than turning into a fireball; a gun gets pulled in a bar, but reason prevails; thugs cruising in a car seem to menace Paterson by coveting his dog, but nothing comes of the random exchange. It's a cartoon-like world.
This is a movie bathed in earnest innocence, with its heart on its sleeve. Paterson suggests that his love is so deep that, if he were ever to lose Laura, "I'd tear my heart out and never put it back." Paterson and Laura are mirrored by an ill-fated couple who keep showing up at Paterson's local pub (Laura kindly turns a blind eye to Paterson's fiction of walking the dog as an excuse to go drinking). Everett, dumped by Marie, at one point takes a stand and betrays Jarmusch's soft spot.
"Without love," he implores, "what reason is there for anything?"
Has the indie film world's bad boy gone soft?
BONUS TRACK
The soundtrack is full of wistful old country and R&B songs. This is a fine example, Willie West's "I'm Still a Man (Lord Have Mercy)":
13 May 2017
Life ls Short: Blimey!
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 can be found here.
We didn't try very hard on this one. It's a musical -- of a sort -- and so the odds were not good. IMDb capsulizes the plot:
London Road documents the events of 2006, when the quiet rural town of Ipswich was shattered by the discovery of the bodies of five women. When a local resident was charged and then convicted of the murders, the community grappled with what it meant to be at the epicentre of this tragedy.
The filmmaker, Rufus Norris, worked with a script by Alecky Blythe, who compiled actual quotes from residents and reworked it into documentary-style chronicle, with many of the quotes -- including by news readers -- sung awkwardly. The first half hour was mainly townsfolk repeatedly expressing fear about going out on the streets. I don't know why so many old men feared for their lives because a maniac was killing young female prostitutes, but then I didn't stick around long enough to find out.
Title: LONDON ROAD
Running Time: 92 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 29 MIN
Portion Watched: 32%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 54 YRS, 5 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 76.4 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Read a James Baldwin essay
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 50-to-1.
We didn't try very hard on this one. It's a musical -- of a sort -- and so the odds were not good. IMDb capsulizes the plot:
London Road documents the events of 2006, when the quiet rural town of Ipswich was shattered by the discovery of the bodies of five women. When a local resident was charged and then convicted of the murders, the community grappled with what it meant to be at the epicentre of this tragedy.
The filmmaker, Rufus Norris, worked with a script by Alecky Blythe, who compiled actual quotes from residents and reworked it into documentary-style chronicle, with many of the quotes -- including by news readers -- sung awkwardly. The first half hour was mainly townsfolk repeatedly expressing fear about going out on the streets. I don't know why so many old men feared for their lives because a maniac was killing young female prostitutes, but then I didn't stick around long enough to find out.
Title: LONDON ROAD
Running Time: 92 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 29 MIN
Portion Watched: 32%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 54 YRS, 5 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 76.4 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Read a James Baldwin essay
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 50-to-1.
11 May 2017
New to the Queue
Bringin' it all back home ...
A documentary about the '60s pop and R&B songwriter and producer ("Twist and Shout," "Hang on Sloopy") who died young, "Bang! The Bert Berns Story."
A coming-of-age story with an edge, the Russian-import story "Natasha."
A documentary about a classic behind-the-scenes couple, "Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story."
Philippe Falardeau ("Monsieur Lazhar") directs the biopic of mid-70s tomato can Chuck Wepner, who famously got pulverized by Muhammad Ali, thus inspiring "Rocky": "Chuck."
Azazel Jacobs ("Momma's Boy") maneuvers Debra Winger and Tracy Letts through the tale of a middle-aged couple who are cheating on each other but then fall for each other again, in "The Lovers."
A documentary about the smarmy grifter who represents one degree of separation between Presidents Trump and Nixon, "Get Me Roger Stone."
Our guy Alex Karpovsky stars in a buddy road movie, the debut feature "Folk Hero & Funny Guy."
Shirley Henderson is a social worker who nurtures a troubled teenager with a great singing voice in "Urban Hymn."
A documentary about the '60s pop and R&B songwriter and producer ("Twist and Shout," "Hang on Sloopy") who died young, "Bang! The Bert Berns Story."
A coming-of-age story with an edge, the Russian-import story "Natasha."
A documentary about a classic behind-the-scenes couple, "Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story."
Philippe Falardeau ("Monsieur Lazhar") directs the biopic of mid-70s tomato can Chuck Wepner, who famously got pulverized by Muhammad Ali, thus inspiring "Rocky": "Chuck."
Azazel Jacobs ("Momma's Boy") maneuvers Debra Winger and Tracy Letts through the tale of a middle-aged couple who are cheating on each other but then fall for each other again, in "The Lovers."
A documentary about the smarmy grifter who represents one degree of separation between Presidents Trump and Nixon, "Get Me Roger Stone."
Our guy Alex Karpovsky stars in a buddy road movie, the debut feature "Folk Hero & Funny Guy."
Shirley Henderson is a social worker who nurtures a troubled teenager with a great singing voice in "Urban Hymn."
09 May 2017
Valedictory
GRADUATION (B+) - Cristian Mungiu tells uncomfortable stories that shine a light toward the dark side of human behavior. With his latest, he unfurls a slow, disturbing tale of an everyman navigating the morally ambiguous world of post-communist Romania.
Reaching back to the dull press of daily life in the abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days" (2007), Mungiu presents middle-aged shlub Romeo (Adrian Titieni), who steps up to help his daughter, Eliza (Maria Dragus), who is struggling to complete her week-long college-entrance exams. With Eliza reeling, physically and emotionally, from an attack, Romeo initially seeks out school administrators to accommodate his daughter, who has a cast on her sprained wrist.
Romeo is a doctor, and Eliza needs high scores on the tests in order to fulfill her father's expectations of studying medicine in the United Kingdom and escaping the . Eliza, though, seems burdened by that pressure, and she is giving serious consideration to sticking closer to home -- and closer to her biker boyfriend. The tension between father and daughter is palpable.
Dissatisfied with the response he gets at the school, Romeo, with the help of a morally dubious pal, the local chief inspector (a wonderfully droll Vlad Ivanov), climbs the ladder to find a higher-up who would be able to flag Eliza's exam, give it special attention, and goose her score, if necessary. What could go wrong?
This little scheme of Romeo's is just a symptom of how his life has gone off the rails. He has a distant relationship with his sickly wife, Magda (Lia Bugnar), whose only joys in life seem to involve sleeping or smoking. Romeo has a young girlfriend on the side, Sandra (Malina Manovici), who is a teacher at Eliza's school. The adultery is so casual that it's a bit eerie.
And, actually, Mungiu (bouncing back from his gruesome last feature "Beyond the Hills") has slyly crafted an urban horror film. At every turn, some character or circumstance is giving us the creeps. The film starts with a rock crashing through the window of the home of Romeo, Magda and Eliza, who all treat it as a ho-hum start to another workday. Minor vandalism will plague them throughout the film, with no real resolution. When Eliza views a police lineup, the men are ordered to utter a vulgar line that accompanied the attack, and one of them gets way into the role and has to be restrained. Sandra's son trips the autism scale and likes to parade the grounds of his apartment complex silently in a coyote mask. Toward the end of the film, Romeo tracks a mysterious figure into a rundown residential area at night and gets turned around as if he were being chased through a cornfield by a slasher in a goalie mask.
It's that paranoia that permeates the film and drives it over the course of two gripping hours. Like much of the Romanian New Wave cinema, "Graduation" navigates an ethically complex world in which practical considerations justify low levels of graft and incompetence. Romeo exists in a sort of purgatory. How he makes his way through the moral muck can be fascinating to watch.
06 May 2017
Spam Poetry, No. 3
Cremation of pitka
holding on cream
an electrical erection of promoters.
Sew-along Charlotte died,
and rally can look for
Madrid supporters,
like editor.
Bob Dylan played to metaphysical witchcraft,
a Beatles good number
Search on eels,
fish ultimately end,
section off of science educators.
Traditionality.
Wicked sword rose,
morning American people were merchandise,
ranging from ...
spiritualism for students
to choose
if they need for some excess.
Seeing what amber brought with them.
English speaking,
and screening
and spreading.
Fine this condition statement cannot prostitute for
lines,
but cold, the look.
04 May 2017
Bizarre Love Triangle
FRANTZ (B) - Not bad for a prim post-Verdun romantic drama.
It doesn't seem sufficient to call Francois Ozon a writer-director or a filmmaker. He is a master storyteller. He takes just about any story -- whether he wrote it himself or whether, like here, he is adapting another's work -- and makes it riveting. And his simple visual style never gets in the way of that story.
Here, Ozon ("Under the Sand," "The New Girlfriend," "Young & Beautiful") travels back to the days after World War I, in crisp black and white, to unravel the story of Frantz, a German soldier seen in flashbacks who died during the war, and his widowed fiancee, Anna (Paula Beer), who is still close to Frantz's parents. (He is adapting a story told by Ernst Lubitsch in 1932, based on a stage play.)
One day, Anna discovers a man putting flowers on Frantz's grave. It turns out to be Adrien (Pierre Niney), a gawky, glum French veteran. To the irritation of the locals, Anna befriends Adrien and even falls for him.
The "mystery" here -- and it isn't intended to be much of one -- involves the question of how Adrien knew Frantz and why he travels to Germany to pay tribute to his former battlefield enemy. I'll give you two guesses, and the first one is too far-fetched to contemplate logistically, unless you know Ozon's work, and then you think ... well, maybe.
There is a loveliness and a dourness to the storytelling here. There are occasional splashes of color, including in several war scenes, as if to shock the senses with the vividness of life. The actress Beer is wonderfully sedate. Niney has a hangdog John Hawkes manner to him. And their awkward interactions feel natural and lived in.
It all unfolds over nearly two hours, but it never drags. It has two neat halves -- the introduction and innocent quasi-courtship, and Anna's trip to France to solve the mystery of Adrien and his background. It has echoes to some of Ozon's best work -- the riddle and detective work by Charlotte Rampling in "Under the Sand"; the dignified end-of-life maleness of "Time to Leave."
Even when he's borrowing a script and working in a minor key, Ozon finds humanity and beauty, refining it as if it's his own.
BONUS TRACKS
Our title track, from New Order, of course:
The trailer:
01 May 2017
Old Punk
The band X, those cerebral punks from Los Angeles, chose Albuquerque, of all places, to launch their 40th-anniversary tour. They did their best to trash a sweaty El Rey Theater on May Day.
We approached with trepidation, because, let's face it, the band members are geezers now, and we're not kids anymore either. But damn if they didn't scorch through a set that relied heavily on their first three seminal albums that kicked off the '80s. John Doe and Exene Cervenka harmonize as well and as poorly as they used to. DJ Bonebrake thumps that rumbling rhythm. And Billy Zoom electrifies it all on guitar. Billy has slowed down of late, battling some ailments in recent years. He wears glasses now but still sends that avuncular contented gaze out to the crowd. And he sits at stage left instead of standing in that famous spread-legged stance of his. He still achieves the original goal of not towering over his bandmates.
Zoom threw in a few saxophone riffs (guitar pick on his forehead for safe keeping), and Bonebrake took a break from the drums a few times to dabble on the vibraphone. It's not often that you go to a punk show and get both an extended drum solo and a vibraphone solo, much less from the same musician.
I've seen X here and there over the years. At the House of Blues in Chicago in the '90s (red hot); Doe performing solo at the Double Door a few years after that. I'm sure the whole band requires a lot more naps than they used to, but for about 75 minutes they whipped the crowd into a frenzy with indelible hooks, ferocious energy and heartfelt songs.
Among the highlights, some of the following songs:
Late in the show, the title track from the epic debut album, "Los Angeles." Get out!
"White Girl":
The show-stopping Doors cover "Soul Kitchen":
BONUS TRACK
One of our favorite clips, from the documentary "X: The Unheard Music," DJ Bonebrake explaining the origins of that complicated tribal rhythm he coined back in the day:
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