New to the Queue

The thin blue line ...

Errol Morris mixes fact and fiction in studying a 60-year-old mystery over the course of four hours, "Wormwood."

A documentary about a horrific crime that examines the intersection of gender, race and class, "The Rape of Recy Taylor."

We've been fans of Turkish-German director Fatih Akin ("Head On," "The Edge of Heaven"), but we're wary of his new revenge flick, "In the Fade."

Annette Bening might be enough to get us to sit through the biopic of golden-age screen siren Gloria Grahame, "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool."
  

Unhappy Families Are All Alike

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (B+) - If this were the first Noah Baumbach film we had ever seen, we might think it was brilliant. But this deep into his career, Baumbach is trading on his reputation and merely updating previous themes, in particular his wonderful family piece "The Squid and the Whale" from 2005, making this feel like a warmed-over sequel at times.

He also leans on Dustin Hoffman in the patriarch role (handled in "Squid" by a wonderfully neurotic Jeff Daniels), and Hoffman -- dimmed in our regard by tales of decades of piggishness on movie sets -- never finds the right pitch as the haughty artist who has twisted his adult children into knots of doubt and anger. Baumbach does coordinate these offspring -- played by Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler and Elizabeth Marvel -- with expert timing. It's a shame they spend so much of the movie trying to bounce off Hoffman's broad caricature as Harold Meyerowitz, spurned sculptor and largely forgotten instructor at Bard College in the Hudson Valley.

Anger issues are established early on as a Meyerowitz tradition. Scenes often end abruptly in the middle of a tirade, starting in the opening moments with the parking adventures of Danny (Sandler), a failed musician, at the end of a failed marriage, shepherding his teenage daughter off to college. Eliza (Grace Van Patten, a "Sopranos" alum) is the great family hope, heading to Bard to study filmmaking and revive the creative juju of the clan. She makes raunchy short films in which she is often nude and in "sexual situations," to Danny's shock and chagrin. The family rallies around her art, which apparently is another jab at familial delusion, because, from what we get to see, Eliza's films seem pretty crappy. Danny, a pathetic, limping 50-ish shlub, is more directionless than his poised daughter. His claim to fame consists of hokey Tin Pan Alley novelty tunes that only his loved ones know and abide.

Matthew (Stiller), the product of Harold's second marriage (and thus Harold's obvious favorite child), has escaped this dysfunction by moving to the west coast and quashing any pretension of an artistic life by working as a successful financial planner. Despite his exulted status, he has a hair-trigger when dealing with his father, not above shouting grievances at the old man in the middle of the street. Jean (Marvel), meanwhile, is a beaten-down wallflower with a drone-like job who hacks out spoof videos for co-workers. Jean, like Danny a product of the first marriage, wallows in resignation, barely registering a personality, going along with the family shenanigans in a monotone delivery.

Baumbach gets a lot of the details right. Stiller, as the successful financial planner Matthew, is the alpha sibling who is inclined to refer to Danny as his father's other son rather than as his own half-brother. And an awkward conversation between Matthew and Danny -- struggling to bond but having no clue about the fundamental aspects of each others' lives -- stings if you've ever tried that with an estranged sibling. A running gag about the kids' boxes of childhood belongings features an amusing dispute over whether a pair of sunglasses belong to Matthew or Danny. Other lines echo nicely throughout the script, bouncing among the family members (if not wearing out their welcome) as pet phrases are wont to do. (For example, the men are fond of staging nominal "McEnroe protests"; yet more anger issues.) Characters talk past each other as often as they talk to each other.

Conflict arrives in the form of Matthew's plan to convince Harold and his latest mate, a wine-soaked aging hippie named Maureen (a delightfully ditzy Emma Thompson), to cash out their Manhattan apartment as well as his artwork and retire to the countryside. Danny, even though he lived there for only a short time as a teenager, resents Matthew's power play. When Harold ends up in the hospital, with a bleak prognosis, the siblings are tossed together, for better and for worse. They feed off each others' insecurities, especially in the way they all cling to a charge nurse and doctor, both of whom get called away to other duties, thus abandoning Danny, Jean and Matthew like a certain someone they know did long ago.

The cast, aside from Hoffman, settles into a tight rhythm. A few cameos click, too, including Judd Hirsch as Harold's much more successful (and well adjusted) contemporary, L.J.; Rebecca Miller as L.J.'s daughter and a potential love interest (savior) for Danny; and Candice Bergen as Matthew's mother, the aging trophy wife Julia. It's an entertaining world that is created here, albeit an insular east coast one.

The result is a movie that is often merely amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny, but that's not really a criticism; Baumbach is wise to keep the humor low-key. You either know a clan like this -- egotistic, faux creative, delusional, passive-aggressive -- and you get it, or you don't. In the latter case, you might be more annoyed than entertained. Baumbach here is returning to the grievance-based character studies of "Squid," "Margot at the Wedding" and "Greenberg" (where he really clicked with Stiller) and thankfully emerging from the skid that produced the sloppier recent efforts "Mistress America" and "While We're Young."

You get the feeling, though, that this brand is played out, finally. "The Meyerowitz Stories" comes off like a nice little career capper for a director pushing 50. Assuming he's emptied out his notebooks from his family histories, he's poised to begin a new phase of storytelling.
 

Doc Watch: The Golden Age

DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME (A) - This mesmerizing documentary digs deep into film archives of the early 20th century to connect the turn-of-the-century gold rush in the Canadian Yukon with the birth of Hollywood. It is part myth and magic, with hard journalistic edge softened by a dreamlike quality that plays like an ode to a lost time, if not a eulogy for the industry.

The producers capture the plot succinctly:  "Using permafrost-protected, rare silent films and newsreels, archival footage, interviews and historical photographs to tell the story, "Dawson City: Frozen Time" pieces together the bizarre true history of a collection of some 500 films dating from the 1910s and 1920s, which were lost for over 50 years until being discovered buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool deep in the Yukon Territory in 1978."

Writer-director Bill Morrison employs that rare footage almost exclusively to convey the fascinating tale and the history of a boom town that displaced indigenous people, only to devolve into a quaint tourist town during the modern era. Only a few scenes involve talking heads. The rest plays out like a silent film, with swelling, haunting music (by Alex Somers of Sigur Ros who scored "Captain Fantastic") and informative text sprawling across the screen. (There's a lot of reading required; this would be best seen on a big screen, though I did the next best thing and pulled a chair up close to the TV monitor).

The deep dive into the culture of a century ago is transfixing and transformative. Human ingenuity is on display -- the mining for gold, the construction of a town, the transportation methods through the snow, the transmission of news and information, the birth of a technology. Dawson City itself stands as a monument to endurance, surviving near-annual fires at its theaters and other foundational buildings.

The films -- many on voluble nitrate stock -- were rescued from under the ice rink of the town's hockey rink, where the reels had been tossed in as landfill. Dawson City was the end of the line for film distribution (it took some films three or four years to make it there), and the studios/distributors didn't want to pay the cost of having the films shipped back; so they were either housed in a library (which also burned down at some point) or disposed of.

Morrison constructs a compelling story here. It's difficult not to get swept up in the majesty of the recounting of it. Tossed back a century in time, we marvel at this lost culture.

BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY (B+) - Another fascinating narrative from another century, this documentary profiles the famous Hollywood star who was an inveterate inventor, coming up with the technology that eventually gave us the wireless communication that powers our lives.

Newcomer Alexandra Dean describes this presentation of Hedy Lamarr as "a film about a girl who wanted to make her mark in the world, but the world could not see past her face." Lamarr was an Austrian sensation (who scandalously simulated an orgasm onscreen as a 19-year-old in "Ecstasy" in 1933) and truly a Hollywood bombshell who starred with many of the screen giants of the '30s and '40s but who also endured her share of clunkers. When she arrived on the scene -- with perfect looks -- other actresses were ordered to follow her lead and part their hair down the middle.

During World War II, she developed a radio guidance system for torpedos dodging Nazi radar; it used frequency-hopping that eventually found its way into modern Bluetooth technology. According to the documentary, the invention was seized by the U.S. military, and Lamarr never made money off of her patented creation.

Dean spins a compelling tale here, anchored by a 1990 phone interview that a journalist recently discovered among his cache of cassette tapes. We also hear from Lamarr's children and other descendants, piecing together many of the tragic aspects of her life -- multiple failed marriages (including in the '50s to a Texas oilman who, in a nasty divorce, denied her the Aspen ski chalet she had designed and loved), an addiction to amphetamines (originally supplied by the studios), and an obsession with plastic surgery. Talking heads include friend Robert Osborne, Mel Brooks and Peter Bogdanovich. Actress Diane Kruger narrates from Lamarr's writings.

There is a suggestion here that Lamarr might have borrowed the idea for her famous invention from her first husband, an Austrian munitions manufacturer (with ties to the Axis powers). But she is presented as a creative and inquisitive woman, who never stopped noodling and doodling. But her life took depressing turns -- she was arrested on charges of shoplifting in 1966 and again in 1991 -- and descended into seclusion, with barely enough money to pay her bills.

Dean puts it all together with the frisson of a sizzling biopic. It zips by in 90 minutes and leaves you wanting to explore more of Lamarr's life.
 

The Zest of 2017

We don't rush into our year-end lists. There are always loose ends to tie up and titles that don't make it to the B markets until after the first of the year. It will take us a couple more weeks to firm up the list.

Till then, here is a list of titles that earned a B+ or higher. One of them will be our pick for the best film of 2017:

• The Teacher
• Lady Bird
• Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
• Landline
• The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography
• The Florida Project
• Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
• Battle of the Sexes
• The Trip to Spain
• Baby Driver
• Obit
• Suntan
• Donald Cried
• The Big Sick
• Lovesong
• A Wolf at the Door
• Brigsby Bear
• Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World
• The Glass Castle
• Patty Cakes
• The Little Hours
• Moka
• Graduation
• I Am Not Your Negro
• Kedi
• The Salesman

RIP, Keely Smith

Louis Prima's better half has died at age 89. He and Keely Smith set the template for Sonny and Cher a decade or so later. Their version of "That Old Black Magic" is timeless.



And here's a clip of Smith (born Dorothy Jacqueline Keely) and Prima from the 1959 film "Hey Boy! Hey Girl!":


 

The In-Crowd

THE DISASTER ARTIST (B) - This is good for what it is. Whatever it is.

James Franco goes into mimic mode to tell the far-fetched story of Tommy Wiseau, a mysterious outsider who somehow wrote and financed what is widely considered one of the worst movies ever, "The Room." The oddball antics of Wiseau, storied in Hollywood and chronicled in a book by collaborator Greg Sestero, offer Franco and his hipster pals a chance to make another movie about moviemaking, this time with a smirk. Give this generation its "Living in Oblivion."

Franco, directing from a script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber ("500 Days of Summer," "The Spectacular Now"), dons an ugly black mop of hair and layers of makeup to star as Wiseau. His brother Dave Franco ("The Little Hours") stars as Sestero, who was 19 when he met the older Wiseau in an acting class. Wiseau and Sestero move from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where Sestero takes the traditional route of struggling actor and Wiseau somehow scrapes together $6 million to film his myopic masterpiece.

Much of the film takes place on the disheveled set, with crew members that include Seth Rogen (a producer of "The Disaster Artist"); Jason Mantzoukas and Paul Scheer from TV's "The League"; and cast members Zac Efron, Josh Hutcherson, Ari Graynor and Jacki Weaver. Melanie Griffith and Bob Odenkirk pop up as early acting coaches. Megan Mullally plays Sestero's mom, and a barely recognizable Sharon Stone gets 30 seconds as a cheesy agent. Alison Brie is an afterthought as Sestero's girlfriend.

Much of the high-jinks is funny, and James Franco is spectacularly dedicated to the character, including a bizarre accent that suggests Eastern European origins. The story is so goofy and unbelievable that -- despite the written history -- it still doesn't seem true, but rather something Franco and Rogen hacked out during a weekend pot bender.

The talented cast itself gives off the feel of slumming through a throwaway story. But there are some very funny moments. There is Wiseau insisting that his ass be featured prominently in an awkward love scene. And the "Oh, hi, Mark" roof scene is destined to be its own cult classic. James and Dave Franco banter well. In one of the memorable lines, as Wiseau is distraught over the guffaws that greet the premiere screening, Sestero tries to cheer him up by telling him that just making a movie is itself an impressive feat.  "How many people get to say that?" he asks Wiseau. The filmmaker pauses and says, meekly, "A ... thousand ... ?"

This is an ebullient, entertaining diversion for 104 minutes, especially if the Francos and their pals amuse you. It's not a necessary film. It's not a significant one. It never purports to examine Wiseau as a person with an emotional life. Franco tries too hard to faithfully re-create specific scenes (and hairstyles). But then again, any minute you expect the whole Wiseau myth to be revealed as a droll hoax. It's a rascally romp. Enjoy.

BONUS TRACK
This post-disco puff piece by Corona trips across the closing credits. (Stay till the end for a bonus scene, by the way.)


 

Doc Watch: Person to Person

FACES PLACES (B) - French film legend Agnes Varda teams up with 30-something activist photographer JR for this playful romp through rural villages in this ode to the creative spirit.

Both are credited as writers and directors, but it is Varda's sensibilities that drive the whimsical narrative that tracks the deepening of their friendship and collaboration. There are echoes of Varda's career-capping "The Beaches of Agnes" (2008) and the scrappy "The Gleaners and I" (2000).

JR always appears in dark sunglasses, and Varda, whose eyesight is failing as she pushes 90, yearns throughout the film to look into his eyes, perhaps hoping to glimpse the soul of an artist. At other times, she is distracted by the past. She name-checks her famous ex, Jacques Demy ("The Umbrellas of Cherbourg"), and tries to hunt down reclusive old friend Jean-Luc Godard.

The 89 minutes zip by pleasantly as Varda and JR compete jovially to most imaginatively capture the locals (JR is partial to generating giant prints that cover entire sides of buildings). "Faces Places" (it even rhymes in French: "Visages, Villages") is charming and touching, but it has a certain evanescence that fizzes away days later.

STREET FIGHT (2005) (B-minus) - This no-frills documentary embeds itself in the race for Mayor of Newark in 2002, in which future political star Cory Booker took on the city's Democratic machine.

Scrappy filmmaker Marshall Curry clearly sympathizes with the young underdog here, and he quickly gets on the bad side of the four-term incumbent, Sharpe James and his band of toughs. Curry seems like a one-man operation, capturing the poorly organized campaign of Booker, then a junior city councilor, and constantly getting roughed up at James rallies (to the point where he finally sends another cameraman to film the incumbent unrecognized).

Booker comes across as an idealist and a good guy. (He would go on to win the Mayor's seat in 2006 and springboard to the U.S. Senate 2013.) James is a classic machine pol, using the city's administrative muscle to threaten individuals and businesses that would dare oppose him. He's also a double-dipper, serving in the state Senate while running Newark.

Curry puts in the time and effort to capture the rough and tumble of New Jersey politics. The James campaign slanders Booker every chance it gets, deriding him as a carpet-bagger and college snob who might be white and Jewish. (Booker's parents, both black, were pioneering executives at IBM.)

The David-vs.-Goliath story has its appeal. But Curry doesn't have much imagination in his first outing behind the camera. He has a workmanlike manner that at times seems to be overwhelmed by the street brawl he found himself in the  middle of.
 

After Party

Tales from behind the Iron Curtain ...

THE TEACHER (B+) - The former Czechoslovakia is the setting for this glimpse of Communist Party shenanigans in the waning days of the Soviet era in the mid to late 1980s.

Here, a middle-school teacher, Maria (Zuzana Maurery), exploits her role as local party chairwoman to extract favors from the parents of her students. If the parents don't cooperate, their child's grades will suffer. The extortion is played as droll dark comedy.

Parents agonize with their decisions of how to give in to the blackmail so as to assure good marks for their children. Kucera (Csongor Kassai) is asked sneak some cakes on a flight to Moscow because he works at the airport, albeit in a capacity that has nothing to do with flight crews. His daughter, Danka (Tamara Fischer), soon gets dumped from the gymnastics team. Another girl (Monika Certezni) connives to get back at the teacher.

The film climaxes with a showdown between school staff and parents, playing out as a gloomy twist on "12 Angry Men." The ending echoes another '80s Iron Curtain drama, "The Lives of Others," right down to post-Soviet Havel-era coda, though "The Teacher" is content to leave the deep stuff to that masterpiece.

THE TREASURE (B+) - Over in Romania, we're back in the present day with two men digging through the past -- literally -- as they hunt for a rumored treasure buried in the postwar era on a family farm.

Corneliu Porumboiu, who has been hit-and-miss -- 2006's "12:08 East of Bucharest" was a thoughtful post-mortem on the Romanian revolution while 2009's "Police, Adjective" felt like a silly wank -- has a sure hand with this reckoning of the Soviet era. Toma Cuzin is a strong lead as Costi, a working-class everyman who can't resist the lure of a neighbor's tall tale about a family treasure hidden before the communists took over.

Cuzin banters engagingly with co-conspirator Adrian (Adrian Purcarescu), and the middle of the film teams them with irascible Cornel (Corneliu Cozmei) and his wonky metal detector. The question, addressed in the final third, is not just will they find anything, but if they do, will they report it to the local police, who will confiscate it if it has value to national history. Thus, the old Communist quid-pro-quo system might come in to play.

But Costi, as much as he hopes to get rich quick also wants to impress his young son, hoping to discover one of those old-fashioned pirate treasures full of jewels and precious metals. That charming side plot sets up a lovely ending awash in childhood exuberance.

BONUS TRACKS
The trailers:




 

Millennials Rising

LADY BIRD (B+) - We were hoping for greatness from Greta Gerwig's solo debut as a writer-director, and while her biographical tale is lovely and lyrical, it isn't quite as compelling as it could have been.

Gerwig plays it safe with a moving but safe recounting of her senior year of high school, dreaming of escaping her Catholic-school Sacramento for the ivied walls and academic rigor of the Northeast. Saoirse Ronan stands in for young Greta, a spitfire who dubs herself Lady Bird and quarrels pithily with her working-class mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf). Her father (Tracy Letts) is the good cop but a bit of a cipher.

Lady Bird explores her sexuality in mundane ways. She is betrayed by one boy (Lucas Hodges, dull compared to his breakthrough in "Manchester by the Sea") and falls in with the kindly hipster Kyle (Timothee Chalamet), and neither love interest adds much to the mix. Lady Bird herself betrays her chubby best friend for a shot at hanging with the cool girl, a concept explored with more edge and dark humor in an aged sitcom like "Square Pegs."

This is territory that has been explored ad nauseam in other coming-of-age films. Gerwig, at least, adds a bit of flair and quirk, as if she herself were jangling and bantering through the scenes. Ronan carries the load here well, and Metcalf is her usual spectacular self, delivering bushels of emotion with a fleeting facial expression than most actors can deliver in a Shakespeare soliloquy.

You hope for grit and soul here, but you get a bit too much of amber memories, almost a form of magical realism, a conjuring of revisionist history that doesn't insult the real people it's based on. Too many of the zingers fall flat. (The best ones work better in the trailer.

At times "Lady Bird" is a special little film. But Gerwig, who first went behind the camera with Mumblecore pal Joe Swanberg in the insightful film "Nights and Weekends," has emerged from the indie scene with mainstream cred. Perhaps she just needed to get this one out of her system. Let's see where Lady Bird lands next.
  

New to the Queue

Toward the light ...

From the filmmaker behind "I Am Love" and "A Bigger Splash," an '80s coming of age story that veers into Eric Roehmer territory, "Call Me By Your Name."

The Franco brothers, James and Dave, horse around with the story of the oddball who crafted one of the worst movies of the millennium, the biographical farce "The Disaster Artist."

The story of a family getting by in North Philadelphia during the Obama years, "Quest."

A documentary about the Hollywood glamour queen and pioneering inventor, "Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story."
  

Afterlife, Part 2: Revenge

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (B+) - This gripping tale from the methodical Martin McDonagh ("In Bruges," "Seven Psychopaths") is almost too smart and clever for its own good. It feels workshopped within an inch of its life, with pieces that fall too neatly into place, and in the end comes off as more of a screenwriter's parlor trick than a powerful dark-comic drama.

But if you want to watch Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell go toe to toe for about two hours, you can't go wrong with this sharp film.

McDormand is frumped up to play Mildred, a plain-spoken resident of the fictional town in Missouri who is grieving her daughter, who was raped and killed. Seven months after the murder, she decides to shame the the local sheriff, Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), by wondering aloud, on three big billboards, why the case hasn't been solved.

Willoughby is dying of cancer, but that doesn't deter Mildred from her mission. Her biggest rival here is a loose-cannon deputy, Dixon (Rockwell), who has a checkered past that includes assaulting minority suspects. Dixon is a pathetic drunk who lives with his racist mother and who is no match for Mildred's determination. He has no qualms about throwing an innocent victim out of a second-story window.

Events are placed strategically into the plot with a master's precision, and as those pieces start to interlock, an audience could be under the impression that they are watching the work of a safe-cracker rather than a filmmaker. One-liners have been sharpened like Ginsu knives. Mildred is transformed into a virtual super-hero who doesn't flinch an inch when threatened by a menacing thug, even as tossed objects fly past her clenched jaw.

Coincidences occur a little too conveniently. A few crucial plot points defy common sense. The casual violence is played for laughs. Peter Dinklage's dwarf character is treated like a circus performer, with Dinklage milking the maudlin as if he's auditioning for a Coen brothers farce. John Hawkes sings a lone note as Mildred's brute of an ex-husband, mocked for having a 19-year-old girlfriend. A flashback shows Mildred feuding with her rebellious daughter, letting fly an unfortunate tirade that eerily predicts the teenager's demise.

Can a movie be too perfectly constructed? "Three Billboards" packs a wallop emotionally at times, and its black humor can be cutting, if a little too far toward Raymond Chandler tough-guy talk (especially Mildred). But there's just something antiseptic about the final result, like a reminder that McDonagh is the smartest storyteller in the room and we're just here for the popcorn.

BONUS TRACK
Over the closing credits, Townes van Zandt's "Buckskin Stallion Blues" by Amy Annelle: