Bleak Is Beautiful

BURNING (B+) - A slow, lovely meditation on yearning. Farm-boy Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo) pines for Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jeon), who has gone off to Seoul, the big city, and, after sleeping with her once, he agrees to watch her cat while she takes a trip to Africa. When Hae-mi returns, she has Ben (Steven Yeun) on her arm, a slick playboy-type with a fancy apartment. The three hang out together, most memorably back at Jong-su's farm, where Hae-mi entertains the troops with a topless dance to a Miles Davis song at twilight.

But when Hae-mi disappears, Jong-su grows suspicious of Ben. But it's not clear which one of the men is the sane one and which one is the paranoid one. Chang-dong Lee, who wrote and directed the equally quiet and compelling "Poetry" in 2010, returns with a true slow burn of a tale. This laconic mind-game (a surprisingly perky 148 minutes) crescendos with a violent ending, and whether or not you feel tricked by the filmmaker, you almost certainly will be drawn in by the performances and the gorgeous look of the scenery.

DARK RIVER (A-minus) - Clio Barnard ("The Selfish Giant," "The Arbor") adapts this brutal, grueling slog of a story about a damage woman named Alice (Ruth Wilson), who, after the death of her father, returns to her rural northern England village for the first time in 15 years vowing to claim the tenancy to the rundown family farm she believes is rightfully hers. But she is stymied at every step by her drunken, hirsute brother, Joe (Mark Stanley), and haunted at every turn by visions of the father (Sean Bean in flashbacks) who molested her when she was a girl. (The only knock on the film is Barnard's horror-story over-use of those incessant glimpses of the past.)

Barnard knows how to tap into the grit and grime of life in North Yorkshire, and Wilson and Stanley wallow in it, surrounded less by the loveliness of nature than by the blood and guts of the rats, rabbits and sheep they live among. The siblings do battle as Alice, a sheep-shearer by trade, strives to fix up the grounds to appease the banksters while Joe resists change. Things get ugly, and it all builds to a horrific -- yet oddly cathartic -- tragedy, though with a coda that reveals the true beauty of the environment these two scarred souls were raised in. The film is bleak and devastating at times but absolutely compelling.

  

New to the Queue

Coast to coast ...

Alfonso Cuaron ("Children of Men," "Gravity") revisits his childhood and the domestic worker who helped raise him in "Roma."

A documentary explores George R.R. Martin's curiosity shop and arts/entertainment center in Santa Fe, "Meow Wolf: Origin Story."

I gave up on Clint Eastwood's bloated movies long ago, but something is drawing me to his drama about an elderly drug-runner, "The Mule."

A pair of Catholic sisters query passersby on the street in the restored 1968 documentary "Inquiring Nuns."

Hirokazu Kore-eda ("Nobody Knows") returns with another family drama, "Shoplifters."

A documentary about the discovery of bizarre industrial musicals from the business world, "Bathtubs Over Broadway."
 

RIP, Ricky Jay

Magician and actor Ricky Jay has died at 72. Here is our July 2013 review of the documentary about him.

DECEPTIVE PRACTICE: THE MYSTERIES AND MENTORS OF RICKY JAY (B) - This was highly enjoyable, with an entertaining subject and clever framing device. I would give it a higher grade -- because it's definitely worth seeing -- but for two reasons: 1) You need to be a little bit of a fan of Ricky Jay and/or his card tricks. 2) Grading this too high would suggest that this is the ultimate profile of Ricky Jay and his magician mentors; it's not.

But at times, it's true joy. Jay was a child star in the '50s and grew up to be the Penn Jillette of the '70s, perfecting his card-tossing routine as a long-haired hippie of the now generation. You may know his face from David Mamet's films opposite Joe Mantegna in the '80s, such as "House of Cards," "Things Change" and "Homicide." He's also the author of numerous books on magic and various oddities.

What this documentary brings to light is Jay's role as a historian in the world of magic. Because he was already an established performer in the 1950s (urged on by his amateur-magician dad), he provides a key link to the artists going back to the turn of the last century. His library is comprehensive.

Director Molly Bernstein stretches the soup a few times when she's stumped for footage, but she employs a simple but effective framing device: Jay sitting in front of a mirror at a felt table shuffling a deck of cards and occasionally showing off his sleight of hand. She introduces us to the elders: Al Flosso, Slydini, Cardini and others. She shows respect for the secrets of these men.

We also get clips of Jay hamming it up with Dinah Shore on her talk show. And we see closeups of the face of a man easing into old age, his hands still quicker than the eye.

The trailer: 

King of America

THE KING (A) - Eugene Jarecki continues to battle for the soul of America, with this examination of our nation's original sin as viewed from the backseat of Elvis Presley's Rolls-Royce. Did Presley embody the American dream as a poor boy from Tupelo, Miss., to international superstar, only to die on the toilet at age 42?

Jarecki, the meticulous chronicler behind "Why We fight" and "The House I Live In," captures dreamlike images of a diverse group of participants floating along America's back roads in the lap of luxury, ruminating on the rock 'n' roll icon and how he may have symbolized everything good and bad with our country. Filming mostly during the 2016 presidential campaign, the result is a profoundly moving gumbo of ideas.

Celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Ethan Hawke (a producer) and Ashton Kutcher (surprisingly warm here) act out the ups and downs of celebrityhood, while sharp observers like Van Jones and Public Enemy's Chuck D (author of the classic line "Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me") offer a wider perspective. Mike Myers, representing the level-headed Canadian counter-balance, is not only quite funny but rather insightful in his analysis of Britain's conjoined-twin nations.

Random musical acts are sprinkled throughout and are lovingly recorded. Old-school artists like John Hiatt (who breaks down weeping in the presence of the spirit of the King) and Emmylou Harris share the spotlight with alt-hipster M. Ward, teenage yodeler Emi Sunshine, and acidic rapper Immortal Technique. The Handsome Family croons a patented murder ballad while gliding through the Southwest. Presley himself is a very real presence, through generous archival footage, following him from rags to riches.

Jarecki shares an aesthetic, as well as actual clips, with Thom Zimny's two-part HBO documentary "Elvis Presley: The Searcher," finding the complexity and layers to the man-child who embodied the hopes and dreams of popular culture for decades. The road trip as metaphor works wonderfully, as the Rolls breaks down a few times, perfectly encapsulating a nation (and its founding philosophy) growing long in the tooth. One man's American dream is another American man's nightmare; and sometimes that contradiction is embodied in one iconic soul.

GARRY WINOGRAND: EVERYTHING IS PHOTOGRAPHABLE (B) - A fascinating, if scattered, study of the work of one of the leading street photographers of the 1960s and '70s. His contemporaries and art critics have studied the hell out of his pictures, and sometimes it feels like they are overthinking and overanalyzing the work. But the images are undeniably compelling.

One ex-wife is on board to examine the man himself, who, if you piece this all together, appears to have been a bit of a sexist pig, but perhaps no more so than most men of his era. One of the hooks here is that Winogrand left tens of thousands of rolls of film undeveloped when he died in 1984 at age 56

BONUS TRACKS
From the closing credits of "Winogrand," early R.E.M. with "Catapult"



From "The King," Immortal Technique spitting "Rich Man's World":



Also from "The King," the angelic crooning of Loveful Heights, "Train Song":

Regards to Broadway

LOVE, GILDA (B) - This by-the-numbers, fawning biography of "Saturday Night Live" star Gilda Radner offers an unsatisfying mix that underplays the funny (her brilliant comic acting) and overplays the sad (death from ovarian cancer in her 40s). Maybe a running time of more than 88 minutes would have balanced things out. A fully formed artist never emerges from the sympathetic direction of newcomer Lisa Dapolito and an army of producers. (Too many cooks?)

Dapolito dwells on Radner's childhood as a fattie but then mostly glosses over adult eating disorders. Too few "SNL" clips are included and they are way too short here. The comedy has no room to breathe. A lot of time is spent on her rather uninteresting post-"SNL" career, and her relationship with Gene Wilder is told mostly through longtime pals and a nephew of Wilder's.

Radner's diaries are used to good effect, but that device sits in stark contrast to Judd Apatow's extensive examination of the psyche of Garry Shandling for HBO (which has the luxury of being three times as long); not that such over-indulgence would have necessarily worked here. Maybe there just aren't as many neuroses and noodlings to sift through when it comes to Radner. But you leave with the sense that you don't really know her all that better than you did before, and you didn't get to laugh as much as you wanted to.

THE SUNSHINE BOYS (1975) (A) - One of the great Neil Simon screenplays, this one starring Walther Matthau and George Burns as estranged vaudeville partners asked to reunite for a TV special. Richard Benjamin steals scenes as the nephew/agent of Willie Clark (Matthau), the frustratingly irascible dotard who harbors petty grudges against Al Lewis (Burns). In classic "Odd Couple" fashion, Willie lives in a messy hotel room in Manhattan while Burns idles away at his daughter's house in New Jersey. Zingers and malapropisms fly past at an impressive rate, and all three actors are at the top of their game. Besides the corny depiction of a bygone era -- filmed in Gerald Ford's New York -- there is a lot of heart on display here, both between Willie and his nephew and between the two old cranks. Still as funny as any word with a K in it.
 

New to the Queue

Thinly veiled ...

A documentary about a filmmaker tracking down the man who stole the first movie she shot 20 years ago, "Shirkers."

Peter Bogdanovich and others finally complete Orson Welles' final film (and film within a film about a filmmaker), "The Other Side of the Wind."

The Welles movie comes with a companion documentary from Morgan Neville ("Won't You Be My Neighbor," "20 Feet From Stardom"), "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead."

Patrick Wang ("In the Family") gets mopey with a delayed-release drama, "The Grief of Others."

A shallow documentary about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, "Daughters of the Sexual Revolution."
  

Born This Way

A STAR IS BORN (A-minus) - Bradley Cooper rediscovers the power of one of Hollywood's original cautionary tales. And he inhabits the role of the drunken, over-the-hill country rocker who discovers a young woman brimming with talent.

Lady Gaga is prodigiously watchable as Ally, a bit of a Plain Jane who can belt 'em out. She and Cooper's Jack fall in love, and we wince as he falls apart and her career rockets straight to the Grammys. Their chemistry is solid, the dialogue feels lived in, the songs are authentic, and the story arc always remains plausible. For mainstream movie-making, that's quite an accomplishment.

Both actors can tug at the heart strings. A strong supporting cast includes Sam Elliott as Jack's older brother (who manages Jack's career and deflects their daddy issues) and Rafi Gavron as Ally's no-nonsense svengali. This clocks in at an epic 2 hours, 16 minutes, but very few frames seem wasted. This is a labor of love by two artists -- Cooper and Gaga -- who, like their characters, crossed paths at just the right time to help erase the cheesiness of the '70s version of this iconic Everyman tale.

OH LUCY! (B) - This curiosity has charm to burn, even if it meanders too often and doesn't leave much of an aftertaste. Shinobu Terajima stars as Setsuko, renamed Lucy at an English class she attends in Tokyo in place of her niece. When the teacher, John (Josh Hartnett), and the niece disappear to California, Lucy and her sister head after them. What follows is a sloppy, sweet road movie with a twist of culture clash. The mood is often melancholy and fatalistic, but Terajima is so winning that you don't mind.

BONUS TRACK
Cooper's opening track, with Lukas Nelson, the grungy "Black Eyes":