On the brink

THUNDER ROAD (A) - This under-the-radar solo piece is a wonder of crazed emotion. Jim Cummings splashes on the scene as writer/director/star of this fevered piece about a mentally unstable police officer unraveling over the breakup of his marriage and the death of his mother.

A 12-minute opening scene -- Cummings having a public meltdown while eulogizing his mother at her funeral, complete with an improvised dance sequence (expanding on a 2016 short film) -- sets the manic tone that never lets up for an hour and a half. Cummings has an uncanny ability to contort and relax his face, switching on a dime as he cycles through and pinballs among emotions from second to second.

Officer Arnaud's behavior unsettles everyone around him, from the police captain (a nice turn by Bill Wise from "Krisha"), to his loyal and understanding partner (Nican Robinson), to his embarrassed pre-adolescent daughter (Kendal Farr). Arnaud's life spirals through a series of embarrassing situations, as denial and resentment course through his veins. Throughout, Cummings is a pure force of nature, refusing to take his foot off the gas. He's like an odd mix of Jim Carrey and Jason Schwartzman. The movie shares a DNA with other recent depictions of psycho/sociopathic emotional cripples like Kris Avedisian's "Donald Cried" and "Buzzard." Cummings perfects the model here.

WILD ROSE (A-minus) - Speaking of phenomenons, Jessie Buckley is a one-person wrecking crew as the singing star of this deeply heartfelt story about a Scottish 23-year-old who yearns to make it big in Nashville. The problem is, Rose-Lynn is living a country song herself. She just got out of prison for dealing heroin, she's broke, and she resents the two children that she had as a teenager. All she's missing is a pickup truck running over her dog.

But Rose-Lynn is determined to make it out of Glasgow, and she finds a sympathetic patron in Susannah (Sophie Okonedo), whose house Rose-Lynn cleans. But there will be no simple path for our heroine here.

Buckley, with a childlike innocence in her back pocket, has the aura of a true superstar. Her Rose-Lynn shuffles around night and day in her trusty pair of white cowboy boots, and she gives and good as she gets in the dive bars where she is sometimes welcome. Buckley has a beautiful voice and a natural stage manner, with none of the artifice or affectation that tinge a movie like "A Star Is Born." She's the real deal.

There is nary a misstep by TV veterans Tom Harper (who directs) and Nicole Taylor (who wrote the screenplay). The songs, a mix of originals and covers of songs by the likes of John Prine, Emmylou Harris and Patty Griffin, are well chosen. The working-class setting feels authentic. The dynamic between Rose-Lynn and her mother (a resigned Julie Walters) is heated and heartfelt but never maudlin. Even the kids (Daisy Littlefield and Adam Mitchell), tagged with classic-country monikers Wynonna and Lyle, find the right tone. The twist in the final reel is well earned and believable. Everyone is on their game here, especially Buckley, who is just bursting with life.

BONUS TRACK
"Peace in This House" by Jesse Buckley (originally Wynnona Judd), from "Wild Rose":


 

The Noir Chronicles, 2019

Our take on the Guild Cinema's annual Festival of Film Noir, still the best way to beat the heat in July.

BLAST OF SILENCE (1961) (A-minus) -This no-name production is a shot of adrenaline that follows a depressed hit-man during the holidays as he plots the murder of a mid-level mob boss in Manhattan. Allen Baron directs, writes and stars as Frank Bono, a nihilistic hit-man "from Cleveland" who slinks along the streets of New York casing the moves of his prey while trying awkwardly to reconnect with an old flame (Molly McCarthy).

It takes a while to get used to the dark, beatnik narration that takes place mostly in Frank's cluttered mind. Baron is no great thespian, but he has a De Niro gravitas about him. The character is mostly a downer, though he does interact playfully with a fat, bearded hippie-dippie gun dealer played by Larry Tucker, who has a modern bearing and delivery. (Tucker would continue on mostly as a writer, with "The Monkees" and "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" among his credits.) This sharp character study builds economically to a profoundly menacing conclusion.

Baron would put out two more features later in the decade before settling in to TV directing the rest of his career. It's a shame that his talents would be wasted on episodes of "The Brady Bunch" and "House Calls," because he had a great eye, a knack for storytelling (though Waldo Salt ("Serpico") is credited with writing the narration, which is rooted in beat poetry), and a feel for the grimy streets and back alleys.  One memorable long take shows Frank walking down a couple of long city blocks, from a blurry distance and then sharply into the camera. You have to think that Martin Scorsese and other American New Wave directors were paying attention to this taut, understated thriller.

SPOTTED: Well, he's not seen, but we do hear Lionel Stander -- the leather-faced and gravel-voiced Max from the 1980s TV show "Hart to Hart" -- as the gruff narrator.

LURED (1947) (B+) - Lucille Ball is a modern star in this playful mystery from Douglas Sirk ("Written on the Wind"). The future queen of TV comedy plays Sandra Carpenter, a lively redheaded ex-pat recruited by Scotland Yard to help catch the creep behind the disappearance of beautiful women who answer his personals ads. The suspect also likes to send bad poetry to tease Scotland Yard's finest.

Veteran character actor Charles Coburn plays the avuncular chief inspector, and George Sanders ("While the City Sleeps") shines as a rakish playboy who becomes a suspect. Boris Karloff adds comic relief as a delusional photographer who lures Sandra to his lair. But it is Ball who lights up every scene, tossing off one-liners but also holding her own dramatically.

This one drags under the weight of its 102-minute run, and the ending is fairly ridiculous, but the stars and the glitz make it a lot of fun.

SPOTTED: Alan Napier -- Alfred the butler from the original "Batman" TV series -- plays a police inspector.

SLEEP, MY LOVE (1948) (C) - The second half of the Douglas Sirk double feature suffers from weak plotting and flat performances. Claudette Colbert hams it up as Alison, a woman who wakes up on a train trip from New York to Boston, not understanding how she got there. Soon she is being gaslighted into thinking that she shot her husband and is going crazy.

Don Ameche adds little in his role as the smarmy husband. The screen lights up only when Robert Cummings ("The Bob Cummings Show") breezes into the picture as Alison's champion who is suspicious of those around her. Cummings and Rita Johnson as his Blondie-like pal execute a delightful banter that sharply contrasts with the sluggish and morose proceedings. And sultry Hazel Brooks vamps it up with extra camp as the femme fatale cooped up in a love nest. However, this one never really adds up to anything coherent.

SPOTTED: Raymond Burr -- before "Perry Mason" and "Ironsides" -- sleepwalks through a role as an enabling police detective.

TWO MEN IN MANHATTAN (B+) - This jazzy noir from Jean-Pierre Melville is itself also a throwback homage to the newspaper movies of the 1930s. Melville stars as Moreau, a reporter from Agence France Presse assigned to track down a French diplomat who went missing from his post at the United Nations. Moreau recruits Pierre (Pierre Grasset), an ethically challenged street photographer, to hit the trail, starting with the numerous mistresses the diplomat apparently has scattered around Manhattan, women connected with the entertainment business. (Michele Bailly is particularly striking as a sexy yet morose burlesque dancer.)

Melville, a New Wave legend, is bebopping in the same territory as John Cassavetes was at the time, with the film "Faces" and the TV show "Johnny Staccato." Melville's rendering of Manhattan is of a city that is both dimly lit and glitzy. A French fatalism peppers the dialogue. The dames are busty and sad. The journalism is seat-of-the-pants. The two men make this a mini buddy road movie within the confines of the big city.

Melville sets an urgent pace (this one's a brisk 84 minutes) while delving into the minds and motivations of our two men in Manhattan. The ending has a fitting twist and a right jab.

SPOTTED: It's a French film, so the pickings are slim, so we'll give a shout-out to this guy, Billy Beck, from countless sitcoms:

DARK CITY (1950) (C-minus) - We were never big fans of Charlton Heston, and his film debut doesn't change our mind. The plot is a mess, and the resolution is unsatisfying. Heston plays a stud-muffin who happens to run a bookie joint with Jack Webb (refreshing as a smart-ass) and Ed Begley (a sweaty heart-attack waiting to happen). Webb is also paired with his future dragnet co-star Harry Morgan, who plays an addled war veteran who might be smarter than he looks.

The group scams a businessman visiting New York out of a check that doesn't belong to him during two nights of poker, leading the poor schmuck to hang himself in his hotel room.  When the man's brother -- an unseen lurker -- targets the men, Heston and Webb high-tail it to L.A., where Heston begins to seduce the widow (Viveca Lindfors), a refreshing break from the clingy torch singer (Lizabeth Scott) who won't leave him alone back in Manhattan. The middle third, featuring Lindfors, holds out promise as some suspense builds, but that quickly unravels and the film limps to a pat and unbelievable final scene.

SPOTTED: Don DeFore -- from TV's "Hazel" -- plays the swindled business traveler.

BONUS TRACK
The jazz scene from "Two Men in Manhattan," with the slow reveal of the singer in the '50s bullet bra:


 

New to the Queue

Refusing to wilt ...

A documentary about the ramifications of corporations harvesting your online personal information, "The Great Hack."

A harrowing documentary about the war in Syria, from one family's perspective, "For Sama."

A satire involving the re-enactment of the actions of a strongman who collaborated with the Nazis, from Romanian Radu Jude ("Aferim"), "I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians."

Marc Maron falls under the wing of the talented Lynn Shelton ("Outside In," "Your Sister's Sister") for a romp involving Civil War truthers, "Sword of Trust."

A documentary about the photographer/artist Jay Maisel and the dismantling of his historical Manhattan home, "Jay Myself."
  

Wanderers

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (A-minus) - At last, a use for Andrew Garfield -- slacker stoner around which a crazy colorful story revolves. David Robert Mitchell wowed with "The Myth of the American Sleepover," but irritated with "It Follows." His third film finds the pocket again with Garfield as Sam, a millennial version of the classic case of an L.A. gumshoe solving a mystery. (This one is more "Inherent Vice" than "The Long Goodbye.") Call it neo-noir, or maybe neon noir in this case.

Swirling around Sam are beautiful young women, many trying to catch their break in Hollywood. Mitchell is making a statement about the dehumanizing effects of the starlet factory, but he's not above employing a lurid male gaze to make his points about the evils of that male gaze. Some might be turned off by the mild fetishism -- one woman (Grace Van Patten) usually sports balloons on her person, while one of Sam's friends with benefits (Riki Lindhome, identified in the credits simply as Actress), is often on her way to an audition or role, thus dressed up as a farm girl or a nurse. (Other women are identified merely as Emerald Beauty, Yellow Miniskirt, Blue Miniskirt, ad nauseam.) An older neighbor (Wendy Vanden Heuvel) likes to be topless on her balcony while tending to her exotic birds. India Menuez (from Amazon's "I Love Dick") sizzles as that undefinable hybrid, the actress/sex worker.

The star here, though her role is limited, is Riley Keough ("Lovesong") as Sarah, a platinum blonde circled by a profound sadness who disappears, thus piquing Sam's curiosity. Sam also is into numerology and other forms of meaningful serendipity. His path goes through a creepy conspiracy theorist (Patrick Fischler) whose graphic novels about a dog killer help Sam solve this mystery.

Millennials drive this magic bus; when Balloon Girl leads Sam down to a subterranean club to hear some "old people music," we get third-wave R.E.M. ("What's the Frequency, Kenneth," of course) and Cornershop. Ouch. But the parade of engaging, appealing characters zips this along so that you don't mind going a quarter hour past the two-hour mark to find out what exists underneath the sleaze of Hollywood. Garfield can be quite the cipher as an actor, and here that lack of charisma hits just the right note.

THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS (C-minus) - A misfire from Nicole Holofcener ("Enough Said," "Walking and Talking"), who strays from her formula by adapting source material rather than penning an original screenplay, and placing a man at the center of her production for the first time. The result is a snooty suburban mopefest starring the usually reliable Ben Mendelsohn surrounded by underutilized actresses like Edie Falco and Connie Britton.

Ted Thompson's novel was probably a good read; Holofcener's movie has a straight-to-video cheapness to it. Mendelsohn plays Anders, recently divorced as well as retired from the investment rat race, and grasping to create a normal bachelor life. His own adult son is drifting at age 27 after a stint in rehab, and Anders develops a connection with the son of some friends, a high school kid also headed to rehab.

Anders seems to bed women at will, only to disappoint them with his performance and generally mean disposition. Mendelsohn mostly mumbles his way through this. Britton, as a potential random love interest, offers a glimpse of what could have been an interesting Holofcener film if offered from the female perspective. The death of a character packs no emotional punch. Instead, a dull rendering limps to a bland finish.

BONUS TRACK
"Silver Lake" digs up the Association's "Never My Love" for an opening sequence featuring oblivious millennials:

New to the Queue

Six degrees of dissipation ...

A debut feature explores the stories we tell and the truthiness of it all, in "The Plagiarists."

A documentary about a poet/songwriter and his muse, "Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love."

A look at one of the symbols of 1960s boomer rocker excess, "David Crosby: Remember My Name."

We have a hunch that Quentin Tarentino's latest is a tolerable return to his roots, the period piece "Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood."
  

Doc Watch

ECHO IN THE CANYON (B+) - This heartfelt documentary pays tribute to the 1960s Southern California music scene, more specifically, the Laurel Canyon gang that specialized in folk rock. The scene included the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas and Crosby Stills Nash &Young. The Beach Boys were in there too.

Jakob Dylan is the perfect host, not only conducting insightful interviews but also helming a band performing re-interpretations of classic songs like "Go Where You Want to Go," accompanied by descendants of Laurel Canyon like Beck, Cat Power's Chan Marshall, and Fiona Apple. Michelle Phillips and other grey-haired survivors spin tales of the good old days.

It all has a warm glow and very little Boomer navel-gazing, thankfully. Roger McGuinn is particularly insightful. Tom Petty tags along with Dylan as a sort of guide and interpreter. Knowing Petty would die soon after filming adds a ruminative quality to the proceedings. It's all a joyful noise

ROLL RED ROLL (B) - This debut documentary from Nancy Schwartzman is a by-the-book true-crime chronicle of the infamous Steubenville, Ohio, videoed rape of a teenage girl by jocks from the local high school football team.

It's a concise 80 minutes that covers all the bases and manages to ratchet up the tension while covering the police investigation that exposes not only the entitled football players but their coaches, as well. The pacing can make for riveting viewing at times.

KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE (B) - This feels like a quickie feel-good snapshot of Democratic women seeking office for the first time, during the 2018 congressional election. It is surprisingly engaging. It helps to have Alexandria Ocasio Cortez at the heart of it; she's an endlessly appealing millennial firebrand and Cinderella story. Of course, it helps to be sympathetic to her as a person and not fear her as a socialist ogre. Interestingly, She is the only one of the four women featured to win her House race. But each woman is inspirational in her own way. This one sneaks up on you.

BONUS TRACK
Jakob Dylan and Fiona Apple team up on Brian Wilson's "In My Room":


 

Outlaw Country

NEVER LOOK AWAY (A-minus) - Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has been dismissed as a one-hit wonder during the more than 10 years since his masterpiece "The Lives of Others."  He has finally dispelled it with "Never Look Away," a three-hour postwar epic based roughly on the life of artist Gerhard Richter, and a moving story of creativity and perseverance.

Reminiscent of Francois Ozon's "Frantz," this one is held together by an unabashedly corny love story. Artist Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling) is influenced by the mental breakdown of his aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) when he was a child during World War II. The aunt was subject to the Nazis' sterilization program, eventually euthanized over her schizophrenia. Kurt, as a young adult, meets and falls in love with her doppelganger, Ellie (a nearly identical actress, Paula Beer), whose father happens to be the physician who oversaw Elisabeth's case.

The film effortlessly passes from national socialism to communism to capitalism, as the couple eventually end up in Western Germany. Von Donnersmarck sublimely captures the creative process, avoiding the pitfalls of most biopics that oversimplify an artist's actual inventive process and development of style. Schilling is sturdy as the idealistic auteur, and both Rosendahl and Beer can be heartbreaking. Sebastian Koch, the hero from "Lives of Others," plays the evil doctor. Divide this one into two or three nights like a mini-series, and you'll be rewarded with powerful storytelling, gorgeous camerawork (truly mesmerizing at times), and a fascinating thread to follow through the second half of the 20th century.

THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN (B-minus) - This innocuous swan song for Robert Redford is all sweetness and light, and thus it goes down pretty easy. He and Sissy Spacek have a nice banter as an inveterate bank robber and his new love interest.

Casey Affleck, however, is unbearably tedious in the cliched role of a 1970s/80s cop and family man tracking his unlikely prey. He and writer/director David Lowery ("Ain't Them Bodies Saints," "A Ghost Story") have gotten way too lazy together. We've seen this story before, but Redford carries the load here with the charm of a performer calling it a career. Tom Waits and Danny Glover have fun as Redford's grey-haired accomplices.

There's not much heft to this whole series of escapades, but it passes the time inoffensively.