Young Women in Peril

CHARLIE SAYS (B+) - In this summer of anniversaries, we travel back 50 years to the Manson Family killings -- marking the end of the '60s, according to the Joan Didion quote that opens this movie -- with a focus on the Manson women and girls, in particular three of them, often in a flash forward to their time in prison three years later.

Mary Harron ("The Moth Diaries," "The Notorious Bettie Page") brings a sympathetic eye to these damaged souls who were lured from troubled childhoods into a cult and given uninspired nicknames -- Sadie, Lulu and Katie. Harron doesn't blink from the sexual creepiness of Manson and the grimy compound he created at the Spahn Ranch in the late '60s. Brit Matt Smith (TV's "Dr. Who") dirties up well for the role of Charles Manson, even if he's a little too tall and handsome for the part.

Hannah Murray (HBO's "Game of Thrones") carries the load here as wide-eyed naif Leslie Van Houten, and Merrit Wever lends gravitas as the jail volunteer who tries to break through to the brainwashed acolytes who continue to chant the Family's aphorisms. You feel for these young women, but they can be scary, too, which is how I remember it, hazily, from childhood. Harron uses dim lighting to ratchet up the tension from 1969, but she brightens things up for the jail scenes. This one gets under your skin.

EVERYBODY KNOWS (B) - In the weakest movie we've seen so far from Iranian master Asghar Farhadi ("A Separation," "The Salesman"), he is blessed with a great cast of Spanish actors but spins in circles weaving a knotty plot of yet another female gone missing (in the mode of ("About Elly"). He's traversing in the territory of "The Past," which landed him in France with a top-notch cast, but here he could have easily pared 20 minutes from a 133-minute running time.

Penelope Cruz stars as Laura, a mother and wife returning from Argentina to her hometown of Madrid for her sister's wedding. Lurking is an ex-lover Paco, played by Javier Bardem, who runs the half of the family vineyard that Laura sold to him years ago. Ricardo Darin ("Wild Tales," "The Secret in Their Eyes") shows up halfway through as Laura's husband, who stayed behind in Argentina trying to salvage the couple's financial mess. 

When their daughter goes missing the night of the wedding, minor intrigue ensues. Cruz cries a lot, and Laura turns to Paco to help raise the ransom money. The disappearance, from the start, has the hallmarks of an inside job -- if not a prank by the daughter -- and thus the second half can feel like drudgery, even as some secrets are revealed, none of which will knock you our of your seat.

But Farhadi knows how to dig deep into the haunted emotions of couples and families. And his visual work with cinematographer Jose Louis Alcaine can be mesmerizing at times. But from the start -- when it is a challenge to keep track of the many family members -- to the final reel when you just want the girl to show up, dead or alive, already, the director tests the viewer's patience.
 

On the Prowl

THE HEIRESSES (B+) - This delightfully quirky film follows two aging scions of wealthy families in Asuncion, Paraguay, as they struggle with their relationship and the loss of their wealth. When the debts of Chiquita (Margarita Irun) land her in prison, her mate Chela (Ana Brun) ends up carting other old ladies around the city, despite her inexperience behind the wheel, but protected by the rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirror.

Written and directed by newcomer Marcelo Martinessi, "The Heiresses" unfolds casually to tell Chela's story as she emerges from social seclusion and savors the joy of freedom from the domineering Chiquita (who thrives in the low-security female prison), especially when the sexy, younger Angy (Ana Ivanova) enters the picture. Martinessi is comfortable with the simplistic narrative, as Brun (like Irun, a newcomer) takes over the proceedings with a soulful performance. The story is quiet but profound.

THE CHARMER (B+) - Young Iranian Esmail (Ardalan Esmaili) is on the prowl in Copenhagen, hoping to land a Danish wife that will earn him a green card and an extended stay away from his homeland. His escapades catch the eye of another Iranian, Sara (Soho Rezanejad), who knows the game he is playing and swats him away from her tall, blond friend.

Esmail's background is slowly peeled back for us to understand his motivations, especially his interactions at the hot singles bar with an older Danish man newly on the singles market and seeking to commiserate with Esmail. The actor Esmaili carries this from beginning to end with a pair of puppy-dog eyes and, yes, charm. This one, from relative newcomer Milad Alami, turns into a quiet little thriller as Esmail tries to outrace his past. Alami and co-writer Ingeborg Topsoe craft sharp dialogue and make fine use of different fonts in the subtitles -- italicizing the English translation of Persian to distinguish from the Danish dialogue. The narrative is taut, leading to a powerful ending.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer for "The Heiresses":


 

New to the Queue

After the flood ... an all-doc dump ...

A visually stylized documentary about a beekeeper in Macedonia (and a statement about the environment), "Honeyland."

A personalized documentary about China's controversial population-control program, "One Child Nation."

A visually dazzling look at humans coping with water and the ramifications of climate change, "Aquarela."

Yet another doc, this one about a trailblazing polemicist and tart-tongued Texan, "Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins."

An examination of what happened when a Chinese company took over a shuttered auto operation in Ohio, "American Factory."
 

Doc Watch: Peace, Love & Muddy Memories

Two new(ish) documentaries on the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, neither of which, apparently, could score rights to performance footage:

CREATING WOODSTOCK (B) - A kind of bait-and-switch, this is a new release but almost all of the interviews of the producers of the iconic 1969 music festival are from the 1970s and '80s. At least their memories are much more contemporaneous that way. And this is a rather fascinating dissection of the nuts and bolts of putting on a massive music (and arts) extravaganza. We hear from the four main creators -- dreamers Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld, and financiers Joel Rosenman and John Roberts. 

Director (curator?) Mick Richards mostly stays off-stage and sticks to the behind-the-scenes tick-tock of how it all went down. Don't expect Hendrix solos and Santana jams here. There is virtually no music from the event included here, and the incidental song selections are often clunky and incongruent. This clocks in at nearly two hours, but Richards makes good use of his time. Entertaining talking heads include Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie and, especially, Leslie West from Mountain. Even some locals -- both for and against at the time -- offer insight into the hubbub that surrounded the last-minute switch between upstate New York locations, from Wallkill to Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel.

This is a level-headed reminiscence, shunning honey-soaked nostalgia, for the most part, in favor of a sometimes riveting explainer. 

WOODSTOCK: THREE DAYS THAT DEFINED A GENERATION (B-minus) - PBS has a slicker story behind the story, but it devolves into yet another hagiographic nostalgia-fest among glassy-eyed baby boomers. We still get very few musical moments from the stage (but plenty of those monotone announcements made famous by the original 1970 documentary). Footage of host Max Yasgur addressing the assembled long-hairs tugs at the heartstrings.

Barak Goodman, a PBS veteran, curates along Jamila Ephron, and they capture the zeitgeist pretty well. Oddly, all of the talking heads appear only in voice-over, so we don't get to experience the fun of comparing '60s hippies to their old-age demeanors. It's not clear why that path was chosen, but I couldn't help thinking that boomer vanity had something to do with it. Maybe the directors thought such a wrinkly visual would just be a distraction and take us out of the Aquarian moment.

Either way, by the final reel of the film, the filmmakers pile on the saccharine a little too thick, creating a hippie haze of good vibes and exclusively pleasant memories. In the end, nothing really went wrong, and it was pure heaven, according to this feel-good film. Whatever, man.

BONUS TRACK
Max Yasgur addresses the crowd at Woodstock:


  

R.I.P., Phillip J. Blanchard

Our dear friend Phil Blanchard died on Friday. He was 65. Phil contributed nine reviews to this site over the years, mainly under the heading "So I Don't Have To" -- he handled the pulpy action films (often featuring men in tights and capes) that I shunned. You can find them compiled here.

Phil was a journalism mentor, father figure and one of the most caring friends a person could have. An ordinary superhero. He was the longtime proprietor of Testy Copy Editors, and there is a tribute to him at the site's current home on Facebook.

Rock 'n' Roll Animals

GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD 2011 (A-minus) - A brilliant deep-dive into the life of the spiritual Beatle, this offering from a relatively restrained Martin Scorsese clocks in at three and a half hours. The archival footage is incredibly rare and fascinating, from backstage antics during Beatlemania to Harrison's own recordings at his estate at Friar Park in rural England.

This is produced by his widow, Olivia, so it's highly respectful, although some of the best stories come from her describing the challenges of their 30-year marriage, as well as the attack by a home invader in 1999. Paul and Ringo chime in with insights and avoid telling the same old stories. George himself weighs in during various archival interviews, and his thoughts about drugs and hippies and peace and love are enlightening.

Scorsese mostly stays out of the way and lets a lot of the footage tell the story rather than swamping it with talking heads. A fine curation.

NOW MORE THAN EVER: THE HISTORY OF CHICAGO (B) - The normal reaction to the band Chicago these days (well, since the '80s) has been to scoff at their treacly easy-listening stylings. But they were a powerhouse jazz-rock band dating to the late '60s, and this Midwest workmanlike documentary dives into their roots and restores some credibility.

The band was filmed a lot in home movies, so the archival footage is plentiful hear and illuminating. Cheesy re-enactments are a middling distraction. The individual members come alive. Peter Cetera, long estranged from the band, does not participate, so he can't explain how he hijacked the band in the '80s with producer David Foster, who is around to flaunt his own arrogance. This is a very Chicago film, with classic accents abounding from the likes of manager Peter Schivarelli and actor pal Joe Mantegna.

The band was awash in drugs in the '70s when they were cranking out respectable brassy hits from their hedonistic Colorado ranch studio. Guitarist Terry Kath (apparently envied by Jimi Hendrix) was the main victim, dying in a gun accident fueled by a coke binge. Thankfully, the film spends all but the last half hour of its nearly two-hour running time on the good years and avoids the "Behind the Music" tropes of many rock documentaries.

Doc Watch: Feminine Whiles

MARIANNE & LEONARD: WORDS OF LOVE (B) - A lovely contemplative tone poem about the love affair between Leonard Cohen and his onetime muse, Marianne Ihlen, who inspired "So long, Marianne" and "Bird on a Wire." The grainy footage from the '60s and '70s (scuffed up by a little CGI?) gives this a sandpapered nostalgia, especially the video from the Greek island where the two spent their days co-habitating.

Nick Broomfield, the bad boy behind "Kurt & Courtney" and "Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam" was a contemporary of Leonard and Marianne, and so he gently injects himself into the story, including as narrator. He gives us deep portraits of each one of them, allowing us glimpses into their inner lives. (They died months apart, after decades of estrangement, in 2016.) The pace is a little slow, especially the first half hour, but the dreamy effect makes this worthwhile.

OVER THE LIMIT (C+) - If you want to see a young athlete berated and degraded by her coaches for 74 minutes (mercifully brief as running times go), then go for the gold. This tells the story of rhythmic gymnast Margarita "Rita" Mamun, as she trains with the Russian national team for the 2016 Olympics. Irina Viner is her vile, foul-mouthed senior coach, a villain in her showy wide-brimmed hats. Amina Zaripova is Viner's hench-woman and assistant coach.

Mamun struggles with foot pain and the trauma of her father's cancer treatments. In short, she doesn't need this crap. But she soldiers on and takes insult after insult. The bulk of the film is pretty much unwatchable; truly horrific. Feel free to start fast-forwarding about 20 minutes in and up to the final five minutes, which are handled wonderfully by director Marta Prus, a relative newcomer. A bonus here is the whole idea of taking rhythmic gymnastics so life-and-death seriously; I couldn't help flashing back to the classic "SNL" sketch with Martin Short and Harry Shearer as synchronized swimmers coached by Christopher Guest. I just hope poor Rita is getting some good therapy these days.

DAUGHTERS OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION (C+) - This documentary can't keep track of what it wants to be: a feminist polemic about the objectification of women or an ad for the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. It ends up toppling into the latter category, and that's a shame. A missed opportunity.

Suzanne Mitchell is the star here. She was the Type A den mother directing the squad, and her present-day stories are entertaining. Some of the former cheerleaders weigh in, but there is not much insight from them. Team apologists also chime in, including one annoying announcer who didn't even show up until the mid '80s, long after the gals' sideline debut during the ERA era.

This one -- from journeyman Dana Adam Shapiro -- starts out promising but eventually starts glossing over important issues, such as costume/weight requirements and the horrendous minimum-wage violations. By the end it becomes a hagiography that applauds Mitchell and lets the male chauvinist pigs off the hook.
 

Fairy Tales

ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOOD (B+) - This ode to a lost era (the end of the 1960s) is an intriguing concoction of macho bunk and addictive nostalgia from a fading Quentin Tarantino. This is much more a return to "Jackie Brown" and "Pulp Fiction" than the endless string of pulp fantasy and genre wanks Tarantino has indulged in during the past 20 years. (I wrote, after seeing "Django Unchained": "It's as if his true 12-year-old was finally set free by his '90s successes, and the Weinsteins' blank checks gave him free rein to wank off. ... It is simply stylized and soulless nihilism.")

Here, he focuses on Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick, an aging TV Western star, and his stuntman buddy (and Man Friday) Cliff (Brad Pitt) as they struggle with a changing world, where hippies are replacing cowboys and the postwar high has gotten sucked into the quagmire of Vietnam. Cliff keeps seeing a seductive teenage girl (Margaret Qualley) on the streets of Los Angeles, and when he finally invites her into his car (Rick's actually), he manages to resist her come-ons but does take her to the Spahn Ranch, the former movie set (in real life) where Charles Manson and his "family" were shacking up with the aged owner (a fine cameo by Bruce Dern in a role meant for Burt Reynolds) while plotting their crimes. Pitt's visit to the spooky ranch, under the glare of Manson's zombies, is by far the high point of the movie. (Qualley, the daughter of Andie MacDowell, is invigorating here but she sticks out as too clever and self aware to be a Manson devotee.)

The brilliance of the movie is the way Tarantino re-creates L.A. at that moment in time, with granular precision. There are many driving scenes and thus endless snippets of AM radio sounds: songs, DJ banter, ads. The soundtrack itself is rife with period AM treasures, with some deep cuts like album tracks from Paul Revere and the Raiders and Jose Feliciano's mournful version of "California Dreamin'," plus a renewed appreciation for muscle songs like Bob Seger's "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" and the Rolling Stones "Out of Time" -- the latter a little too cleverly on-point. Tarantino also has a gas coming up with fictional Spaghetti Westerns for Rick to star in during a six-month sabbatical in Italy, Eastwood-like.

This really is a high achievement of period filmmaking. With much more of a sheen than Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice" (which spilled into the '70s), Tarantino serves up a bubblegum-drenched memory of his (and my) childhood, when it was daunting even to be a 6-year-old in 1969. The attention to detail is obsessive. One quick scene -- a series of neon signs coming to life at iconic L.A. landmarks, at dusk at the onset of the fateful night of the Manson slayings -- is as brilliant a slice of celluloid as you can hope to see. Even in his bad movies, Tarantino can bowl you over with his mastery of the craft.

Not that there's much of a plot. Weighing in at 2 hours 40 minutes, "Once Upon a Time" is very much a hang-out movie, very much a shambolic sunshiny noir. And it's quite a ride up until the climax. Not only does Cliff visit Manson's compound, but Rick lives next door to Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who represent Hollywood's future (Polanski as a budding auteur who could potentially do for Rick in the '70s what Tarantino did for John Travolta in the '90s). Tate here is portrayed as an innocent naif, ripe for slaughter, romping at the Playboy Mansion while being ogled by Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis), bopping to records as she sets up her nursery, or sneaking into a matinee of her latest film and drinking in the audience reaction around her.

But she's a woman, so she doesn't matter as much as do the macho men who soak up most of the screen time. Cliff, especially, gets to beat up hippies, kick Bruce Lee's ass, and repair a rooftop TV antenna shirtless. And, oh yeah, he reputedly killed his ex-wife back in the day, maybe by accident, maybe not. Pitt is the star of the show here, still somehow flashing "Thelma & Louise" charm (and abs). DiCaprio adds layers to his portrayal of Rick (a stutter is a nice touch), and he goes deep during Rick's interaction on the set with a child actor (Julia Butters) -- of Glassian precociousness -- who shakes him out of his late-career stupor.

But this wouldn't be a Tarantino film if he didn't ruin it with cartoon violence and buckets of blood pouring out of people's heads. The final reel finally brings together the two main camps -- our twangy good ol' boys and the Manson family. The horrors that ensue come with a twist, and whether you buy into the ending or not, there's no denying that it feels tacked on and utterly gratuitous. It leaves a bad taste as you walk out of the theater. For a couple of hours, though, that old magic -- L.A. before the fall, Tarantino before grindhouse -- was back on the big screen.

SWORD OF TRUST (C+) - A serious misstep by Lynn Shelton ("Humpday," "Your Sister's Sister"), coming off the quiet gem "Outside In." Here, she offers a broad comedy about a mismatched group of people in Birmingham, Ala., dealing with Civil War deniers. She handles the set-up well -- a pawn store owner stumbles on a sword purportedly related to the North's surrender to Gen. Lee -- and assembles her characters before setting them off on a shaggy-dog road trip. But nothing really gels, and the actors seem to be competing with each other to see who can be the quirkiest. Marc Maron has an appealing melancholy as the store owner, but the three other actors -- Michaela Watkins, Jillian Bell and John Bass -- never take it to the next level.

The banter can be clever, suggesting a loose improvisational shoot. Shelton herself steals the show with a funny, bittersweet cameo as Maron's drug-addicted ex. Toby Huss and Dan Bakkedahl (HBO's "Veep") inject some giddiness as Deep South villains, but this all falls apart by the end as our bumbling quartet tries to out-maneuver the bad guys. Shelton pretty much ignores the real-life dangers of truthiness and the resurgence of the white nationalist movement with this lightweight romp.This is more on a par with her lesser work, such as "Laggies" and "Touchy Feely."
 

R.I.P., D.A. Pennebaker

The influential documentarian D.A. Pennebaker died at age 94. NPR has a fine overview of his career. Pennebaker is known for his seminal works including "Don't Look Back," which traveled to London with Bob Dylan in 1965, and "The War Room," which chronicled the Clinton presidential campaign of 1992.

"Don't Look Back" opens with what is perhaps the first consciously produced music video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues."  The L.A. Times reports this recollection:

“We were down at the Cedar Tavern [in New York] and he [Dylan] said, ‘I was thinking of making up these cards and holding them up and running them like for a song,’ where the words would be the words for the song,” Pennebaker told Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin. “It would be a takeoff of what the Beatles had to do when they had to play the playback, which was demeaning. They accepted it because they were told you had to do this to sell records…. Dylan wanted to put a little needle into that, by doing it as a gag.”

 Here's the video: