Young Adult Friction

GIVE ME LIBERTY (A) - A director making his English-language debut and a no-name cast produce this powerful story of a harried medical-transport driver navigating a personal hellscape and a van full of eccentrics through the streets of Milwaukee. Kirill Mikhanovsky, a Russian immigrant, mines his own experiences and crafts a day-in-the-life of Vic (first-timer Chris Galust), a 20-something son of Russian immigrants who juggles personal tribulations with his responsibilities for the sick, ailing and handicapped clients that he ferries, party-bus style, around the city, which happens to be paralyzed by protests in the wake of the police shooting of a young black man.

Mikhanovsky takes this intoxicating mix and masterfully splays in on the screen in whirling images and at breakneck speed. Vic barely pauses for a breath. In addition to his regular passengers on this given day, he agrees to take on the residents of his grandfather's nursing home, who were abandoned by their scheduled driver and need a ride to the funeral service of one of their own.

The individual characters -- many of whom are non-actors with true disabilities -- can be funny and heartbreaking. The most experienced actor is Maxim Stoyanov as Dima, a grifter who has a scam in mind (and designs on Vic's sister) as he goes along for the ride. Lauren "Lolo" Spencer is unforgettable as Tracy, whose motormouth makes up for the limitations of her legs and who represents the emotional core of the film. We get a one-man Greek chorus from a chain-smoking paraplegic (James Watson) who guides Vic as a philosophical guru.

Mikhanovsky does nothing wrong here. He patronizes no one. He doesn't overdo the mayhem. His camera is certain. His script with Alice Austen (a newcomer, of course) never gets mumbly or maudlin. The story they tell is thrilling and heartfelt. It's funny and sweet.

THE WILD PEAR TREE (B+) - From Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan, we get this three-plus-hour epic slow burn about a young writer battling the demons of his small-minded hometown as he struggles to stay true to his craft. Yes, three-plus hours, and no, there's no cheating here. It's somewhat of a companion piece to Ceylan's "Winter Sleep" (with the same running time), about an older writer.

Ceylan -- whose "Climates" is still the gold standard for relationship films -- here focuses more on father and son (and grandfather) rather than couplehood, though he does tease us with a potential love interest for young Sinan (Dogu Demirkol). Sinan has the arrogance of a young writer shopping his first book, a personalized look at his tiny hometown. Demirkol has a millennial smirk and the goofy mien of Adam Sandler, and his restlessness is endearing, as he nearly bursts with frustration.

He must deal with his frustrating father, Idris (Murat Cemcir) a gambling addict consumed by a quixotic quest to tap a well on the family property. We get deadpan humor, philosophical musings and long, mournful landscape shots, all a staple of Ceylan and his writing-partner wife, Ebru (working here with newcomer Akin Aksu on the script). This one requires patience and understanding, and even if it's a minor-key work from a true auteur, it is satisfying right up to its knockout of an ending.

BONUS TRACK
The "Liberty" trailer:

New to the Queue

Before the fall ...

A wartime film about the hauling of dangerous cargo across the former Yugoslavia, "The Load."

A heartwarming story of a young Milwaukee man who works as a medical transport driver, "Give Me Liberty."

A documentary about an iconic singer from the boomer generation, "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice."

A couple of bumbling good ol' boys kill their best pal and try to cover it up in "The Death of Dick Long."

We will be dragged to the latest super-villain movie and we will adjust our expectations accordingly for "Joker."

Tough Guys

THE IDES OF MARCH (2011) (C+) - In which George Clooney dumbs down American civics with an idiot plot for his Soccer Mom target audience. Requiring a suspension of belief that would daunt the Wendellas, Clooney stars as a former Ohio governor running for president but puts his wunderkind campaign strategist (Ryan Gosling, still finding his legs as an actor) in an awkward position.

Gosling's slick-talking Stephanopoulos wannabe gets caught between his own boss, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a rival campaign manager played by Paul Giamatti. Both Hoffman and Giamatti are woefully under-utilized. Enter Evan Rachel Wood (a wonderful child actor ("Thirteen") who has been drained of talent as an adult) as a 20-year-old campaign intern who is out to seduce Gosling's studly strategist. 

The timing of events -- the Democratic primary is improbably hanging in the balance in mid-March, yet one local pol's delegates could seal the whole deal -- is laughable. The intrigue in barely intriguing. No one breaks out of their two-dimensional molds. Clooney and partner Grant Heslov scored in 2005 with "Good Night and Good Luck," but they have flailed ever since ("The Monuments Men" in 2014 and "Suburbicon" in 2017).

BETWEEN TWO FERNS: THE MOVIE (B) - Not really much of a movie but rather an extended version of Zach Galifianakis' droll spoof of talk-show spoofs. But if you can stand the stand-up's sit-down routine and the droll but scathing writing of his filmmaking partner Scott Aukerman, you'll find plenty to laugh about.

There's actually a plot stringing together the droll celebrity interviews. Zach and his crew take a road trip (the two ferns getting the front passenger seat, with the three staffers in the back). Lauren Lapkus (Pete's ex in HBO's "Crashing") is a standout as his loyal assistant Carol (who casually mentions the murder-suicide of her parents as a mere blip). The cameraman's name is Cameron Campbell, a good example of the laziness and silliness that still manage to get a laugh.

The barrage of celebrity cameos (Paul Rudd and Brie Larson are pretty good) makes for reliable diversions. And dare I say, that Will Ferrell (as the Funny or Die guru) and his shtick are wearing a bit thin?

MUTE (D-minus) - Speaking of indulged celebrities (or their spawn) ... This was background streaming on Netflix that I was subjected to. Duncan Jones (who once made a good movie called "Moon," years ago) writes and directs this execrable sci-fi mess about a mute bartender (Alexander Skarsgaard, in a role he may never recover from) navigating a blandly dystopian future Berlin with the help of a couple of rogue surgeons (?), one played ludicrously by Paul Rudd, pretending to be a gum-snapping tough guy and face-planting hard on his cartoonish walrus mustache (!).

The misogyny here is off the charts. The violence is grim, as if Jones thought it was clever to steal from Terry Gilliam ("Brazil") but takes it way too seriously. This is offensive to the senses and the intellect, as well as wasting everyone's time and money. It doesn't work as a parody of "Blade Runner" or even as a winking wank. Ugh.

BONUS TRACK
A sampling of Galifianakis and Rudd (more in his milieu) in "Ferns":


  

R.I.P, Daniel Johnston

I was one of those guys in the late '80s who discovered troubled Daniel Johnston and sent away for those homemade cassette tapes that he recorded himself on a boombox. Johnston had moved to Austin at this point and caught the attention of MTV and all the hipsters of the alt-music era, most notably Kurt Cobain, who would make Johnston's "Hi, How Are You" T-shirt famous on the music video channel. Johnston died on September 11th at age 58. He was a contemporary and a touchstone.

Johnston suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. His songs sprang from his pain and anguish, but they burst free with joy, even the melancholy songs that seemed to have been liberated from his anxious soul. He sang in a fragile child-like voice, his songs inspired by a kid's cartoon heroes and space aliens (he was an outsider artist, too), somehow simple yet Lennonesque. He was silly and soulful. The sound of his chord organ was ridiculously amateurish yet he dabbled in the profound. The recordings were so crude you could hear him hitting the "record" and "stop" buttons on his tape player. He drew the art for the covers and xeroxed and pasted them onto the cassette case before popping them into the padded envelope that they would arrive in. It was the '80s, and we were so artfully underground.

I saw him perform once at a record store in Chicago, perhaps around the turn of the millennium. He seemed frightened to be the center of attention. I felt guilty for wanting him to entertain me, to expect him to just ignore his challenges and play the role of rock star. I wanted to call a halt to the proceedings and chastise his handlers. Who knows. Maybe in his head he was slaying the crowd at Madison Square garden.

Watching his more recent performances is difficult -- his physical and mental deterioration was evident, and he still looked incredibly awkward. One of his biggest songs was "True Love Will Find You in the End." Maybe peace of mind does too.

BONUS TRACKS
Johnston's "hit," "Walking the Cow":



The cinematic "Desperate Man Blues":



Johnston's haunting cover of "I Saw Her Standing There":



The trailer for the powerful documentary, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston":



Around the turn of the millennium, I knew that our generation had taken over pop culture when Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycles" was borrowed for a Target commercial:



The Reivers put a polish on "Walking the Cow" (as would Mike Watt with Firehose):



And the MTV performance that launched his superstardom:


 

National Night Out

Back to back concert outings, both on a school night:

We last saw The National three summers ago at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. Back then they were previewing songs from 2017's "Sleep Well Beast." This time, at the Santa Fe Opera, the boys gave a classic jolt to "Mr. November" toward the end of the show. But the bulk of the show was devoted to numbers from this year's release, "I Am Easy to Find."

Matt Berninger was joined on most songs by Kate Stables, filling in for the other women who helped her dominate the newest album. On disc, the songs can come off as inscrutable and dense. Live, the melodies of the Dessner brothers gained muscle and felt more pop and less art-show arch. Berninger did his crowd shtick, and "Fake Empire" never sounded so bitter. When they played the title track, with a couplet clipped from Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices ("Tower to the skies / An academy of lies"), a lot of things came full circle.

***

Kristin Hersh is a rock star set off in the corner. She played on a Monday night to a small crowd at a downtown Albuquerque dive, and her power trio powered through new material. She was unapologetic about not playing tunes from her old band, Throwing Muses (and probably for the best, without essential drummer David Narcizo). This was more a mix of 50 Foot Wave punk and Hersh's mood solo work.

Hersh's guitar work was powerful, mixing in distortion and psychedelic solos. Her voice is as immaculate as ever. Her thousand-mile stare just above our heads seemed like a plea for a private right of action -- to play the songs she wanted to and not the songs we might have craved out of nostalgia for the Heyday of the Planet of Sound.

She did not disappoint. Nor does her latest album, "Possible Dust Clouds."

BONUS TRACKS
The National made an art film with Mike Mills, starring Alicia Vikander:



Hersh did not play any old songs, but YouTube cannot be denied. Here is one of the gems from "The Real Ramona," "Him Dancing":



Hersh's "LAX" from her latest disc:


 

Life's a Bee and Then You Die

HONEYLAND (A-minus) - This thoroughly depressing documentary follows the hardscrabble life of Hatidze as she nurtures the bee population of her crude hamlet outside the capital of Macedonia. She also tends to her dying mother in the stone hut they share. When a rowdy couple with a bunch of undisciplined kids moves in next door, they decide to clumsily take up beekeeping themselves, upsetting the town's apian ecosystem and threatening Hatidze's livelihood.

Hatidze nonetheless helps look after these neighbor kids and still goes about collecting honey and selling it in Skopje. The details of her day-to-day existence in this primitive setting are fascinating. People are industrious when they need to be. (They rig up an aluminum disc on a pole -- nailing it in place using a rock -- so they can use it as an antenna for an old transistor radio that they gather 'round like the castaways of Gilligan's Island.) Somehow, the movie is bookended with snippets of the '70s cheese classic "You Are So Beautiful" (doesn't sound like the Joe Cocker version, though), a touch of irony considering Hatidze's haggish, dentally challenged physical appearance. (She looks 70 but tells someone she was born in 1964.))

Directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov gain intimate access to every aspect of Hatidze's simple existence. The camera is perpetually over their subject's shoulder, even as she scales a cliff to check on a hive that is treacherously situated. Some of the visuals are breathtaking. The directors find humor in this rough existence (the neighbor kids are constantly battering and bruising each other -- when they're not getting stung by bees). Hatidze is a survivor, and her gumption is to be admired. But there are times when you wonder if this trudge to the grave is beautiful or pointless.

MONROVIA, INDIANA (C-minus) - You know all those things you do throughout the day -- get your hair cut, shop at the grocery store, do your job, maybe go to a community meeting, prattle on to your fellow senior citizens at the ol' diner? Would you ever want to watch yourself do those things? Would you want to watch a bunch of people in rural Indiana doing those things? Documentary legend Frederick Wiseman thinks you do. You don't.

File this one under Fast Forward Theater. This is as dull as watching corn grow. Which we do in this film, by the way. Sorry, this town is just not interesting. What is the point? Life is tedious and then you die? (Wiseman actually closes with about 15 minutes of a rambling sermon at a funeral for some old lady named Shirley.)

Wiseman -- known for modern successes like "Boxing Gym" and "Crazy Horse" -- has been testing our patience for quite a while now. "At Berkeley" (four hours) and "In Jackson Heights" (a mere three) were wonky process experiments that pushed the limits of fly-on-the-wall observational narration. They just could not be consumed in one sitting, if at all. But at least he had a compelling subject last year in "Ex Libris," about the New York Public Library. It gave us hope that the old boy was back on his game. No such luck.

Doc Watch: Hoarders

JAY MYSELF (A-minus) - This all-around delight follows Jay Maisel, a venerated New York street photographer, now in his 80s, as he packs up and moves out of the five-story bank building he bought in the pre-gentrified Bowery back in the late 1960s and stuffed with art and artifacts. He's a classic New York character and an entertaining subject for a life retrospective.

The cigar-chomping Maisel, over half a century, filled dozens of rooms (including the vault) with ... things. One room is devoted strictly to round objects. One bureau has a drawer filled with screws that fit one particular machine that is nowhere to be found. Colors fill the window panes. There's a small basketball court. His archives spill from cabinets. Discarded film slides fill giant glass cubes. He estimates that 35 truckloads -- organized by Moishe's Last Minute movers -- will be necessary to clean the place out and resettle him in post-gentrified Brooklyn.

The film is by one of Maisel's former assistants, Stephen Wilkes, and points for the insider insight to the old days and for the revealing archival footage from back in the day, but a half point off for lack of objectivity here. This is more of a home movie but a nonetheless fascinating one. Maisel's force of personality, reinforced but softened by his younger wife and by their 20-something daughter, makes for an intimate portrait of a man with an almost child-like glee in observing every observable moment and reveling in the beauty of the everyday. This is an inspiring film infused with the fantastic photographs (and Wilkes' own captured moving images) that reveal the aesthetic splendor that is always around us.

FOOD INC. (2008) (A-minus) - This polemic against the corporate food industry that is killing us still holds up a decade later. Robert Kenner, working with Eric Schlosser (the book Fast Food Nation) casts a devastating lens on factory farming and food processing.

Kenner digs for glimmers of hope -- every day folks rebelling against the warehousing of chickens, organic-yogurt manufacturers breaching Walmart's borders. He exposes Monsanto's genetic manipulations and celebrates an old-fashioned chicken farmer. We've made some progress since this jangled the debate, but how many steps backward have we taken?

BONUS TRACK
The trailer for "Jay Myself":