Doc Watch: In the Closet

A pair of documentaries on Netflix told from a family perspective. One works, the other not so much.

CIRCUS OF BOOKS (B+) - Imagine that your parents, on the sly, ran a gay-porn bookstore in L.A., and you and your brothers didn't find out for years. Filmmaker Rachel Mason conducts a smart investigation of the "secret" life of her parents, Karen (a former journalist) and Barry (a special-effects engineer and inventor), who took over the former Book Circus in the early 1980s, starting out as freelance distributors for the tawdry publications of Larry Flynt (who appears hear, subtitled).

The family dynamic is intriguing here. Mason inserts herself into the story, and we often see her behind the camera as she interviews her parents and brothers and others. Karen is a hectoring mom, and the journalist in her constantly questions the substance and relevance of Rachel's film project, creating a fascinating subplot of mother-daughter angst. Barry is bright and cheery, and he and Karen convey the ups and downs of running a small business (which was not so small in the '80s and '90s when they got into producing porn films, many starring Jeff Stryker, who also appears here). Barry even smiles throughout the recounting of the battle with the Meese Commission during the Reagan administration's crackdown on pornography.

Rachel Mason was a video geek from childhood and a friend of the queer kids in high school, and she dotes on this passion project in every way (she even sings a couple of songs over the closing credits). Another subplot involves one of Rachel's brothers, who took a long time to come out as gay -- all handled tenderly and wisely. Mason has a way of holding a shot on an interview subject for an extra beat or two, evoking subtle echoing facial reactions, which serves to add a subtle layer of subtext to the stories.

This has echoes of the recent "Other Music," which also chronicled the end of a store and an era. Former employees join the talking heads, including one named Alaska, a drag performer with an incredible Joker-like grin. Mason's labor of love celebrates family life, in all of its warts-and-all glory, and packages it into the broader scope of a movement and a faded way of life.

A SECRET LOVE (C+) - Less successful is this valentine to a lesbian couple of six decades who only recently came out to their families. Terry Donahue once played baseball in the famed All-American Girls league, and Pat Henschel is her cranky life partner. Terry's niece Diana also appears as the voice of reason trying to get the two to move to an assisted-living facility. (The director is another relative of Terry's, Chris Bolan.)

Way too much of this family diary dwells on the aging process, as Terry's decline is evident throughout (and even the hardy Pat ends up in the hospital at one point). A wealth of photos, archival footage and availability of Terry and Pat's old friends from the gay community goes to waste, taking a back seat to bickering and minutiae about the pros and cons of various nursing homes.

One scene near the end nearly rescues this production. Diana finally blows a gasket when she finds out how much money the couple have squirreled away while all the time nickel-and-diming her over the choice of a facility. In the end, though, the Midwest ordinariness of the players here gives this a low-stakes feel.
 

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

DRIVEWAYS (B+) - Three wonderful performances ground this small, lived-in drama about a mom and her son befriending an elderly neighbor, in a story that seems too often told but comes off as fresh and emotionally potent. Hong Chau is Kathy, who has arrived in an unnamed suburb (it was shot in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.) to clear out the cluttered home of her estranged sister who has died. Kathy has her 8-year-old son Cody with her, and Cody (Lucas Jay) starts chatting up next-door neighbor Del (Brian Dennehy), a Korean War veteran and widower.

This quiet slice of life gets a lot of little things right and never overplays its hand. Little Cody is impossibly sensitive and shy. Just the thought of having to roughhouse with a pair of lunkheaded neighbor brothers makes him throw up. He'd rather read on Del's porch. Meantime, Kathy works through her family dynamics by reconciling the life of her sister, 12 years older, who left behind a house full of junk and mysteries (and a dead cat).

The mother-son dynamic is touching without being cloying. (Her nickname for the clever little boy is Professor.) Dennehy, who died last month, brings gravitas while dodging potentially maudlin potholes. His big social practice is playing bingo with some old buddies, including one (Jerry Adler from "The Sopranos") who is exhibiting signs of dementia.

Kathy and Cody, as Asian Americans, can be made to feel like outsiders in this former bastion of whitebread suburbia -- especially by subtly racist neighbor Linda (Christine Ebersole) -- though Cody is drawn to other kids of color, including a much friendlier pair of siblings closer to his age. Andrew Ahn gently directs a script by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, actors who have written a few TV episodes recently.

All three lead actors bring depth and nuance to their roles. Chau is particularly soulful as the glue holding this together. Dennehy gets the final word -- in a poignant soliloquy about life (sniff!) -- while young Jaye gets the final gesture.

POLTERGEIST (2015) (D) - I was collateral damage of my partner's burning desire to submit to the this pointless remake of the 1980s horror classic ("They're heeerrre"), not to mention the two sequels that decade. Poor Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt have to pretend to be scared while leaning heavily on their Gen X shield of irony, winking to the audience as modern hipster parents. (And poor indie queen Jane Adams and character actor Jared Harris are trapped in this as goofy ghost hunters.)

But there's no saving this particularly stupid saga, and CGI  and drone technology can't gloss over the fact that we as a culture were more easily amused three decades earlier. Here, again, we get the cute little girl sucked into the TV (what kids watch TV these days?!), and she's got a frail, scaredy-cat brother who is just too sensitive for this crazy world.

Even for a slapped-together shocker film, the (idiot) plot devices are rickety and some just make no sense. If this movie shows up in your home against your will, be afraid. Be very afraid.

(Partner's Grade: B-minus)

BONUS TRACK
From the closing credits of "Poltergeist," it's Spoon covering the Cramps' "TV Set":

Doc Watch: Cultural Touchstones

OTHER MUSIC (B+) - A charming documentary unspools the history of a beloved record store in Lower Manhattan and trails along in 2016 as the middle-aged owners and their wives and employees dismantle their little haven known as Other Music and close the doors for good. This one falls squarely in the pocket of that '90s and '00s heyday of the CD industry, a topic that has been explored previously via the documentary "All Things Must Pass," which chronicled the dismantling of Tower Records. (We never ran across Other Music on trips to New York, though we did discover a little hole in the wall called Rockit Scientist, which also is now only a memory.)

A similar but more indie vibe arises here among the audiophiles who scour the bins for just the right release from that band you've never heard of, tipped off by a diverse crew of obsessive clerks who penned little handwritten staff recommendations amid the displays. This is a loving portrait of a culture of hipster nerds. The operation championed underdog bands like Vampire Weekend, Apples in Stereo and the National (lead singer Matt Berninger tells a few stories) and featured feverish in-store performances in a cramped space. Talking heads include Regina Spektor (who was intimidated by the place) and the always-welcome Jason Schwartzman, a suave fanboy. Depeche Mode's Martin Gore and TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe also pay heartfelt respect to the co-owners and the gang who carried out their vision for a couple of decades.

Directors Puloma Basu and Rob Hatch-Miller pace this perfectly (over 83 minutes) and tell a touching tale of a certain moment in time that probably can't be reproduced.

ONE-CHILD NATION (B+) - Nanfu Wang is co-director (with Jialing Zhang) and the star of this documentary that explores China's decades-long one-child policy, which led to the abandonment and slaughter of legions of fetuses and baby girls. The personal nature of Wang's story -- she and her co-director survived the policy -- can distract at times from the facts grounding the polemic.

Some of the visuals can be striking. A few of the talking heads are powerful. ("It was like fighting a war," one says. "Death was inevitable.") Wang talks to midwives and family planners, as well as leaders of the village where she was raised. This documentary tries to balance the personal (Wang is now living in America and pregnant) with the dialectical, and that tension never gets reconciled.  As a result, a potentially great film suffers in the process. (Streaming on PBS.)
  

R.I.P., Two Who Had the Right Stuff

In the tradition of newspaper editors who like to take two unrelated celebrities and pair their obits merely because they happened to die during the same news cycle, we pay tribute to two of our favorites whose deaths were announced today:

There have been few people funnier than Fred Willard, who emerged in the '70s as Martin Mull's sidekick on "Fernwood 2 Night" and had a long run in the era of mockumentaries which followed that trailblazing fake talk show (like "Best in Show"). He died at age 86.

No one did deadpan like Willard, a veteran of Chicago's Second City. He was more recently known for his "Tonight Show" bits with Jay Leno (a throwback to the days when Steve Allen hosted and interviewed various men on the street, picked up later by Jimmy Kimmel) and on ABC's "Modern Family." And here's his highlight reel from his appearances with David Letterman on "Late Night."

Here's Willard, in "This Is Spinal Tap," welcoming the shaggy-haired metal rockers to a military base to perform during the monthly at-ease weekend:



Lynn Shelton, just 54, died this weekend. She made quiet, wonderful films from her base in Seattle. She was already in her 40s when she made her debut, and she broke through as a leader of the Mumblecore scene when she wrote and directed "Humpday" with Mark Duplass in 2009. She and Duplass quickly followed that up with the even stronger "Your Sister's Sister" (where we also rediscovered Rosemarie DeWitt, fresh off of "Mad Men").

Shelton, who made money in recent years directing TV shows, drifted a bit with the so-so "Touchy Feely" ("a rare misstep") and "Laggies" (saddled with Keira Knightly). And she disappointed last year with the disjointed "Sword of Trust." But she was back on her game the year before that with "Outside In," a powerful character study twinning Edie Falco and Jay Duplass, Mark's brother, who wrote the script with Shelton.

Shelton wrote and directed tender stories about the human condition, and her death is a big loss for storytelling cinema. Here's a good appreciation from Variety.

BONUS TRACK
Our title track, from the Chicago Sun-Times in July 1998, the twinning of actor Robert Young and astronaut Alan Shepard:

Fast-Forward Theater: You Poor Thing

THE ASSISTANT (D+) - Tedium is not the only fatal flaw of this dashed-off drama about a day in the life of the lowly assistant to a mogul of Weinsteinian proportions and proclivities, a man who has created a toxic, oxygen-starved workplace that teeters on eggshells. Can you bring yourself to care

Julia Garner stars as gloomy Jane, who is apparently so harried and unappreciated that she is pitied by co-workers and clients alike as the taken-for-granted martyr. We know her job is tedious, because filmmaker Kitty Green (making her feature debut) makes us watch Jane perform the same tasks over and over again, punishing us, too, in the process. I counted five separate trips to the copy machine -- though, to be fair, one of those tasks involved scanning something, not making copies of it. (Multiple pointless elevator rides, too.) She dutifully disinfects the big guy's (casting) couch and cleans up other office messes (including -- gasp -- drug needles). And we know the boss (unseen, unnamed) is a supreme jerk, because he chews her out over the phone over petty slights, prompting Jane to draft a follow-up email apologizing and begging to keep her job. (That same scenario plays out twice.)

Almost nothing happens in the first half hour of this 87-minute drudge-fest (less time if you fast forward strategically, like we did). When things do happen, they often take place furtively -- whispers in the office, vague glances, unintelligible voices on the other end of the phone line. The movie -- for no apparent reason -- refuses to name the company or the boss himself, which leads to ridiculous dialogue and plot points. On the one hand, it's cute that everyone need only refer to "he" or "him" and there's no mistaking who they are talking about; on the other hand, everyone answers the phone casually (like no one in a business ever would) merely to maintain the weird movie choice of being nameless. Another oddity comes toward the end when a "ding" announces an email from the boss on Jane's computer -- and you realize that it's literally just a movie sound effect, because otherwise, her computer would be dinging all day, seeing how swamped she is with work.

To top it all off, if the point of the movie is that Jane is so overloaded that she doesn't have a single moment to remember her father's birthday, then why does she really not look that busy? Yeah, she has to juggle the boss' wife, mistress, floozy actress of the day, Japanese businessmen and asshole Hollywood actors, but there's little evidence that she doesn't have time to think or eat (though she doesn't have much of an appetite, it's clear). In fact, she has time in the middle of the day to go to HR and complain that Mr. Man randomly hired a young woman from Idaho, who just showed up unannounced and required chaperoning to a hotel, which is supposed to signal to us (yet again) that the boss is a sleazebag, even though such a move, in an of itself, doesn't seem improper or illegal.

That scene (between Garner and Matthew Mcfadyen) is the only compelling part of the film, as we watch him slowly turn the tables on Jane and make her feel more miserable and helpless than when she walked through his door. Are we to assume that Jane has previously suffered more harshly than the minor indignities we witness during this one random day of her life? Was she ever forced to watch him jerk off into a plant? No evidence of that. Is it just that she works for a pervy jerk who belittles her for mis-juggling his various love interests and maybe bringing him chicken instead of turkey on his sandwich?

Who knows? Who cares?
   

That '70s Drift: Working Poor

Actress Lee Grant turned to documentaries about the underclass during the Reagan era. Here are two hourlong entries:

DOWN AND OUT IN AMERICA (1986) (B+) - We meet with different factions across the nation suffering under first-wave Reaganism: family farmers (during the height of the Farm Aid era), blue-collar workers (as unions fracture), homeless people and welfare recipients (dealing with drug addiction). Lee Grant's filmmaking style owes a lot to the Maysles brothers, though her cinematic and political naivete (faux or real) is an advantage, as it helps her form simple, straightforward questions, as a viewer would.

Grant does not try to hide her elite liberalism or empathy for her subjects. This comes off as a (com)passion project of advocacy for those getting left behind in Gordon Gecko's scrubbed new world. The couple at the end (not the first pair in the film to seemingly have more kids than they can support) are alternatively pathetic and heartbreaking as they live in a New York City hovel provided by the government after being burned out of their home at Coney Island. They struggle to find the right words of appeal, and the more we hear from them, the more we can't help but think that they've made too many bad choices in their life. Grant passes no judgment; see if you can do the same.

THE WILLMAR 8 (1981) (B) - This is a touching portrait of the eight women who fought for a couple of years as strikers at a small bank in Willmar, Minn. Grant faithfully documents their struggle through the judicial system of the National Labor Relations Board. We see them picket daily, though (apparently for dramatic purposes) almost always in the dead of a Minnesota winter.

Grant has a little less than an hour to get to know the women, and a few of the personalities emerge in the forefront. The timing -- the late 1970s -- places us in an ugly sexist world that, a good decade into the bra-burning era, still expects women to accept second-class status, grateful for anything they are given if they dare venture out of the home. Tired of training men for jobs that paid more than the women were earning, the women formed a union and walked off the job.

It helps to not know (or revisit) the details of the events before watching the film. That will make the conclusion (a mixed result) more satisfying. Shot is rough black-and-white, this 40-year-old document reminds us how crude and soul-crushing life could be back in the grim '70s.
 

A Low Bar

It's not just you and me. The folks at the Onion AV Club (no relation) are on a run of mediocre movies, giving a B-minus or less to 13 of the last 14 movies they've reviewed. Here's the sorry list:

• Someone thought it would be a good idea to have Beanie Feldstein ("Booksmart") do a British accent in "How to Build a Girl" - C+
• A musical remake of the '80s cheese "Valley Girl" (!) - C+
• A horror flick creatively titled "Z" - B-minus
• The documentary about Biosphere 2, "Spaceship Earth" - C+
• A "surreal romantic fantasy" (whatever that is) "On a Magical Night" - B-minus
• A bland attempt at mixing Tarantino and the Coen brothers, "Arkansas" - B-minus
• Another teen horror film, "The Wretched" - You guessed it, B-minus
• An oddball love story between a man and his suede jacket, "Deerskin," manages a solid B (phew!)
• The Netflix crime drama "All Day and a Night" - C
• A horror film with a bunch of S&M sex, "Liberte" - C+
• A queer-teen take on Cyrano de Bergerac, "The Half of It" - B-minus
• The opioid crisis hits the rodeo scene (!) in "Bull" - C+
• These grumps don't like Spike Jonze's attempt to tell the "Beastie Boys Story" - C+
• How about another random teen drama? "To the Stars" earns a C

It'll pick up. Right?
  

New to the Queue

Another door opens ...

Spike Jonze re-teams with the surviving rap rascals to update the "Beastie Boys Story."

From Iceland, a widower discovers that his wife had been cheating on him, "A White, White Day."

The daughter of a conventional L.A. couple explores their life as proprietors of a gay-porn store, "Circus of Books."

Talia Balsam exacts revenge on a husband keeping his second family a secret in "South Mountain."

Hugh Jackman is a crooked school superintendent in the HBO film "Bad Education."

A documentary about the Biosphere 2 science project, "Spaceship Earth."