A documentary about the eclectic, revolutionary black TV program from the '60s and '70s, "Mr. Soul."
A tone poem about a woman stranded during her commute and trying to get back home, "Ghost Tropic."
The latest from Hubert Sauper ("Darwin's Nightmare," "We Come as Friends"), a look at foreign influences in Cuba, "Epicentro."
Jessie Buckley ("Wild Rose") might be enough of a draw to lure me into the latest mind fuck from Charlie Kaufman ("Anomalisa"), "I'm Thinking of Ending Things."
CONTEMPT (1963) (B+) - Jean-Luc Godard broke through in a splash of primary colors with this film, the prelude to his '60s run that would yield "Band of Outsiders" next and include "Alphaville," "Pierrot le Fou," and "Le Weekend." Here he corrals mid-career Brigitte Bardot to play a wife used as a pawn by a playwright slumming in films.
Bardot is Camille, who starts out bare-assed as she asks her cold husband, Paul (Michael Piccoli), to express his love of all of her body parts. That's Godard's blunt way of treating Camille as an object and setting up the crumbling of their marriage. Paul essentially offers Camille to the pushy American producer (a flat Jack Palance) of a commercial version of "The Odyssey."
Godard frolics with those patented blues and reds, and he revels in the sartorial choices of his unhappy couple. His confident camera captures movie sets and majestic natural beauty, like a cliffside from which Bardot disappears only to return to the screen, after a toss of her towel and a splash, breaststroking away from the manipulative man who let her get away.
BELLE TOUJOURS (2007) (C-minus) - This is a hugely disappointing follow-up -- four decades later -- of the Luis Bunuel epic "Belle du Jour," the 1967 story of a bored housewife (Catherine Deneuve) turning to prostitution to while away her afternoons. Here, Michael Piccoli reprises his role as Henri Husson, the friend of Belle's husband who threatens to reveal her secret.
Here, in the new millennium, Henri is a disaffected old drunk who spots Belle/Severine (now played by the captivating Bulle Ogier) at an orchestra concert and essentially stalks her until she agrees to have dinner with him so that they can settle their affairs. But she has long moved on and couldn't care less.
And, alas, neither should we. Even at a slim 78 minutes, this one drags, with one pointless establishing shot after another just filling space. Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira -- no spellbinder as a visual storyteller -- puts these two senior citizens on display and manages to drain these actors of any spark. A side story featuring two women at the bar repeatedly snarking over Henri and the hunky young bartender feels incredibly out of date, even for the previous decade. This one does a rude disservice to the original.
WBCN AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (B) - This is a thoroughly researched dive into the early days of free-form FM radio, focusing on the legendary Boston station that was founded in March 1968. A bounty of archival footage and soundchecks bring the hippie era back to life. A parade of graybeards look back fondly on their days striving to change the world.
At a full two hours, this one is a commitment, but director Bill Lichtenstein (a former newscaster at the station) covers a lot of ground here -- not only the political turmoil of the era but also the changing social dynamics, including the emergence of women's liberation and gay rights. The shambolic nature of this ragtag group of long-hairs is celebrated through actual footage and glinty-eyed reminiscences of the former DJs and newscasters.
The station's founder, Ray Riepen, was a square who came to Boston to pursue a master's degree at Harvard Law, and he ended up opening the Tea Party music club and then the radio station, as an outlet for album music that never got played on Top 40 radio at the time. He and others meticulously recount the founding of the station and its quick gain in popularity among the counter-culture in the Boston area.
Peter Wolf, later of J. Geils Band fame, was a DJ, and Bruce Springsteen made his first-ever radio appearance on WBCN. Jane Fonda phoned in reports from the Watergate hearings, and Patti Smith famously swore up a storm on a live concert broad cast. Noam Chomsky appears here as a fan. This is all classic Baby Boomer nostalgia, but Lichtenstein reveals the pertinent history of shaggy-dog community radio that served as the internet of its day.
GORDON LIGHTFOOT: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND (C) - Not sure this one is necessary, but even if you have a mild interest in the '70s music scene, this friendly profile of the Canadian singer-songwriter tosses a few nuggets that provide entertainment for an hour and a half.
Lightfoot, pushing 80, looks back on his life, which, despite the adult-contemporary lilt of his story songs, belies a true rock 'n' roll bad-boy past of drugs, booze and infidelity, most of which gets winked at as youthful indiscretions. There is surprisingly bountiful footage of a young Lightfoot in his '60s folkie days and backstage during the '70s.
The filmmakers, for no apparent reason, toy with the timeline, circling back several times back to the beginning of Lightfoot's career. We learn of the friendship and admiration he earned from Bob Dylan, and we get insight into Lightfoot's writing style that was admired by a wide range of artists who covered his hits. Lightfoot himself comes across as a stereotypically polite and humble Canadian who had his day in the sun and doesn't weigh himself down with regrets for his rock-star behavior, perhaps having atoned long ago. (And, also for no reason, another documentary uses Alec Baldwin as a random talking head.)
BONUS TRACKS
We get a snippet of the Nazz's "Open My Eyes" in the WBCN documentary:
And my favorite Gordon Lightfoot song is "Sundown," his No. 1 from 1974:
SCARECROW (1973) (A-minus) - I have been trying to track down this film for years -- unavailable on disc or videotape or streaming, as far as I could tell -- but it finally aired this past weekend on the Movies channel, which is available via antenna or most basic cable systems. It was worth the hunt.
Gene Hackman and Al Pacino go toe-to-toe as a pair of meet-cute hapless drifters -- Hackman's Max a brawling ex-con and Pacino's Lion (short for Lionel, his middle name) a mopey manchild -- bumming rides and riding the rails, headed east to Pittsburgh with plans to open a carwash, a scheme that it almost certainly a pipe dream. Max exploits his magnetism with the ladies (despite wearing the same layers of clothes every day) while Lion pines for the ex he ran out on (off to sea) while she was pregnant. He bears a simple gift for the child he hopes to meet in Detroit.
The writer, Garry Michael White (who never hit it big in TV or movies), thinly sketches out a story and provides sparse, pinpoint dialogue for Hackman and Pacino to riff with. The pairing of the great actors doesn't feel like a natural one, and that gives the film an edge and a little hint of danger -- that this experiment could blow up in director Jerry Schatzberg's face. During the movie's middle third, Dorothy Tristan shows up as Max's sister, Coley, urging him to settle in with her in Denver, and her housemate, the frisky Frenchie (a scrumptious Ann Wedgeworth), who paws at Max like a kitten.
This is a true shaggy-dog tale that rambles like only an early '70s road tale can. Hackman and Pacino give it a Shakespearean gloss at times, and this might make you wonder what would have happened if Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon went off searching for Godot rather than hang around waiting for him.
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our
relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
I returned from a trip to a lake in northern Vermont, landed at the Albuquerque Sunport, and before quarantining I took a quick, safe detour on the way home to the local grocery store to pick up a few essentials to get me through the start of my hibernation. As I was eyeing the watermelons, R.E.M. burst forth from the store's sound system with "Superman," that yummy pop song from 1986's "Lifes Rich Pageant."
Even though R.E.M. was still relatively cool in 1986, and that album was pretty much perfect (their best? Or "Reckoning"?) -- "Superman," sung by bassist Mike Mills instead of Michael Stipe, from the start felt like almost a guilty pleasure. It was a cover of an obscure release in the late '60s. Its lyrics are pretty juvenile.
But it's catchy. Maybe irresistible. When R.E.M. recorded that song, it was 17 years old, a co-opting of peak baby-boom culture. Now, twice as much time has passed -- 34 years -- and (*flash*) here we are shopping for produce, wearing a medical mask, already a tad jet-lagged and looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for the first time in over a week.
Superman? Well, I had just flown through the air. And I used to be a newspaper reporter. But the guy who kicked away the folding chair at the UIC Pavilion in October 1986 during the R.E.M. concert and danced (a safe distance from the puke puddle) to those fresh, explosive songs from "Lifes Rich Pageant"? He's lost a step. And it may be too late for him to save the world.
Ron Howard recounts the fire that destroyed a California town and the efforts to put it back together in "Rebuilding Paradise."
A documentary about a group of men from Chicago's West Side who formed the first all-black high school rowing team there 20 years ago, "A Most Beautiful Thing."
Boy, we're a sucker for music biographies of '70s stalwarts, and along comes "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind."
A documentary about the post-Soviet business deal melding an NHL team with a Russian hockey squad, "Red Penguins."
