BRING YOUR OWN BRIGADE (A-minus) - This urgent documentary takes its time (two hours) to lay out the horror of wildfires (mostly the California variety), the causes behind them, and the solutions to the problem. British director Lucy Walker ("Waste Land," about landfills) brings a fresh cultural perspective from across the pond to cut through the patented American can't-do spirit to addressing the problem.
Going beyond just the hokey rebuilding focus on the 2018 Camp Fire in "Rebuilding Paradise" (below), Walker digs deep with some smart experts and even a few cagey residents in both Paradise in northern California and Malibu in Southern California (noting the red-blue/rich-poor contrast between the two areas). She spends nearly the first half hour on harrowing footage from recent fires, setting the table in the first third of the documentary. She then segues into the causes, with many talking heads citing more factors than merely the warming of the planet. Forest management is explained quite well. Nothing is presented as simplistic or black-and-white.
Walker also chooses a few interesting characters to thread through her narrative. One, who takes care of his dying 90-year-old mother, is a no-nonsense guy whose Paradise home was spared and who opens up that home to a bunch of families who were left out in the cold. A couple of other gruff residents acknowledge the dangers of living in the mountains. The victims are presented in ways that are sympathetic but not overly sentimental.
Walker has an ace up her sleeve, as she follows the Paradise town council and fire officials as they put together a comprehensive slate of suggested solutions. This being small-town America, stay for the climactic scene in which the town leaders vote on the proposals. Walker, who also narrates, has a knack for pacing, and unravels this story like a compelling two-part episode of "Law & Order." This is smart polemical filmmaking.
REBUILDING PARADISE (B-minus) - This highly stylized Hollywood disaster porn has the slick residue of Ron Howard's corny production values as he valorizes the victims of the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., of November 2018. No doubt these folks went through a lot, losing their worldly possessions and dealing with the deaths of their neighbors, friends and loved ones; but this celebration of the American spirit offers little insight into the aftermath of the fire that killed 85 people.
The film follows some rather uninspiring characters, including a wise-cracking cop (who comes across as a poor man's Ryan Reynolds); an elderly man in recovery determined to rebuild his house; and a school superintendent trying to herd cats and who eventually loses her husband in a way unrelated to the fire. Nobody in particular stands out. The cop's marriage eventually fails, though that probably had little to do with Mother Nature's devastation. And kudos to the PG&E representative willing to take his lumps in front of an angry crowd of locals aghast at the failings of the utility company.
Howard opens the film with a 10-minute horror montage, featuring some truly frightening footage that you've probably already seen on newscasts or YouTube. That introduction is expertly edited and paced, but it sets the viewer's expectations awfully high, and the cheesy storytelling that follows can't match the initial emotion.
THE BEATLES: GET BACK (B+) - Let's go back, circa 1977. It's a ballroom in the Palmer House in downtown Chicago. The lights dim. A film projector clatters, and the crowd buzzes as images come to life from 1969 -- the Beatles recording tracks for their final album. It's Second Wave Beatlemania, so different klatches of women still scream when their favorite Beatle appears on the screen. Eventually, Paul McCartney is at the piano, looking up toward the camera with heavy-lidded puppy-dog eyes, as the squeals wash across the ballroom: "When I find myself in times of trouble ..."
That was the annual Beatlefest gathering, which, in addition to panel discussions and a massive flea market that featured memorabilia and bootleg albums, showed films all day -- e.g., the ur-music-video for "Strawberry Fields," John Lennon vamping in the studio while recording his "Rock 'n' Roll" oldies album, and, in the days before home video, "Let It Be," Michael Lindsay-Hogg's gloomy 1970 capstone to a no longer fabulous pop era.
Now comes "Get Back," in which Peter Jackson takes those January 1969 "Let It Be" sessions, which had yielded that
run-of-the-mill 80-minute documentary, and blows it up to nearly eight
hours (in three parts) for a vanity streaming site. It as if Jackson -- perhaps fulfilling a long-held fantasy to have released the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy all at once -- tells the king of documentary tedium, Frederick Wiseman, "Hold my beer." It's also a quirky parallel to obsessive producer Phil Spector, who at the time commandeered the session's recordings and smothered them in shmaltz for the album release.
The result is a tedious but fascinating time capsule that endeavors to rewrite the history of the final year of the Fab Four. While the original documentary was a dour affair starring four seemingly miserable musicians getting on each others' nerves, Jackson's mix is more illuminating and provides a wider perspective. First off, there is more frivolity than bickering among the men, whose personal bonds, while frayed, still run deep and even loving. Paul and John often glance at each other, offering a hint of the teenage boys in their gazes, even if their professional competition gets the better of them at times. They all call Ringo Rich or Richie. They reminisce about India the year before (Jackson illustrates this with shots from their home movies). Paul still refers to the others as "lads." Yoko Ono is not the only girlfriend present; Linda Eastman (McCartney), ironically camera-shy, and her 6-year-old daughter hang out a lot; and even Pattie Boyd and Maureen Starkey have cameos.
There is a fascination to engage in here and a joy to share in as you get to observe the workings of the quartet, who were merely in their late 20s but dog tired of this whole Beatles thing. The idea was to Get Back to their roots -- craft (or resurrect) some simple songs that they could play at a quasi-impromptu concert before their first proper live audience since 1966. The band we see consists of bored, tired, grumpy, and creatively challenged men who care about each other but who each have one foot out the door. But they still get plenty of kicks playing as a group -- just listen to the rollicking rooftop version of John and Paul's boyhood composition "One After 909" for Exhibit A.
The biggest nit to pick with Jackson's project is that it is mostly one big cheat, at least in Part 1, which is the weakest of the three. He has more than twice as much audio recordings than he has video footage, and rarely do the two sync up properly. So he often has sound that doesn't match an image. To get around that, Jackson strains with obvious editing techniques to have the speaker off camera or merely run audio over the wrong video but approximate the lip movements, a gimmick that often brings to mind badly dubbed foreign films of the era.
Jackson performed a similar vanity exercise when he restored and colorized World War I footage and dubbed in audio for 2018's "They Shall Not Grow Old." While that documentary had an old-world kitchiness to it, "Get Back" -- considering the mind-boggling length and more modern sensibility of the gorgeously restored footage -- just seems monotonous and indulgent during that first episode. So that's annoying. But then again, you might not mind, because you're in the studio with the Beatles. There's George, petulant at the slights his songs receive and at Paul telling him how to play guitar; Ringo seemingly stoned and amiable; Paul brimming with brilliant song ideas but nagging his mates like a schoolmarm; and arrogant, silly John, often lazily strolling in late, with only a couple of songs to offer besides the oldies he likes to jam to.
And then there's the music. It seems now, a half century later, that songs like "Let It Be" and "Get Back" have always existed, but this documentary reminds us that they and other classics sprouted as germs of ideas from the minds of these guys and then got workshopped over weeks. The former, referred to in utero as "Mother Mary," is Paul's comfort food when he noodles at the piano, perhaps aware that he has a canonical song at his fingertips; the latter results from true Lennon-McCartney collaboration, as Jojo Jackson from Arizona becomes Jojo from Tucson, Arizona, John assuring Paul that they have the geography correct.
The albums "Let It Be" and "Abbey Road" (recorded and released in reverse order) are remembered as Paul taking over the band while the others were mostly checked out. But that's quite an exaggeration. Sure, Lennon didn't show up with many songs, but one of them was "Don't Let Me Down," one of the all-time great rock 'n' roll numbers ever but which was tossed off merely as a single B-side and filler on an odds-and-sods compilation album in early 1970. He's also essential to "I've Got a Feeling," not to mention his lead-guitar contributions.
Like Paul, George Harrison has song ideas coming to him daily. He shows up to the studio with a new late-night inspiration each day -- "I, Me, Mine," "For You Blue," "Old Brown Shoe" -- and we see him tinkering with "Something," his epic for "Abbey Road." Plus he's got "All Things Must Pass" and other eventual solo works in his back pocket. He tells a sympathetic John at one point that he's got enough songs for the next 10 Beatles albums if his allotment of two per disc holds into the foreseeable future. (He'll put out a triple album instead in late 1970, his masterpiece.) Even Ringo bops in one morning with the first few lines of "Octopus' Garden," and it's captivating to watch George take the time to instruct him on how to get past the first verse by climbing octaves and turn it into a successful song.
And then there's the critical contribution of Billy Preston. Episode 1 ends with George quitting the band. Episode 2 starts with the others trying to get him back -- eventually succeeding by agreeing to drop the idea of the live TV show later in January and instead focusing on recording the album (and letting the film footage maybe be a documentary someday). One scene typifies the men at this critical juncture while George was off pouting in his mansion -- sitting in a circle, John tosses out endless clever wordplay (such as brushing aside the harm of masturbation: "You don't go blind but only short-sighted") while Paul rolls his eyes and Ringo dozes in his chair. When George does return, keyboardist Preston -- who knew the boys from Hamburg when he toured with Little Richard -- randomly stops by one day. When he sits down at an electric piano and starts fiddling around with notes, he truly becomes the fifth Beatle, the solution to the problem of how a band that is accustomed to repeated overdubs records a live-to-track album. Imagine "Get Back" and "Don't Let Me Down" without Preston's indelible solos. (The single is credited to The Beatles With Billy Preston," a unique honor.)
It is at this point that the documentary finally takes off. The lads are in their element, studio rats jamming and harmonizing and bouncing ideas off each other. They've got their groove back. We hear snippets of songs that will eventually be classics. Engineer Glyn Johns -- sometimes rocking a shaggy white goat-skin coat -- persists in keeping the band on task, desperate to capture at least a few final takes of songs instead of "flogging them to death." He puts the mics and amps in the right place and runs tape; George Martin flits around soothing egos ("I'll fix it, lads"); and Mal Evans makes sure tea is served on time. (Or something stronger -- a drunken, late-night version of "Let It Be" closes out Episode 2.)
What eventually congeals in Episode 3 -- as the original director and some of his nutty ideas (flying with fans to Libya for a show at a ruined coliseum) fade into the background -- is the combination of goofing around and songsmithing that we now know will result in a batch of songs ensconced in the pantheon. As George struggles with the lyrics to "Something," John schools him in word association -- "Just sing 'Attracts me like a cauliflower,' until something comes to you." George, spitballing with "Old Brown Shoe," asks Preston, "What this chord, Billy?" John and Paul, bored with rehearsing "Two of Us," take to goofing off with the vocals during these run-throughs -- performing them in German accents, through gritted teeth like ventriloquists, and a la Dylan. By Episode 3, I fast-forwarded through a couple of the umpteenth versions of "Get Back" and others, not wanting them ruined before the capstone live performance.
Paul -- with full beard, as if to distinguish him as the adult who has taken over for manager Brian Epstein -- longs for there to be something more than just another album release. (Meantime, the others, behind his back, plot their move to Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein, a notable asshole. As Ringo puts it, "a con man who's on our side for a change.") Eventually the leading prospect for their first live concert in two-and-a-half years is the fabled session on the roof of the Apple Corps headquarters. Finally, the four men sit down and announce that they, and no one else, will make this decision. George is the only one who doesn't want to go up on the roof (he refers to it as "the chimney"), but he is out-voted. At long last, Lindsay-Hogg will have his movie ending.
Many of us might be numb to the spectacle of the Beatles disrupting lunchtime on Savile Row to debut a few new numbers. We take the event for granted, like we do with paintings of the old masters. But -- maybe it's partly the emotional exhale of surviving the first seven hours -- it's a fresh thrill to see the Beatles ascend to the roof, strap on their instruments and let loose -- finally -- with these songs. There they are in red slicker, business casual, brown fur coat, and lime pants, tossed back into Hamburg improv mode.
My girlfriend happened to wander in the room as the rooftop session started, and she had never seen it before. She was thrilled. How cool is this! Jackson splits the screen, "Woodstock"-like, to give proper perspective to the scene below -- the audience unaware that they were a part of history, the two baby-faced bobbies harrumphing about the noise and lack of protocol. (Props to Debbie at Apple's front desk for deftly stalling and feigning helplessness.) When the cops finally emerge on the rooftop, Paul looks back, smiles mischievously, and lets out a big whoop. He is back in his element. He and John exhibit the joy of school boys as they romp through their school days hit "One After 909."
It's amazing that any fresh entertainment could be wrung from this 53-year-old lark. Jackson pulls off a true feat of reinvention. He recaptures the urgency of seeing it for the first time. It's a great ending.
Still burning off adrenaline, the boys, with galpals in tow, crowd into the playback room of the studio to review the raw live recording. Like us, they are visibly impressed. They grin and chatter. Jackson dives in for a close-up as we see Ringo's hand reach out to clasp the hands of Paul and Linda. There is true warmth and intimacy in this cramped space. Love is all you need.
BONUS TRACKS
Energized by news reports of a wave of anti-immigration in Britain at the time, the band considered making more of a political statement with the lyrics of "Get Back" and then jammed out a song called "Commonwealth" (with a good example of John's ability to crack up Paul):
McCartney has a blast with a vaudevillian knockoff, "Greasepaint on Your Face":
It is canon that we take our time compiling each year's Best-of list, as titles trickle in from their exclusive December openings in the big cities. Here, to keep you in suspense, are the 2021 releases that are in the running so far for best film, having earned a B+ or better this year:
C'MON C'MON (D+) - C'mon, indeed. Or more like, come onnnn.
Memo to filmmakers (and reporters and novelists and other storytellers): Children, with rare exceptions, are not interesting. Mike Mills thought otherwise. He was woefully mistaken.
There is precious and then there is the failed experiment in preciousness that is "C'mon C'mon," the story of an obnoxious 9-year-old boy and a logistical quirk that gets treated like the most traumatic experience ever for him, his mother and his uncle. The histrionics here involve the following "crisis." Viv (Gaby Hoffmann) has to leave LA to go baby-sit her estranged or ex-husband who is having a bipolar episode in Oakland, and so she agrees to let her brother Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) baby-sit little precocious mop-haired Jesse (Woody Norman). Luckily these middle-class mopes have the resources to do all this; Johnny takes Jesse on the road to assist with his NPR-like team that goes around interviewing children, beseeching them to enlighten us with their wisdom. One example, asked of kids born after Katrina even happened, is something along the lines of "What causes flooding inside of you?" (Most kids (I hope) would contort their face and respond, "What the fuck are you talking about?") This is a fictitious world in wish no child is ever bad and adults care deeply about their psyches and moods.
Everything here is a misstep. There is barely a story to speak of: Kid hangs out with uncle for a while, they bicker and do kissy-face stuff, and phone his mom a lot to make sure everyone is, you know, okay. There is barely a script. Much of the dialogue seems workshopped or ad-libbed by the three principal actors and often consists to cloying play-acting along the lines of "You are."/"No you are."/"No you are!" Some actual interesting screenwriting comes courtesy of long excerpts from writings that Mills cribs from the likes of photographer Kirsten Johnson and the book "The Wizard of Oz." And then there are the interviews with the kids. It's not clear if these are real kids giving real answers or if they are just awkward untrained actors reading lines; regardless, Phoenix is no Art Linkletter. It's not even a Bill Cosby Jell-O commercial.
Mills shoots in black and white; he probably would have used sepia tones if the studio would have allowed it. He lucks upon the pairing of Hoffmann and Phoenix and then has them talk on the phone or text for almost the whole movie. We get not one but two scenes of Johnny losing track of Jesse in New York City for less than a minute, followed by the requisite "You scared me; don't do that" which leads to another round of a variation on "You are."/"No, you are."/"No, you are!" Ad nauseam.
Jesse behaves like a spoiled brat, but we're supposed to think he is some misunderstood wunderkind with such deep feelings that we couldn't possibly understand the pure hell of a child who wears cutesy pajamas, uses a toothbrush that plays music, and likes to pretend that he's an orphan. (Because, you know, mommy and daddy have Major Issues and split up.) The one time Johnny does raise his voice to the golden boy Johnny is so torn up he has to confess his cardinal sin to Viv. Lots of processing of feelings all around this one.
None of this is as clever as Mills thought it up in his head (or remembers it from his amber-encrusted childhood, if that's the case). Mills had a great run with films like "Thumbsucker," "Beginners" and "20th Century Women" (a truly insightful paean to motherhood). I'd hate to think that his spouse, Miranda July ("Kajillionaire"), has dragged him into the twee zone. "C'mon C'mon" is supposed to be some ode to motherhood and childhood. Save it for your family gatherings.
BONUS TRACK
A bad movie deserves a mockable needle-drop on our title track:
The soundtrack is all over the place. It has arty mood music from Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National and then punky retro tracks like "The Ostrich" by Lou Reeds early band the Primitives:
And we get a fish-out-of-water random sampling of "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" by Irma Thomas:
The latest from Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights," "Magnolia," "Punch-Drunk Love" and not much since), our annual Christmas Day Mainstream movie choice, "Licorice Pizza."
We'll take a chance on Maggie Gyllenhaal's writing/directing debut, in part because of the presence of Jesse Buckley ("Wild Rose"), "The Lost Daughter."
A documentary about Zimbabwe's 2018 presidential race, its first democratic election in decades, "President."
Joel Coen directs Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in "The Tragedy of Macbeth."
An avant-garde contemplation of the end of mankind, "Last and First Men."
Apichatpong Weerasethakul ("Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives") recruits Tilda Swinton (who also narrates "Last and First Men") for another meandering musing on the fragility of humanity, "Memoria."
A CHOICE OF WEAPONS: INSPIRED BY GORDON PARKS (B) - This earnest examination of the career of pioneering photograph and filmmaker Gordon Parks is a victim of its structure. The "Inspired" part refers to the modern visual artists and documentarians who were influenced by the man who became Life magazine's first black photographer and who directed "Shaft," kicking off the '70s blaxploitation movement. Too often, though, this documentary is fawning and over-reverential.
The talking heads here are often solid but over-exposed. Go-to commentators like Spike Lee (rhymes with "hyperbole"), Ava Duvernay, Jelani Cobb -- we see them frequently, and their insights here are intermittent. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sitting in a tiny chair, knees scrunched, is distracting.
What's better are the stories of working photographers who truly have been inspired by Parks, who got his start in the 1940s with the Farm Security Administration, following in the immediate footsteps of legends Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, who famously chronicled rural America during the Depression. Latoya Ruby Frazier, especially, embodies the Parks method of devoting great swaths of time with subjects, absorbing their stories behind the resulting images. The modern photographers' own stories can be captivating, as are the lingering shots of Parks' indelible photographs from the postwar era.
LISTENING TO KENNY G (B) - A problem with a documentary about smooth-jazz saxophonist Kenny G -- even one purporting to explore both sides of the fan ledger -- is that you have to listen to the music of Kenny G. And if you think his songs are tough to listen to, you should hear him race through scales. Ack!
The talented Penny Lane ("Hail Satan?", "Nuts!") walks a fine line here between indulging Mr. Gorelick and siccing a bunch of high-brow music critics on him (one calls the innocuous genre a "weapon of consent"), and she plummets into the less-interesting gulf in between. Kenny G is highly aware of the image-polishing opportunity before him, and at times it is refreshing to hear him essentially cop to the fact that he has no higher purpose other than writing catchy licks and practicing faithfully every day (and playing golf). But his claim that he, a white man, has never before thought about the racial implications of his career rings hollow when Lane cuts to a clip of him performing in a stadium along with a video of Louis Armstrong. Purists might perish at the sight. He also resurrects Stan Getz to pour syrup on that fellow saxophonist's syrupy bossa novas (while electronically modernizing Getz's recordings).
Despite the limitations of the subject matter -- and the disconnect between Lane's celebration and subversion of Kenny G -- the man himself can garner grudging admiration for his work ethic and his knack for writing hooks that sell millions of records. (His songs also provide the soundtrack for malls and doctors' offices, and his song "Going Home" has become an end-of-the-day anthem throughout China.) He seems like a good guy, even if he comes off as almost as annoying as his mind-numbing music. (Richard Brody of the New Yorker does a really good deep dive into this film here.)
MR. SATURDAY NIGHT (B-minus) - HBO's documentary series brings us this oddly detached look at Robert Stigwood, the Australian/British producer who made the Bee Gees splash big-time in the 1970s disco era. Stigwood himself isn't always the focus of this slapped-together production that spends an inordinate amount of time on the disco phenomenon.
None of the talking heads appear on camera, which probably was a cheap way to observe COVID protocols rather than some sort of editorial decision. Thus, we get a lot of static file photos of the '60s and '70s players, relying on Photoshop animation tricks and lending an air of detachment to the proceedings. There's not much more to the story than Stigwood's abiding faith in the hit-making potential of the Bee Gees around 1975, after a few years in the wilderness for the trio before Stigwood hooked them up with Arif Mardin and jump-started their career. Much of this was covered last year in HBO's much better documentary about the Bee Gees.
One interesting segment examines Stigwood's link to John Travolta, who was seen at the time as a passing TV fad of a teen idol. But Stigwood chose Travolta as the vehicle for "Saturday Night Fever," and was wise enough to sign Travolta to a three-picture deal. ("Grease," another movie/soundtrack megahit, followed.) It was also fascinating to learn that the New York magazine article that the "Saturday Night Fever" screenplay was based on featured fictitious characters. These tidbits are enough to hold your attention for 90 minutes, but this movie certainly doesn't do justice to Stigwood, who ended up incredibly rich and knee-deep in yachts the rest of his life.
BELUSHI (C+) - It's hard to imagine anyone under 50 either caring enough to explore the career of original "Saturday Night" cast member John Belushi and then taking the time to sit for this unenlightening biography. I can save those 50 and over some time too: Belushi was a funny, talented guy with a big drug problem (one that matched his ego and insecurities) who succumbed to a classic '70s OD in the early '80s after failing to put together a decent film career.
For some reason, the collection of "SNL" clips are too chopped up to cohere and give a true sense of why Belushi was such a revered comedian in his day. Even his National Lampoon stint in the early '70s comes off here as little more than frequent weird impressions of R&B singer Joe Cocker. Belushi had a magnetic personality and boundless energy, but this documentary struggles to convey those talents.
Director R.J. Cutler does do an admirable job of capturing the phenomenon that was the Blues Brothers, acknowledging Belushi's bona fides and reveling in the exciting band of ringers that backed Jake and Elwood Blues. Otherwise, Cutler may just be a victim of the passage of time (nearly four decades) and the limitations of trying to bring a funny but flawed comedian back to life.
NINE DAYS (A) - This glum but utterly enlightened story follows sullen Will , a onetime earthbound human who now, in his afterlife, vets purgatorial souls hoping to get chosen to life a full human existence and then follows their lives on old-fashioned TV screens and videotapes. When one of the people he once chose and has been monitoring commits suicide, Will, over nine days, interviews about a half dozen souls competing to take the new spot opened up by Amanda.
Will (Winston Duke) has a special connection to Amanda, because, as a child, she name-checked him as her imaginary friend. Will also had a troubled time on Earth, so he can commiserate. He is unshakeable in his task at hand -- picking one lucky candidate for life's sweepstakes and telling the others that their time has ended. Like with a game show, though, the losers get a parting gift -- after spending a few days watching the 24 or so lives unfold on Will's TV screens, they can pick one life-event that he'll re-create for them, so they can get just a sip of what they'll miss out on. The wishes are as simple as walking on a beach or riding a bike.
It sounds like a complicated set-up, but part of the brilliance here -- borrowed from other thought experiments, such as Shane Carruth's "Primer" and "Upstream Color" -- is the commitment to an idea and following it through to a logical conclusion. Newcomer Edson Oda (writer and director) creates a cramped world set mostly in Will's apartment. His characters are fully formed, including Will's sidekick (neither boss nor assistant) Kyo (Benedict Wong) and last-minute entrant Emma (Zazie Beetz, sporting what can only be called an afro'd Ed Grimley hairstyle), who establishes a strong connection to Will and is the only one who gets to observe the inner workings of his operation. Tony Hale (TV's "Veep" and "Arrested Development") plays a sort of sad clown whose bid seems hopeless.
The brilliance here lies in Oda's incredible command of the story and his attention to detail (Will's operation, all old-school analog, involves a lot of paper forms and filing cabinets along with the videotapes). The dialogue is succinct and crisp. Will's back story unfolds meticulously over the tight two-hour run time. His final scene with Emma is one for the ages, a cap to a powerful, restrained performance by Duke ("Us," "Black Panther"), who carries this movie on his broad but sagging shoulders. It would be difficult to not be moved by this special team effort.
FULLY REALIZED HUMANS (B) - More of an acting exercise than a movie, this endearing relationship romp borrows the best and the worst of Joe Swanberg in his Mumblecore heyday. Jess Weixler (TV's "The Good Wife") and Joshua Leonard ("Humpday") play Jackie and Elliot, a couple who are a month away from the birth of their first child and realizing that time is short to suddenly become well-rounded people worthy of the title "parent." They seek to correct the mistakes of her dad (a prescription-drug addict) and his parents (abusive dad, co-dependent mom) by stretching their perceptions of themselves.
This plays out in unexpected ways. First, Jackie cows Elliot into accepting the idea that they both would benefit from her strapping one on and pegging her husband. Things unravel from there, as Elliot delves into his old emotional scars emanating from his father's homophobic belligerence.
Your appreciation of this mostly ad-libbed adventure -- at turns funny and touching -- will depend on your patience for post-Mumblecore sloppiness and indulgence. Juilliard-trained Weixler -- who genuinely looks eight months pregnant (she did have a daughter in 2019) -- is an endearing performer, and she and Leonard click as a couple, each generous with the other as improv performers (with key support from a couple of cameos by Janicza Bravo of "Zola" and Erica Chidi Cohen). But this one feels like a bit of a throwaway until the final reel, when Jackie and Elliot confront their three parents, and then the film sizzles with sharp dialogue. Credit to the the three older actors -- Beth Grant, Tom Bower and Michael Chieffo -- for grabbing this thing by the collar, with some sharp lessons for our entitled millennials, and rescuing the film in the end.
NORTH BY CURRENT (B+) - Yet another moody tone-poem of a documentary, here we follow Angelo Madsen Minax as he chronicles a few years with his Mormon family in the wake of the tragic death of his sister's daughter, which may or may not have been the result of household abuse. It is a way for Minax, born as a girl named Angela, to reconcile his own identity as a son, sibling and storyteller.
Minax creates an experimental visual and sound collage that sweeps you up in the swirl of family history in rural, often snowy Michigan. Critically, this personal essay never forgets to draw the viewer into a compelling narrative. He uses a disembodied child's voice (his own?) as a sort of conscience or spirit-animal guide while flashing through images as if his brain were firing across synapses. This is a style that calls to mind such sociological and historical experiments as "Truth or Consequences," "Malni," "Dawson City: Frozen Time" and "Stories We Tell."
Minax's grieving sister responds to the death of her daughter by having a new child every year for three years running. Meantime, she is in denial about her drug addiction and what's really going on with her partner, who was a suspect in the 2013 death of the child. Circling around this are Minax's fundamentalist parents, still struggling with his gender identity. As the filmmaker searches for truths and acceptance, it's hard not to be moved by this PBS "POV" offering.
BONUS TRACKS
"Nine Days" has a lovely soundtrack, centered on the recurring violin piece that Amanda plays at a concert, a heart-breaking collection of melodies by Antonio Pinto. Here is a sample:
"North by Current" is boosted by music from Julien Baker, including "Sprained Ankle":
The "North by Current" soundtrack also features the Waterboys' anthemic "This is the Sea":
... and Michael Beauchamp's jangly romp "Gamble-Drink All My Money":
KING RICHARD (B+) - This one comes as a pleasant surprise, along the lines of 2017's "Battle of the Sexes," buoyed by fine performances to tell the story of Richard Williams, the father of tennis phenoms Venus and Serena, as they burst on the scene in the 1990s. Special credit goes to rookie screenwriter Zach Baylin for penning a smart, nuanced script that pays attention to small details and subtle interpersonal interactions to ground this is in reality.
Do know that it can be a challenge to get through the first 20 minutes. You have to accept Will Smith with a New Orleans accent and a few short-hand, caricatured depictions of Compton contrasted with the world of white privilege. But once it gets its bearings, "King Richard" wins you over by sheer determination. The girls who portray the sisters -- Saniyya Sidney as Venus and Demi Singleton as Serena -- are impeccable in their characterizations, and it truly looks like they know how to play tennis. Apparently they took intensive lessons, and it appears that there is limited use of doubles or CGI tricks to make the tennis action completely believable. That makes a difference.
With a feel-good attitude akin to 1989's inner-city underdog parable "Lean on Me," this origin story of the Williams sisters slowly gains momentum under the sure hand of director Reinaldo Marcus Green ("Monsters and Men"). Smith's Richard Williams is pushy and positive minded -- he mapped out tennis stardom for his daughters before they were born -- and the film shows him, if not warts and all, at least blemishes and all.
After an early stumble of caricaturing all the white parents on the juniors circuit as immoral child abusers and their kids as petulant cheaters, the movie introduces the girls' first tennis coach, Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn), as an even-handed task master. Williams eventually steers the girls -- along with their mother, Oracene (Aunjanue Ellis) and three sisters from Oracene's previous marriage -- to the prestigious tennis camp in Florida run by Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal), who also is portrayed with nuance -- a man with the girls needs foremost in mind while also looking out for his end of the business deal.
You know this will end well (with Venus making her pro-circuit debut on the brink of breaking the bank), but the fun is watching Richard Williams, a task master himself when it came to pushing all of his girls to not only survive the ghetto but thrive as their best selves, work his folksy hustle and engage in backseat coaching, day in and day out. Nothing will knock him off his mission. The only person who can match him is Oracene, especially in a pivotal scene in which she calls him on some of his excesses and reminds him that she, too, has sacrificed for these future superstars. This is an old-fashioned feel-good movie that avoids any Hallmark cliches. An ace all-around.
DUNE (C) - I'll never be a fan of sci-fi or fantasy, so don't go by me here. Hardcore adherents of Frank Herbert's classic '60s novel will appreciate the dedicated fan service, and casual viewers will likely fall for the sappy soap-opera style enhanced by Timothee Chalamet's long eyelashes and by cool helicopters that mimic dragonflies.
Otherwise, director Dennis Villeneuve, who has gone from indie noodling ("Incendies") to big-screen bloat ("Arrival," "Blade Runner 2049"), shows a sufficient command of the screen and the screenplay as he navigates a complicated story. He leans on muted colors as well as muted dialogue -- there was so much whispering that, watching at home, I turned on the subtitles, which also helped keep track of all the made-up words in this make-believe world. The most laryngitic of the lot is Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica. She is the consort of Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and mother of young heir Paul Atreides (Chalamet), who takes over for his father and the mission to the inhospitable sandy planet Arrakis, which harbors the valuable mineral known as spice. Leto and Paul are being set up by the evil house of Harkennen, led by Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgard).
The story that unfolds (over two and a half plodding hours) is yet another variation on a theme that has played out countless times onscreen. Herbert may gotten in early with his novel, but George Lucas got to Hollywood first, and little of this latest film expands on a tired genre. There is never a doubt that Paul will overcome whatever obstacles befall his hero's journey. Early in the film he is trained by Leto's venerable henchmen, including Gurney Halleck (the naming of people and things is randomly silly throughout), played by an off-tune Josh Brolin, and the bear of a man Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), the subject of Paul's boy-crush. Paul has visions of the future -- rather bland ones -- which invariably come around to the rapturous sight of an Arrakis Fremen warrior played by the lithe model Zendaya, who is mostly around as an attractive representation of good vs. evil and to tease part two, coming in 2023.
This might play better in Imax, but Villeneuve's visuals are often dim and unimaginative. A lot of sand blows around but the characters/actors are often immune to the annoyances usually faced by your average beachgoer; it's all just a neat CGI trick. And 8,000 years into the future, fashions haven't evolved much beyond those in "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century." Chalamet lacks the gravitas to carry a movie like this on his slim shoulders. And the supporting cast is scattershot. What we end up with is just another table-setter for a sci-fi/fantasy series of big-budget exercises in big-screen bloat.
More rooting around in the back of the queue, as a way of clearing out the backlog:
CHERRY BLOSSOMS (2008) (C+) - This well-meaning but meandering drama lays the syrup on pretty thick as it explores some interesting family dynamics. It rarely coheres into a satisfying narrative while offering hit-and-miss insights.
Rudi (Elmar Wepper) and Trudi (Hannelore Elsner) are a happy older German couple. For reasons never explained, doctors tell Trudi -- but not Rudi -- that Rudi has a fatal disease. Trudi wants to go visit their children, either in Berlin where most of them live, or to their black-sheep son in Tokyo, where Trudi, a disciple of Butoh dance, has always yearned to visit. They end up in Berlin. When one of them suddenly dies in their sleep, the other jets off to Japan to fulfill Trudi's dream.
Their kids are mostly duds who seem annoyed by the burden of their parents' visit and have little time for anything beyond the occasional nostalgic memory from childhood. The one in Tokyo is a Type-A jerk of a businessman. The parent-child generation gaps here are actually refreshing.
The second half eventually drowns in shmaltz, leaning on the character of a young homeless Butoh dancer who gives meaning to the surviving spouse's waning days, those ungrateful kids be damned. The plot rambles in Japan, with only occasional documentary-like takes on the neon-lit big-city culture there.
PETULIA (1968) (B) - The distracting allure of Julie Christie can detract from this jumbled late-'60s take on the sexual revolution, a take that isn't particular sexy. Richard Lester ("A Hard Day's Night") is in sync with the likes of Mike Nichols' "The Graduate" as he tells the story of a disaffected socialite chasing a married man and having little luck.
Lester employs rough cuts and artsy framing to give the appearance of edginess. But his story (written by Lawrence B. Marcus, mostly a TV journeyman till this point) never really achieves liftoff and comes off as more of a series of vignettes from "Love, American Style" than a cohesive drama. Christie plays the title character who openly flirts with George C. Scott's surgeon Archie, who keeps her at arm's length throughout. Their connection involves the fact that Archie treated a boy whom Petulia somehow knew and who had been injured in an auto accident.
Lester awkwardly tries to fuse this so-so drama with breaks for the psychedelia of the day, basing it in San Francisco and featuring music by the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin. Any parallels between the pairing of Christie and Scott with the twinning of Jerry Garcia and Joplin are a mystery. What rescues this effort are the performances of Christie -- finding nuance as a woman seeking refuge from an abusive husband (Richard Chamberlain) -- and Scott, who spends most of the movie trying to come to terms with his ex-wife (Shirley Knight) and her nerdy new beau (Roger Bowen) as he seeks to maintain a relationship with his two sons.
As a period piece, this has its points to make about the newfangled idea of how marriages might play out. Christie, sporting bangs and bangled earrings, has the moxie and charisma to match her good looks. But what she sees in George C. Scott -- aside from the comfort of more sensitive hands -- I'll never know.
THE TREATMENT (2006) (B) - This movie was probably designed to finally turn Chris Eigeman into a Hollywood leading man. Alas. He's been our guy, whether it was on TV in "Gilmore Girls" (the snarky love interest Jason) or in the early films of Whit Stillman ("Metropolitan," "Barcelona") and Noah Baumbach ("Kicking and Screaming"). But he's too much of a minor key moper, more of a Warren Oates than a Warren Beatty.
Eigeman, as usual, brings warmth, nuance and dry, scuffed humor to the role of Jake Singer, a meandering prep school teacher who is still stuck on his ex, even when he finds out she is about to be married. Jake, a therapy junkie, gets knocked out of his funk when he meets Allegra (Famke Janssen), a recently widowed mother of two, including an infant whose adoption has not fully gone through. These two damaged people engage in a delicate dance; it's clearly an opportunity for Eigeman to get serious and grow up, but Allegra seems a little too eager to find a suitable replacement for her husband. Jake and Allegra have little chemistry, but that seems to be the point.
Jake also finds himself reconciling with his ailing father (a perfectly pitched Harris Yulin) while jousting in sessions with Dr. Morales (Ian Holm), who may be only partially real, considering he pops up in Jake's delusions at inopportune times. Eigeman's gravitas grounds a well conceived story by Daniel Menaker, in the capable hands of director Oren Rudavsky, who has otherwise worked in the realm of documentaries. Janssen is a bit flat and the story moves slowly, but Jake's story is worth telling and watching.
PIECES OF A WOMAN (B-minus) - Vanessa Kirby does the heavy lifting here of a woman devastated by the death of her baby girl during a midwife delivery, but the role is mostly a thankless one, unsupported by any sort of compelling narrative. This one just adds more fodder to our arguments for a soft ban on films in which a couple loses a child, the idea being that there be no more odysseys down that rabbit hole.
Director Kornel Mundruczo and writer Kata Weber (the team behind "White God") certainly are audacious. Nearly the entire first half hour of this two-hour slog is devoted to the at-home birth by Kirby's Martha, attended by a last-minute fill-in midwife (Molly Parker) and which ends tragically. The rest of the movie attempts to crack through to Martha's icy emotional core, while devoting an equal amount of time to her dull blue-collar husband, Sean (an annoying take by Shia LeBeouf), who struggles with addiction issues.
This is awfully grim stuff. Meantime, Martha's mother (Ellen Burstyn), insists on pressing the case against the midwife (it's not always clear whether the midwife is being prosecuted criminally, civilly, or both), despite the toll that takes on Martha. The intended tension, however, never really gains traction. A pivotal monologue by Burstyn around the three-quarters mark -- a come-to-Jesus moment with her daughter -- both powerfully energizes the film while also revealing the limitations of the rest of the proceedings. The old-school actress serves up a stark reminder to the younger generation that moping around just doesn't cut it if you want a story to pop.
BERGMAN ISLAND (A-minus) - Mia Hansen-Love gets back on her A game with this low-key relationship tale of two screenwriters making a pilgrimage to Faro, the island made famous by Swedish legend Ingmar Bergman. It stars Vicky Krieps as Chris, who has a loving but somewhat arm's length rapport with her husband, Tony (Tim Roth), who is notably more successful a writer than she is, as well as a good 20 years her senior. She also misses their young daughter, who was left with a sitter.
While scouting around the island, Chris meets a film student at the church where Bergman is buried, and he gives her a private tour of the island, leaving Tony to go it alone on the official group tour, annoying him. The next day, Chris -- stuck at the outline stage of her latest project -- uses Tony as a sounding board for the story she is working on. Suddenly, that story takes over the screen, and now we follow Amy (Mia Wasikowska) and her former lover, Joseph (Anders Danielson Lie), as they reconnect on Faro while attending the wedding of mutual friends.
The rekindled romance is not fated to end well, and it takes a toll on Amy, who clearly is not over her ex. Occasionally Hansen-Love cuts back to Chris and Tony (above), with the husband often getting interrupted by a phone call or just kind of zoning out; he eventually punts when asked his opinion on how to end the story. Instead, Hansen-Love comes up with her own unique ending, offering yet a third take on the cast of characters.
At 105 minutes, this one is paced perfectly. It absolutely flunks the Bechdel Test, but Krieps and Wasikowska are so compelling in their ache for true affection and connection that the viewer can marginalize the stony men and commune with the women's yearning for something more in their lives and careers. Hansen-Love has struggled a bit since her mesmerizing breakthrough "Goodbye First Love," treading water with "Eden" and "Things to Come," but the strength of all of those movies has been the writer-director's devotion to a character and idea and her patience in exploring each character's thirst for growth and understanding. She is quite sensitive and insightful in letting her characters unfold before our eyes.
SWIMMING OUT UNTIL THE SEA TURNS BLUE (B-minus) - Interesting but non-essential, auteur Jia Zhang-ke ("The World," "24 City," "Mountains May Depart") explores the backstories of a handful of writers noted in Chinese literature. It's about as exciting as that opening sentence suggests.
The focus really is not on writing so much; rather, it is more of a rumination on the past. As Jia likes to do, he intersperses random scenes of modern life with visuals and reminiscences from the past to highlight his pet theme of the modernization of China since the 1980s.
The talking heads are mostly insightful and thoughtful, but there is a persistent sense, over nearly two hours, that this topic is inside baseball, not necessarily translatable to a broader international audience. Jia captures some stunning images, and he has a profound way of making a human connection with his subjects. But as the film progresses, especially with any substantive context for what the director is conveying, it can be a struggle to connect with the entire project, no matter how meticulously rendered.
BONUS TRACK
From "Bergman Island," the original version of "Summer Wine," a more modern version of which is featured in the film. Here is writer Lee Hazelwood with Nancy Sinatra:
HOW THEY GOT OVER (B) - This is an unimaginative but endearing look back at the gospel singing groups who flourished in the middle of the 20th century. The subtitle is "Gospel Quartets and the Road to Rock & Roll," and filmmaker Robert Clem focuses on the years leading up to the 1950s explosion of rock music that arrived with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley, though Clem struggles to craft much of a narrative that ties the two genres together.
Instead, he pretty much offers up a clip collection of great gospel performances alongside reminiscences from some of the surviving singers, as well as a few historians as talking heads. It's a shame that Clem could not have crafted this into more of a lively treatise, but it serves a purpose as a sort-of YouTube curation of videos seasoned with narration.
The filmmaker does manage to explore the tightrope-walk that the groups navigated between the religious and secular worlds. The introduction of the guitar, around the late 1940s, was seen as a tipping point. By the 1950s, breakout stars began to cross over, including the smooth Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls and much later, Aretha Franklin. And there are hints from both the performers and historians that the singers themselves were not immune to the pitfalls of the secular world. But in the end, this is about the music, and it is a joyful celebration.
SPARKS (C+) - You had to be there, apparently. Somehow, I have never heard of the band Sparks, which has performed for five decades now, or -- and this is possible -- I did know of them and blocked out any memory of the band. Edgar Wright's documentary about the Mael brothers' musical journey is suitable to explain either possibility -- their music and their story are not very memorable. The question now becomes, do you spend 140 minutes indulging them with this documentary.
The answer is no. Unless you are a fan. Or unless you have a lot of patience for theatrical '70s art-rock diehards. And maybe Wright has misrepresented their music (though I don't think so), but the best thing you could say about the music of Sparks is that their clever avant-garde recordings are an acquired taste. Imagine their contemporaries, Queen, recording "Bohemian Rhapsody" over and over again. In the end, Sparks represents the full flower of Theater People. Lead singer Russell frequently lapses into falsetto, while brother Ron, on keyboards, mugs into the camera, almost always a practiced creepy glare.
It probably helps if any of these songs are even vaguely familiar and if you have an affinity for their derivative recordings. In the '70s, they emulated bands of the era, a trite mix of T-Rex, Meat Loaf, Devo, and the Raspberries. At the turn of the decade, they segued into disco and new wave, creating nothing as memorable as Donna Summer or Human League threw up the charts. (Not hard to believe with songs like "Tits" and "Balls.") Wright has a habit of playing the songs in the background, while talking heads chatter, making the songs a little more annoying. One exception is a tedious composition called "My Baby's Taking Me Home," which consists of the title being repeated ad nauseam and is featured nearly in its entirety as some sort of unappreciated anthem. Good Lord.
Wright himself appears on camera, identifying himself as a fanboy, and his failure -- and the failure of his mostly older male talking heads -- is in not translating their fervor to us casual or non-fans. (Sparks was very popular in Europe, kind of like Jerry Lewis being treated like an auteur in France.) Wright marches through every single album, methodically, as if tasked with creating an exhaustive definitive history for the future benefit of mankind, and it's exhausting. He spends the last 20 minutes -- beyond the two-hour mark -- belaboring a series of false endings, pounding his way to the inevitable maudlin conclusion.
I was not converted. At the hour mark, I thought it would be fun to see if I could finish this review before the end of the movie. That was easy. The writing helped pass the time as the band's career soldiered on. There is no doubt that these are two talented men who have persevered over the years to entertain a lot of people while staying true to their art. But this is a movie for them and their ardent fans, not the rest of us.
BONUS TRACK
Sister Rosetta Tharpe tears it up with "Up Above My Head":
THE FRENCH DISPATCH (B) - I am probably the ultimate niche customer for Wes Anderson's fussy storytelling, and even my patience is wearing a little thin. The best description for his latest star-studded adventure is "overstuffed."
I thoroughly enjoyed his homage to the New Yorker magazine of a bygone era, and in fact I laughed a lot, but this one too often is a classic example of style over substance -- even by Wes Anderson standards. One significant flaw here is the use of four sequential stories told in a vignette format. The first one is a very brief throat-clearer featuring Owen Wilson as a cyclist who sets the table about the magazine, The French Dispatch of the Liberty (Kansas) Sun, which, improbably, from the 1920s to the '70s, served as a foreign bureau based in the fictional town tweely named Ennui sur Blase.
The second, longer section features Benicio del Toro as a transformational artist who happens to be serving a murder sentence and employs his prison guard (Lea Seydoux) as his muse and nude model. Anderson frames this compelling story through a lecture given by Tilda Swinton, rocking a Margaret Thatcher wig and Barbara Walters vocal delivery. That story, for better and for worse, dwarfs the next two tales, rendering them mundane and more convoluted than necessary. In the next piece, we get Timothee Chalamet as a 1968 French student activist profiled by an older female reporter (Frances McDormand). This one has about as much oomph as Chalamet usually does and never gets off the ground. Finally, Anderson offers an inscrutable piece about a food writer (Jeffrey Wright) covering a private dinner with the police commissioner whose son gets kidnapped. Even the one-paragraph Wikipedia entry is difficult to follow (or care about).
By the end, the average viewer likely will be confused and annoyed (though probably not bored). (It also doesn't help that the female reporters in the other two
vignettes sleep with their sources; post-war conventions or not, it's as
icky as it is quaint.) But there are two pluses here: First, the cast is one of the finest ever assembled in one movie. Other cast members include: Bill Murray as the editor in chief, Jason Schwartzman, Elisabeth Moss, Lois Smith, Bob Balaban, Henry Winkler, Adrien Brody, Mathieu Amalric, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan and newcomer Lyna Khoudri. The problem is that these are mostly cameos, and all are blown off the screen by Del Toro and Seydoux. Second, Anderson's trademark detailed flourishes are still impressive -- I laughed out loud a bunch of times and constantly marveled at his creative inventions.
I would watch this a couple more times just to revel in the in-jokes and ingenuity, that unique knack Anderson has (and perfected in "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou") of creating a skewed world that can seem both silly and emotionally powerful at the same time. This is a gorgeous movie, with every inch of each frame fussed over in a way that no other director would have the time or the patience for. This is no throwaway farce. It has heart and passion. But it tries to do too much and, in a bid to impress, instead runs roughshod over the viewer. Too often, Anderson forgets that it's his job to simply convey a coherent narrative. (He also lacked such discipline in his last film, the animated "Isle of Dogs.")
Fans of the New Yorker certainly will get an extra kick out of the sly references to the iconic weekly, and might appreciate the fastidious fussiness. But too many others will be left exhausted, overwhelmed to the point of wondering, by the end of it, whether to care about any of these antics.
THE JERK (1979) (B) - Ah, the simpler, stupider waning days of the 1970s, when Steve Martin was a comedic phenomenon and crudely finding his way to Hollywood. Well before "Dumb and Dumber," Martin, two co-writers, and director Carl Reiner threw a bunch of dumb ideas together and just let Martin riff in this rags-to-riches story of a blithering idiot making his way through the world.
In assessing it 42 years later, it's not so much a question of whether this goofiness has aged well as it is a question of whether we have. Some of the gags are so inane that they elicit guilt-free laughs to this day. Launching from "I was born a poor black child" -- the gag is that Martin's Navin Johnson is so blinkered (a naif, as his name suggests) that he doesn't realize until adulthood that he had been adopted into a rural black family -- Martin goes on to crowd-surf in a sea of silliness. The greatest hits include Navin's pride in his "special purpose," the delicacy of "pizza in a cup," the evils of cat-juggling, "I'm picking out a thermos for you," "The new phone books are here!", Iron Balls McGinty, and the brilliant crescendo of Navin, with his pants around his ankles, pathetically gathering an armful of random items from his collapsed empire -- "... and that's ALL I need!" All the while, Martin's manic energy is complemented by a talented cast doubling down on the deadpan -- Bernadette Peters, M. Emmet Walsh, Mabel King, Bill Macy and Jackie Mason.
I have no idea how an adult in this day and age stumbling across this for the first time -- if that's even remotely likely -- would react to Martin's classic shtick two generations removed. "The Jerk" is still funny, but it also seems about as quaint now as the Three Stooges or Abbott & Costello seemed to us back in 1979. It can be difficult to recapture the complicated tightrope Martin walked back then as a breakout performer.
As the Onion AV Club (no relation) once put it, Martin at the time was "both a consummate entertainer and a glib, knowing parody of a consummate entertainer. He was at once a hammy populist with an uncanny, unprecedented feel for the tastes of a mass audience and a sly intellectual whose goofy shtick cunningly deconstructed stand-up comedy. Martin operated on multiple levels that allowed him to be the most popular comedian in the country, while at the same time being comedy’s most meta performer."
"The Jerk" is definitely wrapped in several thick layers of irony. But at its core, it's also just incredibly dumb fun.
BONUS TRACK
Here is our latest snapshot ranking of Wes Andersonfilms, from favorite to least favorite:
Robert Greene ("Bisbee '17," "Kate Plays Christine") borrows a page from "TheAct of Killing" and uses film projects within this film project to foster the healing of five men abused by priests decades earlier, "Procession."
Radu Jude ("Aferim")deconstructs the propaganda of Romania's Ceausescu regime in "Uppercase Print."
A fresh release of the debut film from Mia Hansen-Love ("Bergman Island," "Eden"), about a young woman dealing with a heroin-addicted father, "All Is Forgiven."
Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga star in Rebecca Hall's directorial debut, the period piece "Passing."
Mike Mills ("20th Century Women") returns with a brooding road movie featuring an uncle and his nephew, "C'mon C'mon."
French artist J.R., who made "Faces Places" with Agnes Varda, continues exploring the human spirit in "Paper & Glue."
A documentary about the post-war doyenne of French cooking by way of PBS, "Julia."
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (A) - It seems to be a good year for improbable directors of music documentaries focused on the late Sixties. A few months ago there was "Summer of Soul" from Roots drummer Questlove, and later this month Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings") will present his re-imagining of the Beatles' "Let It Be" sessions. Here, persnickety dramatic auteur Todd Haynes ("Carol") curates a faithful definitive biography of avant-garde rock darlings the Velvet Underground.
Haynes crafts a heartfelt homage to the influential band, mixing the good qualities with the bad (mainly that Lou Reed seemed to be a drug addict and asshole). He sticks to the band's productive years and skips the post-breakup aura that has predominated for the past half century. Instead, he tosses you back to those heady days when the boundaries of art and music seemed limitless.
And Haynes uses every trick in his own art-house arsenal to fill the screen with dazzling visuals for two nonstop hours of deep-dive nostalgia and character study fueled by songs that have lost little, if any, urgency over the decades. It's a dizzying, delirious trip down memory lane. And it's about as entertaining as a movie can be.
The director takes a little time at first sketching in the boyhoods of Reed and his better half, the violist John Cale. Reed has the rougher upbringing and seemed to be, from the start, dead set on becoming a rock 'n' roll star, in contrast with Cale's more classical, refined background. Reed's sister is onboard as a talking head. Also joining in is an original superfan, Jonathan Richman, who would be one of those proverbial Children of VU, part of an army of followers said to have gone on to form their own band (his was the Roadrunners). Cale and drummer Maureen Tucker, both looking elegant, are still around to offer their perspectives.
Haynes launches headfirst into the New York City scene of the mid-'60s, where Andy Warhol "discovered" the band and turned them into an avant-garde art project, improbably matching the band with the German anti-chanteuse Nico. This led to their first album, which probably scores highest ever on a discrepancy scale measuring the delta between so few copies originally sold and such a high ranking among the greatest records made.
The film takes a detour during the hippie heyday with footage of the band taking a trip to California and blinking into the sun as if finally released from a crypt. L.A. and San Francisco just wasn't their scene; as Tucker put it, they had little patience for "that peace and love shit." The band, true to its name, was a real underground phenomenon. Warhol's patronage allowed Reed and Cale to go deep into musical indulgences, exploring both adventurous sounds and taboo subjects with their music and lyrics. (Check out the reconciled pair's homage to Warhol, "Songs for Drella" from 1990.)
Warhol Factory member Mary Woronov leads the pack among talking heads who aptly place the band in context and bring the past to life. Meantime, Haynes splashes the screen with images, not only of the band and its performances, but with random stock footage that provides further era authenticity. He splits the screen often, sometimes using archival footage of the band members staring inertly at the screen while the other side involves mayhem, as if mimicking or subverting Warhol's own film style. The effect of so many images can be overwhelming, but the solution is to pick out what you can and let the rest wash over you.
In the end, the real draw here is the music. The band put out four proper studio albums with the core group between 1967 and 1970 -- two with Cale and two with his replacement, Doug Yule -- and the sheer power of the songs resonates here from beginning to end. They sound fresh and daring to this day. For two hours, you can get lost in the reverie of the artistry of a truly original band.
BONUS TRACKS
The trailer will give you a feel for the kinetic energy:
Let's do some covers, starting with the Cowboy Junkies' slow-jam to "Sweet Jane":
The Beat Farmers with "There She Goes Again"
R.E.M., from the mid-'80s, with "Pale Blue Eyes," our title track:
The former child actor died at age 85 this week. Stockwell wasn't often on our radar (except every time we pass by channel 4.3 and notice yet another episode of "Quantum Leap" getting an airing on one of the Old Folks stations), but it's a good excuse to relive a scene from David Lynch's "Blue Velvet."
THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (B+) (2021) - My mom was worried. She'd be in the kitchen preparing dinner. I was done with college classes for the day. During the 5 o'clock hour on weekdays, I liked to park it on the couch and tune in to Channel 38 to watch the PTL Club with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.
I was fascinated. The Bakkers were ahead of their time in shrugging off the staid formalities of religious TV pitches and emulating mainstream talk shows, through plain talk and secular braggadocio. At the time, in the early to mid-'80s, they were raking in donations to fund a massive theme park, Heritage USA, that seemed to be perpetually under construction and expansion. My favorite shows featured Jim in a hard-hat reporting from the construction site back to Tammy Faye and lovable sidekick Uncle Henry in the studio.
You couldn't help sense that this was a massive fraud being perpetrated, but the couple were so damned cheerful and confident that you might think that, hey, maybe they really are doing the lord's work, just in their own mysterious ways. Of course, it turned out to be an infernal scam, and the Bakkers could not refute the dogged reporting in the Charlotte Observer that they were charlatans enriching themselves at an ungodly rate while selling worthless time shares to their gullible flock.
Their daily show played out like a soap opera. Jim and Tammy's hubris was unmatched. They played by Gordon Gecko's rules of the day -- greed is good -- while they preached the "prosperity gospel." They were so brash that you almost wanted to cheer them on to get away with it. Damn the suckers who sent them money. When the Bakkers' world came crashing down -- in swirls of graft, sexual affairs, blackmail and rivalry with arch-nemesis Jerry Falwell -- it was all more entertaining than "Dallas" or "Dynasty." I still have a folder of yellowed newspaper clippings from Jim Bakker's trial, which included his infamous nervous breakdown in which he thought the people in the courtroom were animals out to attack him. Wild.
Jessica Chastain was only a kid when this went down, but she has a profound appreciation for the history. She is a producer and the star of "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," a dramatic follow-up to the 2000 documentary about the makeup-prone anti-hero who died in 2007. (Jim Bakker, after a prison stint, has returned to TV now preaching the end-of-days gospel. Is he worried that he can't take it with him?) Chastain devotes every ounce of her energy to this breezy biopic that never lets up over a two-hour running time.
Chastain teams up with talented director Michael Showalter ("Hello, My Name Is Doris," TV's "Search Party") and TV writer Abe Sylvia to create a believable re-creation of the phenomenon that was the PTL Club. (At the time, Chicago Tribune critic Gary Deeb, and I'm sure others, referred to it as the Pass the Loot Club instead of Praise the Lord.) Andrew Garfield, who can be hit-and-miss as a dramatic actor, absolutely nails the smarm and massive insecurities -- not to mention the whiny speech patterns -- of Jim Bakker.
The film is rooted in Tammy Faye's backstory, starting with her upbringing in Minnesota by a divorced woman and her second husband. Her mom (a buttoned up Cherry Jones from "Transparent") will be the conscience for her daughter throughout the movie, even while sharing in the eventual largesse. Tammy has a meet-cute with young Jim at divinity school and will join him as they climb the ladder through Pat Robertson's fledgling ministry in the 1960s, in large part due to Tammy's singing and puppetry and Jim's media savviness. By the mid-'70s, the dynamic duo has branched out on their own.
Showalter, after spending a good hour with valuable table-setting, dives into the slimy world of Reagan-era televangelism and its indecent greed and graft. He gives Chastain a long leash to play Tammy Faye to the hilt, and as broad as she gets at times, it's virtually impossible to overplay what was in real life essentially a cartoon character. Over time, the makeup slathers on thicker and the age lines deepen, but even intense close-ups fail to betray any artifice. (There are 19 people credited to the film's Makeup department.) Chastain is all in, a true force of nature, and nothing can stop her from entertaining you. When another man finally shows her genuine sexual attraction, you melt with her. And she and Garfield nail those flat, nasally heartland voices so well that it's eerie. I have a soft ban on biopics involving news events and newsmakers that I followed closely, but this is a rare exception, one that rises above mere mimicry and period fetishism and instead creates a compelling narrative to get lost in.
At times, Showalter's strenuous attempt to be faithful to the record can get in the way of just telling a story. The timeline can be a bit choppy at times. Vincent D'Onofrio is a little too enamored with the vocal quirks of his Falwell depiction. And the handling of the Jessica Hahn scandal (the secretary is unseen here) feels rushed. But "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" is an old-fashioned throwback to those movies with meat on their bones that were not afraid to emote to the cheap seats.
I eventually outgrew my infatuation with televangelists like the Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggert and the underappreciated "healer" Rev. Ernest Angley (who died this year at age 99). Now my mom is back to just being disappointed that I'm an atheist. The downfall of Jim and Tammy Faye was epic and well earned. But the entertainment value curdled. With the benefit of the passage of time and some dramatic license, Chastain and company bring back both the bravado and the pathos.
ON THE ROCKS (A-minus) - Sofia Coppola, ensconced in her comfort zone, puts it all together for the most mature and nuanced film of her career, a comic but melancholy slice-of-life pas de deux between a 30-something daughter and her incorrigible father. It combines the best elements of two of Coppola's best films: "Lost in Translation" and Somewhere."
Rashida Jones is Laura, Coppola's standard world-weary everywoman, drifting in ennui like Stephen Dorff's rock star in "Somewhere." She has writer's block and is beginning to suspect that her workaholic husband, Dean (Marlon Wayans), is cheating on her with his gorgeous co-worker. When she shares this suspicion with her aging playboy father, Felix (Bill Murray), the old devil stokes her concerns and ropes her into a private-eye caper.
There is a playfulness and silliness to the father-daughter espionage gambol, but that lightweight feel is more than balanced out by the gravitas brought by Jones and Murray. Coppola's camera gets up close with Jones, as if trying to burrow into Laura's psyche or to scan for clues into the motivations of a woman trying to keep a family together as she inches toward 40. Murray, perhaps in the culmination of his career, presents Felix, a high-end art buyer, as cultured but delusional, an unrepentant ladies' man constantly walking the line between charming and creepy at his age. His line deliveries leave some things unsaid -- hinting at regrets and perhaps a boyish insecurity that has always fed the lineage of cocky characters, including his memorable turn with Scarlett Johannsson in "Lost in Translation." His shmoozing with a New York City cop during a traffic stop is a marvel in comedic timing and the avoidance of cliche.
The idiot aspects of the caper aside, Coppola gets a lot of the little things right here. Laura is in a constant state of low-level exasperation with her father, calling him on his bullshit in lighthearted ways. Felix dispenses his brand of assured zen-pop wisdom with the confidence of a man who never gets held accountable, while he leverages his access to power. A small scene of father and daughter admiring a painting in an old rich woman's Manhattan home is just one example of Coppola's willingness to pause at times to contemplate each character's place in the world and their relation to each other. She has a natural feel for the rhythms of the city. The ending is a little too pat, but until then, Coppola has a lot to say about a woman's role in a patriarchal society, and Jones and Murray deliver the goods for her from beginning to end.
LILYA 4-EVER (2003) (B-minus) - This early film from Lukas Moodysson (2014's "We Are the Best!") starts out grim and evolves into downright despairing with a horrific depiction of a 16-year-old Estonian girl abandoned by her mother and then drawn into a life of desperation. Oksana Okinshina gives a powerful performance that just barely makes this watchable all the way through. With her dimpled cheeks and world-weary mien she perfectly captures the fateful transition from girl to woman.
Lilya's mother finds a boyfriend and moves to America, leaving Lilya with a grumpy aunt who wants nothing to do with her. Lilya develops a sweet friendship with younger Volodya (Artyom Bogucharskiy), who crushes on her and obsesses over playing basketball. Volodya has a horrible home life and spends a lot of time in the grimy apartment Lilya squats in. Their scenes together are the highlight of the film.
In a key plot development that strains credulity, Lilya's best friend Natasha (Elina Benenson), who frequents a disco where she picks up older men to have sex for money, flips that narrative and convinces the town that it's Lilya who's the actual working girl. Desperate for cash, Lilya takes up the habit. A hunky younger man offers Lilya hope, in the form of an escape to Sweden, but the set-up devolves into a petrifying scheme that makes matters even worse.
As a viewer, you hold out for any glimmer of hope, but it never seems to come. This film is from the same era as "Osama," one of the all-time candidates for most depressing film ever. Not for the squeamish.
Getting picky and putting the "no" in November ...
A documentary takes a fresh look at the deadly 1971 prison uprising, "Attica."
Our guy Jim Cummings ("Thunder Road," "The Wolf of Snow Hollow") returns as a yet another apoplectic hot mess, this time a Hollywood Agent, in "The Beta Test."
Two funny men -- Dana Gould and Bobcat Goldthwait -- team up for a "Trip"-like documentary directed by Goldthwait, "Joy Ride."
A chronicle of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and other musical trailblazers, "How They Got Over."
From Kosovo, a post-war drama about rising up against the dying patriarchy, "Hive."
Hannah Marks ("After Everything," "Banana Split") explores another nuance of Millennial relationships -- polyamory -- in "Mark, Mary & Some Other People."
There is certainly no shortage of horror films these days, so a smart slow burn like this absurd drama stands out. There's nothing like the unforgiving winter Icelandic landscape to ratchet up the tension.
Noomi Rapace, the original girl with the dragon tattoo, is perfectly cast as the taciturn farming wife who embraces a ewe's newborn that turns out to be part-human and part-sheep. Maria and her husband Ingvar (Hilmir Snaer Gudnason) not only embrace the baby but take it into their home and nurture it, neither one of them batting an eye at the absurdity of the miracle birth.
The couple take everything in stride, to the consternation of Ingvar's visiting brother Petur (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson) and to the maternal vitriol of the mama who birthed the little freak with a human body and an ovine head, and with one hand and one hoof. Maria will be the one to take care of that battle of the moms, and she'll also have to convince Petur not to overreact to the situation.
Writer-director Valdimar Johannsson (working with novelist/poet/songwriter Sjon) embeds this production with a simmering foreboding, peppering the narrative with hints of backstory. Apparently Maria and Petur have a bit of history, though it's not clear if Ingvar knows about that. And Johannsson drops two pretty clear hints about why the couple are childless and despondent.
Johannsson times this all with Swiss precision, pretty much turning a new chapter every 20 minutes (that's how long it takes for the birth scene to occur). He ratchets up the horror incrementally and without resort to the common tropes of creaking doors or sudden shocks. He knows that the viewer will understand that the premise itself is untenable and simply cannot end in a pleasant manner.
Despite the preposterous premise played for deadpan amusement, this troupe somehow wins us over into caring about the survival of this improbable family unit. And while the narrative device of the grieving young couple deserves a soft ban, "Lamb" is smart and visually compelling enough to rise above B-movie material.
Only a swerve into the realm of fantasy during a startling deus ex machina ending detracts from what otherwise is an impressively assured filmmaking debut. Rapace and her co-stars go all-in to ensure that this story can be told with a straight face. And, when you think about it, just about any ending would be at least somewhat unsatisfying. Custody battles -- even those not involving a girl with a sheep's head -- usually are quite messy.
GRADE for "LAMB": A-minus
* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.
