JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (C) - This 1960s drama about Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and an FBI plant in the organization just lies on the screen, an inert exercise in period dress-up and speechifying. Daniel Kaluuya lacks the charisma and physical presence of Hampton, and LaKeith Stanfield is forced to repeat the same emotions over and over as conflicted rat Bill O'Neal. Other cardboard characters spout slogans lifted from Wikipedia entries. This wastes the talents of Dominique Fishback as Hampton's girlfriend and Jesse Plemons ("I'm Thinking of Ending Things") as O'Neal's FBI sponsor, both in unforgiving roles. Martin Sheen shows up for the umpteenth portrayal of J. Edgar Hoover, a prototypical cartoon evil racist monster of the bygone era. A documentary about Hampton and O'Neal -- hinted at in a coda featuring actual clips -- would be much more satisfying.
CARMINE STREET GUITARS (A-minus) - This is a sweet biography of an old-world craftsman of handmade guitars in New York's West Village neighborhood. Rick Kelly scavenges old-growth wood from all over New York and sculpts them into one-of-a-kind guitars. Under-the-radar guitarists who stop by to shoot the breeze include Dallas and Travis Good (the Sadies), Nils Cline (Scarnella, Wilco), Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell (who performs a mournful "Surfer Girl"), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith), Eleanor Friedberger (Fiery Furnaces), Kirk Douglas (the Roots), Charlie Sexton (Dylan) and filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (Squrl) and his old pal Eszter Balint. The modern world eludes Kelly, who gets Instagram exposure only because of his apprentice, Cindy, a pale punk artist with a bleach-blond shag and black fingernails. (Their conversations are goosed by a writer.) This is a perfect vehicle to learn trivia about guitars, wood, trees, bugs and the secrets of Lou Reed's tuning style. Lovely.
BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHE (B) - This documentary about the groundbreaking French film pioneer Alice Guy suffers from a case of the yips. Director Pamela B. Green, in her debut, has a lot of good ideas, and quite the visual flair, but her manic editing style and machine-gun manner of filling every corner of the screen with constantly changing information are an assault on the senses. The story of Guy-Blache, who competed with Edison, Pathe and the Lumiere brothers in the invention of cinema, is critical and fascinating. Green uses two interviews with her subject, from 1957 and 1964, to anchor the story, and Green acts like a digital sleuth in tracking down relatives, acquaintances and film scholars to tell that story. But those jump cuts and her way of attacking the screen (Green is a title-designer by trade), while at times creative and illuminating, are too often dizzying and confounding, as if this were assembled by an iPad on crack. We've had a century to give this woman her due; "be natural" and let the story unfold at a human pace, please.
PRAIRIE TRILOGY (B) - On the eve of the Reagan revolution, two filmmakers went to North Dakota to track down Henry Martinson, an nonagenarian socialist (and poet) who in 1915 helped found the Nonpartisan League, which soon took over North Dakota politics on behalf of farmers for a decade or so. Starting in 1977, John Hanson and Rob Nilsson spent time with Martinson, then in his 90s to relive the bygone era. The three films that resulted -- "Prairie Fire, "Rebel Earth" and "Survivor" -- were restored a few years ago. The first is a Ken Burns-style history of the socialist uprising, employing extensive footage of the harsh plains shot by Nilsson's grandfather from 1915-21. The second returns to the present day, around 1980, to follow Martinson around his old stomping grounds in Minot, culminating in a house party celebrating left wing poetry and music. The third is extraneous, once again following Martinson as he relives his history in the socialist movement and three decades as deputy labor secretary in North Dakota. This is a fascinating chronicle of a sweet old guy who once wanted to dismantle the capitalist system. Good times.
BONUS TRACK
Eleanor Friedberger, featured in "Carmine Street," with the studio version of "I Am the Past":
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