Outside the System

 

BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS (A-minus) - This is a low-key but quietly poignant examination of the outsider artist Bill Traylor, who had been born into slavery but emerged late in life with his crude artwork while living on the streets of Montgomery, Ala. This collaboration between director Jeffrey Wolf (known more as an editor) and veteran sitcom writer Fred Barron takes a playful yet respectful tone with Traylor's art and legacy. They employ a style that brings a visual flair suitable to the subject matter.

Traylor, former sharecropper, had a rather childlike sensibility, partial to bickering couples, booze guzzlers, prancing cats and snarling dogs. The artwork would not be out of place displayed on a refrigerator. But art critics and historians are on hand to place the work in perspective. Descendants tell family stories. (He was prolific in his paternity.) Dual narrators (Russell G. Jones and Sharon Washington) are shown on-screen, sometimes together, enunciating the thoughtful prose put together by Barron. Other actors give voice to anecdotes from written histories. Jason Samuels Smith is on hand for tap-dancing interludes.

What's conveyed is a deep study of a self-taught folk artist who was often a postwar after-thought. The repetition of images from Traylor's primitive drawings has a hypnotic effect and enhances your appreciation of art that you might otherwise quickly dismiss. 

JOSHUA: TEENAGER VS. SUPERPOWER (2017) (B+) - This is an uplifting and technically impressive documentary about the Hong Kong teen who took on China and fought for democratic rights. Joe Piscatella trains his camera on Joshua Wong, a smart, brave young man who inspired a movement against China's attempts to control Hong Kong, initially through its school curricula. 

It covers roughly 2012 to 2016, by which time Joshua and some of his colleagues are coming of age and making moves toward running for office themselves. What stands out here is Piscatella's camera, there from the beginning, embedded in the nascent movement. Joshua and his colleagues also sit for interviews, looking back on their accomplishments that stemmed from a protest that seemed to be little more than a school project at the time.

Joshua is an appealing character, as much a nerdy wonk as he is a fiery leader. The narrative here zips along clearly, building momentum as the stakes are raised. The story anticipates the more recent protests in 2019 and 2020 against forced extraditions from Hong Kong to Taiwan and mainland China. The film provides a helpful primer on the tensions between Hong Kong and China, with a strong personal touch.

BONUS TRACK

The "Traylor" trailer:

Singing the Delta

It's been so long since we've been to a proper concert that we're starting to forget the sensation. The last show we saw before the shutdown was the Growlers at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe on March 9, 2020. We dug up this unfinished piece celebrating the December 19, 2019, appearance of Iris Dement at the South Broadway Cultural Center. While we await the re-emergence of real live concerts, let's pretend this was more recent.

Iris Dement wandered onstage at the South Broadway Cultural Center the other day and did not have a panic attack. Thus, she played 90 minutes of passionate Americana, tapping mainly into her two best-known albums, 1992's "Infamous Angel" and 2012's "Sing the Delta."

She certainly knows how to turn a phrase that evokes the simple profundity of Hank Williams.  Example: "Easy's Gettin' Harder Every Day":

Her gospel songs have the lilting pop-folk of Bob Dylan's Christian period. Example: "The Kingdom Has Already Come":

And our title track, "Sing the Delta," so heartfelt, with the stinging punchline, "A love song for me":

New to the Queue

 In the sun, in the sun ...

Argyris Papadimitropoulos goes back to the beaches of Greece in his follow-up to "Suntan" for another sybaritic tale, "Monday."

A documentary about an early-20th-century outsider artist, "Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts."

A German artist/filmmaker looks back at her youth during the hippies' French revolution of the 1960s, "Paris Calligrammes."

Ed Helms and Patti Harrison (HBO's "Made for Love") make an appealing platonic odd couple in "Together Together."

The comic story of mother-daughter grifters in Spain, "El Planeta."

That's a Rap

 

THIS IS THE LIFE (2008) (B+) - The debut of Ava Duvernay ("13th," "Selma") is a loving tribute to Good Life, a southern California cafe that promoted clean living and hip-hop and which launched a few careers. Duvernay stuffs this documentary with more people than you can keep track of, especially considering that most of them are not household names (especially by their rap monikers).

Coming a little more than a decade after Good Life's brief heyday, the film allows just enough time to give the alumni some distance from the community they created but not too much time such that we're subjected to a bunch of droning nostalgic greybeards. The health-food venue, which launched an open-mic program in 1989, started to flourish in 1993 while retaining a true underground vibe. Swearing was not allowed, but MC battles still got hot and heavy. Duvernay makes good use of the extensive videotape archives from the camera that seemed to be constantly fixed on the stage. 

The talking heads -- really, there are a ton of them, including Duvernay herself, who performed in Figures of Speech with her partner Jyant -- are mostly laid-back and chill, still emanating happy thoughts regarding the collective karma of the place. It seemed like a truly nurturing scene in which the participants were genuinely more interested in creating art than in becoming music stars (though a few, like Jurassic 5, did break out). It's fun to watch a tight-knit group strive to pursue their best life.

SAMPLE THIS (2013) (B-minus) - This bizarre pastiche is a storytelling train-wreck, but it has an interesting premise at its core, and it's entertaining enough to justify 85 minutes of screen time with this documentary about the most sampled and admired riff from the early days of rap music.  The song is an early '70s update of the surf rock anthem "Apache," recorded by a bunch of studio musicians under the name the Incredible Bongo Band. 

This one-off from a guy named Dan Forrer starts out in disorienting fashion with former NFL star Rosie Grier and others waxing nostalgic about Bobby Kennedy's ill-fated run for president in 1968. You might think you are watching the wrong movie, until the connection is made, 10 or 15 minutes in, to Michael Viner, a Kennedy campaign worker who went on to produce pulpy movies and records. In a post-Monkees/Archies world, it was common to cobble together studio musicians or unreleased recordings to create a "band" and try to catch fire with a hit song.

This documentary, with somewhat annoying narration by Gene Simmons from Kiss, meanders down a few rabbit holes (including a long detour into the seedy story of one of the drummers who abused drugs and went crazy) and feels oddly detached from the rap community that seized on "Apache" and that addictive percussion ("Hear the drummer get wicked!"). For every Questlove and Afrika Bambaataa who weigh in, we also hear from old-school R&Bers Jerry Butler and Freda Payne (who happened to have dated Viner), as well as Viner's kin, who just aren't that interesting. But this is a nugget of rock/rap history, and this tale fills in a few more blanks that "The Wrecking Crew" might have missed.

BONUS TRACK

The Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache," the percussion beat that launched a thousand rap songs:

The Cruelest Month

 It's not you. Even the Onion's AV Club (no relation) has noticed a run of mediocre movies in the past two weeks, with only one film ranking as high as a B. Here's the parade of miserables:

• Some horror film called "Jakob's Wife" - C+
• An "eco-thriller," "In the Earth" - C
• Nazis and time travel? Oy. "The Banishing" - C+
• Melissa McCarthy tosses off another broad comedy, "Thunder Force" - C-minus
• Lord of the Flies but in space! "Voyagers" - B-minus
• A "crime epic," "Night in Paradise" - C+
• What looks like a hateful exercise, "Moffie" - B
• Hey, another horror movie with a generic title, "The Power" - C
• A Romanian talker based around the turn of the 20th century, "Malmkrog" - C+
• Oh, look, a Catholic horror film, "The Unholy" - D+
  

Awk-ward

 

SHIVA BABY (A-minus) - This claustrophobic and compelling debut feature from Emma Seligman follows a college senior facing a meltdown amid family, friends and lovers at a post-funeral shiva. It's facile to suggest that this young woman is grappling with her sexuality, but -- refreshingly -- this is a much more nuanced comic drama about a person coming to terms with the consequences of the sexual choices she has made as she blazes her own path forward.

Rachel Sennott is captivating as Danielle, who is hectored by her worried and overprotective parents (Fred Melamed and Polly Draper) while being confronted with the presence at the deceased's home of her childhood friend (and recent slam), Maya (Molly Gordon), as well as the sugar daddy whom Danielle has been secretly banging while claiming to have been earning money baby-sitting. (Turns out he worked with her father.)

This production has the manic energy of a bottle episode of a TV series (here more of a tightly packed ketchup bottle) and at times unfolds like a flat-out horror movie. Danielle is frequently cornered by her parents' friends and other nosy yentas, and she believably seems trapped in a nightmare scenario. Things spill, glass breaks, Danielle alternately binge-eats and shuns food, the baby wails, and the intrigue slowly heats to a boil, with not only the presence of sugar daddy, Max (a Jay Duplass-like Danny Deferrari), but the appearance of his gorgeous, super-successful shiksa wife (Diana Agron) and their baby.

Seligman wisely makes this less about binary concepts of sexuality and more about a budding young woman's confusion and frustration with relationships and what it means to be a successful, happy person. Sennott flawlessly imbues Danielle with a complex mix of thoughts and feelings -- sometimes sensibly challenging convention, and other times acting out like an impetuous child still on mommy and daddy's payroll. All along the way, this is both bitingly funny and disturbingly real and jangling to the nerves, as if we, too, are battling for oxygen in that very same cloistered house of horrors. (A half point off for the only flaw here: the caricature of the mom, whose lines are overstuffed with hoary signifying yiddishisms borrowed from the Borscht Belt era.)

KEEP AN EYE OUT (C+) - It's difficult to recommend this beyond-absurd exercise in silliness, though it does have its moments. This nonsensical police-interrogation film from Quentin Dupieux ("Rubber," "Deerskin") pits gruff police detective Buron (Benoit Poelvoorde) against Louis Fugain (Gregoire Ludig), an ordinary Joe who found a dead body and called it in -- and now finds himself trapped in police-procedural hell. 

It's pointless to explain most of the gags. The title comes from a police colleague who is missing an eye (in a "wink" to the audience, the missing eye is obviously rendered through cheap CGI) and who at some point is called on to ... keep an eye on Fugain, only to fall victim to a freak accident, ratcheting up the pressure on the seemingly innocent man. 

Fugain tells his story through flashbacks, but these flashbacks are infiltrated by his own present self-awareness of them and at times by the detective himself. The dialogue is oxygenated by non-sequiturs and babble. Tropes are nodded to (there is a hokey scene of a clueless character opening a locker that contains a dead body only to not notice the stiff, though later, a lifeless arm will spill out of that locker like in an old movie or a modern spoof). Dupieux bails out of his whole scenario with a Pythonesque deus ex machina theater trick. And speaking of Monty Python's shtick, the writer-director begins the film with an unrelated scene of a conductor in his underwear eventually fleeing police, Keystone Kops-style -- which might be equal parts Benny Hill, come to think of it.

BONUS TRACKS

The trailers:

New to the Queue

 It used to go like that ...

An intriguing look at how a young woman's emergent sexuality plays out among a religious gathering of the old guard, "Shiva Baby."

A visually arresting documentary about indigenous culture, "Malni: Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore."

We're hesitant to indulge another example of a man abusing a young woman he holds power over, but "Slalom" looks like a nuanced, visually riveting take on the subject.

A self-explanatory documentary about the foundational children's series, "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street."

Best of Ever, Vol. 4: Unusual Pairings

 

LOCAL HERO (1983) (A) - Bill Forsyth kicked off the fleeting heyday of low-key Scottish cinema with this sweet fish-out-of-water story about a Texas oilman going across the ocean to woo a small town's residents into selling their beachfront property. Forsyth, coming off his UK hit "Gregory's Girl," crafts a minor key classic, putting Peter Riegert out front as the fish out of water, backed by Burt Lancaster as his boss, the eccentric oil tycoon.

Forsyth, who has not made a film since the early '90s, just had an ear for the daily patter in the lives of common people of his native land. Here, the townsfolk -- fueled mostly by pints in the bar -- are a motley collection of merchants and oddballs (including the singular punk-rock girl in town) who each stand to become instant millionaires. Riegert's Mac bonds with Gordon (Denis Lawson), the hotel/bar owner, and is attracted to Gordon's wife, Stella (Jennifer Black), while Mac's assistant, Danny (Peter Capaldi), falls for the lovely oceanographer Marina (Jenny Seagrove). 

Mac's mission falls to the wayside as he gets seduced by the languid lifestyle surrounded by natural beauty. He reports back regularly to Lancaster's Felix Happer, an amateur astronomer who is more interested in the Northern Lights than in the closing of a deal. Eventually Happer will helicopter in to try to seal the deal. Meantime, Mac is feeling guilty about using blood money to steal this slice of heaven from the inhabitants.

The humor is dry and witty. The cast members bounce their quirks off of each other. Forsyth subtly draws out the pathos while reveling in a quaint way of life. Mark Knopfler's soundtrack is sweet and wistful. There are few films that so ably capture a time and place and mood. 

THE ODD COUPLE (1968) (A-minus) - Neil Simon's foundational screenplay launched his film career and imprinted the epic pairing of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as Oscar and Felix, the beta buddy-movie foils.

Before it morphed into a cozy sitcom, the concept that drives the film is darker and grittier than its small-screen yukfest. There are serious concerns that Felix, crushed by the collapse of his marriage, might actually kill himself. In fact, Felix's opening scene places him on a top floor of a fleabag hotel, where his attempt to off himself will be comically foiled. 

Lemmon's fussy Felix grounds the film, while Matthau seems to riff off that quirkiness with his trademark exasperation. (It is a template he'll adapt for Simon's "Sunshine Boys" a few years later.) It all comes together with a climactic visit from the neighboring Pigeon sisters, Cecily and Gwendolyn (Monica Evans and Carole Shelley) (or is it Gwendolyn and Cecily?), who end up swooning over poor pitiful Felix.

Simon's screenplay snaps with one-liners, both broad and subtle. The poker buddies are a delightful Greek chorus. And Matthau and Lemmon are a match for the ages.

BONUS TRACKS

Knopfler's "Local Hero" theme song:

And the Mekons (with Robbie Fulks) with "The Last Fish in the Sea," recorded on the island of Jura off the coast of Scotland.

Past Indiscretions

 

KAWASAKI'S ROSE (2010) (A-minus) - This gorgeous, delightfully meandering drama explores the idea of complicity with the Communist system and possibility of repentance ... and forgetting. It proffers the theory that just because one man sold out another to the Czech secret police back in the '70s or '80s, it doesn't mean that (1) the victim who ended up an exile didn't end up with a better life after all or (2) the informant should be exposed and punished or couldn't have made amends many times over.

Director Jan Hrebejk and writer Petr Jarchovsky, working a few years after the epic Stasi drama "The Lives of Others," subvert the genre's expectations and nuzzle into the grey areas of individual personal lives. They are blessed with a stellar multi-generational cast, with no weak links. Martin Huba takes the lead as Pavel, a revered psychiatrist about to receive national honors for his vocal actions as a dissident during the Communist reign. But Ludek, Pavel's son-in-law (Milan Mikulcik) -- who is shooting a film about Pavel and cheating on Pavel's daughter with a fellow crew member, Radka (an organic Petra Hrebickova) -- digs deep into Pavel's files and finds that his father-in-law actually long ago ratted on his patients, helping the government weed out the troublesome citizens. One of those was a drunken artist, whose relationship was destroyed, with Pavel swooping in to marry the woman and live happily ever after with her and the daughter.

The film-crew technique is a wise choice here, as Ludek and Radka track down the Stasi official who worked with (blackmailed?) Pavel and then travel to Sweden to find Borek (Antonin Kratochvil), who seems untraumatized by the events of the past. In fact, it is mainly the daughter, Lucie (Lenka Vlasakova), and Ludek (who always resented his in-laws) who are most upset about the treachery that happened long ago. Hrebejk allows room for the ramifications to unfold and either explode or disperse. Life can be messy, but as time goes by, it doesn't have to seem that way.

NAKED (1994) (Incomplete) - With the dearth of enticing new releases, we continue to burrow backward into the catalog of notable landmarks in cinema, and so we went back to the early '90s for Mike Leigh's celebrated Cannes breakthrough from London. He'd had a critical hit the outing before with "Life Is Sweet," and he continued his depiction of the gritty life of the working class with "Naked." (He would go on to a career of mixed results, nailing the genre most successfully in the aughts with "Vera Drake" and "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Unfortunately, this one has not aged well. We watched the first 15 minutes, which were filled with clever repartee that even the actors struggled to keep up with and pawn off convincingly as anything but the showing off of a screenwriter (Leigh). And then there were three rapes by two different men in that opening reel, and we just didn't have the patience to see if either or both of these brutes overcame their demons and grew as a human being to the extent that they managed to stop defiling anything that moved. File another one under "Life Is Short."

BONUS TRACK
The trailer for "Kawasaki's Rose": Here.