BFFs

 

THE NOWHERE INN (B) - Rock stars Carrie Brownstein (Sleater Kinney) and Annie Clark (St. Vincent) have a winning rapport in this meta-mockumentary about Clark's pop-star status and the cult of celebrity. This feels more like a series of vignettes -- not unlike an episode of "Portlandia," which Brownstein starred on and Clark guested on -- than a coherent movie. It seems trapped between the worlds of a Christopher Guest romp and a David Lynch freakout.

The gimmick here -- wink-wink -- is that Brownstein is making a documentary about the St. Vincent tour, with full backstage access to her real-life pal Clark. When it turns out that Clark mainly likes to play Scrabble after a show and not, say, stage a rave in her tour bus, Brownstein mildly suggests that Clark spruce things up a bit and play rock star for the camera. Clark takes this suggestion to the extreme -- including randomly bringing in actress Dakota Johnson for a sex scene -- and proceeds to dive headfirst into a vortex of excessive behavior and identity crisis. 

Of course, this is all staged for this cinematic exercise. While Brownstein and Clark wrote it, it is directed, a bit flatly, by TV journeyman Bill Benz. Clark has a lot of charisma, and both she and Brownstein immerse themselves in the charade, but this loses steam in the final third. The team seems to not have the gumption or the talent to make a truly bold statement like Lynch did in "Mulholland Drive." Instead, it takes a more shallow approach to the idea of identity and pop-culture consumerism. Plus, the music of mid-career St. Vincent is pretty generic. But overall, this is funny and even provocative at times, a diverting passion project that pops on the screen.

TOGETHER TOGETHER (B-minus) - You want to like this friendship film about a 45-year-old man hiring a 26-year-old woman to have his baby and then luring her to be his buddy. Ed Helms is a bit overly mannered as glum Matt, and Patti Harrison is charming but also oddly understated as unhappy Anna. Both are damaged -- Matt just hasn't figured out how to have a successful relationship, and Anna, who gave up a baby for adoption while in high school has long been estranged from her family.

Writer-director Nikole Beckwith has penned a really smart script, and she gets a lot of the little things right about the banter between Gen Xer Matt and Millennial Anna. There are more smiles than laughs (the latter courtesy of Julio Torres as Anna's deadpan co-worker), though there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that this whole exercise just seems hollow. Yes, it's a curious choice for Matt to have a baby on his own, and you wonder why Anna would put herself through this again. And you might wonder why she doesn't just tell Matt to keep his distance; he's pretty much a droll loser, and his friendship doesn't seem particularly valuable.

In the end, this ends up feeling like a series of acting exercises -- all well executed by two appealing actors, but not really adding up to a complete story. It galumphs along, and if all you need is a minor-key dual character study, you will be satisfied; if you're looking for a deeper meaning or an interesting twist, you'll likely leave disappointed. 

Trouble Boys

More rooting around in the back of the queue, circling back to the Aughts as a way of clearing out the backlog:

GENTLEMEN BRONCOS (2009) (B-minus) - Jared Hess ("Napoleon Dynamite") directs this loopy, silly story of a teen science-fiction writer whose story gets stolen by a pretentious famous writer. This one walks a very fine line between sending up ridiculously bad fiction and itself being bad fiction.

But this falls on the side of worth watching, mostly due to a few fairly well-known actors who dive head-first into the shallow end of the pool. Jemaine Clement ("What We Do in the Shadows") takes the juiciest bite into it as Dr. Chevalier, the pompous author who runs a camp for aspiring writers but whose lectures focus mainly on his simplistic algorithm for naming characters. Sam Rockwell, covered in a wild wig and long beard, carries the fantasy sequences that animate the original story written by young Benjamin (Michael Angarano). Jennifer Coolidge is fascinating to watch as Benjamin's struggling single mother whose metier involves designing and making hideous clothes. And Mike White jumps in front of the camera to play a thoroughly ineffective mentor to Benjamin (and star of a low-rent videotape production of Benjamin's story, "Yeast Lords").

It takes a while to set up that whole premise, and you may not have the patience for Hess' insistence on returning to the deliberately hackneyed fantasy sequences or his penchant for vulgar scenes frequently drenched in bodily secretions. But this is one of those shambling movies where you just go with the flow and try to have as much fun as the cast is having. Hess wrote this with his wife, Jerusha, and their kitchen-sink approach and D-level special effects have a certain charm. Young Angarano mopes his way throughout as the center of all this wackiness. Clement commits to a goofy voice. And somehow, Hess balances the quirk factor just enough to merit a worthy successor to his beloved cult debut.

TWELVE AND HOLDING (2006) (B) - Michael Cuesta goes to some dark places with this tale of childhood revenge. Written by Anthony Cipriano (who would go on to create the TV show "Bates Motel"), it tells the story of 12-year-old Jacob, whose twin dies in a treehouse fire set by two bullies who didn't expect brother Rudy to be in it. 

Jacob (Conor Donovan, who also plays Rudy) hounds the boys during their year in juvenile detention, fueled by his mother's inability to forgive the boys who killed her son. The story stays focused on Jacob and two friends, and all of the kids take on the mature role of counseling and challenging their parents. Chubby Leonard (Jesse Camacho), who was injured escaping the fire, takes on his obese parents' nutritional choices, while Malee (an electrifying Zoe Weizenbaum) not only schools her divorced mom (a drab Annabella Sciorra) but develops a serious crush on one of her mom's psychiatric patients, Gus (Jeremy Renner), who himself has some deep trauma that will slowly reveal itself. 

The film is written and shot somewhat like a TV soap opera. But Cuesta (following up his compelling debut "L.I.E." and who would go on to make "Kill the Messenger" with Renner) churns this along with an appealing earnestness. Young Donovan is hit-or-miss as Jacob, the unwanted twin born with a Gorbachev grape-stain birthmark that covers the left side of his face and who struggles to overcome his lifelong grievances. Jacob's latest beef is that the favored twin now gets to be a martyr. 

But it is Weizenbaum and Camacho who really pop and who make this worthwhile. Malee starts out the film getting her first period, and she is hellbent on kicking her miserable mom aside and not only pursuing Gus romantically but also trying to save him from his sorrow. Leonard goes to extremes to try to turn his mom's life around through apples and salads, but he fumbles those attempts and comes off as a lovable loser. If you can get past the dull parents and the grownups' weak performances, these kids will provide you with a surprisingly compelling tale of salvation.

BONUS TRACKS

"Gentlemen Broncos" has an eclectic retro soundtrack, with the movie bookended by Zager and Evans' zombie overture "In the Year 2525":

This Diane Warren song performed by Cher sounded like a parody of an earnest Cher song, "Just Like Jesse James" -- it sounded like Jared Hess was trying to write a bad song to celebrate his young hero -- but apparently it's a real release:

And this lovely song over the end credits, "Self Control" by Yiquan:

 

"12 and Holding" has a subtly effective soundtrack, including era cuts from R.E.M. and Presidents of the United States. Two standouts include Sunset Valley with "Wired Nights" and Death in Vegas (featuring Hope Sandoval) with "Help Yourself":

A Lost Art

 

BOB ROSS: HAPPY ACCIDENTS, BETRAYAL & GREED (B) - For a guy who drew happy clouds and happy trees, he sure gets quite the melancholy treatment in this documentary biography. That's mainly because the film is more of a look at Bob Ross' sad-sack son, Steve, and less about the pleasant painter who entertained and inspired PBS audiences for years.

On my smart TV, there is a conglomeration of channels, some devoted to a single subject. One is a Bob Ross channel, airing the 11 seasons of his series from 30 years ago on a continuous loop, one painting appearing before your eyes every half hour. The visual and his voice are soothing, and can be a balm before bedtime. As you might expect, his life was not so placid. 

Documentarian Joshua Rofe's previous efforts seem to have a grit to them. Here he digs for the conflict behind the smile and the frizzy perm. Rofe targets Anne and Walt Kowalski, the gurus who backed Ross at the beginning and eventually took over his empire after Ross died of cancer at 52 in 1994, controlling his intellectual property to this day. Steve Ross spins tales going back to his childhood. He chafed at his dad's efforts to push him to paint in front of the camera and at his dad's apparent infidelities.

Friends and former colleagues of Bob Ross are on hand to give a sense of early camaraderie and an appreciation for the paint-by-numbers genre of pulp picture-making. That includes Gary and Kathwren Jenkins, whose own niche industry in flower-drawing was undermined by the rapacious Kowalskis. Rofe spins a sort of brooding soap opera, a paean to a more innocent but repressed era. You may learn a lot about Ross, but you might prefer to skip this and instead prefer to bliss out in the Mr. Rogers bubble of his time-warp, never-ending world of yesteryear. Either way, happy viewing.

BRESLIN AND HAMILL: DEADLINE ARTISTS (2018) (B+) - This reverent, gauzy look back at the 20th century era of the gruff newspaper columnists focuses on Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, two New York legends and masters of the crafts of reporting and writing. Three next-gen journalists, including former media critic Jonathan Alter, share directing duties to bring to life the accomplishments of the brawler Breslin and the smooth-tongued Hamill.

Talking heads include a mix of former colleagues, longtime contemporaries, and family members to give a well-rounded picture of two guys who banged out column after column for decades. Breslin bristles at the term "journalist" -- "I'm a reporter." And he was; he literally wrote the book and was the shining star for new journalism, with even Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese on hand to defer to the master. Breslin, as always, comes across as a warts-and-all, emotionally damaged champion of the working class. The documentary doesn't gloss over his outburst against a Korean co-worker in the 1990s but puts his postwar persona in perspective. It features all his greatest hits, including JFK's gravedigger and the Son of Sam killer.

Hamill earns kudos for his more literary (but no more powerful) writing style, and he is admired for his way with the ladies (including Jackie Onassis, Shirley MacLaine and Linda Ronstadt). His battle with the publisher of the New York Post is fondly recalled. (Both men eventually cycled through just about every paper in New York except for the Times.)

The two men -- who have died since this was released three years ago -- sit together for a contemporary final set of interviews. They come off as proud of their accomplishments but not overly egotistical. Their contemporaries are reverent but not starry-eyed. This is an ode to an old style of newspaper work, and it's a valentine to a rougher, livelier era that no longer exists, for better and for worse.

New to the Queue

 The autumn of one's youth ...

A debut drama follows two cousins whose lives diverge and they grow into two very different adults, "Wild Indian."

We tend to skip biopics featuring lives we witnessed the first time around, but there's something appealingly trashy about the film from Michael Showalter ("Hello, My Name Is Doris," "The Big Sick") about our favorite religious charlatans the Bakkers, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye."

It looks like Annie Clark (St. Vincent) and Carrie Brownstein (TV's "Portlandia") had a lot of fun crafting the meta-mockumentary "The Nowhere Inn."

We're still onboard with David Chase ("Not Fade Away") and "The Sopranos," so we'll indulge him with his prequel, "The Many Saints of Newark."

The Duplass brothers rarely let us down, and Mark co-stars with Natalie Morales (who also directs) in a Zoom-era study of a budding long-distance friendship, "Language Lessons."

Adulting

 

MONDAY (A) - Irish TV and stage veteran Denise Gough unleashes a powerful performance as an ex-pat American in Greece stumbling into a rebound relationship and getting stuck in Athens with a charming DJ (also an ex-pat) instead of returning to Chicago to resume her legal career. This is another subversive modern anti-rom-com, and it is the flawless followup by Argyris Papadimitroupoulos, who wowed in 2017 with the equally insightful "Suntan."

Chloe (Gough) has a head-clunking meet-cute with rascally Mickey (Sebastian Stan) on a loud dance floor not long after Chloe has a fuck-off phone conversation with her controlling ex-boyfriend Dimitrios. Chloe and Mickey will wake up from a blackout the next morning, naked in the sand as families are arriving at the beach. This won't be their only brush with the law, which lets the randy couple go free with a slap on the wrist. Chloe is due to leave the next day, but Mickey entices her to stay. This is a movie where the race to the airport to stop the object of affection from getting on that plane happens near the beginning of the movie, and not at the end. Thus begins a strained, complicated, fascinating relationship between these two directionless Americans adrift abroad.

Mickey has been in Athens a lot longer, seven years, and he's got a kid to show for it, though he's battling with his ex to allow him to have time with little Hector, who has a room waiting for him at Mickey's place, even after Chloe moves in with Mickey in way too short order. Tensions build, especially when the couple try to integrate their social circles or try to conduct business from home at the same time (she's an immigration lawyer). Even their epic sexual chemistry gets tested, as each of them wrestles with an issue without telling the other.

Everything here feels so lived in and real. No relationship is perfect, and smart good people make bad choices when they want to trust their gut and make that relationship work no matter what. There are fun and funny moments here, with an assist from strong supporting charactors-- Mickey's alcoholic pal Argyris (Yorgos Pirpassopoulos) is especially appealing as a one-man Greek chorus, and Chloe's friend Elli (Alkistis Poulopoulou) bursts with manic frustration at Mickey's immature friends. As Mickey, Stan exhibits a charm and looks that are a mix of Ryan Seacrest and Bruce Greenwood (thankfully, the latter wins out in the end). Gough, meanwhile, reveals layers of emotion and nuance via a character who is struggling to take control of her life; she is a revelation.

Papadimitroupoulos grabs us in the manic first half and then he gives us a good rag-doll shake in the second half. He organizes this from the start with a series of title cards that always announce a new time sequence beginning on a FRIDAY. He is suggesting that life and relationships, like weekends, always seem most enjoyable and promising at the start but that a case of the Mondays will always arrive. The filmmaker, by resetting the week at Friday throughout, builds tension, and "Monday" eventually morphs into a subtle horror film. Mickey and Chloe decide, for old times' sake, to go on a weekend club bender before little Hector is finally to arrive on that literal Monday, and things get out of hand, in spectacular fashion. 

Will these two get their acts together when Monday comes, and if they do, would that be a happy ending or a tragedy?

DAUGHTER OF MINE (2019) (B) - Another strong, forceful performance rescues this coming-of-age story from melodrama, barely. Alba Rohrwacher ("I Am Love") goes all in as the miserable town drunk who finally meets the girl she gave up at birth to another woman to raise 10 years earlier. That girl is the mousy Vittoria (Sara Casu), who has long bristled at not knowing about her birth mom, even though she appreciates the woman who so obviously, from a physical standpoint, is not her biological mother, Tina (Valeria Golino).

This maternal love triangle unfolds slowly, and little monosyllabic Vittoria is like a feral kitten who suddenly shuns Tina's utter devotion in order to explore her real roots with messed-up, ambivalent Angelica. Rohrwacher's Angelica is also feral and mad at the world. She wants to leave the small town but can't get her funding together and isn't willing to sell off her animals because they would end up slaughtered.

It seems like Vittoria knows that her birth mother is no good for her, but she aches for a connection to the woman that everyone in the small town knows she resembles. Angelica is an unrepentant alcoholic and man-chaser whose idea of feeding her child is to open a can of beans and dump it on the kid's plate. Golino struggles to rein in her instincts as the spurned woman here, sometimes overdoing the emotion. 

This sophomore effort from Laura Bispuri is grounded in some hard truths, and the world she creates is raw and lived-in. Even if the story gets a little far-fetched at times, Bispuri brings it all home with an uplifting ending.

BONUS TRACKS

A club classic bookends "Monday," Donna Summer's "I Feel Love":

No Wave

LYDIA LUNCH: THE WAR IS NEVER OVER (B+) - This spirited 75-minute documentary spans the life and career of Lydia Lunch, a true original ultra-punk who still walks the walk. No Wave contemporary Beth B is behind the camera, so don't expect this to be critical or anything other than a dumpster dive into the good ol' days.

The women present an engaging nostalgia trip to 1970s New York, when that grimy city unleashed a torrent of underground music and film. The film conveys a good sense of the insurgency that Lunch spewed back in the day and stayed faithful to over the years. Contemporaries and acolytes offer colorful recollections and perspectives, including Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Donita Sparks (L7) and Carla Bozulich (Geraldine Fibbers). 

It takes a while for Beth B to delve into the abusive childhood that created the foundation for Lunch's angst and pain, the source of those primal screams. A final scene shows Lunch interacting with audience members at a recent live show, and it makes you wish we were privy to more examples of Lunch connecting with her audience rather than serving as a historical figure. But there's plenty of interviews and archival footage to provide a strong sense of the woman, artist and sexual adventurer. I was never a fan, but this project communicates the maelstrom and joy in Lunch's work.

ATTENBERG (2012) (A-minus) - Meet the inexperienced young woman, in her natural habitat. In this quirky Greek film, we follow Marina (Ariane Labed), a socially awkward -- borderline wooden -- young woman smitten with the nature documentaries of David Attenborough and dealing with her terminally ill father, Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis), with whom she is particularly close.

Marina relies on her more normal friend, Bella (Evangelia Randou), for lessons in French kissing and other standard activities of young adults. The two women are frequently filmed in choreographed perambulations, emulating freakish birds and other animals in the wild. Marina eventually finds a boring man to lose her virginity to. 

Writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari (a collaborator with Yorgos Lanthimos) presents a melancholy examination of not only this spectrumy young adult but also the small-town gloom and post-industrial ennui embodied by the dying Spyros, who refers to himself as a "toxic remnant of modernism." He tells his daughter that their society has failed. "We built an industrial colony on top of sheep pens," he laments, "and we thought we were making a revolution. ... I leave you in the hands of a new century without having taught you anything." 

So maybe Marina is lucky to exist outside of society's norms. Her journey is a fascinating one.

CHARLIE IS MY DARLING (1966/2012) (B) - In the wake of the death of Charlie Watts last month, the Guild Cinema presented this documentary about the Rolling Stones' tour of England and Ireland in 1965-66. A short film was originally released in 1966 and then lost; it was restored and expanded in 2012.

The boys come off as rather thoughtful as they navigate their own fame in the echo of Beatlemania. Jagger, in particular is somewhat insightful; in one interview he points out that these kids seeking to rebel against their parents' conformity will be grandparents before the world truly changes. He is now a grandfather, and the world has finally made progress, as these Boomers move on. 

The live performances at theaters, shot with handheld cameras, have a ferocious energy. "The Last Time" and "Round and Round" sound fresh and invigorating; even "Satisfaction," their recent hit at the time, sounds urgent and a little dangerous. The talent is off the charts. Richard, during downtimes is almost always playing guitar or piano, music pouring out of his pores. The lads do impromptu jam sessions -- a reverent Beatles medley, a mocking of Elvis Presley and Fats Domino, a couple of jolly old standards. 

This cross between "Help!" and Dylan's "Don't Look Back" doesn't stand up to either of those great films, but at 64 minutes it's a fascinating time capsule of a band exploding into fame.