Search for Tomorrow

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.

Denial

 

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.

Writerly Retreats

 

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:

Good Lord

 

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":

Kitchen-Sink Storytelling

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 Anderson films, from favorite to least favorite:

1. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. Rushmore
4. The Grand Budapest Hotel
5. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
6. The Darjeeling Limited
7. Bottle Rocket
   
8. The French Dispatch
   
9. Moonrise Kingdom
10. Isle of Dogs
    

New to the Queue

 There has to be a finish line somewhere up ahead ...

The master Asghar Farhadi ("The Salesman," "The Past") returns with a slow-burn treatise on moral ambiguity, "A Hero."

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."

Linger On

 

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:

R.I.P., Dean Stockwell

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."

Pass the Loot

 

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.

Parental Guidance Suggested

 

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.

New to the Queue

 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."