Doc Watch: Rock Watch

 

FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK (B) - This serviceable documentary tells an obscure story well, even if it is a bit too fawning over the all-woman rock band of the early '70s and overstays its welcome a bit. Bring up the name of the band Fanny, and you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who has heard of them.

The band, led by the sisters Jean and June Millington, emerged from the Philippines in the late '60s, before getting manufactured for an American record label in 1970. Despite being good musicians and championed by the likes of David Bowie, they never really had a hit -- one single got as high as No. 29 on the charts -- and it's not really a surprise why: their songs are awfully pedantic and derivative, which was typical of the post-Beatles guitar era. (Actually, keyboardist Nicky Barclay, who does not participate here, seems to have been their best songwriter and vocalist.)

Feminist filmmaker Bobbi Jo Hart ("Rise," "She Got Game") never finds the right balance juggling the past and present. She goes only skin deep in excavating the era -- literally at times, as she tends to focus on the band members' looks, including their penchant for partying naked in Southern California lesbian splendor. And Hart is too enamored of the familiar go-to hook here -- a reunion of the band's core to write and record a new album after all these years. 

It is inspiring to see the women, now in their 60s, return to their roots after many years in the wilderness with various projects. But reunions -- especially those that seem artificially goosed for the purposes of a documentary -- can be as depressing as they are uplifting, a little too much rah-rah from the geezers.

But the women are truly engaging -- Jean Millington mostly raised a family, and her sister founded a music camp for girls. One drummer, Alice de Buhr, is compelling when she talks about how tough it was for a lesbian to navigate that world. The other drummer, Brie Darling, who went on to tour with many bands, including Robert Palmer's and Duran Duran, injects energy and life into the production with her vivacious personality, especially as the glue keeping the sisters together for the reunion album, despite a band member's late medical setback. Fans on board here include Bonnie Raitt, Earl Slick (Bowie's guitarist), Cherie Curie (Runaways), Kathy Valentine (Go-Go's) and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers), plus creepy superfan Joe Elliott of Def Leppard. It's a fine tribute, if slightly clumsy in its execution.

THIS MUCH I KNOW TO BE TRUE (C-minus) - It's difficult to call this a proper film. It's a series of slickly produced music videos of Nick Cave and collaborator Warren Ellis recording their melancholy music. There is no narrative structure here. 

It starts with more than five minutes of Cave trotting out a series of sculptures he has made depicting the life of the devil. He describes each piece, one after another, as if he were a fifth-grader trying to impress his grandparents. So, the theme has something to do with the devil or maybe redemption? 

But more than a half hour later, all we have are these moody studio sessions, many of them battered with annoying strobe effects. Fussy director Andrew Dominik ("The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford") is fond of revealing the crew and equipment in the background, as if to gin up some intimacy with the viewer. To little effect, an aged, obese and oxygen-starved Marianne Faithful shows up to read a short script, which anyone could have done; why her?

You might be a Nick Cave fan, and you probably would find the music moving, the recording sessions haunting. But that doesn't make this a viable movie. In the second half, Cave and Ellis discuss their songwriting process, and that is about as exciting as it sounds.

BONUS TRACKS

I have to say, Fanny's music just isn't very strong overall. Here's a tepid version of the Beatles' "Hey Bulldog," just because:

Here's their biggest hit, "Butter Boy," with its risque lyrics out of the gate (and, no, you don't remember it):

One of the more interesting tracks from the Nick Cave movie is "White Elephant," from his album "Carnage":

 

And don't forget us! The dirge "Albuquerque":