From Cradle to Grave

 

PLAYGROUND (B+) - One of the most harrowing, emotionally wrenching movies you can watch involves a brother and sister hanging out on a playground. There, bullies welcome them to surrender their innocence forever.

Little Maya Vanderbeque is a revelation as Nora, who can't be more than 7, but who anchors the core of this movie, appearing in just about every scene as she worries over older brother Abel (Gunter Duret) as he is relentlessly (at times violently) picked on by other students. Abel tells Nora not to blab to their single dad, and the overwhelmed teachers are mostly useless to address just one of the many dumpster fires occurring each day.

Nora is stern-faced and resolute, determined to be a proper student and sister, and you can practically see the scales falling from her eyes in real time. Writer-director Laura Wandel, in her feature debut, dives in to the melee guerrilla-style, shooting from Nora's eye level, often over her shoulder a la the Dardennes. The camera crowds the two siblings, and adults are mostly out of frame, even when they speak (a bit of a nod to Peanuts cartoons). There is an urgency here that can be captivating but also exhausting. We get very little resolution of any sort, in favor of a parade of assaults to Abel's body and dignity.

Nora also must process some moral issues, not only dealing with her father's apparent helplessness but also with Abel's own indiscretions. It's a lot to take in. Little Nora is an underdog to root for but even over the course of just 72 minutes here, you wonder if anyone has the stamina to get through this semester, let alone the rest of this kid's school career. And the rest of her life.

THE CATHEDRAL (D) - Well, someone got a participation trophy in film school! This apparently biographical study of a Long Island family over 20 years is about as amateurish as a major release can get. It looks cheap; it is arty in all the tritest ways; and the kids at the center of it all (an avatar for debut writer-director Ricky D'Ambrose) is a whiny little drip.

The story (needlessly convoluted from the start) revolves around little Jesse and his drab horror of having to deal with divorced parents -- and a lot of dull adults. His father is kind of a jerk who is always broke, and his mom is a nice enough woman with not much of a personality sketched out for her. D'Ambrose covers 20 years in 87 minutes, and while he is meticulous in casting four similar-looking dweebs to play Jesse from toddlerhood to 20s, he barely bothers to age (or de-age) the father or any other characters in any appreciable way.

Nearly everything here is a misstep. A monotone narrator vomits information from the start in a manner that is too hard to follow. D'Ambrose takes chin-stroking pauses, training his camera on inanimate objects for long stretches -- he is particularly fond of rugs and plates of half-eaten meals. A lot of the dialogue is incidental, often drowned out by the narration, as if entire scenes were place-holders for when the real movie would start shooting. The movie is cluttered with clips of obscure TV commercials and random news events (gee, who can ever forget where they were on 9/11 or the day they heard Gary Condit was boinking an intern who later ended up dead?).

"The Cathedral" (I don't get the title) reminded me of the mind-numbingly tedious Matthew Porterfield wank "Hamilton" from 2006, in which we literally got to sit and watch someone mow their lawn for about five minutes. (And also, at the other end of the spectrum, "Tarnation," with footage self-curated by someone who truly had an absolutely fucked-up childhood.) Here, D'Ambrose is smitten with the detritus of his childhood, whether it is a race-car set or the day his dad came home and buried his head in his hands out of frustration. But, believe me, all of this stuff is beyond mundane to the rest of us. Just because, as a cherished little boy, you once got a video-camera for your birthday doesn't mean you were destined to grow up to be a minimally competent filmmaker.

One-Sentence Reviews

 

We are always wary of extended ledes, especially those with long interruptions mid-sentence, but Manohla Dargis, in her review of "Blonde," makes art out of this 77-word opening sentence in the New York Times:

Given all the indignities and horrors that Marilyn Monroe endured during her 36 years — her family tragedies, paternal absence, maternal abuse, time in an orphanage, time in foster homes, spells of poverty, unworthy film roles, insults about her intelligence, struggles with mental illness, problems with substance abuse, sexual assault, the slavering attention of insatiable fans — it is a relief that she didn’t have to suffer through the vulgarities of “Blonde,” the latest necrophiliac entertainment to exploit her.

Metacritic pegs this blistering pan at a 20 out of 100, and that's being generous.

Sitting Here in Limbo

 

MURINA (B+) - Teenage Julija chafes at her dead-end life under her bullying father and subservient mother, a family that gets by on the Croatian coast spear-fishing, mostly for eels (the "murina" of the title). An old business colleague of her father's is about to visit, and her father plans to scam the visitor by trying to sell him a cursed island for a housing development.

Gracija Filipovic is arresting as Julija, and not merely because she spends most of the movie in a form-fitting one-piece diving suit. As the conscience of the film, she is bored, restless and, at times, disruptive. She envies the young people vacationing with abandon along the coast. The handsome visitor, Javier (Cliff Curtis), is her mom's former lover, and Julija's dad, Ante (Leon Lucev), will take his marital bragging rights to the grave. The mom, Nela (Danica Curcic), is a sad former model who just doesn't have it in her to escape the oppressive domestic situation that she and her daughter are trapped in (the daughter is literally confined leading up to the climax).

Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, who co-wrote the screenplay, debuts as a director, and her camera is sometimes as restless as Julija is, although she knows how to pause and linger over the beauty of the Dalmatian coast (especially in the elegant lingering final zoom-out shot). And she refuses to fall into traps of convention. She presents Julija as a petulant child, intent on using Javier as a vehicle for escape. 

While Julija is shapely and knowing, her story arc does not go where you might expect. This is not a cheesy '80s sex romp, in any sense of the word. It is smart and willing to take a few risks with the plot. The script, co-written by fellow newcomer Frank Graziano, could have been a little tighter, with more meat on its bones; but there's no denying that Kusijanovic and her star Filipovic are a compelling team.

A LOVE SONG (A-minus) - There's something about a spare love song that can make you ache yet comfort you at the same time. There are movies like that, too. "A Love Song" plays out like the plot device it leans on the most: a random mournful song, snaking across the desert through the static of a portable radio, barely there at times.

Leather-faced Dale Dickey ("Winter's Bone") plays Faye, years into mourning her partner, living in a cramped trailer on a campground somewhere in Colorado, where she has a view of a lake (where she fishes crawdads) and a snow-capped mountain. She resembles a zombie as she sleepwalks through her days. She has exactly two books -- one blue, one red; one's about birds and one's about the stars; one for day, one for night. She awakens by greeting whichever bird is calling out that morning. The movie's opening camera shots alight on hardy weeds and flowers surviving in dry, cracked soil, and that's a pretty obvious metaphor for Faye's survival skills despite the emotional desolation of her life.

She is waiting on a visitor, not sure if he'll show up in the middle of nowhere. But we know (from the previews, at least) that he will, right at the one-third mark. It's an old high school friend, Lito, played by Wes Studi, pretty craggy himself these days. Will the chiseled Lito -- also a widower (and similarly broken) -- make a connection with rough-hewn Faye? As they say these days, it's complicated.

This is the assured feature debut of writer-director Max Walker-Silverman. He is confident in Dickey's ability to draw in the viewer while doing virtually nothing. Sure, there  is plenty of parched pathos, but he also tosses in a few side stories that offer droll comic relief. There is a friendly mailman; a nearby lesbian couple that invite her to dinner; and a bizarre family, four men and a girl straight out of a Coen brothers lark, who politely request that Faye move her trailer so's they can dig up their father and relocate his body to a new resting place that doesn't have an oil derrick spoiling his eternal vista.

Faye likes to play roulette with the dial on her portable radio, and she always lands on a dusty old tune that imparts just the perfect message. It's a touch of magical realism, with an absurd echo to the castaways on "Gilligan's Island." Having loved and lost, she tells Lito, made her understand what all those songs were about. Movies are like that, too. Sometimes they randomly amble into your life and tug at your heart.

BONUS TRACKS

Dickey and Studi have a crude lo-fi duet to Greenwich Village folkie Michael Hurley's "Be Kind to Me":

Over the closing credits, "Slip Slide on By" by Valerie June:

Our unrelated title track, from Jimmy Cliff:

Soundtrack of Your Life: Where Are We, Again?

An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.

Date: September 17,2022, 10 a.m.

Place: Marriott Hotel in Uptown Albuquerque

Song:  "We Are Nowhere and It's Now"

Artist: Bright Eyes (with Emmylou Harris)

Irony Matrix: 4.1 out of 10

Comment: Hanging out with the nurses, technicians and support staff on a Saturday morning at their annual delegate convention. Not necessarily the go-to spot for grumpy nihilism, wondering out of the gate why someone would drink wine until they're blind. It's our boy Conor Oberst, with his head full of pesticide, the sobbing in his voice leavened by the maternal matter-of-factness of Emmylou Harris' controlled trills, she the stern yellow bird. We didn't stick around in the lobby long enough to sample the rest of this playlist, but god help the day-drinkers who survived this mid-morning kidney punch in a cold shower. We're wide awake, it's morning!

BONUS TRACK

A moving live version of Oberst's "Landlocked Blues" at the 1:08:46 mark:

Retrospective: Wilder, With Lemmon

 A pair of post-peak Billy Wilder pictures:

AVANTI (1972) (A-minus) - Working at a leisurely European summer pace, Billy Wilder riffs for more than two hours, luxuriating not only in the beauty of the island of Ischia but in the banter and natural chemistry between his two stars, Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills, who may have herein invented the modern meet-cute.

Wilder and longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond dampen and space out their usual zingers to dial things down from screwball (see below) to meditative. They unleash the story of a businessman, Wendell Armbruster Jr. (Lemmon), who travels to the small island off the Neapolitan coast to collect the remains of his father, the family company's CEO who died in a car crash during his summer vacation. On the same boat from the mainland is an Englishwoman, Pamela Piggott (Mills), who, coincidentally, is headed to the same luxury hotel to arrange for the return of the body of her mother, who also died in a car crash.

Turns out, his father and her mother had been having an abiding affair and would meet each summer for a month. They had been the toast of the town, beloved by all. Wearing a black armband, the hotel manager, Carlo Carlucci (a fabulous Clive Revill), tends to Wendell's every need and indulgence, as if the son were the father reincarnated. The valet Bruno (Gianfranco Barra) is also quite solicitous, although he has ulterior motives, as he connives to return to America after having gotten kicked out on his first try at immigration.

All of this is elegantly rendered. You will recognize an early template for Wes Anderson (especially "The Grand Budapest Hotel") and Mike White's recent "The White Lotus" -- with their whimsy and banter and fussiness -- but also a profound humanism that echoes the best of Krzysztof Kieslowski's mellow morality plays. It's as if Billy Wilder, in the twilight of his career, has grown downright wistful. He revels in the '70s contrast between hyperactive Americans and the lazy European locals.

Lemmon and Mills are perfectly pitched and matched as the brash rich American and the proper, humble Brit. She has a complex about her weight (barely noticeable to modern audiences), though it's her sweetness that wins him over. They re-create their parents' dinner routine and sunrise swim, and she brings flowers to the morgue when they go identify the bodies. The extended scene at the morgue is a microcosm of all the film's delights. That includes the bureaucrat who stops by to execute the paperwork with the efficiency of a surgeon and the flair of a magician. 

Wendell, as the boorish clod perpetually in a hurry to get back for a funeral in just a few days, is frustrated at every turn, often by someone's extended lunch break. He's the Ugly American at sea in another less accommodating culture. (A running gag has him grimacing every time he sips some muddy coffee.) The plot includes an extortion attempt by the family that owns the vineyard that the car crashed through, causing damages. Wilder is in full command of the remaining plot twists until he has teed up the perfect ending. His stars have charm to burn. And their story, in the end, is quite moving.

IRMA LA DOUCE (1963) (B-minus) - There's screwball and then there's just plain silly. This anachronistic farce from the pre-Beatlemania era is a bizarre throwback to the early days of Hollywood. Billy Wilder re-teams Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine (subbing in after Marilyn Monroe died) from "The Apartment" three years earlier. And while they still have a magical chemistry, this off-key Parisian romp is too nonsensical and too long to survive as any sort of classic.

It also comes with an old-fashioned idiot plot: Lemmon is Nestor, a by-the-book young officer who fails to grasp the art of looking the other way when it comes to gambling and prostitution, and after he predictably loses his job he falls for MacLaine's stylish streetwalker Irma. He then concocts a scheme to keep Irma off the streets by concocting an elaborate disguise as a wealthy Englishman who pays her to be his exclusive consort. Of course, she doesn't recognize him, and wacky hijinks ensue. (Lemmon is a hoot at times as a stereotypical Limey twit.)

Lou Jacobi as a bar owner called Moustache is the ringer here, facilitating Nestor's ruse. (And he is the keeper of the running gag, ending long conversations jags with "But that's another story.") Everything gets jumbled and a little too confusing. Things drag on for nearly two and a half hours. Lemmon and MacLaine are entrancing, as always, but this one dies in a ditch between nostalgia and silliness, between Ziegfeld and the Zucker brothers.

BONUS TRACK

The music from "Avanti" is lovely, with a theme song that calls to mind "You Belong to Me" ("See the pyramids across the isle ..."):

R.I.P., Jean-Luc Godard

 

The titan of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, died this week at 91. Variety and the New York Times have obits. He was a true iconoclast, to the very end.

We have scanned his catalog, old and new, in the past decade. Here are a few examples:

• "Masculin Feminin" from 1966. Our conclusion: "Merely above-average Godard from his '60s peak era."
• "Film Socialisme," a more recent offering from 2013. "The reds and blues, like a digitally enhanced, high-def version of some of Godard's '60s classic shots, are stunning, at times mesmerizing. Beyond that, I'm not old or intellectual enough to appreciate whatever the French master is going for here, if he has a point at all."
• "Contempt" from 1963. "Godard frolics with those patented blues and reds, and he revels in the sartorial choices of his unhappy couple. His confident camera captures movie sets and majestic natural beauty."
• "Goodbye to Language," his penultimate film (2014). "God bless Godard. I haven't completely understood a movie of his in decades. But I'm still drawn to his technicolor diatribes. Here we have another script slathered with philosophical -- or pseudo-philosophical -- mutterings while splashed with mind-altering neon primary colors." 

We'll revisit more titles in the coming months. For now, in memoriam, we turn, finally, to his last work:

THE IMAGE BOOK (2018) (C+) - The crowning visual and philosophical achievement of a cinematic pioneer? Or the bitter ramblings of an old man slipping away from a fractured world that has passed him by and disappointed him? This ambitious collage of images is a supreme challenge to comprehend, but I'm sure there are some out there whose devotion to it will be rewarded.

Godard's evolution was toward dense, disorienting, inscrutable polemics, splashing around in dizzying montages. Here, title cards repeat, and blackouts come fast and furiously. He alternates between bleaching the images and over-saturating them with color. Subtitles drop off randomly, so some dialogue is missed. Godard is daring you to comprehend his "story" or simply doesn't care if you follow the hopscotch of his thoughts.

Themes of war and violence (results of capitalism?) permeate. Many figures are seen crawling, trapped in subjugation. Glimpses of trains suggest freedom and opportunity. (The New Wavers were fans of John Ford and the American West, after all.) The final third is devoted to the Arab world (from mythical flying carpets to the horrors of ISIS); at one point Godard does a deep dive into the minutiae of the plot of an obscure novel. His sympathies lie with these people, dismissed (in his mind) by Hollywood that uses Arab culture as "primarily scenery and landscapes." (His sympathies were clear in 1960, when he explored the Algerian occupation with "Le Petit Soldat," banned by France at the time.)

Still, relentlessly, the images flash by, incessantly. The aspect ratio jitters frequently. Thoughts drift or are cut off. The clips -- old movies, newsreel footage -- rarely ring a bell. Repeated viewings or scholarly study might chip away at the meaning. Maybe Godard is toying with us. Maybe he was just playing at a whole nother level.

But what does it matter? Do my words here even have meaning? Here are two positive, thoughtful examinations of the movie: from Slant magazine, and from Roger Ebert's site, where Matt Zoller Seitz likens Godard to "an old and easily distracted uncle who keeps changing the subject" and sums up by lamenting, "I felt like I was watching the entire history of civilization, and one of its most important filmmakers, fragmenting and imploding on the screen."

BONUS TRACK

And a friend recommended this iconic scene from "Band of Outsiders," with Anna Karina and the boys:

I Want to See the Bright Lights

 How about a double feature staring Kentucker Audley, the mumbliest of what's left of Mumblecore?

STRAWBERRY MANSION (B-minus) - This absurdist sci-fi tale looks and feels cheap throughout, playing around with an interesting idea but not taking it very far. Kentucker Audley plays a federal agent named Preble whose job it is to carry out the mission of the government to audit people's dreams (all of which are now recorded and cluttered with advertisements) and calculate taxes on the contents of those dreams.

No-nonsense Preble, dressed like Joe Friday as a Mormon missionary, stumbles on the strawberry-colored house of an old woman mellifluously named Arabella Isadora (Penny Fuller, who played good-time Sally in "All the President's Men"). Bella never upgraded from videotapes, hundreds of which are scattered around her cluttered mansion. She invites Preble to stay in a guest room while he slogs through the backlog. The retrofitted contraption he uses to view the analog collection involves a device that looks like a giant medieval-knight's helmet that covers his head and rests on his shoulders, making him look like a 1950s robot. (It's a nod to the steampunk ethic of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil.")

Preble has his own recurring dreams, which mainly take place in a room the color of strawberry sherbet and which are menaced by ads. Bella shares with him a special helmet that she and her late husband had designed, a device that can disable the advertisements. (A plot twist will introduce Reed Birney ("Mass") as a link to the nefarious dream invaders who are profiting.)

Preble delves into Bella's recurring dreams, which involve her as a young woman. He not only enters the dreams as a hologram and observes, but he also begins to interact with the young version of Bella (an affecting Grace Glowicki). Visual lunacy ensues, as is common in dreams. But while the trippy visuals are fun, they too often bog down in outright silliness that take the story nowhere. We're not fans of CGI, but that would be preferable to the pantomime characters here romping around in big puppet heads. 

Audley cooked this up with Albert Birney (Reed's nephew), but their confection is only half-baked. It is not only part "Brazil" but also part "H.R. Pufnstuf" (and too much of the latter). After early promise, the story meanders and eventually fizzles.

CHRISTMAS, AGAIN (2015) (B) - Once again, not much happens here in this morose drama from journeyman Charles Poekel about a melancholy Christmas-tree salesman in Brooklyn. But Audley draws you in with his twisted angst, as the quaintly named Noel, who is mourning a recent failed relationship and perhaps getting involved with a troubled woman who crosses his path.

Poekel revels in the minutiae of the grind of a sidewalk tree salesman, from the rote recitation of types of pines to the lopping off of the bottom of the trunk after a sale to the sweeping up of needles. Noel lives in the trailer parked on the lot, with apparently not much of a life to speak of. 

One day he helps a young woman, Lydia (Hannah Gross), from being preyed upon by a homeless man while she is passed out drunk. He shepherds her to his trailer, where he is a gentleman. She will continue to pop up around the lot (as will a jealous boyfriend), but some viewers might be frustrated by what little happens to them (or anyone else). 

The colorful characters come and go (including not a few insufferable yuppies), and as Christmas Eve nears, Noel makes a few tenuous connections, culminating in some last-minute deliveries that jolt the movie out of its cramped confines (and out of Noel's cobwebbed brain). An appearance by Andrea Suarez Paz is a much-needed boost, as her character offers at least a glimpse of hope.

Poekel's visual palette is pure indie gloom. He is partial to angled close-ups and disorienting out-of-focus colored lights. This art-house workout is one big sullen mood (it's refreshingly non-festive), and Audley is the man to pull it off.

BONUS TRACK

Our title track, from Richard and Linda Thompson:

Marissa Nadler with "All Love Must Die," during a key scene in "Christmas, Again":

Doc Watch: Decepticon

 

MY OLD SCHOOL (A-minus) - What fun. With vigor and good humor, Jono McLeod looks back at his private school in Scotland in the early 1990s and does a deep dive into the bizarre con perpetrated by one of his former classmates. 

Do yourself a favor and read nothing about the background of the incident at Beardsen Academy involving "Brandon Lee," who shows up out of the blue, mid-semester, and takes the place by storm -- showing off his broad knowledge of subjects and landing the lead in the school musical, "South Pacific." But something about him is obviously off. It is apparent that he is running a scam, but the details that are unpacked here are what make this so entertaining.

McLeod himself perpetrates a bit of sleight of hand himself here.  It turns out that Brandon Lee would not appear on camera -- as quite a few of his old classmates do -- but would only lend his voice to an interview. To compensate, McLeod makes an inspired decision:  He hires actor Alan Cumming to sit at a school desk and lip-sync Lee's words. It's a clever meta touch, buoyed by Cumming's effortless charm. McLeod also hires an animation crew headed by Rory Lowe to create "Daria"-style old-school cartoon re-creations that are a delight. 

Both gimmicks work, improbably. They fit neatly into the loose, giddy production in which McLeod and his ex-classmates pick through the mystery of what happened. Some of them are still a bit baffled by exactly what went down and how, and to this day different versions of the urban legend persist. 

McLeod presents his classmates mostly in pairs, and that seems to loosen them up and show off their camaraderie. They are all in their 40s now and clearly still chucked to be revisiting this tale, which sells itself. They bring unique perspectives and personalities that help round out the proceedings. One classmate in particular gives Lee credit for being a true friend, even an inspiration. One teacher who played a pivotal role in the original events shows up, at times to take his lumps.

Period songs help revive those comparatively carefree days. (Be warned, you might end up humming "Macarena" for a few days.) News clips slowly take precedence as the film progresses, as the storytelling evolves from the incredible (mostly animated) to the real (via news reports). It is an assured method of wisely unspooling this fun story. 

Once the jig is up, the final half hour drags at times. Fifteen minutes shorter and this one might have been perfect.

BONUS TRACK

The movie's title track plays over the credits, sung by 60s sensation Lulu, who also voices a character. Here is Steely Dan's ever-catchy original:

New to the Queue

 ... caution to the wind ...

It might be fun to hit the IMAX for the curated footage of David Bowie in "Moonage Daydream."

A look back at the life of author Patricia Highsmith, based on diaries and notebooks (recently excerpted in the New Yorker), "Loving Highsmith."

A debut feature tracks nerds who live for comic books, "Funny Pages."

A documentary about a model village set up in 1967 to train police and National Guard personnel in ways to quell urban uprisings, "Riotsville, USA."

In her follow-up to "The Lure" (holy crap!), Agnieszka Smoczynska dramatizes the true story of sisters who will communicate only with each other, "The Silent Twins."

The Sorrow and the Pity

 Digging through the queue for more titles that have lingered there a long time.

YOU KILL ME (2007) (A-minus) - Credit, first and foremost, must go to writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely for their meticulous script about an alcoholic hitman who is sent from Buffalo to San Francisco to dry out while the Polish crew he has left behind in upstate New York faces extinction against the other ethnic gangs.

It is upon that foundation that Ben Kingsley kills it as down-on-his-luck Frank, buoyed by a brash younger woman, Laurel, brought to sarcastic life by Tea Leoni. They have a Tracy-Hepburn snap to their interactions. Then throw in a fine supporting cast -- Bill Pullman as a sleazy realtor who keeps an eye on Frank; Luke Wilson as Frank's AA sponsor; Philip Baker Hall as the beleaguered head of the Polish family; and good ol' Dennis Farina as the swaggering Irish mob boss. They all are in on the fun.

It's a delicious mix helmed by John Dahl, the onetime neo-noir darling ("Red Rock West," "The Last Seduction"), who paces this to near-perfection. Frank gets a temporary job at a mortuary, where he has his meet-cute with Lauren. He struggles with sobriety and she puts up with his shortcomings in a city where it's tough to find eligible straight men. 

The writers Markus and McFeely (one grew up in Buffalo, the other in the Bay Area) share the quirks of their hometowns and show off a subtle touch with sly one-liners. When Frank meets Wilson's Tom at the snack table at an AA meeting, Tom asks Frank if it's his first time, and Frank quips back, "No, I've had cookies before." When Frank, half-joking, asks Lauren a few days after their first date if she's pregnant, she replies, "Not unless you put something in my egg roll. And then put the egg roll in my--". The writing team would go on to a career in the Marvel universe, an unfortunate waste of banter.

Kingsley inhabits this pitiful hitman, who doesn't regret the assassinations he has executed, but merely the sloppy way he did them while drunk.  Leoni goes toe-to-toe with Sir Ben and holds her own. Pullman is a one-man Greek chorus, tossing off oblique observations in an off-kilter dem-bums patois. It all builds nicely to a denouement back in Buffalo, as it's inevitable that Frank will eventually return to try to save the gang. In the hands of Dahl (who would go on to slum mostly in the TV industry), this is sharp storytelling.

MY JOY (2010) (B-minus) - I'm not embarrassed to say that I paused this movie halfway through in order to look up the plot on Wikipedia so that I could figure out what the hell was going on. (I kept the page open to help guide me through to the film's landing.) It's a tough story to follow, with limited signposts; the main actor changes his look rather dramatically halfway through, and I honestly couldn't tell it was him.

This is ostensibly the story of a humble truck driver, Georgy (Viktor Nemets), who gets knocked off course and goes into a physical and mental tailspin. Early on, while hauling flour somewhere in Russia, he picks up an old man (Vladimir Golovin) who tells him a story, aided by flashbacks, of getting ripped off by a fellow soldier during the last days of World War II in Germany.  Both Germany (during WWII) and the old man (in the present) will eventually return to the story. Characters will have multiple connections. Georgy will get attacked and be struck dumb and be kept by a woman until she sells off his truck and abandons him. 

This tale from a dozen years ago sprouted from the mind of Sergei Loznitsa (who alternates between documentaries like "State Funeral" and features like "Donbass"). It is a harrowing tale of a man in a mundane spiral. If you don't mind the narrative and visual challenges, there is an appeal to both the drone and the jerkiness of the plot, the hypnotic effect of this serpentine two-hour journey. The best scenes are the bookends involving two military guards at a traffic checkpoint that seems to be in the middle of nowhere. Not much happens in the opening scene, and then everything happens when we return for the final scene. It all ends with a chilling, memorable fade to black.

BONUS TRACKS

"You Kill Me" has an eclectic soundtrack, heavy on the doo-wop oldies. Devotchka croons over the opening credits with "Vengo! Vengo!":

Geraint Watkins chirps through "My Happy Day":