The kids from Dehd stopped in Albuquerque earlier this month and eked out an hourlong show. Rock concerts are packaged like food products now; instead of raising the price, you shrink the amount in the box. The trio in Dehd earned $25 per head and didn't have to stay out much past 10 o'clock.
They put on a fine show to a cozy, appreciative crowd. Wikipedia is all over the map trying to define their sound: "reverb-heavy guitar, blunt drumming, and the use of idiosyncratic vocals, which include drawls, call-and response, yelping, and frequent use of counter-melody ... but additional comparisons can be made to wall of sound, surf rock and dream pop." Think post-punk Jesus & Mary Chain at 16 speed. Try prehistoric "Munsters." For the first time, I got a lo-fi Del Fuegos vibe. Fellow travelers with the Growlers.
Jason Balla, with the day-glo lime guitar, hopscotched around the stage gingerly as he daintily plucked his spare notes. Emily Kempf has taken over many of the vocals on recent releases. And Eric McGrady is a standup guy on drums (he literally stands up while he plays, like Victor did in the Violent Femmes).
Samples from the evening include the early track "Lucky":
They charged out of the gates with their latest hit, "Bad Love":
Here's a hunk of them live, as a sampler, on KEXP:
They did a two-song encore; maybe they got OT for that.
BONUS TRACK
Speaking of .... the late-great Del Fuegos, the pride of the '80s, with "When the News Is on" and its enduring metaphor: "Sometimes love is like a shoe; you run around a lot and then it falls apart":
And one of the great rock couplets from "It's Alright": "I love you baby and I love your cat / I love the way you look in my fireman’s hat":
SUNDOWN (B+) - Tim Roth is compelling as a catatonic rich man whiling away his time on a beach in Mexico, ignoring a family crisis back home in London. Like the fish gasping for air on a boat in the opening scene, Roth's Neil is suffocating under weight of his family and wealth and perhaps other concerns.
When a family matriarch dies, Neil conveniently misplaces his passport and must send his family members back to London without him. He proceeds to hole up at a seedy hotel, dip his toes in the water and start sleeping with a local bodega proprietor. He makes no effort to return for the funeral.
When the family (and the family lawyer) eventually return to retrieve him, our perspectives have shifted about what exactly is going on. (There will be a final dramatic twist (among others) near the end -- explaining Neil's state of mind -- but it is pretty well telegraphed in one of the first scenes.) Roth is delightfully numb and pretty heartless; he plays well off of Charlotte Gainsbourg as Alice, who is beyond frustrated with Neil.
Some viewers might tune out, lacking the patience for this poor little rich boy experiencing his first-world problems while the working class serves him buckets of beer or shares his bed. But there's something compelling about this relentless bout of depression, and it's intriguing to watch two heavyweight actors spar together. And the final third features some clever, compact storytelling -- and gritty photography -- from Mexican writer-director Michel Franco in what feels like a breakthrough for a relatively young filmmaker.
FAST FORWARD THEATER
RUBBER (D+) (2011) - There's a fine line between absurd and stupid. This warped satire, which stars a loose tire, is mo' meta than meta.
Of course, this quirky concoction from Quentin Dupieux ("Keep an Eye Out," "Deerskin") can't just offer your ordinary average anthropomorphic whitewall -- no, this discarded hunk of rubber must also boast psycho-kinetic powers that it uses to blow up humans and various creatures. Cool.
And this is not just a traditional story about a little tire that could, but there is a self-referential B-plot involving an audience out in the desert watching the tire's journey. And then there's another meta layer on top of that featuring lectures on film history.
There are occasional amusements that you'd get out of any weird prop puppet -- the tire stops off at a motel and watches race-car driving on the television; it takes a shower. But none of the humans stand out. The police come off about as marginally funny as the C-team from "Reno 911." I fast-forwarded through some of the scenes of the tire just a-rollin' down the road, like a cowboy riding the trail in a spaghetti Western (an obvious influence here).
You could possibly spot potential in such an arch idea, perhaps a shot at clever absurdism, but the execution is flat and pointless.
BONUS TRACKS
From "Rubber," this R&B nugget, "Just Don't Want to Be Lonely" from Blue Magic:
Three documentaries from my old stomping grounds, two down, one to go ...
LET THE LITTLE LIGHT SHINE (A-minus) - This thoroughly uplifting documentary chronicles the fight by students, parents and administrators to keep their high-performing elementary school from being closed by the school district on behalf other residents of the gentrified South Loop of Chicago. It might instill faith in the next generation.
Filmmaker Kevin Shaw -- working with "Hoop Dreams" legend Steve James as executive producer -- embeds with the black residents of an evolving neighborhood as they battle to stop the school district from converting their amazing elementary school into a high school, a plan intended to appease the high-brow neighborhood newbies.
Elisabeth Greer, a mother of two young ones, is the leader of the group defending National Teachers Academy, which has essentially an A+ rating from CPS. Greer invites students to disrupt a neighborhood meeting, and the kids also shout down the school board at one meeting. Meantime, the principal -- a white man in a nearly all-black school -- proves himself to be a fearless leader.
The film is so assured and invigorating that you can't help but be enchanted and filled with hope as the campaign goes on, eventually ending up before the Illinois Supreme Court. No matter how this turns out (it helps not to know the outcome going in), your heart most certainly will swell with admiration for this grass-roots effort. It helps when Chance the Rapper shows up to champion the cause.
The main complaint here is that Shaw is in too much of a hurry to tell this story in 87 minutes. At times, images -- of Malcolm X quotes and other slogans -- fly by too quickly to be absorbed. It need not be so kinetic. Otherwise, this is storytelling that should bring a tear to your eye.
THE TORCH (C+) - This an interesting but non-essential visit with blues icon Buddy Guy, whose Legends nightclub has anchored Chicago's South Loop since the 1990s. It is an unfortunate melding of two stories that drags out over close to two hours.
One story is the history of Guy, who is the main remaining link to the original bluesmen, like Muddy Waters and B.B. King. Guy is a fun storyteller, and he can be both rambling and engaging as he spins out memories for the camera. He also can still wield a mean guitar.
The other story involves Guy passing "the torch" to a new generation, mainly Quinn Sullivan, who was a child prodigy before he turned 10 and is now in his 20s. Sullivan has incredible technical skills but none of the soul that emanates from Guy. Too much of the film is devoted to Sullivan and songwriter Tom Hambridge, a key collaborator of both blues guitarists. Anyone who is not Buddy Guy in this movie is only marginally interesting, and that includes Carlos Santana, Jonny Lang and Susan Tedeshi. The film has a hint of White Savior complex.
Not only was it completed before COVID hit, but it also was shot over an extended period of time, making it seem dated and at times lacking in continuity. Guy's music is great. He deserved his own documentary.
PREVIEW
And we are awaiting a wider/streaming release of "Punch 9 for Harold Washington," a chronicle of Chicago's beloved first black mayor:
BONUS TRACKS
Our title track, the Freddie King version:
Buddy Guy, from the '90s, with John Hiatt's "Feels Like Rain." I always smile at his interpretation of the phrase "button down the hatch":
Buddy Guy with his former musical companion Junior Wells live from 1974:
HOLD ME TIGHT (A-minus) - I can't think of another movie-going experience where I almost walked out after 20 minutes but decided to stay and wound up finding the film to be brilliant. Actor Mathieu Amalric goes behind the camera, with impressive skills, to spin this densely constructed story of the wanderings of a woman at the end of her rope who is shown walking out on her husband and kids in the middle of the night.
Amalric, adapting a play, intentionally stirs confusion about what is exactly happening and when, mixing flashbacks in with current events. It takes a while to congeal, and for the longest time, you wonder if Clarisse (Vicky Krieps from "Bergman Island") is nothing more than a miserable absentee mother on some sort of bender. While she pinballs around, Marc (Arieh Worthalter) tends to their little girl (a piano phenom) and younger boy.
Once an equilibrium is reached -- when the viewer may start to catch on about what is really going on here -- a rhythm sets in. During the middle of the film, we get a break from the mother (Krieps can be hard to take during the first half but is redeemed in the second half), and the focus on the father and children is a welcome respite. Meantime, Amalric's visuals and narrative tricks build momentum. The driving piano interludes that include Beethoven's "Fur Elise" -- young Anne-Sophie Bowen-Chatet is wonderful at either playing the keyboards or mimicking the act -- coil the tension a little tighter each time.
Some might be disoriented until the cathartic final scenes. Don't worry. It's OK to sit back and experience Amalric's visual dalliances that both underscore and soften Clarisse's agonizing journey. After 97 minutes, you can just wring yourself out.
BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE (C-minus) - Talk about bailing .... No matter which side of the blade you pick here, both sides are dull. This is the third recent collaboration between writer-director Claire Denis and star Juliette Binoche, and it falls somewhere between the sly, amusing relationship drama "Let the Sunshine in" and the dispiriting space wank "High Life."
Binoche is Sara, partnered with Jean (our guy Vincent Lindon), who is about to go back in business with Sara's ex, Francois (Gregoire Colin), whom Sara has never gotten over. That's an acceptable premise. But there is no explanation why Denis spends just under two hours spinning her wheels with these three petulant middle-age adults.
The dialogue is both repetitive and overly expositive. Jean is an ex-jock who has done time in prison for some white-collar misdeed, and much of his story is sidetracked by the B-plot of his troubled teenaged son being raised by Jean's mother (the always welcome Bulle Ogier from "Belle Toujours"), a thread that goes absolutely nowhere. Meantime, Sara nags Jean about doing business with Francois, Jean nags her back about continually bringing up Francois, and Francois toys with both of them.
Everyone is annoying. Sara, for no reason, talks out loud to herself about how turned on she is about the thought of seeing Francois again. Denis returns ad nauseam to scenes of Sara in bed, a bare shoulder the main focus. Only a knock-down drag-out argument between Binoche and Lindon late in the film provides grit and realism. Otherwise, these three behave like high schoolers, and watching them act like spoiled brats is not very much fun.
BONUS TRACK
The spare, haunting "Musica Ricercata" provides a taste of the jangled mood Amalric sets in "Hold Me Tight":
A documentary about a grandfather in Mexico who builds a house next to his own, hoping to eventually lure back home his descendants who migrated to the U.S., "What We Leave Behind."
A look at Ernest Withers, the photojournalist who chronicled the civil rights movement and happened to also be an FBI informant, "The Picture Taker."
Martin McDonagh ("Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri") re-teams with his "In Bruges" stars Brendon Gleeson and Colin Farrell for friendship tussle "The Banshees of Inisherin."
A documentary about the sexual politics of cinema, "Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power."
MATEWAN (1987) (A) - John Sayles emerged into the mainstream with this deeply heartfelt tribute to the 1920 coal-mine strike in West Virginia that erupted into violence. Dour Chris Cooper holds the center as Joe, an out-of-town union organizer who must make and keep peace between the striking workers and the scabs -- mostly Italians and Blacks -- lured to the company town by the mine owner.
Sayles -- emerging from indie status after directing "The Return of the Secaucus Seven" and "Brother From Another Planet" (and a few Bruce Springsteen videos) -- teams with cinematographer Haskell Wexler to create a gorgeous period piece, a languorous hymn to the rural working class. You know that Sayles is on the side of the workers, but he refuses to turn either side into a cartoon.
James Earl Jones maintains the moral compass as a character named Few Clothes, who helps broker the deal between his fellow scabs and the union. David Strathairn is the no-nonsense sheriff whose sympathies are obvious, and Kevin Tighe oozes smarm as the out-of-town employer enforcer. These characters slowly wind their way toward the inevitable violent showdown, wonderfully choreographed by Sayles and his crew.
The dialogue here is sharp and spare. Touches of verisimilitude lend gravitas. West Virginia bluegrass legend Hazel Dickens shows up at church services and funerals to wail a couple of traditional laments (plus a song written by Sayles). Cooper's Joe forms a bond with a local innkeeper played by Mary McDonnell, and it thankfully is one based on respect and not lust.
Sayles stretches this a quarter hour past the two-hour mark, but it never drags. His narrative is deep and rich. His upstate New York roots don't clash with the blue-collar sentiments of his script. This is mature filmmaking from an era that had more patience for nuanced storytelling.
THE HIRED HAND (1971) (B) - Peter Fonda mopes throughout this minor-key western that he wrote and directed, starring as a man caught between a deep friendship and the family he left behind about seven years earlier. He is lucky to have Warren Oates on hand to keep this watchable.
Fonda is too often enamored of creating artistic visual shots of the New Mexico sky and landscape (it was shot around White Sands), as if showing off as a director rather than tying the visuals into his storytelling. The story itself is sparse. Fonda's Harry has been drifting through the Southwest for years now with his buddy Arch (Oates), but after a third member of their crew is shot dead by a jealous husband, Harry and Arch head back to the place Harry left, to his wife and the child he barely knew.
This makes for an awkward emotional triangle during the middle of the film, and Harry at some point will be forced to choose between Arch and his wife, Hannah (played with stoic pride by Verna Bloom, who would go on to play Dean Wormer's wife in "Animal House"). While the antics here are essentially chaste and fully platonic, it's not a stretch to say that this film might have planted a few seeds about how two men can connect out on the range, and it might have served as a germ of an idea for "Brokeback Mountain." Harry and Arch are not ashamed about the deep bond they share, though they rarely acknowledge it.
Besides those glimmers of emotional depth, the narrative is pretty dry, and Harry can be quite the cipher across 90 lazy minutes. (That's not unusual for a neo-Western that shares DNA with, say, "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid," from two years later.) Fonda's co-stars here bail him out, each filling in the man's blanks.
BONUS TRACKS
Here is Hazel Dickens, from the early moments of "Matewan":
And, finally our title track. Because the Dire Straits album "Brothers in Arms" still traumatizes us to the point that we can't bear to link to it, let alone listen to it, we'll sub in the band's previous release, the EP "Extended Dance Play," with four snappy songs. "Ah, the things that I could do ... if I had you.":
Brett Morgen, so compelling with his documentary about Kurt Cobain ("Montage of Heck") and deft with his biography "Jane," now curates footage of David Bowie. And we are reminded that his early work includes one of our favorites, the ribald Robert Evans memoir "The Kid Stays in the Picture," 20 years ago.
MOONAGE DAYDREAM (B+) - This two-hour-plus video montage captures the unique essence of David Bowie, even if it is overwhelming in its otherness at times. This is a collage that shuns a conventional narrative -- no talking heads, no narrator (besides the voice of Bowie himself at times), no chronology of album released.
Director Brett Morgen skews toward his Cobain biography "Montage of Heck," exploring the soul and creativity of a unique figure in rock history. The first third of the film leans heavy on Bowie's gender-bending Ziggy Stardust phase. It's a stark reminder of just how provocative Bowie was at the time, but Morgen overstays his welcome in the early 1970s before finally shifting gears and following his star to Berlin for the late '70s trilogy of recordings with Brian Eno.
At times the film overwhelms the senses, with a few too many split screens and sonic mixes that border on cacophony. The timeline barely extends past the "Let's Dance" phenomenon and the stadium stardom of the mid-'80s and the TV commercial romps with Tina Turner. Morgen portrays Bowie as a renaissance auteur; Bowie's personal artwork is particular fascinating to see.
It is clear that David Bowie never made a false step in public, always perfectly coifed and filmed from just the right angle. He didn't leave behind an unappealing clip. In the end, of course, this comes down to the music, and Morgen thankfully makes off-beat choices for the soundtrack, including some extended live performances. Like Bowie did, Morgen puts forth a gestalt, somewhat of a polemic that makes the argument for Bowie's pristine form of genius.
THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE (2002) (A) - This one holds up as a thoroughly entertaining romp through the lens of one of the true characters who bridged the eras between Hollywood's Golden Age and the American New Wave, Robert Evans. The Paramount producer's memoirs had been a hit among A-listers in the '90s, and Morgen and co-diretor Nanette Burstein take a visually giddy approach to this string of randy stories.
Evans, who died in 2019, failed as an actor in the '50s but stuck as a studio executive, having a major hand in "Rosemary's Baby," "Love Story," "Marathon Man," "Chinatown" and "The Godfather," all box-office smashes and cinematic touchstones to this day. He was briefly married to "Love Story" star Ali MacGraw (whom he condescendingly refers to as Snot Nose) but famously lost her to Steve McQueen. He eventually got swept up tangentially in a cocaine scandal and a murder investigation, crashing and burning at Paramount until he revived his career as a producer in the late '90s with middling retreads like "The Saint" and "The Out-of-Towners."
But his CV is almost beside the point here. Evans was a notorious storyteller, stretching the truth more than Jane Fonda's aerobics leotards of the era. (A title card to the movie announces: "“There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying.") He has a gravelly voice and tends to mumble, which makes it an inspired choice to use his voice from the audiobook as narration. (Stick around for the end credits to watch Dustin Hoffman's vulgar 1976 imitation of Evans.) Morgen and Burstein make photographs pop with animation effects, and they dig up some fascinating film footage, including outtakes from the set of "Rosemary's Baby."
Evans is a character, in every sense of the word. He is a throwback to the cigar-chomping blowhards of the past and the slick deal-makers who knew how to soothe the egos of movie stars and close cut-throat deals worth millions. He is full of himself but also self-deprecating. He's a hoot and a holler. Watching this movie is like doing lines with Jack Nicholson. Have a blast.
BONUS TRACKS
The Bowie doc's soundtrack is a refreshing mix of deep cuts and alternative takes (plus a live version of "Love Me Do" embedded in "The Jean Genie"). Here is "Hallo Spaceboy" from his mid-'90s limbo:
A more familiar track (and one of my favorites) is a single released from the "Lodger" LP in the middle of his Berlin period. "DJ" is where Brian Eno's production overlaps with Talking Heads of the same era.
The theme song that lilts through "The Kid Stays in the Picture" is Irving Berlin's wistful "What'll I Do":
GOD'S COUNTRY (A-minus) - You would be hard-pressed to find a movie as meticulously crafted as "God's Country." Every interior scene is carefully constructed and framed, and Julian Higgins' camera creeps across the wintry Montana landscape with a jaundiced eye.
At the center is Thandiwe Newton, as Sandra, an aggrieved woman who teaches at a local college and has moved into the rural home of her dead mother to tend to the old lady's belongings. At the school, she is on a faculty search committee, and her push for even a token amount of diversity falls on deaf ears. Meantime, a couple of good ol' boys like to park on her house's property when they go hunting. She politely asks them not to do it, and that only incites them.
Sandra is no shrinking violet, and so when the jerks keep leaving their red truck on her land, she tows it away. Things escalate quickly from there. A kindly sheriff's deputy, Gus (Jeremy Bobb), tries to mediate, but his efforts are mostly ineffective. The various trespasses -- both rural and academic -- have a grinding effect on Sandra, who, we come to learn, has a reason to be skeptical of Gus and police officers in general. She also is a New Orleans transplant who is haunted by memories of Hurricane Katrina and, you could call it, a flood of disturbing memories. Newton's placid mask occasionally belies Sandra's disgust at just about every turn, a woman of color marginalized in a white (at times literally snow-white) world.
Higgins wrote the film with Shaye Ogbonna (TV's "The Chi"), and the script is whipsmart, never quite going in a direction you think (or fear) it might go. (For much of the movie I was chanting to myself, "Please don't sleep with the deputy, please don't sleep with the deputy.") A possible rapprochement with one of the trespassers teases a possible Lifetime Channel breakthrough only to take a quick turn. Later, Sandra herself betrays a student just to make a point with the smarmy head of the faculty search committee.
Dread lurks around every corner. Even a shot of a pair of eggs boiling in a glass pan raises goosebumps. The cinematographer is Andrew Wheeler, who cut his teeth on pop music videos. A close-up shot of a photograph burning in a house fire is mesmerizing. Higgins made one previous feature, an obscure drama way back in 2004, but he has the confidence of an experienced auteur. He lets Newton carry the story along to a stunning conclusion that is experienced mostly off screen, only heard by the viewer, but no less shocking in its impact.
"God's Country" is a moving, minor-key rumination on the steady buildup, year after year, of the slights and offenses endured by a strong but emotionally bruised woman. And on the big screen, it is a wonder.
