The Best of 2023: Do Go On

A lot of things these days might make you wonder "Why go on?" Some are dramatic. Some are insignificant. Even if you do wonder, you usually just end up carrying on anyway.

Two major cineplexes have closed in Albuquerque in the past year or two, and I can't say that I miss them. There are fewer and fewer reasons to hit a multiplex these days, given the bloat that is usually on offer. Sure, it's fun to sit in a dark theater with strangers and experience art and entertainment. Maybe someday that won't be an option anymore. We'll cope. Or we'll go underground. The point is, I can't imagine I would miss 99 percent of the titles on the average marquee.

Last year I whined a bit about over-long "prestige" movies glutting the market, and there was more of the same this year. Too many movies run significantly longer than two hours, and too few deserve such an indulgence. And still more of our old stand-bys disappointed us. I can't believe so many old male filmmakers still command big budgets and rapt attention. For me it was a parade of hard passes. 

If you still have the patience for Martin Scorsese giving a dull history lesson for three and a half hours, you have my admiration and/or sympathy. Christopher Nolan pontificating melodramatically for three hours? Be my guest. Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix playing war games (2 hours, 38 minutes)? I'd rather live out my days in exile. A Bradley Cooper vanity project (2:09)? Did you see the trailer?! Michael Mann brought out of mothballs to cultivate another Italian accent from Adam Driver (2:09)? Maddon'. Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti stretching a '70s period piece to a relatively brief 2 hours, 13 minutes? ... Maybe?

I believe in life cycles, hitting about every seven years or so, and it feels like another moment to flip the script and purge some stodgy former favorites. I didn't think I'd walk out on a Wes Anderson film, but his "Asteroid City" was so pointless that I could not imagine staying seated in the theater and feeling myself slowly age. We clicked off Todd Haynes' "May December," even though it was streaming for mere pennies. Things culminated on New Year's Eve, when I forced myself to watch all of "Barbie" (interminable at two hours, but thankfully streaming it in my living room) and literally woke up sick the next day. (Surely a coincidence?) I was so insulted by what Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach considered to be clever and cutting edge that it made me rethink my relationship with film the past 30 years. That is not bubblegum hyperbole.

But, also like last year, that doesn't mean it was a bad year for movies. 2023 was OK. I settled on a cool dozen films to rank as the best of 2023, and I had to rely on the multiplex for only two of them -- the rest turning up either at my local arthouse cinema (check out my history of The Guild here) or via boutique streaming services like Mubi or Fandor. (Every title below gets a link to my original review.)

There was no doubt that "Past Lives" would end up at number one, and by a pretty wide margin. The debut from Celine Song, starring Greta Lee as an immigrant finally coming to terms with her childhood sweetheart, is 105 minutes of pristine storytelling, the perfect example of why movies exist. (It might be back in your local theater this week.) The next four on my list were alternately fun (Nicole Holofcener's picking apart of a marriage and Matt Johnson riffing on the BlackBerry phenomenon) and deeply moving (another immigrant tale, "Fremont," and the best depiction of male friendship I've ever seen, "The Eight Mountains"). 

More simple, mainstream fun was found in "Bottoms" (at the cineplex) and "M3GAN" (on DVD). Only one documentary made the Top 12, but a bunch of others get an honorable mention below. One fun discovery was a three-part documentary, uploaded to YouTube, about the old Comiskey Park in Chicago; a fan's passion project shows a fine command of archival footage.

I've tried as much as possible to help you find the movies that are listed. The site Just Watch has a simple search function to figure out where movies might be streaming. I subscribe to Netflix, HBO Max (still, despite my "Barbie" trauma) and indie standard-bearer Mubi, and I do free trials or short-term deals with the likes of Hulu, Amazon and Criterion to strategically gobble up a bunch of titles I've flagged ahead of time. I even still have a DVD player, and the local library is a reliable source of new releases. Maybe I'm desperately staving off irrelevance.

I get it -- like my previous career (journalism), the movie industry is undergoing significant changes, based on technological advances and old-fashioned capitalist greed. It's a blessing and a curse to have so much "content" instantly available at our fingertips. (By the way, check out "Fingertips" on Apple-TV+.) This time of upheaval can leave a viewer skeptical or overwhelmed or just frustrated by the paralysis of choice. 

But (like the newspaper business) nothing has changed about the underlying purpose of filmmaking: It's about telling stories. The delivery methods are in flux, but the mission hasn't changed over the past century, since the Talkies arrived. Spin a compelling tale, don't overstay your welcome, and give me something I won't soon forget. What follows are a bunch of movies that do just that, and which are worth your time.

THE TOP DOZEN of '23

  1. Past Lives: Just a perfect movie about personal connections across decades and continents, and a sense of longing and belonging.  Including the best screenplay of the year by Celine Song. (DVD)

  2. You Hurt My Feelings: Julia Louis-Dreyfus can do no wrong in another finely tuned screenplay by Nicole Holofcener. (DVD)

  3. Fremont: A heartfelt tale of a lonely immigrant. Every generation gets the Jim Jarmusch it deserves. (Mubi)

  4. The Eight Mountains: A magical study of male friendship, captured over decades. (Criterion)

  5. BlackBerry: A giddy retelling of the rise and fall of the millennium-era technology, with a charming Canadian sensibility. Matt Johnson, an emerging master storyteller (see also "Operation Avalanche"), gets the nod for best director. (Apple/AMC)

  6. The Elephant 6 Recording Co.: The perfect depiction of creative collaboration, and a faithful tribute to a very American music movement around the turn of the millennium. (Kino)

  7. Bottoms: Pure stupid fun, as Rachel Sennott teams up again with Emma Seligman ("Shiva Baby") and co-stars with Ayo Edebiri for a spoof of high school clique flicks. (MGM, Fubo)

  8. The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic: A "brutally honest and gripping account of a handicapped man embarking on a mission, by himself, to finally meet his online soul mate." (Fandor, Hoopla)

  9. The Royal Hotel: Another young dynamic duo, Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick, trapped in the Australian outback for this "winking pseudo-horror psych-out." (In theaters)

10. Fallen Leaves: A minor-key story of two lonely people struggling to make a romantic connection. (Mubi)

11. M3GAN: This "Frankenstein" story for our times, a cautionary tale about an AI girl who gets out of control, is gonzo fun. (Amazon)

12. Jethica: "A clever, simple story is buoyed by a stellar ensemble cast to explore the ideas of obsessive relationships, hauntings and atonement." A tiny gem. (Fandor)

JUST MISSED THE LIST

• The cyber thriller "Missing." (Netflix)
  
• The fun romp "Theater Camp." (Hulu)
  
• The sci-fi bro film "Biosphere." (AMC, DVD)
• Christos Nikou follows up "Apples" with a semi-futuristic story about relationships, "Fingernails." (Apple)
  
• The slow-burn political period piece, "Chile '76." (Kino/DVD)
  
• The gay-rights '80s period drama "Blue Jean." (Hulu)
  
• The smart slow-boil suspense film "Afire." (Criterion)
  
• From Romania, an examination of prejudice, "R.M.N." (AMC)
  

 

MORE TOP DOCS 

• A deep dive into the mind of a psychedelic-music pioneer, "Do You Have It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd." (In theaters)
• The well-paced and well-argued political polemic, "South to Black Power." (HBO Max)
• A slick look at a mysterious disappearance in the Australian Outback, "Last Stop Larrimah." (HBO Max)
  
• A fascinating, if sluggish look at the '70s sex researcher, "The Disappearance of Shere Hite." (In theaters)
  
• A sympathetic profile of Mr. October, "Reggie." (Amazon)
  
• A look at a female metal band in Lebanon, "Sirens." (In theaters)
  
• The matter-of-fact "Take Your Pills: Xanax." (Netflix)
  
• A fond tribute to author and editor, "Turn Every Page." (Criterion)
  

 

TOP PERFORMANCES

• Julia Louis-Dreyfus, effortlessly funny in "You Hurt My Feelings."
• Colman Domingo, commanding the screen in the earnest biopic "Rustin."
  
• Anaita Wali Zada, stoic but moving in "Fremont."
• The ensemble -- Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro -- in "Past Lives"
  
• Mark Duplass, making it look easy, in "Biosphere."
• Ana Scotney in "Millie Lies Low." (Starz, Hoopla)
  
• Petri Poikolainen in "The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic."
• Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri, bro'ing it up in "Bottoms."
  

 

THE LEFTOVERS

Some 2022 films we caught up with:  Both "The Silent Twins" and "Dear Mr. Brody" likely would have cracked last year's list. The former was a powerful period piece, based on a true story, about quirky sisters.  The latter was a fascinating documentary profile of a tragic hippie who intended to give away his inherited riches but instead left of a bunch of disappointed people in his wake. ... We were disappointed in Jafar Panahi's "No Bears."

Wayback Machine: We finally reviewed the foundational mockumentary, "David Holzman's Diary" from 1967 and the Maysles brothers' masterpiece, "Grey Gardens.". ... Our favorite director, Krzysztof Kieslowski, finally got his due, with his Three Colors Trilogy screening at the Guild ("Blue," "White" and "Red") (also on HBO Max). ... Retro reviews of some of the all-time greats included "12 Angry Men," "Terms of Endearment," "Slap Shot," "Glengarry Glen Ross," "Basic Instinct" and "The French Connection." ...  We continued to delve into the Godard canon, with some classic early and 'mid-60s offerings and a pair from the '80s and '90s. ... There was a gem at the annual noir festival, 1965's "Mickey One" with Warren Beatty, along with late Bogart, "The Harder They Fall."

Streaming Services: In a bid to clear out the backlog, we did a short stint with Hulu and discovered the thoughtful dark comedy about suicide, "On the Count of Three"; the disturbing story of a marriage in limbo, "The Killing of Two Lovers"; a brutal cringe comedy about a reunion of college pals, "All My Friends Hate Me"; and another winner from Hannah Marks, "Mark, Mary + Some Other People." ... Amazon turned up "Reggie" and not much else.

R.I.P: We said goodbye to Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman), Alan Arkin ("The In-Laws"), Wayne Shorter Burt Bacharach (paired with a Dionne Warwick doc) and Sinead O'Connor.

 

GUILTY PLEASURES

• Owen Wilson spoofing the PBS legend Bob Ross in "Paint."
• A fan's tribute to the Chicago White Sox' old ballpark, posted for all to see on YouTube, "Last Comiskey." 
• Nicolas Cage doing his thing in the inconsistent but often amusing "Dream Scenario."

  
  

 

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

(Well, maybe this time it is you. 

Some of our favorites let us down.)

 

• We walked out of the latest from Wes Anderson, "Asteroid City."  We labeled it the Twilight of Twee.
• We also turned off Todd Haynes' tedious "May December."
  
• OMG, the technicolor yawn that was "Barbie," from the formerly respected duo of Greta Gerwig (director) and Noah Baumbach (her co-writer). It was insipidly irritating and the absolute low point of the year.
  
• Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams just couldn't find the magic again in "Showing Up."
• Sarah Polley failed to make a book leap off the page, giving us the chatty, leaden "Women Talking."
• Luca Guadagnino delivered an unintentionally comical bomb, "Bones and All."
  

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Here are a bunch we wanted to see but didn't get the chance:

• All Dirt Roads Taste Like Salt
• Adults
• All of Us Strangers
  
• Drylongso
• The Delinquents
• Plan 75

Join us in 2024 as we track down those titles and more of the finest movies you wouldn't otherwise think of watching.

New to the Queue

 A mutiny of the bounty ...

Favorite storyteller Francois Ozon ("In the House," "Frantz," "Everything Went Fine") is back, this time with a screwball romp with echoes of "Chicago," "The Crime Is Mine."

A documentary examining the work of the French legend of filmmaking, "Godard Cinema."

A drama about a middle-school teacher who gets stressed out by a theft investigation, "The Teachers' Lounge."

We're normally wary of biographies of artists, but this looks like so much more, "Apolonia, Apolonia."

From Kleber Mendonca Filho ("Aquarius," "Neighboring Sounds"), a tribute to his hometown, "Pictures of Ghosts."

Doc Watch: Discovering the Body

 

LAST STOP LARRIMAH (B) - There is something a little too slick about this deep dive into the mysterious disappearance of a resident of a tiny town in the outback of Australia. The inhabitants of Larrimah seem a little too camera-ready, and the narrative devices feel manipulative.

Newcomer Thomas Tancred has a great story to tell: One of the eccentrics the town is known for, Paddy Moriarty, has disappeared (as has his dog), and his neighbors are not exactly sad to see him go. Paddy had been feuding with his neighbor and her handyman. He had been an annoying presence at the town's bar. And did he piss off the owner of a crocodile one too many times? Everyone is quirky and entertaining. They all pretty much dislike each other.

It all plays like a brightly lit film noir, but don't hold your breath waiting for the mystery to unravel and the puzzle pieces to come together. Tancred spreads this out across two hours, dropping a new tease every quarter hour or so. The misdirection becomes the point, eventually, and while each chapter can be enjoyable, the slickly edited film can be unsatisfying as a whole. It's a clever exercise, but you might feel cheated in the end.

SMOKE SAUNA SISTERHOOD (B+) - Women gather in the woods of Estonia to cleanse bodies and souls in this arty documentary about female bonding. Most of it is shot in the cramped quarters of a sauna while the various permutations of the group of women bare their bodies and their emotions to each other.

The intimate conversations can be brutal to watch. We start out with some standard body-image conversations. But then things grow darker. The women discuss abortions, a particularly difficult miscarriage, and then a harrowing sexual assault. I felt like a voyeur at times; not sure if that was wrong of me or whether that was the intended reaction provoked by debut director Anna Hints. 

Hints' camera doesn't shy away from the nudity displayed by women with a range of rather ordinary bodies. But the camera does have a habit of keeping faces and private parts out of frame. The story of the miscarriage is told while we look at the woman's bare feet the whole time. Interesting choice, but a distraction. The combination of claustrophobia and intimacy can be captivating at times, and you applaud the women for opening up (especially the few who show their faces). 

But at times this feels manipulative and even choreographed. Did Hints help shape these women's narratives, or did the narratives spill out totally naturally? Were they coached and goaded at all, as if this were a very special episode of "The Real Housewives of Estonia"?  The women are mostly middle-aged, and so there is a blanket of history -- in particular the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago -- that smothers the proceedings. It's as if an entire nation of women is exfoliating and expiating all of their hopes and sins.

EVERY BODY (B) - You don't get more body-positive than this polite polemic about intersex individuals -- that is, the fraction of 1 percent of humans who are born with contradictory sex signifiers. Here we meet Saifa (born with mostly male parts), River (also born with male parts but identifying as "they"), and Alicia, who is living life as a woman but who had been born with XY chromosomes and with testes (removed during childhood) instead of a womb. 

 

All three are smart and engaging as subjects, and the film does not exploit or play up their unique traits, but rather takes a practical approach to what each went through as a child and how they navigated their unique issues. Alicia, in particular, is quite articulate as she leads a movement on behalf of intersex people and fighting the horrors of surgeries forced on children, often during infancy. We see footage from 60 years ago of one of the main proponents of early assignment surgery and gender-affirming parenting, John Money, and he becomes the overall bad guy whose outdated theories and studies have led to mutilation over the decades.

A fourth person, David, is featured prominently during the movie's middle third, and it feels like a bit of a cheat, given that David's story (his penis destroyed during circumcision, his parents were urged to raise him as a girl) is lifted liberally from reporting done by NBC's "Dateline." There was so much archival TV footage from David's tragic tale that I wondered whether I shouldn't just go watch that instead of this movie.

But that should not overshadow the benefits of this insightful and educational documentary that proves how ludicrous it is to insist on a strict binary interpretation of sex and gender. Julia Cohen (the biodocs "RBG" and "Julia") balances an upbeat attitude with a properly sober understanding of the challenges faced by the three main protagonists and the workmanlike ways in which they forge their paths in life. She sets the right tone with an opening montage of wacky gender-reveal stunts. But we have to take at least a half-grade off for the execrably bland cover versions of songs like "Born to Run" and "Our Lips Are Sealed," which create a distraction. And the latter one really clangs when you consider the unintentional double entendre it elicits.

Confused Couples

 

FINGERNAILS (B+) - Christos Nikou follows up the elegant "Apples" with this droll pseudo-sci-fi examination of the complicated ways in which we fall in love -- or want to be assured that we have fallen in love with the right partner.

Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed are wonderfully melancholy as co-workers at a company that has cornered the market on the new science that can definitively determine whether two people are in love. The Love Institute (run by an eccentric owner played by a morose Luke Wilson) trains couples in boosting their intimacy in order to maximize their odds of scoring 100 percent on the love-match test. (Chuck Woolery is not involved this time.) If the couple score a 50 percent, that means only one person is in love with the other. If it's a zero, neither is in love. Those are the only three options. The test involves pulling off a fingernail of each person (commitment!) and putting the stubs into a machine that looks like a microwave oven, with results appearing within minutes.

Buckley's Anna is in a 100 percent relationship with Ryan (the ubiquitous Jeremy Allen White), but their coupling has grown humdrum, and Anna is starting to question the science and her own heart. She tries to nudge Ryan with some of the exercises she has learned during her training, but he is complacent, contentedly set for life. Anna soon grows close with Amir (Ahmed), her hangdog workmate who is apparently faking a relationship with Natasha (Annie Murphy is a fun cameo) while devoting his energies to the couples who depend on him to get them in the right space to hopefully ace the test.

It's no secret that Anna and Amir begin to fall for each other. They both are pretty mopey about it. But their longing is palpable, and Buckley and Ahmed throw themselves into the deep end of the emotional pond. Buckley cycles through a range of feelings, and Ahmed has gravitas as a quietly broken man who uses humor as a crutch. Nikou has created a quirky atmosphere, and he peppers the proceedings with minor-key absurdities -- humorous interludes and one-offs that keep the mawkishness at bay.

The setting also keeps the viewer off-balance. It is set not in the future so much as it is in a parallel time. The phones are landlines. The only computer displayed prominently is the testing device, which has a Pong-era monitor that crudely displays the results of each test. One intimacy exercise has couples singing karaoke together, though all the songs are in French (such as "La Mer," the fore-runner to "Beyond the Sea"). Others have a connection to actual science, like smell tests and bonding exercises. Many of the couples are setting themselves up for heartbreak if they don't eventually score 100 percent.

In the end, this is an occasionally profound treatise on yearning and the complications of human connections. Anna, at one point, proclaims that "sometimes it's more lonely to be in love than to be alone." She's a perfect match with the lump sitting on the couch each night. Does she dare risk that by following her instincts and defying modern technology?

PASSAGES (B) - Tomas is a narcissistic movie director who is difficult to be around, and that's a challenge not only for the other characters in this gloomy film but also for the viewers. Ira Sachs ("Love Is Strange") hangs out in Paris for this dour love triangle, a slog through Tomas' devastation of other lives.

German Tomas (Franz Rogowski from "Transit") cheats on his British husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), with a French woman, Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos), but Tomas is so fickle and arrogant that he does little more than toy with each of them, as he fantasizes about somehow starting a family that could include all three of them. Martin moves on quickly with a hunky writer, but Agathe is slow to understand just how horrible Tomas is, and before you know it, she is pregnant.

At times this is compelling, especially the showdowns between various permutations of these three characters (plus another scene with Tomas and Agathe's parents, who, understandably, cannot fathom what their daughter sees in this jerk). Rogowski is more annoying than convincing as Tomas. Exarchopoulos doesn't get much to work with, and it's hard to understand her character's motivations. Whishaw is the savior here as a man emotionally torn between the man he loves and the need to purge the ogre from his life. There are several sex scenes among the trio, and they are all fairly joyless.

Sachs penned the script with regular partner Mauricio Zacharias and veteran Arlette Langmann ("Loulou"). They have a great idea, and the cast is game, but Sachs just doesn't pull off a believable story that involves three-dimensional characters. It's a missed opportunity. 

BONUS TRACK

Music is key in "Fingernails." The central song is "Only You" by Yaz, heard in French and then, over the credits, covered by the Flying Pickets, who had a British number one with their barbershop version:

 

Back to Vince Clark and Alison Moyet, and Yaz's techno gem "Don't Go," also in the movie:

 

And let's seize on the opportunity to spin "Beyond the Sea," the Bobby Darin classic:

 

From a party scene in "Passages," this chippy surf tune "Ce Soir" by Kumisolo:

Road Worn and Weary

 

THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY (B-minus) - Can you return home to your roots to cure whatever ails you? Isn't it usually the case that the home you knew as a child led to the ills you want to be rid of? This movie is not interested in asking such questions. A classic case of style over substance, this feature debut from Morrisa Maltz celebrates life among the Lakota Nation, following a sorrowful woman as she returns to her grandmother's hometown in South Dakota to attend a relative's wedding.

Lily Gladstone ("Certain Women") stars as Tana, who braves a winter road trip from Minneapolis to the Badlands, and much of the movie involves the highlights of her itinerary -- driving while listening to AM talk radio and stopping at motels and diners. Before falling asleep at night, she likes to stare at a beat-up old photo of a young woman taken in Texas in the 1940s, and by references by others to the loss of Tana's grandmother, it's a safe bet that it's the same woman in the photo. 

Maltz shoots this in quasi-documentary style, with non-actors playing the role of family, and a lot of apparently improvised dialogue. She also picks out random people whom Tana meets in passing on her road trip, and the narrative (what little there is) gets sidetracked for a quick little bio of, say, a waitress or a convenience store clerk, each narrating a sliver of a backstory. It's an interesting concept. Do the detours to others represent Tana's failure to fully explore her past or come to terms with it? Are these snippets just in her imagination? Are they voices -- like the ones floating from the radio -- coming to her on a special frequency?

Either way, few of them are interesting. By the halfway point, I decided that I'd have preferred Maltz to dump Gladstone, toss what little script there was, and just shoot a documentary about life on the road and the reservation. She falls back on overly artsy shots -- I stopped keeping track of how many lens flares there were -- but forgets to tell a compelling story. Even at 85 minutes, it dragged. (How many times can we watch Gladstone light a cigarette?) Cinematography props, I suppose, to Andrew Hajek. However, mood and landscapes can get you only so far. Maltz has a pretty clever ending here, but it's a chore to get to, and it's also a little too shmaltzy to feel earned.

The movie comes alive, and Tana's disposition brightens, only when she finally leaves the kinfolk behind and heads to Texas. (Proving my point?) Her smiles no longer seem forced when, in the final reel, she meets a lively, diverse group of young adults in Dallas -- suggesting that strangers and a big city can be just as good an antidote as any family reunion in the impoverished rural America. Maybe I'm reading too much into what Tana was going through -- or maybe I missed the point, or maybe I'm just an old guy trying to help fix her -- but I needed something to do while waiting for the film to get to its own point.

BONUS TRACKS

The soundtrack adds to the moodiness, in a good way. The transition at the one-third mark is accompanied by Beach House, with "Take Care":

Remember Slowdive? Here is "Star Roving" from 2017:

The songs are often sunnier than the cinematography. Here's a lovely song, "Young," by Sun June. It has a Cat Power vibe:

And, at the climax, this jittery tune, "Among the Sef" by Colin Stetson:

And our title track, out of left field, from the Supersuckers:

Doc Watch: Fight the Power

 

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE (B+) - Shere Hite was a powerful presence in the 1970s and '80s, a sex researcher with a commanding role in popular culture. This documentary holds her out as somewhat of a savant as well as a heretic for daring to unveil some of the secrets of sexuality, mainly the importance of the clitoris.

Nicole Newnham follows up "Crip Camp" with this deep dive into the psyche of the savvy best-selling author of "The Hite Report" and its followups. She delves into Hite's background as a nude model while struggling to make it as a graduate student. She has plenty of vintage clips from TV talk shows back in the day, in which Hite holds her own under a barrage of sexism and scientific arrogance. (One scene of her debating four macho actors is dripping with misogyny.) Hite is a captivating figure, noted for both her style and intellect. Newnham gives us plenty of clips to understand Hite as a fully evolved female in the 20th century.  Hite's arguments are as relevant today as they were then. Her writings are narrated elegantly by actress Dakota Johnson.

The film can be a slog at times, though. It clocks in just under two hours, and it is not until the final 20 minutes that it really addresses the "disappearance." (Hite, tired of America, fled to Europe with her German husband in the 1990s.) We're also exposed to numerous shots of Hite's naked body, as captured by some fine-art photographers over the years. It's not clear why there are so many depictions of Hite without clothes. Is it a provocation? Is there a deeper point being made? The nudity tends to be a distraction, but there is no denying that Hite's story is compelling.

SOUTH TO BLACK POWER (B+) - What a positive, refreshing documentary about empowerment. New York Times columnist Charles Blow pushes his passion project: getting northerners to move (back) to the South in order to consolidate their political power.

This is bright and sharply rendered. Many interviews are often shot in well-lighted rooms or outdoors in natural light. It literally has a sunny disposition. 

Blow's odyssey might turn out to be a pipe dream -- he admits he could be either an apostle or Don Quixote -- but the people he talks to are intelligent, creative and imaginative. They have a lot of energy. They make a difference -- especially in Georgia in 2020-21. At every stop across the South, Blow finds reverse migrants seeking to tip the scales in smaller states. This is based on Blow's book The Devil You know.

The talking heads are not famous. They tend to work in the trenches, slogging away at democracy. Blow is a genial host and an insightful interviewer. One highlight, around the halfway mark, involves a visit to an old college friend of his, and not only is she dynamic and funny, but the love exuded between them is a perfect rendering of the collegiality among true believers who are full of hope for the future. There is something to be said for an uplifting polemic, honestly rendered.

BONUS TRACKS

The trailers:

Feel-Good Features: Redemption

 

RUSTIN (B) - Colman Domingo carries this chipper bio-pic on his able shoulders, with a forceful performance that tends to knock away the distracting shmaltz that peppers this earnest biography of Bayard Rustin, one of the key forces behind the Civil Rights movement. It would have made a perfect TV movie-of-the-week back in the day.

Domingo imbues Rustin with a brilliant mind, an expansive heart and a savage wit. His face lights up whenever he gets to deliver a particularly poignant putdown. A missing tooth never stops him from flashing a wide grin. That isn't to say that Domingo hams it up in any way. Impossible to know for sure, but it feels like he gets the energy of Rustin just right.

Rustin was on the outs with the NAACP and Martin Luther King in the early '60s. This is despite his heroics as an organizer and mastermind for the Civil Rights movement; but it was due in part to the fact that he was a closeted homosexual, one notably susceptible to blackmail, especially considering the FBI tail on King. In fact, one rival threatens to expose Rustin as King's "queen."

But, in the spirit of a vintage Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney film, Rustin convinces the black powers-that-be to allow him to organize the 1963 March on Washington, with MLK center stage. We all know it's going to be a smash hit, but it's a lot of fun watching Rustin and his ragtag crew shock the world by pulling it off with only a few short months to do so. It's a heart-warming redemption story.

Credit to director George C. Wolfe ("Ma Rainey's Black Bottom") and writers Julian Breece (a TV veteran) and Dustin Lance Black (TV's "Big Love") for crafting a workmanlike piece of biography, even if it is formulaic from beginning to end. Too often the dialogue is stuffed with exposition, especially in the confusing opening scenes that get us situated, as if this is a history lesson for high school freshmen. But the narrative sheds most of that in the second half.

All the youngsters on Rustin's staff are unfailingly bright, clean-cut and as cheery as the day is long, like a bunch of paper dolls. Chris Rock feels out of place as a scowling Roy Wilkins, but Aml Ameen is wonderfully understated as King, and Jeffrey Wright steals a few scenes as the scheming Rep. Adam Clayton Powell. Maxwell Whittington-Cooper's eyes eerily embody the spirit of a young John Lewis. Perhaps the most effective scene in the movie is a showdown between Rustin and his young live-in lover, Tom (Gus Halper), in which the young man shows a cad what a broken heart looks like.

At times I rolled my eyes at how corny and predictable the story could be. At other times, Domingo grabbed me by the shoulders and sat me back down in my chair, back straight. If you make it to the end, you might even tear up at the heroism of a long-suffering soldier who finally steps out of the shadows and gets his day in the sun.

Pinker and Prouder Than Previous

 

BARBIE (D+) - I. Can't. Even. This was by far the worst experience I had watching a movie in the past year. It's a pompous pop-art swipe at the patriarchy and shallow consumer culture. But, like the dolls it depicts, it can't wipe the smug smirk off its face over the course of two -- yes, two -- hours.

I am now regretting the union of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, who separately have been responsible for some of the best films of the past two decades,* and not because it ruined his marriage, but because it has derailed their careers. Indulge them with bigger and bigger budgets, and their worst instincts get vomited up on the screen, like this technicolor yawn that they wrote together and she directed. "Barbie" is by turns dumb, boring and insulting. Here's a neat trick: waste Margot Robbie's acting talents while somehow rendering Issa Rae, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon and Michael Cera unfunny. 

You can feel Gerwig and Baumbach patting each other on the back (or him patting her on the head) with each clanging line of dialogue or wince-inducing sight gag. Nobody dared tell them how brutal this turned out. That is some sort of privilege.

But then, how tone-deaf am I? This made a billion dollars and has been held up as a profound work of staggering genius. Don't mind me. The culture passed me by years ago; I'm cool with that. At one point -- thankfully watching this on HBO Max and not trapped in a theater -- I started folding laundry to pass the time and to tell myself I wasn't shedding critical brain cells. And I can report that the household task felt more intellectually challenging than this movie. Admittedly, I did have to match socks.

So, if it was so infuriating, why didn't I turn it off? I couldn't look away from the fast-paced slow-motion wreck. (It does have a great punchline at the end.) I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. Ryan Gosling was occasionally amusing as Ken (at least he fully committed to the concept). But the rest of the Keystone Kops here with their cartoon car chases and sophomoric satire? Bumbling amateurs. I literally groaned aloud more than once at either the dialogue or the ideas. (The filmmakers' concept of a defining trait of all men is that they all love ... horses. Huh? Are they thinking of 12-year-old girls?) The songs are tuneless and dreadful. Brace yourself for a lecture on the rigors of motherhood.

It hurt watching Robbie celebrate -- yet try to winkingly sabotage -- an iconic doll and the impact that toy has had on our understanding of women for six decades. In the movie, girls mock Barbie as fascist and irrelevant, and you're not sure which insult stings more. Gerwig and Baumbach are, of course, self-aware that they are misusing "fascist," so they follow it up with some tone-deaf meta analysis. At some point, though, if you're not careful (or if you get greedy), no amount of ironic detachment will save you from becoming the thing you mock.

You might think that I'm not the target audience, and it's perhaps not my place to weigh in on ... whatever this is supposed to represent. Fair point. And only 12 people read what I write, anyway, so the joke's on us. But, ah, I am a key demographic data point here. Who else are the former doyenne of Mumblecore and the hipster indie filmmaker (who goes back to 1995) speaking to than this middle-aged student of cinema for the past three decades? 

They tried this same crap a year ago with author Don DeLillo and their adaptation of "White Noise," a self-satisfying pretension to artsy storytelling. (Baumbach directed; Gerwig sleepwalked through it.) That featured a bloated budget, an interminable running time, and intellectual belches that must smell like peppermint to each other. Just wait for them to become the beloved it-couple in front-row seats at awards shows, head-nodding toward Wes Anderson in the back.

The whole exercise made me deeply question pop culture in general and my love of movies in particular. If Gerwig and Baumbach want to be rich and famous and pretend that they are doing so ironically, I wish them all the best. Be in love. But don't assault me with some imperious parade of platitudinal ... ugh, this is tiring. I'll never get the pink bubblegum out of my hair. 

Time to shave my head, proceed to a zen monastery, and clear out my mind. Will seven years of penance and contemplation cleanse my soul?

---

* - Baumbach and Gerwig have been hit-and-miss together. "Frances Ha" was brilliant. "Mistress America" was a disaster.

BONUS TRACK

Our title track, or at least title album -- and a reminder that I'm an old white guy from the suburbs -- Nick Lowe with "Lovers Jamboree":

Missed Connections

 

FALLEN LEAVES (A-minus) - From Finland comes a low-key neo-noir about two lonely souls who have trouble meeting up after one chance encounter. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is an alcoholic who can't keep a job, and mousy Ansa (Alma Poysti) gets fired from her job at a grocery store for taking home expired food. They initially meet at a karaoke bar, but Holappa loses Ansa's number and doesn't know how to find her.

The movie is a series of vignettes in which the two might or might not be match in the end. One date goes horribly, mainly because of Holappa's drinking. Maybe they just are not a good fit. 

 

The mood is mostly working-class glum, but veteran writer-director Aki Kaurismaki threads some dark comedy throughout the film. Kaurismaki crafts this as a series of blackout sketches. Vatanen has a hangdog Jimmy Stewart look to him, and Poysti does wonders with her facial expressions; when Ansaw finally smiles in the second half of the film, she comes to life as a wholly different person. Janne Hyytiainen almost steals the show as Holappa's matter-of-fact pal, mostly on the prowl for a woman of his own.

Crafting this at a slim 81 minutes, Kaurismaki ("Le Havre," "Leningrad Cowboys Go America," "The Match Factory Girl") wastes no time. The sparse dialogue plays like a series of koans. You never feel like he's wasting your time, whether these two end up together or not.

INTREGALDE (B) - There is not much of a plot to this low-key Romanian suspense film, but it is at times a fascinating examination of a how a good deed can go horribly wrong.

Radu Muntean ("Tuesday, After Christmas" from 2011) pulls off a technical achievement as he films three aid workers who get stranded on a muddy side road while trying to deliver food and supplies to rural Transylvania. The plot plays like a vaudevillian horror film, a series of mishaps, in which no good deed goes unpunished.

Muntean assembles a trio -- Maria (Maria Popistasu), Dan (Alex Bogdan) and Ilinca (Ilona Brezoianu) -- in an SUV loaded with humanitarian supplies. Dan makes the mistake of sympathizing with a drifter on the side of the road, not only lending the old man a ride but also taking his suggestion of a detour. This leads to the vehicle getting stuck on a muddy road in the middle of the woods as temperatures are about to plunge at sunset. 

It's not so much the storytelling here that's fascinating as is Muntean's deft camerawork in dark, claustrophobic spaces. He wields documentary sensibilities as he tries to keep track of the three aid workers and their various attempts to get help. He also has a punchline up his sleeve, as we eventually learn what kind of life this poor old man leads. (Non-actor Luca Sabin is heartbreaking in the role.)