A Mild and Lazy Bio

 

STEVE! (MARTIN) (B-minus) - One of the great wits of our time, Steve Martin, gets the documentary biographical treatment in this tepid, extended film from the talented Morgan Neville.  The film is divided into two parts ("Then" and "Now"), and both halves tick past the 90-minute mark, creating an end product that feels both bloated and rushed as it shifts tones while ranging across Martin's 60-year career.

The first part focuses on Martin's early struggles as an anti-comedian through his breakthrough as a rock-star goofball selling out stadiums. It plants the seeds of a cold-hearted upbringing and an insistent loneliness as success and fame showered on him. The second half brings us to the present and examines the psyche of a man who walked away from runaway success in favor of a respectable movie career, eventually growing comfortable enough in his skin to open his heart to a partner and a family late in life.

There is a tension between the two halves that never really gets resolved. Too much time is spent on Martin's early life and career (even while giving short shrift to his work with the Smothers Brothers and other TV shows of the late '60s and early '70s), padded out merely because there is quite a trove of home movies from Martin's personal archive. One remarkable result of this granular indulgence is the realization that Martin's comedy often was quite bad before he discovered the tipping point between stupid and artfully buffoonish. (Sometimes all that takes is a simple prop, like a gag arrow through the head.) Martin had the luxury of time and resources to hammer away for years until he hit on better ideas (like leading the audience outside of the venue after his shows, which created an almost literal cult following).

Neville has made some of our favorite documentaries in recent years, including "20 Feet From Stardom" and "Won't You Be My Neighbor." But he might be going a little too fast these days. His last film, "The Saint of Second Chances," was a mess. In this case, he might have taken a step back and decided how to do justice to Martin's life and career in a simple two-hour format, without the indulgence of time offered by Apple.

The second part has its moments -- occasionally we get true psychological insights into a thoughtful artist -- but they are weighed down in the muck of his boring family life. He found lasting love in middle age and became a father at 67, but who really cares? We get no insight from the likes of Tina Fey, Eric Idle and Lorne Michaels, and a knock-off "Comedians in Cars" appearance from the ubiquitous Jerry Seinfeld, who big-foots the proceedings and distracts with his tired shtick. We spend a lot of time with Martin's latest collaborator, Martin Short, but again, the truly funny moments (including their workshopping material for their stage act) are few and far between. Instead we are subjected to abiding Martin's manufactured self-deprecation, often as he and short swap dad jokes while running errands or, for no apparent reason, going for a bike ride.

Besides some keen observations from a couple of longtime female friends, only Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker, a close friend, provides meaningful analysis, including a gloss on the contents of Martin's expansive art collection as a proxy for inkblots that help define a lifelong loner who finally learned to collaborate and open his heart. Deep into the second part Martin fully opens up about his tough nut of a dad (who responded to a screening of "The Jerk" by noting that his son was "no Charlie Chaplin"), and the emotion is real and affecting.

But rather than synthesize the various aspects of Martin's career and life into an expertly edited two-hour film, Neville dodges that more difficult task and instead dumps more than three hours onto the screen, leaving it for us to sort out. Fans of Martin will appreciate the overview of an impressive career (even if the comedy bits and the movie clips are way too clipped to be satisfying), and they'll probably gain some insight into one of the all-time great entertainers, a sly and exacting comedian who deserved a little better than this straight-to-streaming knockoff.

BONUS TRACK

Martin's meta-comedy started to take shape on "The Smothers Brothers Show," here circa 1968:

And one of my favorite jokes from the height of Martin's celebrity:

Poor Things

 

PROBLEMISTA (A-minus) - Julio Torres is a delightful, unique comedian, whose arch observations mix whimsy with left-field emotional depth, a millennial descendant of Charlie Chaplin, if you dare. He is known for writing wry, melancholy sketches for "Saturday Night Live" ("Wells for Boys") and for portraying a sensitive chocolate-empire heir on "Los Espookys." He is an amusing manic-pixie dream boy. Here he spins a semi-autobiographical story of an El Salvador immigrant in grimy New York City striving to maintain a work visa as he angles for his dream job at toymaker Hasbro. 

 

Torres wrote, directed and stars as Alejandro, a precious young man, who is so dainty that he prances on tiptoe wherever he goes. It might be improper to use the word "stars" in this context, because Torres is up against Tilda Swinton, who is maniacally entertaining as Alejandro's eccentric would-be sponsor, Elizabeth, who is obsessed with cataloging the egg-themed legacy paintings of her late spouse, Bobby (RZA in flashbacks). Elizabeth is a narcissistic, technologically challenged whirlwind, with hair dyed purple but with roots betraying her perpetual discombobulation.

Silliness ensues as obstacles stack up against Alejandro. Torres indulges his obsession with quirky objects -- his HBO special "My Favorite Shapes" is perhaps the finest hour of comedy to come along in the past decade -- through Alejandro's unorthodox toy designs (such as a Barbie who crosses her fingers behind her back). There is a gravity to his lightweight larks, but there also is a serious undercurrent at play here, especially in conveying the real-life challenges that poverty imposes on the working class.

Torres' style is quite an amalgam that draws from varying archives of whimsy -- there is the magical realism of Michel Gondry, the curatorial world-making of Wes Anderson, and the steam-punk silliness of Terry Gilliam. Perhaps even the incisive absurdism of early Woody Allen. Yet his voice is unique, and his touch here in his feature debut is assured. Torres certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you are able to tune into his frequency, you are likely to be both buoyed and charmed by his brand of storytelling.

THE OLD OAK (A-minus) - On Saturday morning, I had breakfast with some former newspaper colleagues, and one of them waxed philosophical about the need for a late wave of collectivism to save our society. I later went to a matinee at the Guild Cinema to experience this possible swan song of the old British lefty Ken Loach, itself a quiet, bittersweet plea for us to come together before it is too late. 

Here Loach ("Kes," "The Angels' Share," "I, Daniel Blake") dials in once again on the struggles of the working class in Britain. Our hero, TJ, runs a pub in an old seaside mining town in Northeast England. His regulars are grumbling about the arrival of war refugees from Syria, and TJ, through a random act of kindness, makes a connection with a young photographer among the newcomers, Yara, whose mother and siblings are adrift while her father is imprisoned back home. 

Loach's longtime collaborator, screenwriter Paul Laverty, crafts a nuanced portrait of the community, showing an understanding of all sides of the immigration debate in this dirt-poor village, even if it's apparent that the filmmakers' sympathies lie with TJ and Yara. When a volunteer brings a donated bike to one of the refugee girls, a trio of local boys looks on, and one wonders aloud why he can't have a bike too. One adult, who has a handicapped wife, complains that outside speculators are buying up flats sight unseen at bargain-basement rates, jeopardizing his own longtime investment.

TJ, prompted by Yara's exploration of the demise of the town's mining past (and the devastating union strikes of Maggie Thatcher's 1980s), spruces up the back room of the pub in order to create a space for communal meals. Of course, nothing comes easy to him or the unlucky residents of this snake-bitten village, and as challenges persist, Loach and Laverty take us deeper into TJ's backstory, which at times can seem as harrowing as those of the refugees from Syria. 

 

Dave Turner is powerfully emotional as TJ, and Ebla Mari is understated but moving as Yara, an assertive and compassionate young woman, who walks a fine line between standing up for the refugees and respecting the locals who are hosting them. Her penetrating eyes and calm demeanor counteract his hangdog look and dour outlook. 

The humanistic film never turns maudlin, even if it threatens to do so around several turns. The final scene is deeply moving, even if the viewer is well aware that genuine acts of kindness will always be offset by the deep-rooted prejudices and nativism that might well do us all in someday. 

BONUS TRACK

COUSIN JULES (B+) - This foundational documentary from France in the early 1970s is at this point more of a curiosity. It depicts the hardscrabble life of a blacksmith toiling away on a country farm. It could very well take place in the 1870s, considering the lack of modern conveniences on display.

From the classic era of fly-on-the-wall documentary filmmaking -- see also, the Maysles brothers, D.A. Pennebaker and Frederick Wiseman -- Dominique Benicheti spent about five years observing elderly Jules Guiteaux, whether slogging away forging tools or carrying out mundane household chores. There is little to no dialogue, and I felt a connection between this film and the later fictionalized works of Michelangelo Frammartino ("Le Quattro Volte") two generations hence.

We see Jules shave with a straight razor and observe him and his wife peel potatoes and chop vegetables in drawn-out sequences that set the table for "Jeanne Dielman" a few years later. While there is no discernible plot that seems obvious, we do note that Jules' wife, Felicie, disappears from the picture at some point, and our viewpoint shifts toward a deeper empathy with this hard-working Everyman.

You Were Here

 

THE ARC OF OBLIVION (A-minus) - Writer-director Ian Cheney has a lot on his mind, and he unloads his thoughts in scattered fashion into this engaging documentary ostensibly about how we preserve human history. His heavily curated film is also one big McGuffin: He commissions the building of an ark on his parents' property, intending to fill it with objects, documents, ephemera -- anything that he thinks might mark our time here on Earth and which might be useful to future nerds.

That shtick -- the creation of a noble wooden vessel -- can wear thin at times, and Cheney inserts himself way too often in the proceedings. But those questionable choices are more than compensated for by his inclusion of a parade of talking heads, all of whom provide fascinating insights on a wide variety of topics. 

 

We meet filmmaker Kristen Johnson ("Cameraperson") and, even better, her brother, a paleontologist who waxes poetic about how fossils are formed and discovered. There is an expert on limestone, David Hoch, who taught me during the movie how the method of heating limestone creates a glow that accommodates wall-shadow projections (it's where we get the phrase "in the limelight"). We meet cave specialist Bogdan Onac, who lectures extensively about bat guano. There is also an artist whose house was destroyed in a hurricane; a couple who photograph old cemeteries from the Jim Crow era; and the sawyer lovingly plying his craft as the ark slowly takes shape. Even documentary legend Werner Herzog (an executive producer) stops by to put an exclamation point on a film that clearly was inspired by his lifelong pursuit of truth and quirk. ("Fitzcarraldo" is a natural point of comparison.)

The surface topic involves the preservation of our digital world, but as Cheney meanders off the beaten path, he excavates ideas about humans and nature and how lives and concepts are preserved over centuries and even millennia. This might be a pop-philosophical exercise that could tick off some intellectual aficionados who could dismiss this as undisciplined surface-scratching noodling. 

But don't overthink it. Cheney certainly doesn't. His technique is not so much HD as it is ADHD. He's all over the map, literally and figuratively, as he follows his nose to whatever places interest him. He then dumps it all into this 105-minute hodgepodge. This is a random movie by a filmmaker who tossed together a chopped salad of brain droppings and visual whims. Not everything has to be neatly packaged.

Vacation Adventures

 

HOW TO HAVE SEX (B+) - Cinematographer Molly Manning Walker makes her writing-directing debut with this deceptively smart story of a teenage virgin's awkward transition to hook-up culture during a wild spring break with her two London pals on a Greek island. Mia McKenna-Bruce is understated but powerful as Tara as the afterthought of the friend zone with her two alpha female pals. 

 

Tara is wide-eyed and inexperienced, but she has that yearning you might remember from your teen years, the ache to be cooler than you are. She starts a flirtation with a boy from the next hotel balcony over, Badger (Shaun Thomas), who also plays second fiddle to his handsomer mate, Paddy (Samuel Bottomley). At the halfway point of this bacchanal, Tara goes off with Paddy, and they have sex, but it's a bit vague just how consensual it was and whether Tara feels more violated or just more underwhelmed by the overhyped moment.

Newcomer Molly Manning Walker, a veteran cinematographer, pens a deceivingly intelligent script. She keeps the dread level elevated, but we never feel like any sort of tragedy has occurred. She also, interestingly, shuns nudity -- there is plenty of young flesh on display, but not a breast or a penis to be spotted, making this oddly but satisfyingly chaste in a way. The kids have thick working-class London accents, and this was screened with subtitles, which detracts a bit from the appreciation of the agile banter Tara engages in with her randier besties, the controlling Skye (Laura Peake) and the empathetic Em (Enva Lewis). 

At the end of the trip, McKenna-Bruce conveys a range of emotions, as you wonder whether Tara is traumatized or just different, her eyes and mind opened to the pitfalls of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. Along the way, it's fun to watch these young adults carouse and catcall each other as their immature bodies indulge in adult substances during a memorable weekend. This shares DNA with other wild-weekend entries like "Monday" and "Suntan," all sharper than you'd expect.

FLY WITH ME (B) - From PBS' "American Experience" comes this by-the-numbers history of women in the air industry, from World War II-era nurses to the assembly line stewardess of the early jet age to the flight attendants organizing into what is now one of the strongest unions in the country.

 

At 112 minutes, this feels bulky. Most of the first third is taken up with archival footage of the early days of flight and airline service, and then there is a detour near the halfway mark to explore civil-rights issues for African-American pioneers in the industry, which feels like a shallow gloss. That leads to the the Title VII protections against sex discrimination. The actual feminist and labor movements don't congeal  until the final third.  

But the pioneering women are fun to hang out with. Their stories are engaging, and it's encouraging to know that they survived decades of sexism. You get the sense that some of the fun stuff about being a swinin' stewardess in the '60s and '70s might have ended up on the cutting-room floor in order to maintain a sobriety and sense of decorum for this by-the-books documentary.

BONUS TRACK

From the closing credits of "How to Have Sex," Romy with "Strong":

Adobe Underground

 

The London hipsters Bar Italia stopped in town on a school night this week. They are much more engaging live than on record. I should say that their music is much more engaging live; the band members are not engaging at all. They have this shtick where they ignore the audience, which is an odd affectation.

The band seemed to strive for a Velvet Underground hipness -- icy, ironically detached, backlit. But there music is squarely '90s-derivative, in the best sense of the concept of borrowing and molding sounds. They offer a strain of shoegaze like "Lush," but also atonal post-punk like the Mekons. You can also hear the Pixies and Pavement in their song structures. Guitars occasionally ring like they did in Guided by Voices songs in the late '90s. What sometimes feels limp on their recordings pops with more edge in person.

 

The three main players all share vocals -- Sam Fenton and Jezmi Fehmi on guitars, and Nina Cristante, the ostensible front person. I wondered at first why her vocals were buried most of the night, but it became apparent that she is thin in both body and voice -- more Liz Phair than Kim Gordon. But the band was tight. Their rhythm section is apparently the province of hired guns. Whoever their drummer was stole the show at times, with tight timekeeping and muscular fills.

When they came out for an encore, the audience needled them to the point of finally responding. Cristante muttered "You're ruining it," which came off more like an admission that the band is trapped in a somewhat paralyzing routine. Maybe we helped them find an exit ramp from the stifling purview of dilettantes to a warmer live experience. 

BONUS TRACKS

One of their best songs, "Punkt," has a bit of a "Bull in the Heather" vibe:

 

A two-song encore ended with the trippy "Skylinny":

 

They closed their main set with the anthemic "Worlds Greatest Emoter." Look closely at the beginning of this live version, and you can see Cristante actually break character and acknowledge the crowd:

 

 Here they are at a place actually called the Velvet Underground, in Toronto, with the hypnotic "Nurse!":

 

Here's a full live set from Los Angeles last June:

New to the Queue

 Bracing for the winds of spare change ...

We will honor Ken Loach ("Kes," "I, Daniel Blake") by watching his final film, about a gruff northern England town dealing with an influx of Syrian refugees, "The Old Oak."

Radu Jude ("Aferim," "Uppercase Print," "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn") is inconsistent among the Romanian directors, so we'll be a bit trepidatious over his nearly three-hour hectic romp, "Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World."

Quirky storyteller Bob Byington ("7 Chinese Brothers," "Somebody Up There Likes Me") is back with a dark comedy, "Lousy Carter."

An Australian noir, with Simon Baker chasing a cold case, "Limbo."

Teenage girls take part in an immersive exercise in democracy, the documentary "Girls State."