The Ultimate Buddy Road Trip

 

A REAL PAIN (A) - Jesse Eisenberg writes, directs and stars in a gem of a movie about 30-something cousins retracing their family roots to Poland and joining a Holocaust tour. We could not find a misstep in this heartfelt rendering of the lingering pangs of personal suffering.

Eisenberg brings in Kieran Culkin as Benji, one of those annoying but lovable fuckups who manages to be the life of the party. He contrasts with Eisenberg's David, who has tamed his childhood anxieties through extreme adulting -- holding down a responsible job (selling internet ads) and building a home with a loving wife and child. That exposition gradually spills out as David and Benji reunite for their excursion to Poland.

Benji is coming off "a tough few months" and is in a funk after the death of their grandmother, with whom he was close. Benji, as a coping mechanism (besides daily pot smoking), defaults to dragging the conversation between the two men toward their childhood, when David was a ball of neuroses and Benji was the well-adjusted one (and apparently Grandma's favorite). It's a way to keep David off-kilter and level the playing field. 

But let's not ignore the fact that the two men are frequently funny together. Eisenberg does his Millennial Woody Allen thing (which he has made his own), and Culkin bursts with manic energy. Occasionally he seems to be stealing Zach Galifianakis' shtick, but there's no denying that he commandeers this roller-coaster of joy and heartbreak and owns the movie.

It is always difficult to avoid the third rail of comedy and dodge "The Day the Clown Cried" territory when weaving the Holocaust into a comedy. Eisenberg assembles a small group of fellow tourists (including Jennifer Grey), who each have their own personal journeys to share, including a man (Kurt Edyiawan) who survived the Rwandan massacres when he was young and ended up in western Canada. Will Sharpe (HBO's "The White Lotus") does a fine turn as the sweet tour guide, James, who takes earnestness to Olympic levels. 

Benji's antics will continually alternate between amusing and exasperating, culminating in a group dinner in which both men will have the chance to open up about the other to the fellow tourists. The visit to the concentration camp is understated, and it is perfectly punctuated with just a few seconds of absolute silence on the screen. 

A final pilgrimage to the cousins' grandmother's family home is perfectly anti-climactic. And the final shot of Benji captures his entire personality in one image. From start to finish, Eisenberg crafts a minor-key masterpiece.

R.I.P., Gena Rowlands, Part 2: Couplings

 Gena Rowlands, the longtime wife of and collaborator with John Cassavetes, died in August at age 94. With an assist from the Guild Cinema, we are (re)viewing some of her foundational films.

MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ (1971) (A-minus) - Somehow John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands found joy in the brutality of men and the recklessness of being in relationships with them. And, yes, like the films in our previous entry, Rowlands gets knocked around again, and at the hands of Cassavetes' character, a soulless married man who is stringing along her Minnie, who definitely needs a reset in her love life. (And what's with saddling Rowlands with names like Minnie, Mabel and Myrtle?)

But the woman is resilient, and here she gives a soulful, layered performance. Minnie doesn't have her meet-cute with Moskowitz (Seymour Cassel) until at least a half hour into this shaggy-dog tale (and even then, it's not very cute). He is parking cars at a restaurant where she has just had a miserable blind date with a vain jerk prone to outbursts (a hilarious, menacing turn by Val Avery, who is also in "Faces"). Moskowitz offers her a getaway in his beat-up pickup truck, where he proves himself to be a more charming type of loudmouth. With his long ponytail and Yosemite Sam mustache, he displays Jethro Bodine moves, using his brute wiles to wear down his love interest.

This is an old-fashioned story about an aggressive man essentially bullying a woman into loving him. But Minnie is no pushover. Their dates go haywire, but each of them is improbably drawn to the other's je ne sais quoi. Each is damaged but not irrevocably so. Amid everything, Rowlands and Cassel are very funny together. 

This is one of Cassavetes' strongest scripts. The dialogue is sharp and the narrative holds together as he careens along curves. He stages several set pieces as showcases for outre characters, each with a chip on their shoulder. Moskowitz's first scene is in a diner, featuring a five-minute dialogue with Tim Carey's depressed middle-aged man who has opinions on every topic that pops up in a stream of non-sequiturs. Avery, as Zelmo the lunch date, is riveting as the loquacious loser on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Toward the end, Cassavetes' mom, Katherine, has a cameo as Moskowitz's stereotypical Jewish mother, spewing putdowns of her layabout son. As usual, Katherine Cassavetes threatens to steal her son's movie.

But the through line involves the pas de deux between Rowlands and Cassel riffing through that quintessential '70s drift. The film is consistently entertaining, whether the viewer is laughing or cowering, all the while holding on during a wild ride.

FACES (1968) (B) - Rowlands has to share screen time here as a supporting player in a bifurcated story of a couple whose coincidental midlife crises mark the unraveling of their marriage. Rowlands plays a high-end call girl who romps with the husband, while the wife has her own fling in the movie's second half (with a young surfer dude played by Cassel, whose character never overlaps with Rowlands').

 

John Marley -- who a few years later would famously wake up with a horse's head in his bed in "The Godfather" -- dominates as businessman Richard Forst, who escapes his loveless marriage and falls for Rowlands' cute Jeannie. The first half is dominated by an extended scene in which Forst must compete for the attention of Jeannie and her housemate with two other crass businessmen on the prowl, including Val Avery (see above). It's a prototypical Cassavetes extended scene of debauchery, a seemingly improvised acting exercise where revelers booze and smoke, tell jokes, sing standards, dance like clods, and engage in loud horseplay (see also, "Husbands"). Cassavetes' camera gets all up in his characters' faces, often positioning it from Jeannie's perspective. (This review has a nice description of the ensemble style, referring to the cast as "guerrilla thespians.")

The secret weapon here is newcomer Lynn Carlin (who had been Robert Altman's secretary) as Richard's wife, Maria, who also has had it with her mate. On a girls' night out (at the famous LA haunt the Whiskey a Go-go) she and her gal-pals bring home Cassel's Chet, a good-time guy who targets Maria for seduction. The second half is dominated by a set-up mirroring the first half, this time with married women canoodling with their boy toy. Carlin and Cassel sizzle with chemistry -- he is a raw performer, and she brings fresh energy to every moment she is on screen.

It all crescendos with a classic love-triangle confrontation, featuring more yelling and physical harm. But it is the final shot of ordinary domestic indifference that is most chilling. Cassavetes' camera finally pulls back for a static long shot, itself worth the price of admission.

BONUS TRACK

From "Faces," Jimmy Reed with "Life Is Funny":

New to the Queue

 Reality ... what a concept ...

A documentary about the little-known songwriter, artist and bon vivant, "The World According to Allee Willis."

A look at the week in 1972 when John Lennon and Yoko Ono tried to pitch utopia to the masses, "Daytime Revolution."

A study of the leisurely popular music pioneered by Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary."

Ronan Farrow looks into our nosy AI interlocutors in "Surveilled."

A woman explores the world of the photographer mother who died young, "A Photographic Memory."

Holy Crap!* Clone Wars

 

THE SUBSTANCE (C-minus) - This breakneck science-fiction assault serves as both a Rorschach test and an endurance challenge. See how long you can grasp the reins of its insane plot -- about an aging actress who risks taking a drug that makes a young replica of herself, with predictably disastrous results. I lasted about 100 minutes, before this went off the rails in the final 40 minutes.

Provocateur Coralie Fargeat (her first effort was called "Revenge") writes and directs this hammer to the viewer's skull regarding what society thinks of women once they age out of the starlet classification. She is anything but subtle. Her opening scene is a clever time-lapse montage of a plaque being placed on a walk-of-fame for Oscar-winning actress Elisabeth Sparkle, a star-shaped plate that quickly gets trampled and endures wear and tear, with cracks eventually forming across its face. 

Cut to Demi Moore as Sparkle, a Jane Fonda type who spends her middle age leading aerobics classes on a popular TV show. But she is quickly fired (right when a birthday hits) by evil network executive Harvey (Dennis Quaid), a disgusting pig who demands a young replacement. (You see, men are allowed to be horrific, but an elegant beauty like Demi Moore is to be discarded as a post-fertile drag on society. Ya follow?) 

 

Sparkle's new self is a nubile clone who goes by Sue and is played to great visual effect by Margaret Qualley ("Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood," "Drive-Away Dolls"). Sue will take over Sparkle's exercise show and instantly hop on a track to stardom, mostly on the strength of her taut buttocks. This depresses Sparkle, of course. 

The key element of this oversized idiot plot is that, after Sparkle "births" Sue out of her spine (go with it), the two must follow a strict regimen in which they alternate consciousness for seven days at a time. But one slip of dosage or any delay in switching over could have negative effects. This comes to pass when Sue brings a date home and is about to have sex just as her seven-day run is ending, so she cheats to buy a little extra time. This results in a minor deformity to Sparkle once she awakens. And, yes, I'm starting to get winded conveying the details of this stupid story.

This all is rendered on a pulp neon palette and in an intentionally exaggerated fantasy world where dialogue is unbelievable and logic goes out the window. The visual style of storytelling could be called David Cronenberg meets Adrian Lyne. Fargeat knows no boundaries in exploring and degrading her actresses' bodies. There is, I would say, an almost shocking amount of nudity involving both Moore and Qualley, considering this is a mainstream movie and very few scenes apparently involve body doubles. The absurdity of the body dysmorphia ratchets up at first slowly (a gnarled finger), gets silly (Sue plucks a chicken leg out of the side of her buttocks, just like those charlatans used to retrieve someone's kidney with just their fingers), and then, like a rollercoaster, everything spills over the top and speeds out of control. 

The first half of the movie was entertaining, and its absurdities and plot holes tolerable. You give it the benefit of the doubt. But after the chicken leg, the entire production just jumps the shark. As Sue becomes more and more popular, it comes at the expenses of Sparkle, who becomes more and more disfigured. It's as if Fargeat had no third act up her sleeve, and so she unleashes near-comical horrors to inflict on each actress, culminating in a preposterous scene that recalls "Young Frankenstein," "The Elephant Man" and "Carrie" on steroids. (With a nod to "How to Get Ahead in Advertising.") After those first 100 minutes, it would have been wise to land the plane with a smart, quick final 15 minutes or so. Instead that rollercoaster keeps picking up speed until it flies off the rails and crashes into an orphanage -- pardon the out-of-control metaphor.

Fargeat's style throughout could be called Spumco Verite. When we first meet Harvey, at a urinal, Quaid's bulbous face is on top of the camera in an exaggerated distortion. In his next scene, he is eating shrimp like a slob, and the camera offers closeups inside his mouth. Fargeat is fond of long shots of corridors, with the angles and dimensions contorted in funhouse style. She shoots through peepholes and uses other disfiguring reflections like into doorknobs and camera lenses. She uses rapid-fire edits -- zip, snap, chop -- to dizzying effect. And let's give credit to the foley crew -- Victor Praud, Antoine Swertvaegher and Gregory Vincent -- for their giddy sound effects full of glops and splooshes and splats. (And that is just Quaid's slobbering.) Even tablets of Alka-Seltzer have a maniacal fizz.  

It's difficult to convey just how off-kilter the first half is and how unleashed the second half is. Fargeat bleats out the same message over and over and over again. I get it, we punish women for losing their youthful beauty. But battering your actresses in a public flogging somehow seems worse.

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.

Doc Watch: Pop Idols

 

MARTHA (B+) - You get the feeling watching this documentary about the rise and fall and resurrection of better-living guru Martha Stewart that the film might have actually captured the true personality of its subject. Here she is, warts and all, an in-your-face businesswoman who doesn't seem to care what you think about her.

I can see viewers walking away from this with varying reactions -- some thinking that she was singled out for prosecution (over a shady but relatively minor stock trade) because she was a strong woman, and others concluding that she was an insufferable task-mistress who likely got what she deserved. (It could be both.) R.J. Cutler specializes in celebrity profiles (like "Belushi"), and he finally seems in command of the storytelling. 

 

He is lucky to have Stewart herself, parked in a chair, essentially narrating much of the film and framing the arc of her life story. How reliable a narrator she is, well, that's also for viewers to decide. I got the feeling that she doesn't always tell the truth -- including when James Comey went after her for the suspicious timing of her selling stock in a friend's company, right before a negative news story was going to tank it. She has no reason to be repentant -- she did five months in prison -- and she comes off as quite the scrappy executive. But her veneer slips occasionally, like when Cutler calls her out on a double-standard after she trashes her first husband for cheating on her -- when she also was unfaithful. Stewart dismisses her indiscretion as nothing but decries her husband's affairs as unforgivable. We also see her treating underlings dismissively and borderline cruelly.

But we also are offered many clips of Stewart in her prime -- planting gardens, glazing desserts, tricking out a bedroom -- as a woman on a mission who could not be stopped. She is smart and funny, and the camera adored her like the model she once was. The stories about her time in prison -- again, you have to assume she is being truthful about all of it -- are fascinating, and her renaissance as a social media butterfly and pal to Snoop Dogg is fun to watch.

It all feels like a comprehensive two-hour spin through the life of a key pop-culture figure of the second half of the 20th century. It might reinforce your opinion of a divisive personality, or it might open your mind to reconsideration of a celebrity you thought you loved or hated.

RETURN OF THE KING: THE FALL AND RISE OF ELVIS PRESLEY (B-minus) - What a lopsided misfire about one of the most fascinating moments in rock 'n' roll history. In a bit of a bait-and-switch, only a fraction of this movie revolves around the December 1968 TV special that revived Elvis Presley's career after a decade that had sidetracked the rock idol with military duty and bad Hollywood movies, while the Beatles reconfigured the music world. (An inauspicious opening to the film doesn't help; it starts out with a re-enactment and hyperbole, a couple of red flags.)

Two-thirds of the movie -- more than an hour -- are spent just on the run-up to the '68 special, which then gets short shrift. Some build-up was necessary; you can't tell a redemption story without putting the original fall from grace into perspective. But here it feels as if the familiar beats of Presley's first 12 years or so in the public eye form a litany of greatest hits that won't end. We don't need yet another glimpse of Presley with his locks shorn before heading to Germany or his bride Priscilla's giant bouffants. 

There certainly is some great outtake footage from the '68 special, some of it showing an anxious and insecure Presley. And an unusual array of talking heads -- such as Bruce Springsteen, Conan O'Brien and Billy Corgan -- offer some quite cogent insight into Presley's psyche. But the final half hour is just not enough time to appreciate the TV spectacle that unfolded, in particular the electrifying jam circle that reunited Presley with his '50s bandmates. They show clips from "Trying to Get to You," but not the heady moment where Elvis gets so riled up he can't stay in his seat. The rest of the clips are so chopped up that they lack sufficient impact. Maybe last year's "Reinventing Elvis" from Paramount did a better job; we'll have to track it down and compare.

BONUS TRACK

The full-on Elvis, whose chair just cannot contain him, with "Trying to Get to You" at the 1968 taping:

R.I.P., Gena Rowlands, Part 1: Women on the Verge

 Gena Rowlands, the longtime wife of and collaborator with John Cassavetes, died in August at age 94. With an assist from the Guild Cinema, we are (re)viewing some of her foundational films. 

 

A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974) (A-minus) - This is a brutal two-and-a-half hours of domestic cinema verite, in which Gena Rowlands gives a devastating performance as a woman unraveling mentally before her husband and three young children.

Mabel (Rowlands) is particularly under the influence of alcohol, but who wasn't back then? As rough as it was back then, the drinking levels were appreciably higher in John Cassavetes movies. He is the writer-director here, with a huge assist from his improvisational cast, in particular Peter Falk as Mabel's fitfully angry blue-collar husband, Nick. As the film opens, Mabel has sent the children off to be with her mother so that she and Nick can have a date night -- except that Nick's crew gets sent to fix an emergency water leak, and so Mabel gets stood up. She responds by going to a bar, getting drunk, and bringing a man home to spend the night.

The strange behavior accelerates the next morning when Nick brings his crew home for a meal, and Mabel gets oddly flirty with one of the young men. She later hosts a birthday party for one of the kids and freaks out another parent; Nick eventually comes home to find the all of the children under-dressed and running wild. That leads to a climactic argument between Mabel and Nick (backed by his mother, played by Cassavetes' mother, Katherine) and the family doctor, who eventually has her committed.

There's more tortured domesticity, and until the end Mabel and Nick will try to create a mirage of a normal family in front of the kids. Falk is fascinating as a man at his wits' end, with such little patience for Mabel's mental illness that he resorts to that era's old stand-by, twice trying to slap it out of her. His bursts of anger are jarring. Nick shows little patience with the kids, too, as he tends to them with a similarly rough hand during Mabel's absence. 

Meantime, Rowlands, juggling the innocence of a girl with the skewed wiles of a fated to unhappiness, cycles through emotions as if she were possessed by the character. She imbues Mabel with personality quirks -- like her habit of jerking her thumb and blowing raspberries -- that define Rowlands' career image to this day, a half century later. It is hard to imagine a more raw performance by an actor insistent on exploring the terrors of misogyny during a backward era.

Cassavetes' camera stalks the actors, as if goading them into uncharted emotional territory. (He gets an assist from regular cinematographer Al Ruban.) He mines the dark humor of family life that can occur when a couple acts out in front of friends, strangers or their own resilient children. You can laugh at the absurdity one moment and bridle at the appalling domestic abuse the next. Rowlands' masterpiece might not appeal to modern, enlightened viewers, but the power of her high-wire act and Cassavetes' cinematic provocation cannot be denied.

OPENING NIGHT (1977) (B+) - It's hard to tell, in retrospect, whether John Cassavetes' scripts in the 1970s were exploiting his wife's ability to plumb emotional depths or were indulging her desire to take such deep dives. She sure gets knocked around a lot, both physically and metaphorically. 

Now in her mid-40s, Rowlands takes on the role of Myrtle Gordon, an aging actress having a midlife meltdown as she portrays a woman on stage having a midlife meltdown during her latest show's previews in the run-up to opening night. Anytime there's a play-within-a-play, things can get arty, but Cassavetes actually brings a fresh take to the inside baseball of backstage antics. The workings of the crew are fascinating at times, as Cassavetes' nosy camera turns us into VIP lurkers.

Myrtle is jarred after an early performance when she is confronted by an obsessive fan outside the stage door and then watches as the young woman gets hit by a car and dies. Myrtle strong-arms her way into the family shiva and then goes on a major bender that will culminate in her showing up late and trashed for the big night. 

It is the last straw for the play's director, Manny (Ben Gazzara), who has tired of suffering through Myrtle's antics in rehearsals and during the previews -- blowing lines, ad-libbing, addressing the audience, and taking flops on stage (there is one scene in which her lover's character, played by Cassavetes, is called on to slap Myrtle's character). Despite this slow-motion trainwreck, Manny rebuffs pleas to dump Myrtle by the playwright, Sarah (a marvelous old-school Joan Blondell, near the end of her career). Sarah is spooked by Myrtle, who suffers delusional visions of the young woman who died, sometimes having knock-down drag-out battles with the ghost. 

Rowlands nails the slow unraveling of a woman not just mourning and not just suffering from alcoholism, but also from the haunting realization that her looks won't draw the autograph hounds much longer. It's Sarah's script that jangles her as much as anything. Rowlands gets a lot of mileage just by narrowing her eyes and letting her character's judgment spill out from a stare. And she plays a believable rubbery-legged souse. As a stagehand marvels to her: "I've never seen anyone as drunk as you and still standing up." It is delivered as a high compliment.

Gazzara does a slow burn throughout, with occasional bouts of quick outrage. Cassavetes is a great foil as Maurice, who taunts Myrtle during rehearsals. Stay for the final half hour (the film runs 2 hours 25 minutes), as Rowlands and Cassavetes go toe-to-toe onstage, riveting the audience with their dueling, escalating improv to cap the play. (Again, it's a nested-doll concept -- did Cassavetes script the ad-libs, or were the ad-libs ad-libbed?) That extended climax of the film between real-life husband-and-wife is instantly iconic, and it makes up for any missteps of the previous two hours. That kind of sizzle between characters cannot be taught, though it serves as a master class in acting.

Soundtrack of Your Life: Rocktober

 We had an especially busy month or so on the concert front. Here are the highlights.

It started with Brooks Nielsen from the Growlers, who appeared at Revel on September 22. There is something about Nielsen, the face and sound of the beach-goth SoCal group that fizzled around the time of COVID, that just fills me with joy. He comes off as a clever, sweet stoner, who also has great taste in music. Each time I saw the Growlers (once in Albuquerque, once at their annual festival in San Pedro) the shows were a little slow out of the gate. But once he and his band hit their stride, a switch goes off, and they can do no wrong.

Nielsen is about as close as Millennials can get to their own Dylan. He's a hipster lounge singer (with his own neon "Brooksy" sign) who knows how to craft a groove to lay over languid lyrics. His latest band featured a ringer of a lead guitarist (who gave off a Flea vibe), which propelled a lot of the songs. Here they are in San Diego playing the sing-along "Love Test":

 

I caught a book reading by Joe Boyd in support of his latest And the Roots of Rhythm Remain, a world tour of world music. He told bittersweet stories from a historical perspective, most memorably when he traced the origins of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" back to South Africa in the late 1930s and as popularized as "Wemoweh" by the Weavers. It just so happens that Boyd's brother lives in Albuquerque, so a stop here should not have been a surprise. I was drawn to Boyd because of his work with R.E.M. in the mid-'80s. A Harvard grad, he went to England in the 1960s and became synonymous with the British folk scene of Fairport Convention and Nick Drake. 

My partner took me to see one of her favorites, Skating Polly, at the Launchpad in late September. Step-siblings Peyton Bighorse and Kelli Mayo, who share vocal duties and switch off between guitar and bass, were "discovered" in Oklahoma by Exene Cervenka of X. They can give off a Throwing Muses vibe with some off-kilter rhythm shifts. They certainly played loud and tore it up before a small crowd. Here they are six years ago in a live set on KEXP:

I bought tickets to see sadgirl Haley Heynderickx, who is doing her part in supporting the consonants at the end of the alphabet, but I just was too busy to run downtown on a Tuesday night. I hope she appreciates my $20 contribution; I'd still like to see her during a calmer period.

Rocktober crescendoed with a trip to Austin. The visit was bookended by concerts from Guided by Voices (at the Mohawk) and Dehd (at the Scoot Inn).

Opening for Dehd was Chicago-based Sweat FM, who has to be seen to be believed. Apparently a guy named Dom Rabalais, who is into bodybuilding, tattoos and a porn side gig, he sings techno-punk songs to a recorded digital backing track. He strips down to barely anything and jumps around the stage, like a kickboxing aerobics instructor who sings his own songs. My favorite outfit was a neon lime-green jock strap. The ladies loved his hydraulic butt cheeks. He ended every song with a verbal stamp: "Sweat FM!" (Like Mary Katherine Gallagher's "Superstar!") Here he is without the peroxide in his hair:

Dehd drew a packed crowd to the outdoor venue on a warm night. They seem a little more confident than when we saw them two years ago in Albuquerque. Jason Balla still stalks the stage while bashing out his spare, loose lead guitar riffs, and Emily Kempf is the anchor on the left side of the stage. Highlights included "Loner" and "Light On"; they are the second and third track on the video below from a recent live KCRW recording. We left at the end of the main set, ceding the encore to the kids to enjoy, as we wandered past the Daniel Johnston tribute mural, getting a jump on traffic, only to have our bus break down and then getting caught in a massive snarl on the UT campus as a Sabrina Carpenter was letting out, unleashing a horde of blond girls in white boots onto the thoroughfare.

We're nearing double digits on our Guided by Voices world tour. Austin was either the 8th or 9th city we've seen the Dayton legends (depending on whether you count Los Angeles and Long Beach separately). God bless Robert Pollard. He refuses to rest on his legacy songs. For better or worse, he leans into his recent catalogue more and more, which made the second hour a bit of a drag at times. (One stretch of 7 out of 8 songs were barely recognizable to me, a diehard since "Bee Thousand.") Pollard is getting more and more judicious with the old favorites, like "Motor Away," "The Best of Jill Hives" and "Shocker in Gloomtown," sprinkling them in almost as teases amid the denser new material. 

I didn't stay for the encore (which means I missed one of his best live songs, "Jane of the Waking Universe" ... and, of course, "Echoes Myron") but he finished the main set strong with "I Am a Scientist," "Cut-out Witch" and "Glad Girls," with one new ringer mixed in -- "Serene King," an instant pop classic:

I don't know which one of us is going to fold first -- Bob (who is 67) or me. There were times at the Austin gig where I vowed that it might be my last GBV show -- especially considering it was one of those concerts where Pollard had that chip on his shoulder that comes from not being appreciated as the greatest pop songwriter of his generation, and he wouldn't shut up about it -- but I'll probably end up in a place like Pittsburgh next year pogoing to "Teenage FBI." Never say never.

New to the Queue

 There is a season ...

A documentary, the last in a trilogy, about the solidarity of workers at a Chinese garment factory, "Youth: Homecoming."

Andrea Arnold ("Fish Tank," "American Honey") is back in her British working-class milieu, focused on a tween protagonist, with "Bird."

From Jesse Eisenberg, the story of cousins who go to Poland to explore their Jewish roots, "A Real Pain."

A chronicle of the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat."

A quirky black-and-white comedy about teen step-siblings falling for each other, "Hippo."

Caste Away

 

ORIGIN (C-minus) - Props to Ava Duvernay for thinking outside of the box and being ambitious. But this fictional interpretation of the crafting of a nonfiction book is an interesting idea that fails miserably on the screen. 

Based on writer Isabel Wilkerson and her book Caste, which recalculated traditional thinking on race and class, the film tags along as the fictionalized Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor from "King Richard") travels the globe -- to Germany, India and across the United States -- exploring the ideas of hierarchal cultural categorization. Aside from the visuals of such a travelogue, the grunt work of researching a book never really jumps off the big screen. Attempts to rope in real-life current events feel forced -- the film starts with a re-enactment of the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, and Wilkerson awkwardly interacts with a plumber wearing a MAGA hat (Nick Offerman) at her house.

The dramatic hitch comes from the fact that Wilkerson suffers, in quick succession, the deaths of her mother and her husband (plus a cousin (Niecy Nash) is seriously ill), which, rather than create some dramatic tension, casts a pall over the proceedings. Next stop: research into Nazi Germany! We get sepia-toned flashbacks to a couple in the 1930s, a gentile man in love with a Jewish woman, and there is just nothing particularly fresh to convey about such forbidden romance amid horrors. Too often this one feels like Holocaust porn or similar wallowing in the history of lynching. (Wilkerson was influenced by a 1941 sociological study of "caste and class" in the Deep South at that time, penned by a couple whose story is also told in grim flashback.)

She eventually sets out to study untouchables in India, where Duvernay's palette brightens, but the dialogue remains stiff and academic. By the time we hear a droning lecture on endogamy (marrying within your own group), I was tempted to shout at the screen, begging for a in-depth documentary rather than this 141-minute gloss across one writer's serendipitous world. 

SAINT OMER (C-minus) - Stilted does not begin to describe this melancholy drama about the trial of an immigrant woman who killed her six-month-old child while battling long-term depression. Most of the film literally consists of dry testimony in a French court.

 

The hook here is a shared focus on not just the accused but also on Rama (Kayije Kagame), a professor and novelist who is drawn to the woman's narrative and attends the trial. Rama, who happens to look like a model, wants to parallel this tragic story of Laurence Coly (a placid Guslagie Malanda) with the myth of Medea. But she doesn't do much more than sit in the gallery brooding as she, like us, endures the droning court proceedings.

We are allowed some fresh air at times -- domestic scenes between Rama and her husband and family, and between Rama and the accused's mother -- but even those scenes are lethargic and obtuse. Alice Diop (the documentary "We") has a heavy hand with both the script (along with two co-writers) and behind the camera. Colors are muted. And these court scenes stretch out for 20 minutes at a time. Rama's scenes outside the courtroom are often wordless. At one point she takes out her recorder to replay some of the testimony that we've already sat through. It's just too much to take over 2 hours 2 minutes in running time. 

From flashbacks we can see from Rama's childhood that she herself has some mommy issues, and through scenes depicting her romantic relationship, she might also have some motherhood issues. None of this coalesces. Some of the court dialogue is somewhat enlightening, as it humanizes Laurence and allows her to tell her back story -- she had a tough mother, a sham of a marriage, mental health struggles. If only Diop had managed to tighten it and brighten it and given us something more complex than a mopey protagonist and a stone-faced antagonist.

Doc Watch: Buddy Movies

 

DUSTY & STONES (B+) - This fish-out-of-water documentary is a little flat but quite charming, as it follows two cousins from Swaziland who chase their dream of country-music stardom in Nashville and Texas. It takes the fish-out-of-water concept about as far as you can go without wearing out its welcome.

 

Debut director Jesse Rudoy embeds deeply with Gazi (Dusty) and Linda (Stones) in a story set, oddly, back in 2018 and only now getting a wide release. Dusty and Stones pay respects to classic country with covers of Johnny Cash and others, but they also write their own songs in a more modern mode. They catch their big break when an international music festival in Jefferson, Texas, contacts them in their town of Mooihoek, inviting them to take part in the town's annual competition.

On their way to Texas, they stop in Nashville to record a few songs with a noted producer and top session players. It's touching to watch the duo express pure tear-filled joy at the way their songs come to life with a full band and professional production. The guys also sample America's strip-mall fast-food culture. They find a sacred link between the American South and Swaziland through Dolly Parton's "Tennessee Mountain Home," which resonates with their connection to their own homeland. 

Once the festival starts, there are ominous moments, as it looks like the two men might not be so welcome in a rural white world. The leader of the house band acts dismissively during their sound check, and the men are regarded more as curiosities than established musicians. (Although they are warmly embraced, at times literally, by local women at a rowdy bar.) No matter the outcome, you sense that Dusty and Stones had a dream come true and appreciate what they have, both at home and abroad.

WILL & HARPER (B-minus) - Funny guy Will Ferrell uses the road-trip device to chronicle the journey of his pal and comedy co-conspirator Harper Steele, whose transition from man to woman challenges Ferrell's heteronormative construct of their friendship, which dates to their days on "Saturday Night Live," where Steele wrote some of Ferrell's most memorable sketches.

Ferrell is earnest and open-minded as the old friends take a car trip across the country to revisit some of Steele's favorite dive bars and other dumps in order to gauge the reception that Steele will get now that he no longer is a slumming good ol' boy. (The men are also partial to celebrating beer o'clock in Walmart parking lots, and they even take a balloon ride in New Mexico.) However, the settings are unimaginative, and the reactions are fairly predictable -- mostly inadvertent misgendering mixed with acceptance from unexpected sources. Too often the placement of Steele into these situations seems forced, solely for the purpose of goosing the narrative. Often, the constant distraction of having a celebrity present spoils the whole experiment.

The bond between Ferrell and his older friend is genuine, but that friendship is not really explored beyond the gimmick that got them in a car to drive across the USA. Besides a cursory montage of sketches and characters that Steele apparently created, you don't get a good sense of what made him so funny before he went through a dark period about seven years ago before breaking through as his true self. And maybe that's the point; the old Steele is dead, and this is the person you get now. 

And maybe that's what lends a layer of melancholy over the exercise. Ferrell sometimes looks flat-out bored; though he's funny enough here that he at least makes this watchable. If not for his antics, this would be a pretty flat film. As it is, things drag and get repetitive. Director Josh Greenberg did not need the nearly two-hour running time afforded to him. The movie is slow out of the gates; it takes about 20 minutes to get the pair fully on the road, first wasting time in New York with a boring reunion at "SNL."

The inclusion of many "SNL" alums doesn't feel organic, but rather a way to get bold-faced names in the credits. Only Kristen Wiig makes a mark, as she is recruited to pen a theme song, and her composition over the closing credits doesn't disappoint. It's getting to that final destination that can be a chore here.

BONUS TRACK

Dusty and Stones' "hit" song, "The River":

 Also over the closing credits of "Will & Harper," a ginchy pop bauble "Go With Me" by Gene & Debbe: