The Final Twist

 

WAKE UP DEAD MAN (C) - I can't remember the last time I've seen such a dud of a cast, and one so lacking in direction in the face of a convoluted script that tries to be more clever than it is. The third entry in Rian Johnson's "Knives Out" series is an exasperating bomb. 

 

Josh O'Connor lacks the heft to carry this ribald story of a parish priest who gets caught up in a small-town murder mystery, and he is surrounded by second-tier actors, most of whom serve as mere placeholders. Daniel Craig, the star of the trilogy as detective Benoit Blanc, has little to play off of and instead spouts Johnson's throw-away dialogue, the one-liners plummeting into a comedic void, eliciting barely a cricket. (It's probably for the best that this is being released mainly on Netflix and not to muted cinema crowds.) Josh Brolin, who seems to have generally just worn out his welcome, emotes to the heavens as a MAGA monsignor who covets a missing jewel that incites the mayhem. Brolin seems about as relevant these days as his dad is. ("I know you are, but what am I?")

Veterans Glenn Close and Thomas Haden Church are shadows of their former selves, and the rest have very little to do. That includes Mila Kunis yelling a lot as the local police chief; Jeffrey Wright as a sassy bishop; Andrew Scott ("Blue Moon") as a frustrated author; Kerry Washington as a generic lawyer; Cailee Spaeny as a disabled cellist, for some reason; a defanged Jeremy Renner as a doctor with the nerves of Don Knotts, and Daryl McCormack ("Good Luck to You, Leo Grande") as a hackneyed social-media influencer. Yeah, the star power doesn't exactly jump off the page; nor does it leap from the screen. (And we thought the second film in the series, "Glass Onion," had a B-list cast ...)

Johnson trots out hoary chestnuts like the spritely character who repeatedly startles the protagonist by seemingly coming out of nowhere. The biblical wordplay is unrelenting. A typical joke suggests that the blinding of Saul at Damascus might have been merely a "bad case of pink eye." It's the cartoonish kind of movie in which a single punch knocks a man out cold (even if he is a former boxer) -- and then have him wake up next to a dead body and mistakenly think he killed the person. (What high jinks!)  Kunis and Craig even have the temerity to make a reference to "Scooby-Doo," which is a challenging bar for "Wake Up Dead Man." 

The narrative plods along and tips its hand often. If you think a man of the cloth who dies on Good Friday isn't going to be "resurrected" a couple of days later, you won't be winning this year's kindergarten connect-the-dots championship. And Johnson takes his sweet time slathering on the plot points. Did I mention this is nearly two and a half hours long? You are stronger than I am if you can make it through this without pacing or wandering off for a bit to check your email. 

There are clever notes here and there, but nothing rises to that spoofy Agatha Christie level of giddiness of the 2019 original, "Knives Out," with its enthusiastic performances from the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette and Alec Baldwin (with an assist from newcomer Ana de Armas). What felt fresh six years ago seems fully played out. We now have solid evidence of diminishing returns, and while we admire Johnson's throwback energy, it turns out he just could not capture lightning in a bottle again.

BUGONIA (B) - Here is my theory of how "Bugonia" made it to the big screen: Will Tracy -- an Onion and John Oliver contributor who broke out in 2022 with "The Menu" -- and co-writer Jang Joon-hwan penned this taut dark comedy about conspiracy theorists that was about 95 minutes long. Then Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos came along and said, "Don't worry about the final half hour; I've got this" -- and ran the whole thing off the rails. 

 

Lanthimos drew attention with his avant-garde early work, "Alps" and "Dogtooth," but has made one good movie ("The Favourite") in the past 15 years. We had hopes that this heavyweight bout between Emma Stone (playing a CEO who is kidnapped over her company's environmental crimes) and Jesse Plemons (playing a man who believes that Andromedans are plotting to kill off earthlings). And it does sizzle, thanks to a clever script and its two stars, until jumping the shark into silliness in the final reel.

You need an appreciation for horror and sci-fi (or the nostalgic production values of the original "Star Trek" TV show) and patience for logical leaps in order to make it to the end of the film. You'll have to believe that a character with a broken kneecap can hobble away beyond the pursuit of security guards and law enforcement. You must withstand whipsaw changes in main characters' motives and actions.

 

However, for at least the first hour, this is an endlessly clever exercise that allows Stone and Plemens, two of the best actors of their day, to play to their strengths -- she as Michelle, a type-A CEO, and he as Teddy, the aggrieved conspiracy merchant who drags his mentally handicapped cousin into his felonious scheme, apparently out of a basic love for honeybees and their survival (and inspired by his mother's cancer that he attributes to Michelle's company). His is a familiar type -- smart enough to know how to look for information; dumb (or mentally ill) enough to fall victim to confirmation bias. Meantime, newcomer Aidan Delbis, as the cousin, brings nothing fresh to the familiar trope of the dimwitted patsy.)

It is fun to watch Michelle ply her business-school training and HR jargon when trying to talk her way out of her chained existence in the basement of the beat-up rural home. (It looks like the kind of house that a grown man would inherit -- decor, dust and all -- after his parents die.) It's a kick to watch her kick off her heels as she prepares to fight off the cousins during the initial kidnap attempt, using her self-defense training. As the trailer reveals, Plemons is a ticking time bomb who is not averse to ape-sprinting across a dining room table to furiously attack his captive in the middle of dinner.

Your mission is to decide whether two-thirds of a very good movie are worth the eye-rolls it takes to make it to the final credits. I managed it. 

BONUS TRACK

"Bugonia's" climax makes compelling use of Marlene Dietrich's interpretation of Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," even if it feels unearned at the end:

Doc Watch: Apple Scruffs

 Two recent documentaries from Apple TV:

STILLER AND MEARA: NOTHING IS LOST (B+) - Comic actor/director Ben Stiller, with an assist from his sister, performs a deep dive into his parents' lives, a public grieving and reconciliation as he picks through the extensive family archives after Jerry Stiller's death in 2020. Even though, as you'd expect, Ben pulls his punches a few times, he stumbles on some profound insights into the marriage and careers of the beloved comedy team from the 1960s and '70s.

 

Jerry Stiller met Anne Meara in the 1950s, and theirs seems like an authentic love story. His insecurities drove them toward success, while her talent and timing were critical to their success. They became staples on the "Ed Sullivan Show" in the 1960s, but they eventually embarked on successful solo careers in TV (and her on stage). Their marriage survived until her death in 2015. 

The treasure trove here is Jerry Stiller's voluminous archives -- home recordings of the duo creating and rehearsing bits; family films when the kids were small; meticulously curated news clippings that tracked Ben's career. Ben Stiller takes the opportunity to evaluate his own performance as a husband and father, and the making of the film offers him an chance to repair his foundering marriage to actress Christine Taylor. He also bonds sweetly with his sister, Amy, also a comic actor. 

Ben walks a fine line between mawkish and reverential. He mentions his mother's alcoholism but doesn't dwell on it and instead champions her late-life sobriety. He strongly implies that his father could be both a sweetheart and a tyrant, but he keeps it respectful. Jerry Stiller had an almost debilitating craving for approval. In one recording, Meara describes the duo's workaholic patterns as "joyless." 

It would have been more fascinating, of course, to have been a fly on the wall to any Stiller and Meara couples-counseling sessions back in the day; their marriage skills are admirable. (Their act liked to riff on their mixed marriage -- he was Jewish, she was Irish.) But this is the next best thing to being there, and Ben Stiller is an engaging host who comes across as humble and grateful not only for what his parents passed on to him but also for the opportunity to present it all to the world. 

COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT (B) - It's never easy to watch someone die. This documentary takes the approach of a Hollywood drama in chronicling the final couple of years of poet and activist Andrea Gibson whose uphill battle against cancer is doomed all along.

 

As brave and determined as Gibson (above right) comes off here, there is no sugarcoating the challenges Gibson faced alongside a devoted wife, Megan Falley, a fellow poet. We spent plenty of time in hospitals and at chemotherapy sessions, and no aspect of their home life seems off-limits to the film crew. The hero's journey is two-fold: one is to position Gibson for the inevitable; the other is to root for Gibson to put on one last farewell performance (her shows had the energy of punk concerts at times) before death comes. 

Director Ryan White has previously tackled such subjects as Serena Williams and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Some of his scenes here feel awfully staged -- he gets the lighting just perfect at times, and his establishing shots can be downright Spielbergian. But he knows he has a compelling story, and he's there for the key moments. 

We get to observe Gibson's writing process. The couple come across as insightful and honest. White does not overstay his welcome over 104 minutes. He provides an opportunity for the viewer to take a heartfelt journey and to pause afterward in gratitude.

BONUS TRACKS

Over the closing credits of "Stiller and Meara," Sonny & Cher with "Unchained Melody":

 

Unrelated, our title track, from George Harrison:

Family Values

 

SENTIMENTAL VALUE (A) - Norway's Joachim Trier makes intricately emotional films for adults. And he has the talented Renate Reinsve in his regular troupe. Here, they reunite from "The Worst Person in the World" to tell a powerful story of a successful man trying to reunite with the daughter he has long neglected.

 

Reinsve (above left) is Nora, a theater actress (who has a TV show under her belt) with a chronic case of stage fright. She and her sister are estranged from their father, a well-known filmmaker who abandoned them and their mother when they were kids. Now that their mother, a psychologist who worked out of their beloved childhood home for years, has died, the father has returned to reclaim the family house. Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard) also seeks to kick-start his dormant career with a screenplay he presents to Nora, asking her to star in the film. She rejects the offer without reading the script, because she cannot imagine working with him. 

Gustav turns to an American star, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) to play the role and to shoot the film in the family house that he, too, grew up in -- including a scene depicting his mother's suicide in the 1950s. The production bumbles along, as Gustav tries to adapt the film in English and Rachel struggles to find the right accent and overall tone for the role meant for Gustav's daughter. Nora -- stunned by the end of an unhealthy romantic relationship and convinced that she is only 20 percent sane -- bonds with her sister, Agnes, and her tow-headed nephew.

No one can so subtly convey a range of emotions, sometimes within seconds, like Reinsve. Her face at rest is a placid mask, like Isabelle Huppert's, but both actresses speak volumes with their eyes or a flick of an eyebrow. Skarsgard turns in a melancholy performance as a 70-something drunk and aged playboy. 

The ringer here, though, is Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (above right) as the sister, Agnes, who grounds the film (as a trained historian, she delves into her grandmother's mental troubles that followed working with the anti-Nazi resistance). She adds nuance beyond the typical daddy-daughter drama and steals every scene from her heavyweight co-stars. And it's a cliche to suggest that a building is an additional character in a film, but Trier makes that childhood home come alive, using arch camera angles to suggest a knowing and seeing being that lurks in the four walls.

About halfway through I paused to register my gratitude and luck at getting to enjoy this in real time, and then I dove back in, never once checking the time but instead savoring every moment of the two hours and 13 minutes, not a second wasted. The final 20 minutes perfectly tie up these loose ends, at least to the extent it is possible to heal generational wounds.

D(E)AD (A-minus) - Film experiences don't get much more joyous that this absurdist comedy about a man who stalks his family after he dies. The film's website succinctly explains the plot: "Tillie (Isabella "Izzy" Roland), a floundering young woman and her charismatic, alcoholic father (Craig Bierko), struggle to resolve their fractured relationship in the weirdest possible way: after he dies, his ghost appears in mirrors to haunt everyone in the family but Tillie."

Roland wrote the screenplay (directed by Claudia Lonow, Roland's real-life mom) and it positively sizzles with snappy dialogue and a galloping plot that careens across 96 giddy minutes thanks to a talented no-name cast. It is a clever take on the father-daughter dynamic, with Tillie flabbergasted throughout as to why her dad is snubbing her, even in death. Roland slips in some serious insight amid the mayhem.

The rich cast includes Roland's fellow comedian Vic Michaelis as her type-A sister, Violet; Lonow, a TV veteran, as Frankie, who is driven crazy by the reappearance of her dead ex-husband; Brennan Lee Mulligan as a deadpan phone-center drone who becomes a target of Tillie's crush; and veteran comic Eddie Pepitone as a Rabbi brought in to conduct an exorcism. 

This plays like an extra-long episode of your favorite sitcom, and I mean that in a good way. It is an "Addams Family"-like romp with a sharp modern sensibility and terrific comic timing. Don't miss the truly independent gem made for $250,000 in Kickstarter funding.

HAMNET (B) - In which Chloe Zhao goes medieval on our asses. The director of "The Rider" and "Nomadland" spirals back centuries to show us William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, grappling with the death of the son who inspired "Hamlet."

If you can make it through the brutal slog that is the film's first hour, the second half (after the child dies) cobbles together a decent story of an estranged couple, brought back together in the final 20 minutes with the debut staging of "Hamlet," leading to a profoundly moving final scene. But that first hour is a chore, and I was tempted to just walk out. Jessie Buckley (Agnes, a nature lover and borderline "witch") and Paul Mescal (earnest wordsmith Will) are pitted against each other in an emotionally wrenching crying contest for more than an hour. Both performances -- rendered often in extreme close-ups -- crank the pathos to 11. Toss in a couple of screeching childbirths and the truly horrific death throes of an 11-year-old boy, and it's virtually unwatchable.

 

Buckley ("Wild Rose," "The Lost Daughter") and Mescal ("Aftersun") are formidable talents. But Zhao -- who has worked wonders with amateur actors, successfully mixing in Frances McDormand in "Nomadland" -- pushes her stars too far into the realm of misery porn. 

In the end, however, Buckley and Mescal finally get a reprieve from the maelstrom. At the climax, the world suddenly goes quiet ("The rest is silence") and they exchange a long glance -- her leaning on the stage like a groupie, him in the wings, triumphant -- and we are reminded of their implicit, unspoken connection that whole time. It is a stunning moment of filmmaking that makes it worth the effort to tough it out until the end. 

New to the Queue

 The transition phase ...

Chloe Zhao ("The Rider," "Nomadland") is back with a drama about Shakespeare and his wife (Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley) and their son who died young, "Hamnet."

Brazil's Kleber Mendonca Filho has been hit-and-miss (compare "Aquarius" with "Neighboring Sounds" and last year's "Pictures of Ghosts"), but we'll steel ourself for his latest 2.5-hour period piece, "Secret Agent."

Will Arnett stars in a moody film from Bradley Cooper about a comedian who returns to standup during the dissolution of his marriage, "Is This Thing On?" 

A documentary looks back at high school AV muckrakers who broke a big story about environmental harm in New York in the 1990s, "Teenage Wasteland."

Gus Van Sant is back with a '70s period piece about a hostage-taking at a bank, "Dead Man's Wire."

Morgan Neville ("20 Feet From Stardom," "Won't You Be My Neighbor") studies a breakthrough year in American cinema, "Breakdown: 1975." 

Doc Watch: Add It Up

 

GEORGE ORWELL: 2 + 2 = 5 (A-minus) - This examination of the work of George Orwell -- which remains persistently prophetic in its warnings of totalitarianism -- is another powerful but overstuffed documentary from Raoul Peck, who previously splashed the screen with the written works of James Baldwin in 2017 with "I Am Not Your Negro."

Peck blends old film footage with modern clips that puts Orwell's polemics -- mainly "1984" and "Animal Farm" -- in perspective, and he threads the two-hour presentation with dispatches from a tuberculosis clinic where Orwell spent many months in his final years. Peck emphasizes that condition with sounds of wheezing on the soundtrack, and by the end of the film it is obvious that it is western democracy that is gasping for its last breaths as much as the subject was in the 1940s.

Reminders of World War II-era repression, as echoed in the dictatorial regimes of today, abound throughout the film. Peck provides a seamless blend of news events spanning from 100 years ago to today. We watch modern slaughter in Ukraine and Gaza and elsewhere, and we are treated to excerpts of speeches by Nobel peace laureate Maria Ressa of the Philippines, which are particularly poignant. The sense of urgency is unrelenting throughout the film

But like with "Negro," it is difficult to absorb it all. The viewer must contend with an onslaught of images, along with narration of Orwell's writings, plus text flashing on the screen identifying people and events. At times it is all too much to take in, and like with "Negro," it makes you want to just go read the source material.

Three is an overemphasis on 1984 (including movie clips from the 1950s version and the 1980s version), and Animal Farm is slighted -- reduced to more of a visual element than its substance. Peck does do a fine job of humanizing his subject. He goes back several times to a photo of an infant Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair) in the arms of his dark-skinned nanny in India at the dawn of the 20th century, and he gives credit to Orwell, a privileged Eton graduate, for his empathy toward oppressed peoples. 

There is a quote from Orwell addressing the dichotomy within the man, calling himself both a snob and a revolutionary. The film wraps with a quote attributed to Orwell toward the end of his life (living on the Scottish island of Jura) -- "All that matters has already been written" -- but you get the sense that Peck here has just scratched the surface. To the library we go.

BONUS TRACK

Our title track, completely unrelated, from the Violent Femmes:

That '70s Drift: The Hippie Hangover

 I'm an atheist who does not like musicals, so when considering my reviews of these two films -- brought back last month by the Guild Cinema -- take what I say about them with the proverbial pillar of salt.

HAIR (1979) (B) - The hit stage musical that partly epitomized the emergence of the Baby Boom in 1968 was finally brought to the screen at the end of the 1970s by Milos Forman, in a visually powerful film that must have seemed wistful and nostalgic for the previous decade even back then. 

A long-haired Treat Williams (above) leads a spirited cast belting out old hits like "Aquarius," "Good Morning, Starshine" and "Let the Sunshine In," and dancing to the mesmerizing choreography of Twyla Tharp. John Savage plays the wide-eyed Oklahoma farm boy who falls in with a tribe of happy hippies frolicking in New York City on his way to Army duty in a matter of days. He also falls in love (like they do only in old-fashioned movies) with a rich girl played by Beverly D'Angelo.  

This succeeds where "Jesus Christ Superstar" fails -- they don't try to sing every bit of dialogue, thankfully, and the songs have hooks and swing to them. Ringers abound. Nell Carter blasts out a couple of songs. Renn Woods sets the tone early on with a soulful version of "Aquarius." Punk chick Annie Golden is adorable as the tribe member expecting a child and not really caring whose it is. Ellen Foley pays homage to "Black Boys" in song. Charlotte Rae has a blast lusting after Williams when he crashes a high-society dinner. And devil-eyed Richard Bright stands out as an Army sergeant who gets rolled by the stoners. 

Forman (coming off a long break after "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") is in command from start to finish. He lionizes the anti-war spirit of the times, and he loads some scenes with hundreds of extras, particularly effective in the climactic crowd scene depicting a protest outside the White House. The kinetic energy created by Tharp's choreography never lets up, and rather than come off as arty or showy, it feels natural and propels the film with its inventive visuals. 

The final act seems completely removed from the original stage show, as the hippies cook up a caper to rescue their Oklahoma pal from service in Vietnam. The bittersweet twist at the end feels like an homage to the death of the Sixties.

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (1973) (D+) - What in tarnation? I struggled mightily to understand this cinematic mess or find a hook to keep me watching. I failed. 

"Jesus Christ Superstar" is the poster child for musical mayhem disguised as art. Theater people! Norman Jewison's adaptation injects modern elements into the story of Jesus and Judas during the week leading up to the crucifixion of Christ. It is bookended by scenes of a theater troupe rolling out into the Israeli desert to launch the god-forsaken production and finally loading back up onto a bus to drive off after the sacrifice of Our Lord. Whatever.

The music from Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber is brutally atonal at times, with nearly every word "sung." There are two standout tracks -- the title number and Yvonne Elliman's tender "I Don't Know How to Love Him" -- but most of the songs are forgettable if not irritating. The story is a mess. The character depictions are a farce. Jesus is played by blond, blue-eyed Ted Neeley.

All of this would be eclipsed and rendered as beta satire by Monty Python's "Life of Brian" six years later. As usual, the Python troupe ruined biblical epics for good. But even without the send-up, "Jesus Christ Superstar" plays as self-parody throughout.

BONUS TRACKS

Here is the cast of the 1968 musical performing "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" on the Ed Sullivan show and taking over the studio for the infectious conclusion:

  

Yvonne Elliman, iconic with "I Don't Know How to Love Him," one of the few highlights from "Jesus Christ Superstar":

 

The title track from "Superstar." Dig those white afros, backing up Carl Anderson as Judas:

The Old Ballgame

 

EEPHUS (A) - There is one thing in this life that I know down in my bones, and that is baseball. It is the one through-line going back to as long as I can remember. And I've never seen a more perfect baseball movie than "Eephus," a low-budget, low-key ragtag pickup game of a movie. If you've ever chosen up sides at the local field and called balls and strikes on the honor system, or played right-field-out, then this film is for you.

 

"Eephus" follows a day in the life of a men's recreational league, marking the final game at a local field in New England that is facing demolition (making way for a school to be built there). These guys have been toiling away at this for years, most of them approaching middle age, except for a few young ringers who still harbor hopes of finding a professional league someday. They banter and bullshit for an hour and a half on screen, and then, like every game around nightfall, they're done, and they haul their creaky bones back to their families.

This is the debut of writer-director Carson Lund (he was the cinematographer for "Ham on Rye"), and along with two other writers, they leg out scratchy dialogue, from random bits and pieces, no doubt assisted by the cast's occasional ad-libs. And the minor-league crew of no-name actors bat around arch observations and aphorisms like old pros. None of this should really work well; everything does.

Like kids pushing against a weekday curfew or old men facing the autumn of their lives and careers, these old rivals look to wring every moment they can before sunset shuts the door on an era. They are assisted by a Greek chorus or two of observers, some trained, others baffled at the spectacle. The left-fielders for each team are especially philosophical. 

The heart of the film is old Franny (Cliff Blake), the diligent scorekeeper who eventually fills in as umpire (making calls from the pressbox) after the proper umpire refuses to cover extra innings. Franny is the voice of tradition and fairness and the keeper of history (his scorebook entries, in pencil, are meticulous). We also hear snippets from radio broadcasts, which could be emanating from the men's childhoods, as well as wise baseball maxims borrowed from the likes of Yogi Berra and Babe Ruth, intoned as chapter headings by the documentary veteran Frederick Wiseman. 

Some players come and go -- one arrives just in time during the first inning to save his team from a forfeit, and one team's pitcher/manager runs off mid-game to his niece's communion. And there is a mysterious interloper, who seems familiar to a few of the guys, though no one can identify him beyond the name Lee. It is Bill Lee, the former Boston Red Sox lefty, playing himself. After bragging that he can still sling his stuff, he heads out to the mound in his street clothes to show it off -- including the famous high-arcing eephus pitch that gives the movie its name. Lee was known as a hippie goofball in the '70s, but now, settling in to old age, he fits in as one of the guys.

And it is the arc of time, the decades, that lingers in the air throughout "Eephus." Observing the slow-pitched balloon ball intended to throw off batters' timing, one of the players notes, "It stays in the air forever." And that's just what the sport -- the idea -- of baseball does. It lingers over a lifetime. Each game, as George Carlin famously observed, could conceivably last forever, and here that's just what threatens to happen. 

 

 

In the end, there are more empty beer cans scattered about the dugouts than gloves or balls. And frustration among the players: "Let's just finish this thing to say that we did." Base hits will disappear into the dusk, like Gabby Hartnett's homer in the gloamin', legging a single into a double, turning a middle-aged base-runner into a kid again for a moment. Though in the daylight, things often are not pretty. (The players display all levels of talent and skills, just as you'd expect.) After one sloppy play, one of the men observes: "Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base?"

No, it turns out. It all seems perfect in the moment, and it always has. 

WHO KILLED THE MONTREAL EXPOS? (B-minus) - A friend from Chicago has a go-to line that we both find infinitely funny: "Didn't your dad used to pitch for the Expos?" The fact that the Montreal Expos moved their baseball operations to Washington, D.C., in 2004 somehow makes that reference feel even more quaint.

I was aware (barely) in 1969 when the Expos joined the National League, the first year each circuit split into East and West divisions, the Montreal gang providing a cushion to the Chicago Cubs against a last-place finish, at least for a few years after expansion. (We won't go into the childhood trauma involving the Cubs and the year 1969; been there, done that.) 

This Netflix documentary waxes nostalgic over the perennially snakebit team and laments the eventual betrayal of Montreal fans by the owners. However, its emphasis on ownership drama over the years makes this more inside-baseball than actual baseball. The old players get short-shrift; instead, it is a series of executives who get the bulk of the air time here.

So if you are looking for a nostalgia ride with Tim Raines, Gary Carter and Andre Dawson, you're out of luck. And the original squad that included Le Grand Orange, Rusty Staub? Ghosted. Would you settle for Larry Walker (probably known more for his Colorado exploits) and beloved manager Felipe Alou? They, Pedro Martinez and Vladimir Guerrero Sr. get face time here, but not as much as the bean-counters do. The filmmakers make other odd choices, as well; for example, it is hinted at but not mentioned that Jackie Robinson played with the Montreal Royals minor-league team the year before he broke the color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dennis Martinez's perfect game is barely sneezed at. Actual game clips are fleeting. In sum, you do not get a sense of players' accomplishments that drew the loyalty of fans.

From the start, the club was stuck with unfortunate stadiums and then saddled with a local ownership group ill-equipped to deal with baseball's free-agent era of the 1980s, which left small-market franchises at a competitive disadvantage. The franchise finally put it all together in 1994, widely recognized as the best team in the Major Leagues that year, only to have the playoffs canceled by a players strike. A fire sale proceeded the next year and they finished last in 1995.

The team finally gave up on local ownership around the turn of the century and sold to art dealer Jeffrey Loria, who failed to sell Quebec on a locally funded stadium, and at one point the team did not even have local TV broadcasts. Loria would move on to the Florida Marlins, and, after a period of receivership in the hands of MLB, new ownership moved the team to D.C., where the Nationals took over in 2005 (and would win the World Series in 2019). Loria's stepson David Samson shows up to take his lumps and defend himself as the clueless executive vice president during that time.

This Netflix production has a cheap quality to it. The quick cuts and subtitles for French speakers can make it hard to follow everything on the screen. Especially in the wake of "Eephus," and maybe something gets lost in translation crossing the northern border, but this documentary just doesn't feel like a labor of love produced by baseball fans.

BONUS TRACK

From the closing credits of "Eephus," Tom Waits with "Ol' 55":

The Creeps

 

ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL (B-minus) - At times fascinating, at times confounding, this exploration of Zambian grief culture is often too arty to sustain its one-note narrative over 95 repetitive minutes. 

 

Shula (Susan Chardy) is driving one night when she spots the body of her uncle in the road. She, her drunken cousin and Shula's manipulative father arrange for the body to be retrieved, and so begins an extended mourning period, during which a really obvious secret will challenge the women of multiple generations as they sit shiva in a crowded house.

Chardy is appealing as the stoic niece dealing with a hen-house full of aunties. Elizabeth Chisela perks things up as the drunken cousin. There is another cousin suffering in a water-logged hospital from what appears to be PTSD. They are chafing against a misogynistic system that is wholly accepted by the aunties (they literally crawl around the house and faithfully serve the whiny men), leaving the younger women to brood and seek small ways to rebel.

Writer-director Rungano Nyoni ("I Am Not a Witch") unwinds a droll and elliptical story, mashing up the languages of Bempa, English and French like she is whipping up a Zambian bouillabaisse. She releases the "secret" of the uncle's actions fitfully but frustratingly. Every other scene seems like it is restarting the story, and while the cultural Easter eggs are enlightening, it feels like she merged a short film with a documentary about the Zambian middle class, watering both down. Shula's shambling excursions can be both funny and touching at times, thanks to Chardy's placid demeanor in any situation.

It is a unique vision, but you have to be in the mood to meander, perhaps muttering under your breath at times for Nyoni to finally get to the bittersweet but underwhelming reveal. This is more about the journey than that destination. 

WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR (1965) (B) - This seedy neo-noir traffics in the era of the screwed-up creep preying on a woman, though there is less violence and more psychodrama surrounding the denizens of a swinging discotheque in Manhattan.

 

Dancer Juliet Prowse (above right) turns in a strong performance as Norah, the victim of a phone stalker, and from the start we are pretty sure that man is co-worker Lawrence, played by a ripped Sal Mineo. Their boss at the dance club is wise-cracking Marian (Elaine Stritch, above left). Norah spins records (mostly the same ones over and over again; presumably the producers could not afford the rights to more tunes) and fends off the creeps (there is the suggestion that prostitution goes on in the back rooms). 

Lawrence lives with his sister, Edie, who is brain damaged, ever since a fall down the stairs as a girl after she witnessed her older brother having sex with an older woman. (That's where the teddy bear comes in.) Meantime, a hard-boiled detective, Lt. Madden (Catskills comedian Jan Murray), seizes the opportunity to track down the stalker, seeing as he is obsessed with sexual deviancy, refusing to hide lurid details of cases from his adolescent daughter, who picks up the salacious cop lingo.

Director Joseph Cates (a veteran of TV comedy) keeps things crackling in modern black-and-white, including street scenes shot on the more lurid side of Times Square. His camera practically drools as it pans across pornographic books or peeks up at store-window mannequins clad in bondage gear.The writers are Leon Tokatyan (who would go on to create the TV show "Lou Grant") and Arnold Drake (an early comic-book superhero aficionado), and they have a flair for throwback potboiler dialogue. 

The film doesn't really hide its gay undertones -- when Marian escorts Norah home, the older woman is perceived to be hitting on her underling, and Mineo is often seen shirtless, either pumping iron in a gym or parading around in tight jeans or swim trunks. Prowse is a perfect foil for all of this sexual decadence. And while there isn't much to the mystery, Cates maintains enough suspense to keep his strong cast battling each other to the end.

Spotted: Daniel J. Travanti (as Dan Travanty), in his big-screen debut, plays Carlo, the mute bouncer at the dance club. He would go on to helm "Hill Street Blues" as Capt. Furillo in the 1980s.

BONUS TRACKS

The groovy rock songs in "Teddy Bear" were written by Four Seasons songwriter Bob Gaudio and Al Kasha ("The Morning After"). There doesn't seem to be a record of the songs or the band performing them. Here is "It Could Have Been Me" with Mineo and Prowse:

 

The other main discotheque number is "Born to be Bad":

Doc Watch: Sammy Maudlin

 

ARE WE GOOD? (B+) - Welcome to your 60s, Marc Maron. As if the comedian/podcaster weren't grumpy enough over the years. 

This documentary tracks Maron -- an admittedly B-list standup -- as he winds down his pioneering podcast "WTF" and moves on from the COVID-era death of his girlfriend, the filmmaker Lynn Shelton. That was a tough blow for him in 2020, having found a true partner after a couple of failed marriages and even more battles with drugs.

 

Here he is, warts and all, a kid from Albuquerque, putting his life in perspective, and as sociology, it can be fascinating at times -- though Maron's self-deprecating crankiness gets a bit old hat across 97 minutes. Maron grapples with an unhappy family history, too, particularly with a gruff, philandering father who now is dealing with dementia, assisted by a younger wife, Rosie (who decades ago was his business assistant). The film's coda places father and son in an Albuquerque diner (Maron is good about coming back to his hometown to look in on the old guy), and it's almost remarkable how unremarkable and anti-climactic the scene is. It lacks either tension or a connection -- just a middle-aged man and his elderly father existing in the same space for a while.

Director Steven Feinartz, a veteran of standup specials, and rookie writer Julie Seabaugh struggle at times to find narrative hooks or a-ha moments that will jump off the screen. Instead, it's slow and steady as she goes, and luckily Maron (depending on your tastes) is an intelligent soul-searcher whose musings connect on a basic level. They assemble some of Maron's comic pals -- including David Cross, John Mulaney, Caroline Rhea and Michaela Watkins -- who explain how far Maron has come from his wilder early years, which included partying with Sam Kinison and displayed through some old stage clips. No one, though, is ever really able to truly capture what exactly made Maron such an asshole back in the day and why they admire is journey as a man.

But Maron does exude a certain rough-hewn charm, even in this maudlin milieu. He is loving to his cats, and he seems to have great taste in music, as reflected on the soundtrack. It might help to connect if you are close to his age and are of a mind to take stock of the events that have unspooled over the decades. My older movie companion and I were heartened.

CODA: As we stood on the sidewalk outside the Guild Cinema breaking down the film, out from the theater toddled an elderly man struggling against a cane, aided by his younger partner. It was Maron's father and Rosie. 

BONUS TRACKS

The soundtrack helps the film build to a crescendo and find closure. That includes "The Ticking Is the Bomb" by Dean Wareham of Luna:

 

The hypnotic "Manhattan" from Chan Marshall as Cat Power:

 

And over the closing credits, Big Thief with "Change":

Mystery Dance

 

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (A-minus) - Filmmaker Jafar Panahi is no longer a political prisoner in Iran, but boy is he still pissed. Like with his previous film, "No Bears," Panahi made his latest without the permission of the government.

 

"It Was Just an Accident" alternates between being a revenge thriller and a bumbling black comedy about former prisoners of Iran's religious autocrats who stumble upon a man believed to be the one-legged interrogator who tortured them during their imprisonment. The plot is set into action by a random car accident that leads the man, known as Peg Leg, to visit an automotive garage, where he is recognized (possibly) by mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri). Vahid is directed to another victim, photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari), for help in confirming Peg Leg's identity.

It just so happens that Shiva is taking wedding photographs of a couple, and the bride, Goli (Hadid Pakbaten), is yet another survivor of Peg Leg's who thinks it's him. Finally, the group recruits Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), Shiva's ex, who is the most certain about Peg Leg's identity and must be restrained from attacking the man, who is being held drugged and unconscious in a crate in the back of Vahid's van. Hamid is the source of much of the film's fury and dark humor.

Panahi ("Taxi," "This Is Not a Film") orchestrates this ensemble like a maestro. He directs venom at the regime from a variety of sources. He finely articulates the conundrum created by vengeance. He shows the group performing a kind act for Peg Leg's wife and daughter. Panahi builds suspense like a master. And now that the United States is a country where masked goons kidnap innocent people, the anxiety of totalitarianism resonates throughout "Accident's" taut 104-minute running time.  

WEAPONS (B-minus) - Horror writer-director Zach Cregger is his own worst enemy as he takes an interesting idea and trips all over his fussy plot contrivances. And he takes his two interesting lead actors and keeps them apart way too often. It feels like a lost opportunity.

 

The premise is simple. All but one of the students from teacher Justine Gandy's third-grade class have gone missing, fleeing their homes at 2:17 a.m., arms out like airplane wings, disappearing into the night. Obviously, the parents are suspicious of Gandy (Julia Garner), who privately has a bit of a drinking problem. One parent determined to solve the problem is played by Josh Brolin, who is given way too much screen time to brood over his missing son.

More interesting is a local police officer, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich, "Hail, Caesar!"), who has had a fling with Justine, sparking the ire of his girlfriend (fiancee?) Donna (June Diane Raphael), who reins him in. Ehrenreich and Garner ("The Royal Hotel") are the most compelling faces in the movie, but Cregger rips them apart and chooses to balkanize his film by splitting into segments devoted to different characters and by scrambling the time line over and over. He also introduces a junkie (an appealing Austin Abrams), and it's about as much fun hanging out with this junkie as it would be in real life. But the one with the truly "It" factor is Amy Madigan, who is nearly unrecognizable as Gladys, the aunt of the surviving boy. She has a clown-like appearance (to cover up the effects of cancer) and a penchant for hocus-pocus rituals. 

And, lord, is the Crazy Lady character played out at this point. Gladys is doing some sort of voodoo on behalf of her nephew, who still attends school (bullied, of course) and whose parents sit zombie-like on the couch, cloistered behind newspaper-covered windows. All this feels more like a distraction than an active intention to tell a coherent story and solve a basic mystery. Garner and Ehrenreich often disappear for long stretches, and the narrative meanders. (It's odd to see the waifish, child-like Garner play a full-fledged adult -- drinking and having sex -- and you long to see her flesh out her character more; meantime, Ehrenreich is similarly hand-cuffed in his ability to develop a persona.)

It does not help that "Weapons" is yet another movie that cannot justify a running time of more than two hours. It's a sloppy mess that takes way too long to reach its inevitable, underwhelming conclusion, though a climactic rampage of students, wildly photographed, is worth sticking around for.

BONUS TRACK

"Weapons" has a retro soundtrack that tries too hard to please hipster uncles. The initial disappearance of the children is scored to George Harrison's "Beware of Darkness":

 

Of more recent vintage is "Don't Be Scared" by the Handsome Family:

 

Elvis Costello, with our unrelated title track:

Teenage Wasteland

THIRTEEN (2003) (A-minus) - Twenty-two years later, Catherine Hardwicke's brazen debut still feels like a daring provocation. It is an urgent adolescent wail but with an intense focus on how a divorced mother copes with a girl's initial flirtation with growing up. And that may be Holly Hunter's finest moment.

 

Hunter plays Melanie, a hipster mom who is clinging to her sobriety as she tries to make ends meet styling hair in her kitchen. Evan Rachel Wood is her 13-year-old daughter, Tracy, who at the beginning of the film is quite girlish, with her dorky clothes and stuffed animals. But at school she soon catches the attention of Evie (Nikki Reed), who looks and acts like an adult. Soon Tracy has ditched her loyal pals for Evie's gang of bad girls -- who are into drinking, drugs, shopping (stealing), piercings and older boys. 

The transformation may seem startling at first, but even 22 years ago 13-year-old girls were susceptible to the allure of adulthood, or at least the juvenile-delinquent simulacrum of growing fierce and independent. Melanie and her ex-husband have never had a solid grip on Tracy's behavior (she has been secretly cutting herself). And Melanie has no good tools to deal with a rebellious young girl. Especially when Melanie is determined to stay sober (what was she like as a teen?) and has her own needs to fulfill -- Jeremy Sisto is fantastic as Mel's boomeranging boyfriend who is fresh out of rehab. Tracy seethes at her mother's display of sexuality and co-dependency while aspiring to those exact same goals.

Hardwicke (who would make the big leagues with the "Twilight" movies) shoots guerrilla-style, and her camera itself is giddy as it races through a lean L.A. with these rampaging teens, their still-forming brains besieged by hormones. Meantime, the household is suffocating, especially when Evie, fleeing an irresponsible parental guardian, moves into Tracy's bedroom and the boyfriend crashes with Melanie. 

Reed, who is a commanding screen presence, co-wrote the script with Hardwicke, based on her own experiences. (Hardwicke once dated her father. Reed was 15 when the film came out; Wood had just turned 16.) The story juggles both the exploitation of young women's bodies and the girls' hedonistic (if misunderstood) desire for freedom. Gritty is an overused word, but the milieu here -- working class, marred by abuse and addiction -- is raw and real. Melanie is on her last nerve throughout, often on the verge of a breakdown, and she is willfully blind to how Tracy suddenly came into all the clothes and bling, not to mention the cries for help that emanate from Tracy's Nine Inch Nails-style poetry.

At the climax of the film, when the scales fall from Melanie's eyes, her maternal instincts are feral and her love pure and absolute. It takes an awful lot for a wild teenage girl to break her mother's will. Melanie might have her limitations as a parent, but you cannot doubt her devotion. Everyone will need to be wrung out at the end of this emotional bobsled race.

BANTU MAMA (2022) (B) - From the underbelly of L.A. to the slums of Santo Domingo ... this one also features drugs and bad behavior and kids acting like adults -- in this case truly necessary for survival.

French traveler Emma (Clarisse Albrecht) is busted with drugs in her suitcase during a vacation to the Dominican Republic. She manages to escape police custody and flee to a barrio in Santo Domingo. She is a light-skinned Cameroonian who somewhat blends in with the local population, and she hides out in the home of three children, whose mother is dead and whose father is in jail. And so she mothers them. The older boy is a young adult who hangs out with gangsters. The adolescent younger boy, Cuki, respond to Emma's nurturing. The middle child is Tina (Scarlet Reyes), a young teen who wheels and deals like a mobster, providing for the family. 

 

Tina, using the threat of her incarcerated father, pressures a lawyer to help Emma escape, with the hope that Emma will take young Cuki with her and rescue him from a future of poverty and violence. Reyes is the beating heart of this film by director Ivan Herrera. She is like a street cat, surviving by her wits and claws. Emma's simple act of teaching Tina how to wrap her hair in a bandanna offers the girl a modicum of dignity amid the chaos. 

Albrecht -- who co-wrote the script -- is an elegant presence, keeping calm while bonding with her makeshift new family and awaiting escape. Emma has left a pet parrot behind in France, and she and Herrera use artsy shots of birds in the sky to drive home both that sense of neglect and her yearning for freedom, a return to middle-class comfort. This is a slim 77-minute movie that knows its characters and where they're going.

BONUS TRACKS

"Thirteen" has an edgy alternative soundtrack, including the sultry "Nicotine" by Annette Ducharme (who goes by ANET):

 

Over the closing credits, Liz Phair, from 1993, with "Explain It to Me":

 

Our title track, Robert Pollard joining Pearl Jam for a cover of the Who's "Baba O'Reilly":

 

 

Doc Watch: Fade to Black and White (Ode to Mrs. Smith)

 

THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR (B+) - This energetic documentary is driven by police body-camera footage as it recounts the battle between a cranky middle-aged woman and the neighbors she relentlessly harasses, focused mostly on kids playing near her home during summer break.

The miserable woman -- most of us might recognize the type; growing up, our baseball-confiscating neighbor was Mrs. Smith -- happens to be white and most of the residents around her are black. Tensions are always high, and she is a frequent caller to the local Florida police department. There are so many calls, that officers are on a first-name basis with many of the folks, and there is enough body-cam video to stitch together a full narrative of the events that lead to violence and consequences.  

Filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir, in fact, might be too in love with the gimmick -- a little too faithful to the body-camera footage, which sometimes can muffle dialogue or create confusion among the characters, sometimes blurred out. But as shtick, it's effective, and the story is compelling. This neighborhood "Karen" suffers from irrational fears, though you can't help thinking that the kids, at times, are toying with her.

The jittery cameras -- especially when an emergency occurs -- ratchet up the tension. It is tough to watch a father have to break bad news to his children and console them. It is also fascinating to watch the woman in question, Susan, reckon with the fallout of what happens. Interrogation-room scenes become curious psychological studies, matching any TV procedural. Gandbhir curates a sharp examination of how Americans struggle to live side by side in peace (and quiet).

REBEL ROYALS: AN UNLIKELY LOVE STORY (C-minus) - There is an interesting premise here, but this cheap production about a European princess marrying a gay American con man (and ex-con) never rises above a bland tale of fish-out-of-water true love. 

 

Rebecca Chaiklin, coming off her success with the Netflix series "The Tiger King," offers up an odd combination of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and "Real Housewives of Oslo." She introduces us to Norway's Princess Martha Louise, a divorced mom who is willing to shed her royal duties in order to wed Durek Verrett, a self-styled shaman who scans as gay, though he claims to be bisexual. He also is black, and Chaiklin has plenty of opportunities to photograph him surrounded by a sea of white Norwegian faces.

The film opens with promise, as Verrett is quite the dandy and a tantalizing leading man who might have ulterior motives, and Martha, with her teen and young-adult daughters, is a sympathetic human face of an exhausted celebrity. But we're playing in the minor leagues here -- this isn't exactly the House of Windsor or the love story of Edward and Wallis. And the final third of the movie is indistinguishable from your basic basic-cable wedding-planner reality show. 

Verrett's diva act and new-age snake-oil antics grow weary, and it's difficult to get as jazzed about this "romance" as the tabloid-hungry Norwegians seem to get. It feels like the one who scammed here is Chaiklin, who probably thought she had a sizzling story to tell.

New to the Queue

 The storm before the calm ...

Lynne Ramsay ("Morvern Callar," "We Need to Talk About Kevin") snags Jennifer Lawrence for a dark post-partum relationship tussle, "Die My Love."

Jafar Panahi ("Jafar Panahi's Taxi," "No Bears") loosens up a bit with his latest guerrilla release, "It Was Just an Accident." 

A documentary about the sexually adventurous singer from the aughts, the artist behind the 2003 album "Fatherfucker," "Peaches Goes Bananas."

We'll participate a third time in the guilty pleasure of Rian Johnson's throwback series, "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery."

A documentary about Jule Campbell, the photographer behind the notorious Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues, "Beyond the Gaze."

BONUS TRACK

Peaches with "Bag It":

 

An Incomplete Pass

 

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (C) - I don't know if Wes Anderson has lost it -- or if he has just lost me. When you break a habit as a consumer, it can be difficult to rekindle the previous ardor for that product. Anderson used to be one of our favorite directors. We walked out of his last film, and barely tolerated this latest fussy production.

 

Anderson twee aesthetic, combined with his granular storytelling, has grown exhausting. "The Phoenician Scheme" is fascinating to look at -- mesmerizing patterns of meticulous design throughout -- but confusing to follow. Benicio del Toro stars as old-timey industrialist and arms dealer Zsa-Zsa Korda, who has a Rasputin quality to him -- he has survived multiple plane crashes and other attempts on his life. The latest has him thinking of his life's work and his estranged daughter, Liesl (nepo baby Mia Threapleton), who is a novice nun, and whom he reconnects with in order to serve as his main heir. (In typical Andersonian fashion, Korda also has a boatload of sons that he mostly neglects.)

Thus is unleashed the most needlessly complicated plots, wherein Korda plots his most elaborate scheme, involving the rebuilding of the fictitious region of Phoenicia while rival governments pull a global industrial maneuver to bankrupt Korda, who must then engage, sequentially, with his oddball investors to trick them into overcoming the looming financial debacle.

In tow with Korda and Liesl is Bjorn (Michael Cera), who purports to be a tutor for the boys (his specialty is entomology) and also serves as Korda's right-hand man. Bjorn pines for Liesl, whose vows are perpetually being challenged. All the while, Korda also experiences near-death hallucinations, which involve black-and-white excursions to something resembling ancient Greece or Egypt, with Bill Murray playing God (and making zero impact here). This will eventually lead to a confrontation with Korda's half-brother Nubar, played with villainous glee by Benedict Cumberbatch. As you'd expect, the cast if stuffed with ringers -- Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson and Willem Dafoe all elbow each other for goofball bragging rights.

I broke this up into three half-hour screenings, and each one felt like a heavy lift. It is only mildly funny, especially compared with Anderson's films of 20-plus years ago, which also were full of much heart and character development. Here, Del Toro and others grind out machine-gun dialogue in that flat affect that afflicts most characters; it's a bit like how Woody Allen kept writing the same movie over and over and just had younger actors take on his cadences and phrasings, no matter how beaten into the ground the whole shtick was. A clever coda here teases the idea of a much more interesting father-daughter tale.

Anderson has always been one to create unique worlds, full of quirk and wonder. These days he spends years and millions of dollars wallowing in his punctilious world-building and overstuffing his scripts with minutiae that still amusing him but leaves many of us numb to this cartoon-like existence. 

ROOFMAN (Incomplete) - We gave this shaggy dog story about a clever criminal close to an hour, and there still was more than an hour to go, so we bailed.  It just can't sustain its run time, despite the presence of Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst and Peter Dinklage. It didn't help that the narrative -- based on a true story -- often did not make sense and seemed like typical Hollywood gilding of a true story.

Tatum stars as Jeffrey Manchester, an Army veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division with practical MacGyver-like skills. To provide for his wife, daughter and son, he starts robbing McDonald's venues by entering through the roof, waiting for the crew to arrive in the morning, locking them in the cooler, and making off with the previous days' proceeds. He gets caught, goes to jail, breaks out, and takes up residence in a Toys R Us, eventually getting bold enough to venture outside, where he has a meet-cute with one of the Toys R Us employees, Leigh (Dunst), at her church's toy-drive event. (He has set up baby monitors in the store's office, so he overhears Dinklage's boss interacting with Leigh.)

That's as far as we get in the first hour. That's a lot of time for set-up. The McDonald's heist at the beginning is the funniest part of the film, and you can see that in the trailer, mostly. There simply is no reason why a movie like this needs to be two hours and six minutes long. There was little promise that Tatum and Dunst (pretty flat in the first half) were about to set the picture on fire. 

In addition, the idiot plot (albeit based on real life), got harder and harder to bear. There is a stray distracting story about a former army comrade (Lakeith Stanfield) that was going nowhere, and the way Jeffrey is seen romping around the store every night making a mess, it's a wonder that he was able to cover his tracks for as long as he did, raising suspicions only by the amount of M&Ms he was consuming. And the real Manchester apparently duped the unwitting Leigh for quite a while, although the way he is presented here -- looking unemployed and homeless -- it seems incredulous that they would strike up a relationship (even if it happened, in some form, in real life). 

Tatum is a fun actor, but he has little to play off here. This is a lethargic offering from Derek Cianfrance ("Blue Valentine," "The Place Beyond the Pines"), who now seems well past his prime. The production overall felt a bit cheap, and the performances are subdued. The whole crew needed to pep this up and bring it in under 100 minutes. That extra half hour is a killer. 

Am I Blue?

 

BLUE MOON (A) - Rarely will you find a movie that so earnestly and elegantly captures emotional longing -- as well as the yearning for love and acceptance -- as this endlessly clever and charming tale of the bittersweet final days of Lorenz Hart, the celebrated lyricist from a century ago.

 

 

Ethan Hawke turns in a career performance as Hart, whose alcoholism has mostly destroyed his songwriting partnership with Richard Rodgers, who has moved on to team with another lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein, and it is their Broadway opening of "Oklahoma!" that provides the setting for the film during one night at a Manhattan bar, the legendary Sardi's. Hart is the personification of glib, and Hawke unleashes one-liners and monologues as if he were in a one-man show. He amuses himself and others, although some have grown a little tired of his shtick.

Richard Linklater can do no wrong in re-creating wartime Manhattan and delving into the busy mind of the celebrated songwriter who is destined on this night to yet again lose his battle with the bottle. I'm enjoying Linklater's middle-aged swerve to the mainstream, perhaps finally realizing that he no longer is the indie auteur of classics like "Slacker," "Dazed and Confused," and "Before Sunrise." Like his 2003 romp "School of Rock" and the recent "Hit Man," "Blue Moon" lets Linklater relax a little into a rich character study that appeals to the masses. It's a return from the wilderness and the meandering of films like "Boyhood" and "Everybody Wants Some."

This is the first full screenplay by Robert Kaplow, a novelist, whose "Me and Orson Welles" was brought to the screen by Linklater in 2009. Kaplow stuffs the script with cunning wordplay and sharp insight into one man's damaged psyche. Some might find the dialogue overwhelming at times; I found it to be deft and insightful, welcoming Kaplow's challenge to keep up with it. I can't begin to do it justice with excerpted quotes. Suffice it to say that Hart's apoplexy over the exclamation point in "Oklahoma!" will warm the heart of any former copy editor or critic of modern punctuation usage.

Hawke presents Hart as a lovable loudmouth, full of empty boasts and headed for a fall (he would be dead within months, later in 1943). He is a small man and he knows it; Linklater has fun bundling Hawke into a suit that dwarfs him and engaging in camera tricks that make him appear to be the size of a boy barely able to belly up to the bar. His comb-over and cigar peg him as a Tin Pan Alley has-been, and his empty swagger seems both earned but well past its due date.

Hawke has a fine cast to bounce off of, most notably Bobby Canavale as a Jackie Gleason-like foil. John Lees provides a tinkling Greek chorus as the house piano player, a nice Jewish boy on leave from the service. A platinum-coifed Margaret Qualley swans about as Hart's college-student protege who is angling for an audience with Rodgers, eyeing the possibilities for her career (and perhaps more). She has a focus here that she has lacked in other projects.

But this is Hawke's show. He carries the first 20 minutes with a motor-mouthed monologue during which he holds court and unleashes a torrent of pithy philosophy, to the amusement of the stragglers at the bar. He briefly befriends E.B. White, the New Yorker writer who until then was nursing a drink in a booth, quiet as a mouse. (Linklater and Kaplow insist on dropping little Easter eggs into the script -- Hart will give White an idea for an iconic children's book, and Hart will have passing interactions with nobodies who will go on to be a famous songwriter and a noted movie director. Blink and you'll miss a reference to New York street photographer Weegee.)

In the end, I fell hard for the rat-a-tat dialogue and the authentic emotion of Hart pouring his heart out -- to a pretty young gal he idealizes or to a lifelong pal and writing partner whose approval he craves. What an imaginative period piece and a magical moment in time. 

BONUS TRACKS

Much of the Rodgers & Hart catalog is rendered as incidental music, courtesy of the piano player in the bar, but some songs get fuller studio workouts, like "This Funny World," as interpreted by Tony Bennett:

 

For me, the definitive version of "Blue Moon" is by Elvis Presley from the Sun Sessions:

 

Then there is the '90s reimagining from "Cowboy Junkies," featuring Margo and Michael Timmins:

 

And our title track (not from Rodgers and Hart), courtesy of Billie Holiday:

Bangers

 

TURA! (B-minus) - This fawning documentary with selective memory celebrates the life and career of Tura Satana, the amazonian star of sexploitation B movies in the 1960s and '70s (see Exhibit A, below). In keeping with modern times, it accepts apocryphal stories and treats them as gospel.

 

 

Satana was a living comic-book character, complete with a vengeful origin story -- she was gang-raped as a girl, and she claims to have years later exacted violent revenge on each of the perpetrators. I suppose we have to take her at her word, which filmmaker Cody Jarrett does. Satana also claimed not only that Elvis Presley proposed to her but that he insisted she keep the engagement ring, which she flashes in old video clips. 

A Greek chorus led by filmmaker John Waters amplifies these mythical stories, and perhaps a credulous biography is just what the larger-than-life Satana deserves. She created a Japanese-stripper image as a teenager in the 1950s (the film's coda offers an interesting twist regarding her mixed heritage), and she drew attention in a bit role as a streetwalker in Billy Wilder's "Irma La Duce" with Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. Russ Meyers built "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" around her -- Satana added a karate element to the picture -- and her cult status was cemented forevermore. 

With Kabuki eyebrows, severe bangs, massive breasts and a svelte waist, the towering Satana cut an intimidating figure. Her acting was fairly wooden, and her stardom was fleeting before she eventually fell back to the nostalgia circuit, eventually succumbing to gravity and the middle-age spread. She left a mark as a poor man's Bettie Page or Marilyn Monroe. 

Jarrett has fun with his subject, though many viewers will grow tired of seeing the same photos and film clips over and over again. (He could have easily cut 15 minutes from the 105-minute running time.) Margaret Cho is on hand to narrate, and talking heads include some of Satana's former burlesque mates and next-gen admirers like Pamela Des Barres and Dita Von Teese, who lights up the screen. We also hear from Satana's two daughters and from director Ted Mikels, who directed Satana in 1968's "The Astro-Zombies." 

It all zips by at breakneck speed, those images on an annoying loop, and one does come away with a rather broad picture of a curious character in film history. If you don't think about it all too much, you can get swept up in it and help cement the myth. 

FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1967) (C+) - Tura Satana made her name with this psycho Russ Meyer romp about three burlesque dancers who go on a spree of racing cars and killing men, hoping to separate one of them from a horde of cash.  

 

Satana stars as Varla, the alpha female of the crew, which also includes the exotic Rosie (Haji, above center) and blond bombshell Billie (Lori Williams). We meet these beauties in an opening montage of them dancing on stage while creeps leer, drool and yell "Go, baby, Go!" But quickly they are each styling in their own vintage sports car (Varla's is a 1964 Porsche 356, while the others are '50s models -- an MG and a Triumph.) When a loudmouth and his bikini-clad girlfriend, Linda (Sue Bernard), challenge the gals to a race, it ends not only badly for him but also tragically. 

Varla's squad shrugs it off and, during a pit stop, spot a man in a wheelchair and his dim-witted son, told that the old man has just come into some money. The women (with kidnapped Linda in tow) follow the men to their shack in the Mojave Desert and variously seduce and bitch-slap them and another son. With noir-detective dialogue and jolting violence, Meyer adds cheap camera tricks (on a micro-budget) to mash this all into a juicy pulp. He leers at the women's cleavage, and he likes it even more when they walk away from the camera. Despite all the provocations, there is no nudity beyond a bare back or two. 

What sells this is the gonzo dialogue, courtesy of Jackie Moran, who was mostly an actor but penned a few movies, including one called "Wild Gals of the Naked West." Satana likes to shout her lines, showing little modulation. When a gas-station attendant cleans her windshield, he tells Varla that he admires their road-warrior spirit and, while gawping at her cavernous cleavage, says he believes in "seeing America first," and she snaps back: "You won't find it down there, Columbus." At another point she lectures a rival about her personal philosophy: "I never try anything. I just do it." When seducing one of the old man's sons, she reduces him to a burbling mess, as he sputters, "You're a beautiful animal, and I'm weak, and I want you." And the comedy has a zip to it. The old man (a sharp Stuart Lancaster) is full of one liners, including when he asks his visitors, "You girls a bunch of nudists or are you just short of clothes?"

The intoxicating mix of violence and whimsy surely must have struck a young Quentin Tarantino at a vulnerable age. "Faster, Pussycat" is the beta version of pulp fiction, one that takes those classic women-behind-bars types and unleashes the cast out on the open road, snakes in the forbidding desert landscape (shot in ominous black and white). You might roll your eyes at how corny it all is 60 years later, but you'll almost certainly walk away entertained, perhaps even empowered.

BONUS TRACK

The "Pussycat" title track by the Bostweeds:

The Festival Circuit

 In mid-October, we caught a few titles at the Santa Fe International Film Festival, which reclaimed some of the vigor from its heyday 20 years ago.

FREE LEONARD PELTIER (B+) - If you haven't caught up on the developments of jailed Native American activist Leonard Peltier, hold off on running to Wikipedia. Instead, watch this energetic history of the admired member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) as he awaits word on clemency in 2024 over his conviction in 1977 for the killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

            (Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice)

Directors David France ("How to Survive a Plague") and Jesse Short Bull ("Lakota Nation vs. United States") curate a treasure trove of footage from the early '70s, catapulting the viewer into a specific time and place in American history. By 1972, Peltier had been recruited by Dennis Banks to join AIM in leading the opposition to the militia organized by tribal chairman Dennis Wilson, who was seen as corrupt and a sell-out to Washington. Pine Ridge was known in 1973 for the Wounded Knee occupation. That eventually culminated in a 1975 showdown, where the FBI agents were shot to death, and Peltier was hunted down and convicted on shaky evidence.

The filmmakers are meticulous in the rendering of these events and the trial that put Peltier away on two consecutive life sentences. We see interviews of Peltier during the early years of his incarceration, and we hear him by phone in the present day, as activists champion the 80-year-old inmate in the final months and weeks of the Biden administration, trying to convince the lame-duck president to heed the years-long call to free Peltier. The film, over a brisk two hours, thus melds past and present, providing an overview of AIM and the long-standing struggles on reservations for decades and balancing it with present-day drama over whether Peltier will be freed or left to almost certainly die behind bars.

I had forgotten the outcome of January 2025, and I was rewarded with a suspenseful climax to the film. All the while, admiration builds for Peltier, who likely could have been sprung by President Clinton had Peltier admitted guilt to something he adamantly denies. Contemporary interviews with veterans of Wounded Knee and other struggles add heft to the storytelling. This is rousing filmmaking.

THE LOVE THAT REMAINS (B+) - From Iceland, we get a fascinating, granular study of a relatively content household, where the parent happen to be splitting up. There is no high drama or trauma for the adolescent children; it just so happens that mom and dad don't want to be married anymore.

This comes from Hlynur Palmason, who emerged in 2020 with "A White, White Day," but bogged down a couple of years later with the sluggish "Godland." Here he hits a sweet spot with a depiction of an artist, Anna (Saga Gardarsdottir), and her husband, Magnus (Sverrir Gudnason), who mostly lives separately and is often at sea working on fishing expeditions. He also fishes for invitations to return home and is often sniffing around for sex, which Anna is loath to consent to. She's just over him.

The children, an older girl and two boys (apparently the director's offspring), engage in fun rural high jinks (be careful with that bow and arrow, kids), and are fully aware of their parents' estrangement, but they merely work that odd rapport into their own naive conversations about sex and relationships. (The girl is just about old enough to date, but she shows no interest in boys.) The children engage in random kid behavior -- playing outside, admiring baby chicks -- and don't seem to be repressing things that will later burst out into the open; they mostly go with the flow of the day-to-day.

Palmason makes an odd choice to inject magical realism into the proceedings. Those scenes come out of left field, and perhaps they are a means to convey to the viewer how off-guard and confused Anna and Magnus are during this absurd phase when their paths are diverging. Palmason begins the film with a shot of a crane forcefully removing the roof from Anna's industrial work space, a perfect metaphor about the upheaval the two adults will encounter going forward. 

Anna's art process is fascinating -- it involves industrial metal cuttings, large objects, exposure to the elements and the passage of time. By the film's final reveal, it provides an apt parallel to the slow drift apart by a man and woman as they protect their children through uncharted waters.

PETER HUJAR'S DAY (C-minus) - There is such a thing as being too faithful to your source material. Here we spend 24 hours with '70s New York photographer Peter Hujar, in a dramatization of an interview transcript that had been lost to history until recently. Ben Whishaw tries to salvage the project as the chain-smoking interview subject dropping names during the Big Apple's Drop Dead era from the avant-garde arts scene.

And there's not much more too it than that. This is literally 75 minutes of the interviewer, Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), running a tape machine as Hujar babbles on describing one recent day hobnobbing around New York with the likes of Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz and Allen Ginsberg.  Hujar also drops dozens of names, most of whom you've probably never heard. (Halfway through I fantasized about a version of this along the lines of a VH-1 "pop-up" video device, which would identify the obscure characters name-checked throughout the film.)

There is something almost audacious about the numbing recitation of minutiae by Hujar. It's almost as if writer-director Ira Sachs is daring you to walk out; but I was oddly frozen in my seat, convinced that a plot would rear up at any moment. Alas, there really is no there there. (We first heard of Hujar from the great documentary about his former lover, "Wojnarowicz.")

We have a love-hate relationship with Sachs, whose previous films have never scored higher than a B (2023's "Passages"; see also, "Little Men," "Love Is Strange" and "Keep the Lights On"). Here he sets aside his usual drama and light comedy for a quirky sociological experiment. Whishaw and Hall can be fascinating to watch at times, but very few people will find it worthwhile to trudge through this random Rolodex and bland recitation of a day in the life of an artist from 50 years ago.

BONUS TRACK

A break from the tedium in "Hujar" comes when he and Rosenkrantz dance in her apartment to the rockabilly nugget "Hold Me Tight" by Tennessee Jim: