A Month of Fun Days

 We gobbled up a healthy amount of live music over the course of the past month.

 

The big event was a trip to Denver for the Outside Days festival the final weekend of May. The impetus was the appearance of Grouplove, my partner's favorite band. (See below.) On Saturday night we satisfied longstanding curiosities by checking out the Flaming Lips (just as silly and mildly entertaining as I expected) and My Morning Jacket (who were just too jam-band for our tastes at the 10 o'clock hour). The final night crescendoed with a lively set by Cage the Elephant. 

Frontman Matt Schultz brought the Jagger swagger, and the set list did not disappoint. It helped for me to be surrounded by rabid young fans on the urban college quad. My favorite number was the '60s-inflected garage workout "Mess Around."

 

The month-long run began on May 15 with Broncho at the Launchpad; it's a band I had known only tangentially from their service on the dear-departed jukebox at the nearby downtown pool hall Anodyne. Much of the first half of their set consisted of sludgy psych-pop, though Ryan Lindsey and his mates veered more toward the pop side in the second half. A highlight was the infectious "What":

The Supersuckers passed through Albuquerque, as these road dogs do just about every year. They opened with "Born With a Tail" and wrapped with "Pretty Fucked Up," and in between they touched on just about every era in their 35-year career as rabble-rousers. We previously tossed out those two classic Supersuckers tracks 10 years ago here. Opening for them was Scott H. Biram, torching the stage solo with his brew of folk-rock-blues. Supersuckers leader Eddie Spaghetti joined Biram -- now a haggard greybeard -- for his centerpiece, "Still Drunk, Still Crazy, Still Blue":

 

Here is a short acoustic set from Biram from 13 years ago on KEXP. He was more plugged in during his Albuquerque, working a drum machine with a foot pedal.

Warming up for Grouplove was the sister duo Girl Tones. They felt like a work in progress, aspiring to the fuller sounds of the White Stripes or Black Keys (if not the grunge of Flat Duo Jets), and they amiably tried to get the outdoor crowd amped up. But it wasn't until Grouplove stormed the stage that the audience came alive through the sheer exuberance of the band, which comes off as Up With People but with chops. Grouplove jumped out of the gate inducing singalongs with the opening track "Deleter," and they did not let up from there. They teased an upcoming single "Sh Sh (Fall Apart Together)," leading up to the big hit "Tongue Tied":

 

A year ago I communed with Joe Jackson in Santa Fe, coming to terms with my lonely fandom. He returned to New Mexico again this June, at the historic downtown KiMo Theater, and this time he brought a band to plow through his hits. No gimmicks this time, just a tight best-of set. He started out solo, in a dapper suit, knocking out "Is She Really Going Out With Him?," allowing the audience to fill in the backing vocals. Then the great bass player Graham Maby came out for a duet on "Different for Girls," followed by the rest of the band for a couple of new songs. (Maby's bass should have been higher in the mix.)

Classics included "Sunday Papers," a powerful take on "Another World," "Real Men," "Home Town" and, of course, my favorite, "Be My Number Two." Despite battling the high-desert altitude, Jackson was in fine voice. The best new song (one of three featured from the album "Hope and Fury") was the nostalgic "End of the Pier," a modern lament echoing his upbringing in Portsmouth, England: 

Jackson kicked off a three-song encore with a cover of David Bowie's "Scary Monsters" (this version recorded the next night in Denver):

 

We jetted off to Chicago in mid-June, and the centerpiece concert we picked was Amyl and the Sniffers at the Salt Shed on Elston Avenue, on the grounds of a former Morton Salt warehouse, with views of the city's skyline, set aglow at sunset. Amy Taylor -- clad in a 1970s gym-class outfit, her face smeared like a drag queen's -- stomped the stage and led punk sing-a-longs, fronting a grungy three-piece band. The Aussie frontwoman was idolized by a diverse crowd, who lapped up her message of inclusion and empathized with her bafflement at the state of American politics. But she mostly let the music do the talking. The band reached back to their 2019 debut album for the first encore song, "Got You":

Here is a good sample of Amyl and the gang live, from a year ago in Seattle (she is wearing the same outfit):

 

Finally, the day I arrived in Chicago, my Boomer brother had an extra ticket to see two of his favorite bands, the Doobie Brothers and Santana, who co-headlined a tour that stopped at the outdoor venue in Tinley Park. Due to ridiculous traffic (as if they had never hosted a concert before), we missed the first few Doobie songs, but we caught most of the hits in a 16-song set. The band has lost a step or two, though Tom Johnston's voice remains strong. (Michael McDonald, on the other hand, is getting a bit raspy these days.) They truly felt like an "oldies" act; the boys fronted a screen that displayed retro videos featuring their various lineups. There are few things in life as joyful as a smile on Patrick Simmons' face. Let's lament one of our favorites that we missed, Simmons' "Depending on You":

And another favorite, one they did not play (but did later in the tour for the first time live since 1982), McDonald's solo R&B jam "I Keep Forgettin'":

 

Then Santana hit the stage and tore the roof off the pavilion. Their set was a near-nonstop burst of Latin poly-rhythms, high energy out of the gate. Carlos Santana, pushing 80, leaned on a stool a lot as he rippled out his soaring, searing guitar licks. His wife, Cindy (an alum from Lenny Kravitz' band), annihilated her drum set, assisted by players on bongos and timbales. Two singers traded off lead-vocal duties. The hop-scotching set mixed in a little rap, covered the Zombies' "She's Not There," and offered a mashup of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" and a phoned-in "Come Together." 

Highlights included "Samba pa ti," "Oye Como Va" and the mesmerizing "Jin-go-lo-ba"

I never expected Santana's high-powered jam session to be a highlight of that month of fun days. But sometimes the Boomers can still bring it.

Doc Watch: That's Entertainment

 

SHARI AND LAMB CHOP (B-minus) - It is unclear why, at this moment in time, the world needed a profile of puppeteer and entertainer Shari Lewis, who died about 18 years ago, but good for her and her family that her talents have not been forgotten. And this by-the-numbers documentary at least does a good job of showing off her considerable voice talents.

 

The world of ventriloquism seems like it was eons ago, but it was still quite a thing when I was a kid. Lewis was one of the best. The best parts of this peppy documentary are the extended clips that exhibit Lewis' flawless technique and she banters and duets with the adorable Lamb Chop and pals Charlie Horse, Hush Puppy and Wing Ding. 

This is from Lisa D'Apolito, who turned in a similarly sympathetic appreciation of Gilda Radner with the doc "Love, Gilda" in 2018. She tracks Lewis from her breakthrough on Arthur Godfrey's talent show to a stint with Captain Kangaroo and then her own show on NBC in the early 1960s. Lewis also sang and danced, and she persevered into the 1990s, when she ended her career on PBS before her untimely death from cancer in 1998 at age 65. Maybe this involves an acquired taste, but D'Apolito fills in a puzzle piece in the story of 20th century entertainers.

MARTY, LIFE IS SHORT (B) - We skipped what looked like a sappy documentary about SCTV's John Candy last year, and there was no pressing need to screen this fawning appreciation of his former co-star, Martin Short, but it was a good excuse to watch some of Short's classic clips, which never fail to amuse.

Not much more than a glorified home movie, "Marty, Life Is Short" gathers his longtime inner circle -- Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Goldie Hawn, Steve Martin and the "Second City TV" alums -- to pay tribute to what seems like one of the nicest and funniest guys in showbiz the past 50 years. It is directed by another member of the club, director Lawrence Kasden ("Body Heat," "The Big Chill"), who does a great job of curating tons of VHS footage from home movies shot at Short's house and his summer home in Canada. This allows us to appreciate Short the family man and doting husband. 

It is obvious from the start that the film will build toward the 2010 death of Short's wife, Nancy Dolman, whom he met during a tour of "Godspell" in the early 1970s. Of course, this tight-knit group of Boomer stars, who all raised kids at the same time, will be effusive in their praise of Short and his devotion to his lovely wife and their fairy tale marriage. But when Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara call him the funniest man they've known, you can be assured they are not just blowing smoke for the cameras. That's quite an honor.

And Kasden has the clips to back up those claims. Short might not be everyone's cup of tea -- you either go along with his hysteria or you don't, I suppose -- but we get all the right highlights here, from Ed Grimley to Jiminy Glick, who will always crack me up. Chalk this up to a pal's homage to one man's persistence in making people laugh.

Life Is Short: Women on the Verge

 

We pulled the plug on two movies in a row -- the droll indie wank "Bunnylovr" and the annoying quasi-horror momcore pulp "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You." Both were aimless, apparent attempts to explore the psychology of a woman grasping for direction.

In each movie, very little happens, plotwise. We get a series of events in the life of the protagonists, but they lead nowhere. Similar events repeat day in and day out, and the men in the films tend to be creepy or abrasive. Each film spun its wheels for at least 44 minutes, without a satisfying plot development in sight. I bailed on each movie, coincidentally, right at the point of animal abuse.

"Bunnylovr" is probably the least sexy or interesting movie you can make about a cam girl. Katarina Zhu writes, directs and stars as Rebecca (her online name is the slinkier Teddi), who has a boring day job that she's bad at, and she makes money on the side performing online for creeps, though in the first 50 minutes, she flashed no forbidden flesh the whole time.

Instead, she holds lucrative private audiences with a well-off creep who sends her a live rabbit in the mail. Rather than run in the opposite direction at that disturbing provocation, she forsakes her other clients for face-to-face sessions with this dullard, who has an unsettling demeanor, to say the least. By the time he convinces her to pose lasciviously with the cute little bunny, this whole thing is going nowhere fast.

Meantime, Rebecca is straining to keep up a relationship with her estranged father (a charming Perry Yung), who is a chain-smoking card sharp with a pretty obvious health problem that I'm sure devolves into pathos in the final reel. The major crime here is that the story is flat-out boring. I can accept that it's not titillating (though why make the character an exhibitionist in the first place?), but I can't forgive a turgid script and a placid performance. Someone needed to step in and either direct Zhu or replace her.

Also stuck on one note -- and a pretty screachy one at that -- is Mary Bronstein's horror slog "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" (no, there's no point to that title). Poor Rose Byrne is trapped in Movie World, stuck at 11, amped up for no reason other than her writer-director wants to drag her through extreme acting exercises. Byrne is a talented actress (and comic actor), but here she's at the opposite end, craft-wise, from, say, Gena Rowlands in "A Woman Under the Influence."

 

Byrne's blandly named Linda is on her last nerve -- her daughter has a profound eating disorder (which requires a feeding tube), her husband is away a lot, and her roof has caved in from a plumbing debacle (which doesn't make sense logistically). Linda is mentally fried from the very first scene -- hectored by her needy child, whose face we don't see, so the girl's whining is especially annoying. Mother and daughter slum it at a low-rent motel while repairs are made, and it's clear that Linda is out of control, leaving her child (unnamed) alone often and falling into bad habits with recreational drugs and alcohol. The humiliations repeat in cycles, and even when Linda gets a break from her own kid, she has a therapy patient who is going through her own post-partum struggles. (Glimmers of life can be found in underused denizens of the hotel -- the front desk clerk played by Ivy Wolk ("Outcome") and a hip resident played by A$AP Rocky.)

This is supposed to be some profound treatise about the rigors of motherhood -- but how sympathetic a character is Linda, when she has the means to hire a nurse to help tend to the child and a crew of workers to repair the house, both of which would take the load off of her ... and thus let the air out of the artifice underpinning this pretentious genre exercise. Throw in Conan O'Brien wearing glasses and acting all serious, and you have quite a mess on your hands. 

Title: Bunnylovr

Running Time: 86 MIN

Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  50 MIN

Portion Watched: 58%

My Age at Time of Viewing: 63 YRS, 5 MOS.

Average Male American Lifespan: 76.5 YRS.

Watched/Did Instead: Went home and went to bed.

Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 7-1

 

 

Title: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Running Time: 113 MIN

Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  44 MIN

Portion Watched: 39%

My Age at Time of Viewing: 63 YRS, 5 MOS.

Average Male American Lifespan: 76.5 YRS.

Watched/Did Instead: Started writing this review and then went off to read.

Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 14-1

 

BONUS TRACK 

Be grateful for small favors: At the 11-minute mark of "If I Had Legs," Rose Byrne's character is seen listening to classic Guided by Voices, the "Bee Thousand" track "Hot Freaks":

 

Now and Then: Tom Waits for Jarmusch

 

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER (B+) - There is something rather comforting in a Jim Jarmusch film. The leisurely pace. The assured direction. The sparse, off-kilter dialogue. The loops of echoing themes. And his respect for his audience's intelligence.

Here he unspools three stories about parents and children, in three disparate settings capturing the awkwardness of family relations. The cinematic connective tissue involves random repeated threads -- skateboarders, wristwatches, family photos, overhead shots of tables full of food and drink, toasts, color coordination of outfits (in the red family), horoscopes, car trips and sly variations on the British colloquialism "Bob's your uncle." The other common theme: Usually parents are depicted as out of touch and pitied by the younger generation; here, Jarmusch offers a Boomer's wink suggesting that his generation was and is the wiser, more well-adjusted and hippest of them all.

 

Adam Driver accepts the torch from Tom Waits as Jarmusch's off-kilter anti-hero, as they star together as father and son in the first short, with Mayim Bialik as Waits' daughter. The two offspring set the table for the whole movie with their disjointed and arm's-length conversation during the drive on the way up to their father's isolated lake house. It is clear early on that the father is exploiting his kids' generous nature and not letting on that he might be living a better life than his messy house suggests.

Waits is perfectly odd as the mumbling, fumbling father who just doesn't connect with his spectrum-y adult children, whether he is running down a list of drugs he's not taking or wielding an ax for no good reason. Driver, who starred in the director's "Paterson," can underplay a role with the best of them; I can't imagine anyone else in this specific role. And Bialik is the ultimate get-along sister/daughter. The actors have wonderful chemistry playing three relatives that have none. You almost wish it were its own standalone short film.

The third episode jumps a generation to a pair of 20-something twins visiting Paris to clear out the apartment of their parents, who have died in a plane crash. Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) have a playful banter and a fundamental connection, which is a refreshing contrast to the stilted relations on display in the first two episodes. Again, the lives of the parents -- excavated through photos, fake IDs and documents -- suggest a much more interesting narrative than the mundane plot we are watching, a clever sleight of hand.

 

Moore and Sabbat display the ease and dexterity of veteran actors, and it is fun to explore the side streets and interiors of Paris with this laid-back pair. They also are the most intellectually curious of all the film's characters. And we get a final subtle generational twist for the finale. 

The middle entry is the weakest. Charlotte Rampling portrays a best-selling novelist who must endure a traditional mother-daughter high tea with her two dysfunctional daughters. Cate Blanchett plays a straight-up nerd, and Vicky Krieps is the stereotypical aging punk-rock chick (at least Jarmusch's version of one). They live in Dublin, of all places, walking on eggshells around each other at the mom's fancy home. 

You can't ask for three more skilled actors, but they struggle to connect; their disparate accents don't help. There is no heft to the narrative, besides the disappointment a high-powered parent can barely conceal in her under-achieving children. Maybe the filmmaker just doesn't have an ear for this type of female interaction. It's fine but dwarfed by the impeccably curated tales that bookend it.

DOWN BY LAW (1986) (A-minus) - Jarmusch is at his '80s quirkiest, blessed with three unique actors who bond in this absurdist prison tale set in the unforgiving swamplands of Louisiana. 

John Lurie returns to the fold from "Stranger Than Paradise" to portray Jack, a somewhat dimwitted pimp who gets set up in an embarrassing police sting. Tom Waits, whose music career was humming along, is Zack, a hipster-doofus deejay who gets suckered into being a bagman, with disastrous results. They are eventually joined in prison by Roberto, a happy-go-lucky Italian who speaks fractured English and is played with broad comic joy by Roberto Benigni, in his American film debut (and his first of three films with the director). 

 

Benigni seems to embody all three Marx Brothers simultaneously as he steals the show from his sublimely deadpan co-stars. He constantly mixes up Zack and Jack (understandably), and he crafts charming fractured phrases from his notebook of English idioms. ("I am a good egg. ... We are a good egg.") Waits, especially, provides a deadpan backboard for the giddy offerings from the strange man they call Bob.

Time passes slowly but pleasantly in the jail cell. When they eventually make their way into the backwoods as fugitives, Jarmusch and cinematographer Robert Mueller let their lazy camera glide along the swamps with the stumbling escapees. Jarmusch's plot employs a satisfying switch at the end, alighting upon a lovely Italian restaurateur in the middle of nowhere (Nicoletta Braschi), who helps flip the hipster script.  

The filmmaker avoids the sophomore slump and sets the table for a rolling out of his patient, outre character studies and zen thought experiments that would play out over a four-decade career. 

BONUS TRACKS

Jarmusch shuns music in favor of an eerie stillness for most of "Father Mother Sister Brother," but then he picks a perfect daytime car ride in Paris to drop a needle on "Spooky" by Dusty Springfield:

 

 

Here is our latest attempt to rank the films of Jim Jarmusch, from most to least favorite:

• Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
• Dead Man (1995)
• Broken Flowers (2005)
• Down by Law (1986)
• The Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)
• Night on Earth (1991)
• Mystery Train (1989)
• Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) 
• Mother Father Sister Brother (2025)
• The Limits of Control (2009)
• Paterson (2016)
• Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
• Permanent Vacation (student film, 1980)
• Gimme Danger (2017) 

Not seen: "The Dead Don't Die" (2019)

The Altman Universe: Odd Woman Out

We figured it was time that we revisit the works of Robert Altman, something we somehow haven't done in the past 13 years. This is the start of an occasional series.

3 WOMEN (1977) (B+) - Two women -- Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall -- are at the peak of their quirkiness in this character study with a sci-fi psychological twist on sisterhood and motherhood. 

With a nod to Ingmar Bergman's "Persona," Robert Altman plays with the concept of shifting identities as he follows Spacek's naive Pinky as she joins the crew of a rehab spa in the California desert and latches on to a co-worker, Millie (Duvall), a self-absorbed and delusional motor mouth living a pathetic life. Pinky moves in with Millie at an apartment complex populated by young hipsters who mock Millie behind her back. The apartments are run by alcoholic former stunt double Edgar (Robert Fortier) and his mysterious pregnant artist wife Willie (Janice Rule).

 

Spacek is wide-eyed and creepy, as Pinky starts to "Single White Female" Millie, eventually seeking to take over Millie's outgoing personality. Duvall is off the wall as the clueless goofball prone to empty boasts. It might be her most memorable character and performance; she dives deep into Millie such that at times you get the sense that Altman just followed her wherever she went, without regard to the rest of the cast or the dictates of the script. Pinky is the only person clueless enough to take Millie seriously, despite the constant verbal abuse that Millie heaps on Pinky.

With a wink that might have informed David Lynch in future endeavors (like "Mulholland Drive"), Altman's second half toys with the timeline and shifts the perspectives of the characters. Millie's cheap affair with the boorish Edgar will scramble the stakes, culminating in a feminist outburst that unites the three women and rearranges their personas one more time. 

The harsh desert landscape and the echoes of an outdated Hollywood make for a haunting backdrop. And while the two stars talk past each other more than they interact, their bizarre bond propels the narrative, greased with the dry black humor that endures until the final visual punchline. 

A WEDDING (1978) (B+) - An ensemble cast of character actors slowly unwraps Altman's day-in-the-life chronicle that revolves around a snake-bit wedding and reception populated by bourgeois elitists, screw-ups and horny guests. What starts out slowly builds momentum, with the random gags and fleeting one-liners that add up to a satisfying whole.

 

Altman juggles perhaps his biggest cast of all and knits together a dizzying array of mini-plots. The nouveau riche  bride, Muffin (Amy Stryker), wears braces, and the old-money groom, Dino (Desi Arnaz Jr.), may have impregnated her sister, Buffy (Mia Farrow), though Buffy has been so popular with the boys that the source of the fetus is anybody's guest. The mother of the bride, Tulip (Carol Burnett), is getting hit on by the groom's uncle (Pat McCormick). And the matriarch of the groom's family (screen legend Lillian Gish) has passed away peacefully upstairs in her bed, though not everyone who visits her notices. There is a drunken doctor (Howard Duff), a harried wedding planner (Geraldine Chaplin), an overwhelmed lead security officer (John Considine, who shares screenwriting credits), a bumbling bishop (John Cromwell) and a coterie of pals from the military school Dino hails from (including Craig Richard Nelson). 

Illicit affairs occur in every corner of the mansion. A painting of the topless bride will be ceremoniously unveiled. When the bride and groom's exes show up, they each greet their old flames openly with passionate kisses. Burnett and McCormick provide the main comic relief as they fumble through the first stages of a potential affair. The quality of the cast is deep. Paul Dooley is the father of the bride, who is a little too close with daughter Buffy, the mostly mute maid of honor. Nina Van Pallant is radiant as the unhappy mother of the groom with a melancholy backstory. Dina Merrill exudes old-school class as her bossy sister. "Mork & Mindy's" Pam Dawber provides spunk as Dino's ex. A raft of young actors from the Chicago theater scene (mostly Steppenwolf and Second City) score roles as barely recognizable extras, including Joan Allen, George Wendt, Dennis Franz, Danny Breen, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.

Some will find this meandering and underwhelming. It didn't click for me until the second hour. It's almost brilliant in its scattershot understatement. (Similar to how Roger Ebert appreciated the "insane logic" of Altman's "MASH.") Only Altman at the time could attract this level of disparate talent. He seems to be bursting with small ideas and having fun watching his players run around with them. 

BONUS TRACK

Let's take a shot at ranking from memory the Robert Altman films we've seen and watch how the list evolves as we re-view them and add more. (Boldface indicates recently added or re-viewed.)

  1.  Nashville

  2.  McCabe & Mrs. Miller

  3.  MASH

  4.  The Long Goodbye

  5.  The Player

  6.  Short Cuts 

  7.  3 Women

  8.  A Wedding

  9.  California Split 

 10. A Prairie Home Companion

 11. Gosford Park

Doc Watch: The Unraveling

 

BREAKDOWN: 1975 (B+) - As advertised, this Netflix documentary breaks down the year of 1975, mostly (but not exclusively) through the movies released during perhaps the greatest year of American film. To the strains of Donna Summer's disco purrs, we're told in the opening (by narrator Jodie Foster of "Taxi Driver") that America was experiencing a nervous breakdown, and it sure felt as if, as Gerald Ford put it, we were locked in a "long national nightmare" even after we drove Nixon out of office.

To quote Al Pacino's bank robber in "Dog Day Afternoon," as he negotiated with police after robbing a bank to fund an operation for his transsexual partner: "I'm dyin' here!"  Both unemployment and inflation hovered at 9 percent. America had just lost a war. We were a hot mess.

Morgan Neville ("20 Feet From Stardom," "Won't You Be My Neighbor") knows how to craft a compelling narrative, and here he immerses us in the good, the bad and the ugly from the depths of one of the grimmest decades in recent memory. (The 2020s sure are making a case to compete against that time a half century ago.) He has a lot of material to work with in 1975:  poor Gerald Ford cleaning up after the disgraced Nixon, trying to "whip inflation now"; the end of the Vietnam War; school busing; the  Church Committee unmasking the tyrannical sins of the federal government; the oil crisis; the feminism wars; the specter of Ronald Reagan (seen in a clip on the "Tonight Show" with his buddy Johnny Carson); the creeps from Est. America was faking patriotism and community for its upcoming Bicentennial. No wonder there was nostalgia for the '50s -- "Happy Days" challenged the present-day dolor of "All in the Family" on TV. A bolder future, too, could be glimpsed: Microsoft was founded in an Albuquerque garage in 1975.

Check out these titles of esteemed releases that year: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Nashville," "Shampoo," "Jaws," "Dog Day Afternoon," "Night Moves," "Smile," "Three Days of the Condor," "Mahogany," "Hester Street," "Barry Lyndon." December 1974 releases carrying over in theaters included "The Godfather: Part II" and "Young Frankenstein." Neville likes to make broader points through film clips. He twins the fall of Saigon with the scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" of the knight in defiant denial as his limbs get hacked off one by one. He pits the progressive Betty Ford against the robotic nostalgist Nancy Reagan via clips from "The Stepford Wives."  

There were the pulpy dystopian films: "Towering Inferno". "Rollerball," John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13." (Coming in early 1976 would be "Taxi Driver" and "Bad News Bears.") Airier fare still had a bit of an edge: "The Sunshine Boys," "Cooley High" (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs is a talking head), "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Tommy," "Love and Death." "Emmanuelle 2." Neville ties in TV clips, too, including the dark comedy "MASH" and the debut of "Saturday Night Live," represented here with the iconic word association sketch between Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor.

Observers include Albert Brooks (who made short films in the debut season of "SNL"), critic Frank Rich, comedian Patton Oswalt, Variety's Peter Bart, Joan Tewkesbury (who wrote "Nashville"), critic Wesley Morris, author Rick Perlstein, and Naomi Fry. Oswalt captures it all perfectly when he re-imagines selling his date on a night out at a movie featuring Jack Nicholson as a statutory rapist in an insane asylum. We get fascinating clips that revive the ugliness of the era, such as the 1975 Academy Awards show, where old-timers Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and John Wayne defended the Old Boys Club vs. the American New Wave, represented by Dustin Hoffman.

Dial back the clock a half century if you dare. At least some of us can boast that we survived the shit-show.

SONG SUNG BLUE (2008) (B) - This documentary from 20 years ago is much darker than the recent fictional version (with the same title) of the story of Lightning and Thunder, the real-life couple whose Neil Diamond tribute act suffered from real-life setbacks.

Things are depressingly real for Mike Sardina and his wife, Claire, mostly in the health challenges they faced during the period of the documentary, from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Greg Kohs (who got a screenwriting credit on Craig Brewer's highly entertaining holiday release) gets extensive intimate home-movie access to the Sardina's and their working-class home life.  

Sardina died in 2006 at age 55. and he and Claire battled obesity (his solution was to resume smoking to lose weight), in addition to her loss of a leg in a freak car crash on their front lawn. The true footage is much grimmer than the feel-good feature film, as you'd expect. Things go sideways by the 20-minute mark and the couple never really recovers (despite Mike dismissing their schneid as a mere "bump in the road"). The Midwest accents are authentic, but so is the dour day-to-day slog, the domestic tension of a blended family. "The Brady Bunch" this is not. Then there is Claire washing her stump in the tiny bathroom sink. Kate Hudson doesn't have quite the chops to pull off something that haunting.

Sardina gives monologues for the camera and parades around in his underwear, like Hugh Jackman does jovially, but his character arc does not fit the Hollywood model of a hero's journey toward redemption. It is painful to watch the pair perform to empty dingy clubs, or to a smattering of curious onlookers at the Wisconsin state fair. At the hour mark, Mike has a major heart attack, and the slow slide to his demise is baked in.

So, go ahead, chase your dreams. Enjoy them before the nightmares overwhelm them.

BONUS TRACKS 

Three representative songs from 1975, starting with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Breakdown"

 

Heart, "Crazy on You": 

And the biggest-selling single of 1975: Captain & Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together" (penned by Neil Sedaka, another '50s nostalgia act):

 

And here is Lightning and Thunder onstage with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, having fun with Diamond's "Forever in Bluejeans":  

The Best of 2025: It's Not Me, It's You

 

Generation X is in a millennial slump. 

There is no need for a grand essay this year, or a diatribe. As usual, you may jump down to the lists and you'll find dozens of movies to stream right now. But I do want to address Gen X's midlife malaise. So this year we are going to offer a sort-of anti-list upfront. 

As a Gen X elder (let's not debate this), I'm saddened to see so many filmmakers lose their mojo as they trail me into middle age. Some of my all-time favorite directors have lost me with their releases in recent years.  

I believe in chapters, and I learned early on that it's not easy to sync with an artist throughout their career. The three-album rule was invented for a reason, and feel free to apply it to filmmaking. I had my quarter-life crisis after college, realizing that some of my favorite bands just didn't thrill me anymore. Now, at the three-quarter mark, I find that it is a parade of filmmakers who leave me disappointed. (By the way, I have long since forgiven Joe Jackson.)

So let's elevate the annual "It's Not You, It's Me" category from below and highlight a list of 2025's offenders, who either outright offended or just fell short in some way:

• Noah Baumbach, age 56. ... His 2025: Back in the day he made a handful of brilliant movies; this time he excreted the maudlin "Jay Kelly" with his new pal George Clooney. Baumbach has made one good film in the past decade. ... His Heyday: "The Squid and the Whale" (2005) and "Frances Ha" (2013)
• Paul Thomas Anderson, 55. ... 2025: He once made a handful of brilliant movies, but he has grown as bloated as his budgets. The latest is his fetishism of fascism, "One Battle After Another," which follows the fun but lightweight "Licorice Pizza" (2021). ... Heyday: "Magnolia" (1999)
• Kelly Reichardt, 61. ... 2025: She was onto something with "The Mastermind," but a bland star (and a blaring soundtrack) under- and overwhelmed her thin plot. ... Heyday: "Certain Women" (2016)
• Wes Anderson, 56. ... 2025: We walked out of 2023's "Asteroid City." We made it through "The Phoenician Scheme," but barely. ... Heyday: "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001)
• Chloe Zhao, 43 (cuspy). ... 2025: She somehow managed a decent final half hour of "Hamnet," but the first hour was nearly unwatchable. For some reason, I did not walk out. ... Heyday: "The Rider" (2018)
• Lynne Ramsay, 56. ... 2025: She produced something powerful and compelling at times with "Die My Love," but she tripped over some tropes and didn't earn the ending. ... Heyday: "Morvern Callar" (2002)
• Rian Johnson, 52. ... 2025: He ran the well dry with a weak third installment of his "Knives Out" series, "Wake Up Dead Man." ... Heyday: "Looper" (2013)
• (We pause, briefly, in honor of our onetime service to the country as a copy editor, for a discussion of commas. Is there an argument for leaving out the comma in "Wake Up Dead Man" and "Die My Love"? Doubt it. "Sorry, Baby.") 
• Yorgos Lanthimos, 52. ... 2025: He continues to botch scripts, this time muffing the last 20 minutes of "Bugonia." ... Heyday: "Alps" and "Dogtooth" (2010-12)
• Francois Ozon, 58. ... 2025: The man is in his own league, but even he is working in a minor key, with 2025's "When Fall Is Coming." ... Heyday: "Time to Leave" (2006) and too many others to list
• Jia Zhang-ke, 55. ... 2025: Even an all-time great could barely hold our interest in his career pastiche "Caught by the Tides." ... Heyday: "The World" (2006)

This doesn't take into account:

• The occasional Boomer -- Rob Reiner's soggy "Spinal Tap" sequel, or Nuri Bilge Ceylan's so-so "About Dry Grasses."
• Or the clouds forming on the horizon for a couple of Millennials: We've struggled twice so far to make a dent in 37-year-old Celine Song's "Materialists" (her "Past Lives" was No. 1 in 2023), and we gave up on "Pavements" from Alex Ross Perry, 41. (We preferred the Pavement doc "Louder Than You Think," about their crazy drummer/producer.) 
• Meantime, Walter Salles, 69, got back on his game with "I'm Still Here," and 73-year-old Boomer Jim Jarmusch is still steady-as-he-goes, maintaining his niche as the zen master, with his latest, "Father Mother Sister Brother."

OK. So I'm in a funk. The good news is that there are fresh voices out there; look below for movies from the likes of Eva Victor, Nina Conti, Isabella Roland, Rungano Nyoni, Michael Strassner, and more. The future remains promising, as the generations churn.

***

Below you'll find a ton of movies to sample, most from 2025, but some that hurtle you back decades (see "The Leftovers" below). Where possible I point out where you can stream them. My main go-to services are HBO, Mubi, Criterion, Netflix, and the library's free Hoopla (or Kanopy in your jurisdiction) or DVDs. Each film citation has a link to my original review.

THE TOP 15 of '25

(For the first five movies, I watched them more than once, confirming them as top picks.) 

  1. Blue Moon. Richard Linklater (a late Boomer with an X sensibility) directs a pitch-perfect Ethan Hawke in "this endlessly clever and charming tale of the bittersweet final days" of songwriter Lorenz Hart. Including Best Screenplay, in fact one of the best of all time. (In theaters; Netflix 2/14) 

  2. The Ballad of Wallis Island. "It is funny and full of heart; it's an earnest labor of love that tells a somber story without wallowing in any emotional muck." (Amazon Prime)

  3. Eephus. The best feature film about baseball ever made, with a tiny budget and a cast full of mostly non-actor ringers. (Mubi)

  4. Sorry, Baby. One of the many quiet indie gems on the list, often starring the writer-director (here Eva Victor), that stuck with us a long time. (HBO)

  5. One to One: John & Yoko. A meticulous, fascinating deep dive into the culture of New York City at the time an ex-Beatle showed up. (HBO)

  6. Sunlight. A buddy-movie road trip across New Mexico full of wit, heart and charm, led by stars Shenoah Allen and Nina Conti, who directed. (Rental on demand)

  7. Sentimental Value. Another mature, thoughtful character study from Joachim Trier (age 51). (In theaters)

  8. Diane Warren: Relentless. A documentary buoyed by the sheer force of the personality of its subject, a prolific MOR songwriter. (Hoopla/Kanopy)

  9. I'm Still Here. A tale of bravery and endurance from Walter Salles, whose exploration of Brazil's secret police will feel hauntingly relevant. (Netflix)

10. The Alabama Solution. A searing indictment of a state prison system, from the prolific Jarecki family. (HBO)

11. D(e)ad. Isabella Roland's family, working with a tiny budget, helped produce this clever comedy, one of the funniest movies of the year. (Rental on demand)

12. Song Sung Blue. When was the last time -- if ever -- you danced in the aisles in joy after a movie? The most fun at the theater in 2025. (Coming to Peacock)

13. Pee-wee as Himself. A filmmaker does a personal exploration of one of the most fascinating artists of the past 40 years. (HBO)

14. Listers. Microbudget DIY filmmaking at its finest; this documentary about birdwatching is the best movie most people never saw. (Free on YouTube)

15. Is This Thing On? Bradley Cooper wrings pathos and humor out of a disintegrating marriage, thanks to his star, Will Arnett. Including Best Director. (In theaters)

JUST MISSED THE LIST

(Honorables mentioned)

• The Baltimorons (AMC+)
• It Was Just an Accident
• Die My Love (Mubi)
• Friendship (HBO)
• Drowning Dry (Mubi)
• Father Mother Sister Brother (Theaters, then MUBI)
• Matt and Mara (Mubi) 

 

MORE TOP DOCS 

This was a particularly strong year for documentaries. Buckle up for a long list of releases, mostly in the B+ range. Many, too, Just Missed the List: 

 

• The music profiles: "Devo" explored in detail the origins of an art collective (Netflix); "Janis Ian: Breaking Silence" was intimate and revealing (PBS); "Becoming Led Zeppelin" gave the old boys their due (including drummer Jon Bonham through archival recordings) (Netflix); "Sunday Best" explored Ed Sullivan's commitment to civil rights on his variety show (Netflix); "Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted" was a total hoot (rental on demand).
• Ben Stiller excavated his family history in "Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost" (Apple TV)
• Raoul Peck powerloaded "George Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5" (rental on demand)
• A fascinating profile of Andy Kaufman, "Thank You Very Much" (rental on demand) 
• "Breakdown 1975" examined not just movies but our fraying culture during a pivotal year (Netflix) 
• "Secret Mall Apartment" had a great little-known story to unpack (Netflix)
• "The Perfect Neighbor" told a tragedy mainly through police body-cam footage (Netflix)
• I enjoyed getting to know comedian/podcaster Marc Maron in the gloomy documentary "Are We Good?" (rental on demand)
• Laura Poitras showed why she is one of the best, with her complicated profile of Seymour Hersh in "Cover-Up" (Netflix)  

 

TOP PERFORMANCES

• Songwriter Lorenz Hart in "Blue Moon" was the role Ethan Hawke was born to play, and no other performance came close this year. 
• Fernanda Torres was riveting throughout "I'm Still Here." 
• Susan Chardy was a well of guarded emotion in the disappointing culture study "On Becoming a Guinea Fowl" from Rungano Nyoni. 
• Jennifer Lawrence, fierce and feral in "Die My Love." Robert Pattinson and Sissy Spacek managed somehow to keep up with her.
• Tim Key walked a tightrope between comedy and drama in "The Ballad of Wallis Island," with an assist from Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan.
• No one can quite do what Renate Reinsve does every time, including this past year in "Sentimental Value."
• Hugh Jackman melted into his character, a Neil Diamond impersonator, in "Song Sung Blue."

 

GUILTY PLEASURES

• The Lost Weekend: A Love Story. The sweet story told by John Lennon's girlfriend in 1974, May Pang. (Amazon Prime)
• Splitsville. Another fun romp from filmmaking team Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin. ("The Climb") (Rental on demand)
• Dig (XX). An updated music doc that revisits the aughts "rivalry" between the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. (Leaving Criterion) 
• The Merchants of Joy. A cheesy but effective profile of sellers of Christmas trees in New York City. (Amazon Prime)

 

THE LEFTOVERS

Some 2024 films we caught up with:  The powerful PBS documentary about workers organizing, "Union." ... The fascinating four-hour mystery saga, "Trenque Lauquen." ... We walked out of the Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown," and instead went back in time to two classic documentaries about the man. ... The offbeat study of asexual adults, "Slow." ... Anne Hathaway was charming in the rom-com from Michael Showalter, "The Idea of You."

Wayback Machine: There were three of the all-time classics from the American New Wave: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Rosemary's Baby" and "Shampoo." ... We went back to the '80s to hang out with Spike Lee ("Do the Right Thing") and John Hughes and Molly Ringwald. ... We enjoyed Goldie Hawn in Steven Spielberg's "Sugarland Express." ... There were two Rolling Stones-related nuggets, "Performance" and "Gimme Shelter." ... We paid respects to Gene Hackman (R.I.P.) in "The Conversation" and Peter Sellers in "Being There." ... We dove deeper into the oeuvre of Joan Micklin Silver ("Between the Lines"), with "Crossing Delancy" and "Hester Street." ... Then there were the '70s hippie spectacles "Hair" and "Jesus Christ Superstar." ... Along with a documentary about Tura Satana, we screened the Russ Meyer B-movie classic "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" ... And, of course, we sampled liberally from Guild Cinema's annual summer film noir series (here and here).

R.I.P: We paid tribute to David Lynch and Robert Redford. We still have one more Lynch entry to go. ... We owe a tribute to Diane Keaton. ... We sampled "Spinal Tap," then and now, in memory of Rob Reiner, and we have a follow-up to that due in a few weeks. 

 

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

(Well, maybe this time it is you. 

Some of our favorites let us down.)

 

• (See above)

COMING ATTRACTIONS

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

• The Secret Agent
• The Ice Tower
• Bob Trevino
• Sirat
• Miroirs 3

Join us in 2026 as we track down those titles and more of the finest movies you wouldn't otherwise think of watching.

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":

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 parents 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: 

 

Doc Watch: Fight the Power

 Two from PBS ...

UNION (A-minus) - With ultimate insider access, this granular documentary provides classic fly-on-the-wall observations of the rag-tag group that heroically organized thousands of workers at an Amazon plant on New York's Staten Island, the first ever bargaining unit sanctioned at a warehouse of the e-tail giant.

 

In the shadows of COVID in 2021, Chris Smalls and Derrick Palmer formed the unaffiliated Amazon Labor Union, following a worker protest that had led to the firing of Smalls, who channeled his fury into an Ahab-like determination to topple a giant. Shunning an affiliation with a major national union, the ALU focused on grass-roots organizing, zeroing in on individual sign-ups in a short period of time at a facility whose workforce turns over roughly every six months. 

In all kinds of weather, a handful of diehards manned a tent at a bus stop outside the warehouse, offering food (and at one point weed) to win over the overworked crew members. We sit on on the leadership's Zoom meetings, where democracy gets messy (and prissy) at times (one of them will defect by the time the big vote arrives) but hope never dies. We trek with them to the offices of the National Labor Relations Board as they navigate the ancient bureaucracy, and hidden cameras take us inside the facility to lay bare the anti-union indoctrination sessions known as captive-audience meetings. 

Smalls, on balance, is a hero you can root for. He is a single father who displays an interesting mix of empathy for the workers and vengefulness toward the behemoth that tried to crush his spirit. Directors Stephen Maing and Brett Story are dogged in their pursuit of the story, their cameras often rolling in predawn hours as the huddled masses spill out of buses, steeling themselves for another 10-hour shift on their feet, with too-few breaks. As if we needed another reminder of the reality behind our blithe online shopping addictions.

HANNAH ARENDT: FACING TYRANNY (B) - This is another matter-of-fact installment of Philosophy for Dummies, meaning a Philosophy 101 class for people like me. We get a tick-tock through the life and career of Hanna Arendt, the foe of totalitarianism who rose to prominence when she coined the term "the banality of evil" while covering the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961 (reporting for the New Yorker magazine.

A German Jew, Arendt fled the rising Nazi regime in 1933 after briefly being incarcerated, settling in Paris, working toward a Jewish state in Palestine, before a brief pilgrimage to her postwar homeland and then becoming an American citizen in 1950, the year before she published The Origins of Totalitarianism." This "American Masters" production is a bit obsessed with her love life -- she famously dated the legendary Martin Heidegger (who would fall in with the Third Reich) and later had an open marriage. But it gives full berth to her words -- through archival interviews and her writings, voiced by actress Nina Hoss.  

The rise of the Nazis (later echoed in the Nixon-Vietnam era) should send chills down the spine of modern Americans, with a rhyme scheme readily apparent. We get this quote:

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.  And the people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act, but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people, you can then do what you please.

The message from this surface-level analysis of one of the 20th century's big thinkers: Pay attention to the past; totalitarianism can take root anywhere and at any time.