Doc Watch: Historical Record, Part 1

 A pair from the HBO stable as it transitions to Max, ditching the tiffany label for a cruder one, for some reason. Here is a docudrama and a documentary.

REALITY (C) -As gimmicks go, this one pegs into the red zone on the Annoying Scale. The filmmakers rely exclusively word-for-word on transcripts of the initial interaction between FBI agents and National Security Agency translator Reality Winner when they raided her home in 2017. Mundane doesn't begin to capture the tedium on display here. This is really a docudrama, but it's worse than a dull documentary.

I'm sure the goal was to tap into the banality of evil, or some other Arendtian concept. (We previously played with the idea of the evil of banality.) Here we must wrestle with the banality of banality.  Winner eventually pleaded guilty to one count of transmitting a classified document (a report on Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election) to the Intercept. She would serve about three years of a five-year sentence.

Sydney Sweeney (TV's "White Lotus") plays the wide-eyed, jittery Winner as she is confronted outside her home by two friendly FBI agents. Much dialogue involves the humdrum details of caging her dog and not letting the cat get out of the house, and which rooms will be swept in which order, and the cataloging of the weapons she owns (which, surprisingly, seem to be a low priority). The dialogue is stilted and limited by the unwarranted devotion to replicating every word and stammer. 

There is a reason why we fictionalize stories. Real life is often boring and cluttered with pleasantries and throat-clearing. We pep things up, strip out the banalities, and strive to make it ... entertaining. There are times when the gimmick works, when the droll proceedings turn absurd in a way that's both amusing and chilling. But even at a brief 83 minutes, this one is a chore to get through, despite Sweeney's best efforts.

LOVE TO LOVE YOU, DONNA SUMMER (C+) - Either Donna Summer wasn't a very exciting person, or her daughter -- who made the film -- failed to capture a spirit deserving of a full documentary. There are flashes of true personality of the former disco queen in the huge tranche of home movies she created over the decades; but this overview rarely coalesces into anything beyond a low-key greatest-hits package. 

One hundred seven minutes is way too much time to devote to the career of the woman who broke disco into the mainstream and who had a solid run in the late '70s and early '80s. Her daughter Brooklyn Sudano (with an assist from veteran Roger Ross Williams ("The Apollo")) dutifully follows the early years (including a stint in "Hair" in Munich, where she lived for several years) and the breakthrough fame during the first half of the film. 

However, the second half descends into mawkish family melodrama, with too much time devoted to Sudano, her sisters and Summer's exes. Summer (who died in 2012 at 63) seemed like a nice, interesting, talented woman, but nothing here scratches below the surface. One compelling scene, another home movie, features an older Summer breaking out into an a cappella version of "She Works Hard for the Money," and her natural beauty and vocal talent explode into the camera. Alas, such moments are few and far between.

Equally frustrating is the fact that most of the talking heads -- as well as the archival footage -- are sound only, with no video. Perhaps this was a limitation of Sudano's budget (or a COVID consideration), but we get a lot of static old photos accompanying disembodied voices -- including Summer's -- droning on.  Too much of this is a missed opportunity.

BONUS TRACK

She did, indeed, work hard for the money. That voice ...

That a cappella snippet of the song is at the 1:20 mark of the trailer:

And the last call for the disco era, "Last Dance":

New to the Queue

 Taking some final laps ...

Nicole Holofcener ("Walking and Talking," "Please Give") re-teams with Julia Louis Dreyfus ("Enough Said") to study a fractured marriage, "You Hurt My Feelings."

With a documentary feel, a period piece about radicalized workers at a watch factory in 19th century Switzerland, "Unrest."

A stylish thriller about a woman who jeopardizes her bourgeois lifestyle by harboring a wounded enemy of the Pinochet regime, "Chile '76."

A drama about two childhood friends, separated when one moves from South Korea to New York, who meet up again two decades later, "Past Lives."

Millennial Wall Street

 

BLACKBERRY (A-minus) - Matt Johnson has established himself as the master of the flashback process movie. He previously imagined NASA in the late '60s faking the moon landing in "Operation Avalanche," and now he starts in the mid-'90s to tell the story of the BlackBerry device, the once-ubiquitous attachment to rich assholes everywhere before the company crashed and burned through malfeasance and a little device that came along called the iPhone.

Johnson stars as Doug, one of the co-founders of Canadian start-up Research In Motion, along with Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis, the visionary behind the outfit. If Mike is an idiot-savant, Doug is more of an idiot. He sports a red headband at all times, even the one time he has to don a suit to impress other suits. Doug speaks almost exclusively in dialogue from classic movies. He lives for Movie Night at the office, quoting along with dialogue.

Their fledgling operation is soon taken over by an opportunistic and brazen CEO, Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), who immediately gets them in the door at Bell Atlantic, to pitch their PocketLink device, based on a crude prototype, slapped together literally overnight. 

Throughout the film, RIM has to walk a fine line between flooding the market with BlackBerries and not overwhelming the systems they run on. In 2007, the iPhone came along -- building the keyboard into the screen instead of having a click keyboard -- and the downfall of BlackBerry was swift and messy.

Johnson -- writing with Matthew Miller -- borrows a little from HBO's "Silicon Valley" (the nerds often riding to the rescue of the reckless CEO) and a bit from "Wall Street" (Balsillie poached top techies from Google and elsewhere, using an accounting trick with stock options that caught the eye of the SEC). His visual style has a shaky documentary feel to it, but is not afraid of drone shots of skylines, either. Baruchel is dead-on as the spectrum-y tech whiz (he eventually morphs, not unlike Steve Jobs, into a Jim Jarmusch-like spiritual guru), and the bromance between Mike and Doug is touching. 

Johnson's narrative hurtles along at break-neck speed, as one liners shoot out and land with ease. When reminded that "perfect is the enemy of the good," Mike claps back, "Well, good enough is the enemy of humanity." We already know that this is going to end in corporate tragedy, but that doesn't take away any of the entertainment value. Maybe it's the Canadian sensibility, the over-arching self-deprecation, that makes this all so delicious.

Some people are born storytellers. There's a Tarantino-esque DYI confidence to Johnson's filmmaking. It is a perfect match of this story that needed to be told, and done so without a heavy hand.

BONUS TRACKS

The film kicks off with the nervous energy of Elastica's "The Connection" over the opening credits:

When the film advances to 2003, the Strokes chime in with the infectious "Someday":

 

When things start to fall get out of control, the White Stripes charge in with "Hello Operator":

Auteur, Auteur

  A pair from two talented writer-directors who broke through in the Aughts.

SHOWING UP (B-minus) - Kelly Reichardt re-teams with Michelle Williams (they go back to "Wendy and Lucy," from 2008) for this minor-key depiction of the week in the life of an artist. This is as slow and uneventful as a movie can be, so it's the little things that make this worth a view.

You know how we go on about Theater People? They can be a lot to take. Well so can art departments. Thankfully, Reichardt does not dwell on the quirks of artists or deify their pursuit of genius. On the contrary, this movie is about the tedious existence of a modest artist, bland Lizzy, who dresses in baggy clothes, wilts under a mop of soccer-mom hair, and lives to make lovely statuettes of female figures. She is hustling to finish her latest crop before her upcoming exhibition.

But life keeps getting in her way. Her landlord, Jo (Hong Chau from "The Menu" and "Inherent Vice"), won't fix the hot water and then saddles Lizzy with a wounded pigeon she found. (Lizzy feels guilty because it was her cat who wounded the bird and Lizzy who dumped it out the window, leaving it to die.) Yes, get ready for a giant Wounded Bird Metaphor. Meek Lizzy gets walked all over in the art department and is at her wit's end dealing with her bipolar brother.

All of this can be quite interesting at times. And Williams is a wizard at disappearing into a complex character. The deep supporting cast also includes engaging small turns by the likes of Judd Hirsh (Lizzy's father), Amanda Plummer, James Le Gros (I recognized his voice before I recognized his face), John Magaro as the brother, and Andre (3000) Benjamin as the kiln operator who could probably be better at his job.

There's a lot to like here. But there's a whole lot of nothin' goin' on, too. It's just ... too ... slow. At the one-hour mark, I thought to myself, "OK, time for the plot to start." Fifteen minutes later one of my friends ducked out; he reported later that he just didn't have the patience to find out what would happen to those two wounded birds -- Lizzy and the pigeon. It's a delightful ending that my friend missed; but for too many people, it will be a chore to wade through nearly two hours to get there. I made it OK.

EVERYTHING WENT FINE (B+) - Francois Ozon has been one of the great storytellers of the past 20 years. His edge has dulled a bit in recent years. Earlier work -- "Under the Sand" with Charlotte Rampling, "Time to Leave" and "5 X 2" -- includes flawless, unsettling character studies.

Here he takes on the story of a woman who assists her dying father with his final wish. Sophie Marceau is riveting as Emmanuele Bernheim.  Apparently always her dad's favorite since childhood, she steps in to be at the side of Andre (Andre Dussollier), who has suffered a stroke and struggles to maintain his dignity or even care for himself. Dussollier, too, commands the screen in this emotionally draining pas de deux. Emmanuele's dour sister Pascale Geraldine Pailhas) can't work up the same amount of drive to accommodate the old man, but she offers support when she can.

Andre is cranky and petulant. He was a bad father and was an even worse husband to the traumatized and now-ailing Claude (a defeated Charlotte Rampling). Some might find him irredeemable; others might appreciate his candor. When he tells Emmanuele (whom we also see in childhood flashbacks) "you were such an ugly child," he delivers it as if he thinks it's a compliment about her current beauty. Marceau does make it difficult to look away as her face constantly fills the screen, even if the melodrama is painfully raw. (For one thing, she sports a shag haircut to end all shag haircuts.)

Dussollier's performance -- a raw depiction of a fallen, helpless man -- can be difficult to watch. And this could have been shorter than 113 minutes. But Marceau pours so much grit and nuance into her role of Everywoman that you are inclined to quietly cheer everyone on. Ozon teases us as to whether the old man might change his mind. Andre harbors a secret -- involving a pest called Gerard -- which unspools gradually until it completes the picture of a man hoping to go out on his own terms. The ending is near-perfect.

One-Liners: Sleuthing

 

MISSING (B+) - Incredibly frenetic and a little frazzling, "Missing" follows a young adult using her phone and computer almost exclusively to solve the mystery of her mother's disappearance during a planned trip to Colombia with a new boyfriend. As gimmicks go, this one is pretty slick; you're not just watching someone play with a computer screen but rather getting sucked into her online world.

Storm Reid (from HBO's "The Last of Us" and "Euphoria") plays June, the snarky daughter of Grace (Nia Long), whom we also see in a videotaped flashback to when June was a toddler, just before the girl lost her father. When Grace doesn't return to LAX from Colombia, June starts sleuthing online. Through TaskRabbit she finds Javier (a delightful Joaquim de Almeida), who goes way above and beyond his usual handyman duties to provide key private-eye assistance.

The FBI also gets involved, and it's eye-opening to watch all of the tools June utilizes at her fingertips. She uses translation programs to talk to the hotel staff. She unearths key documents. She IMs and face-times; she tracks down public video-camera footage; and she hacks emails and social-media accounts. Soon the intrigue has built to a real-world climax.

Writer-directors Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick, in their feature debut, hurtle this story along for nearly two hours, never letting the plot sag. After peeling the onion with some engaging slow reveals, they pack the final reel with a couple of clever twists that turn this into a compelling mystery thriller. It all revolves around Reid, who has a grand command of the big screen, with beefy supporting roles from the likes of Ken Leung (TV's "Lost") as the creepy boyfriend. It all adds up to pleasing pulp.

MINDHORN (2015) (B-minus) - About as lightweight as they come, this British parody has the thinness of a sitcom as it follows a vain, washed-up TV actor who slips back into his old detective character to help police on the Isle of Man solve a murder and avoid more killings. It is silly and stupid, but it has enough gags to justify its feature length. It also has strong performances that lifts it above the riff-raff.

This comes from the minds of Julian Barratt, who stars as the hack actor Richard Thorncroft, and Simon Farnaby as Clive, who worked as Richard's stunt double on the '80s drama "Mindhorn," a poor man's "Matt Houston." A suspected killer is obsessed with the Mindhorn character, and so the local police ring up the balding, pot-bellied Thorncroft to once again don the cheesy orange leather jacket and his bionic eyepatch (which allows Mindhorn to see the truth) to revive his TV persona and lure the killer into custody.

Don't overthink this. Steve Coogan is on hand as Thorncroft's rival, Peter Easterman, who went on to become a movie star. Andrea Riseborough is amusing as a mousy detective. The eminent Kenneth Branagh and Simon Callow ("Room With a View," "Four Weddings and a Funeral") play themselves, dispensing some very British inside jokes. It all zings by in an hour and a half.

Barratt and Farnaby toss in some subtle comic flourishes -- for some reason, Thorncroft finds his inner Mindhorn only while wearing very specific footwear -- and the comedy is as deadpan as they come. Thorncroft is a blowhard and a buffoon, and while this has the feel of a show within a show, it never becomes too cartoonish. You can almost sense Quentin Tarantino taking notes for the washed-up TV action star he centers things around in "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood," and you can still enjoy the simple send-ups of all the cop shows that came after "Mannix." (In turn, "Mindhorn" cops a few gags from the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" video.)

The hunt for the killer is almost an afterthought, but Barratt and Farnaby wrap things up nicely, and Mindhorn once again gets his day in the sun.

Class of '81

 Two from the year I graduated high school: the first I've never seen, the second a rewatch to see if it still held up (it does).

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (B) - This must have seemed ground-breaking at the time -- an overt thumbing of the nose in the era of "Jaws" and "Star Wars" -- to make a movie about two theater veterans having a discussion over a meal for two hours. I'm sure it was a refreshing intellectual exercise taking place while I was mainlining "Stripes" directly into my veins. 

Forgive me for letting this one settle for four decades before testing my maturity, patience and stamina for dry fare. And the first half certainly can be a challenge. It is dominated by Andre Gregory, the director, spinning tales, a few of which are just not that interesting. Gregory had left the theater for a new-age adventure, doing a little soul-searching.

It isn't until the second half that Wallace Shawn moves beyond just reacting "Gee!" or "That's interesting!" during Gregory's stories. The discussion turns more philosophical, and the men offer sharp observations about modern society at the dawn of the Reagan era. You might not be surprised to learn that -- like observers for decades before then and since -- they often lament the accelerating speed of the culture and the dangers of losing our humanity.

The men caution about the rise of technology -- robots are a big theme -- and the loss of human connection. Sound familiar? They celebrate the simple things in life -- a cup of coffee while reading a newspaper (on paper, of course). They make references to mindfulness, citing a "need to cut out the noise." Back then, careerism was a big culprit. It's not clear which more peaceful era they would go back to; like Godard, they have a decidedly post-WWII traumatized mindset, and Nazism still infiltrates their thinking

Director Louis Malle films this with no frills. Besides bookended scenes of Shawn sharing his thoughts as he arrives at the restaurant and then again as he cabs home, this is literally a movie about two men talking while eating dinner. There are a few interactions with waiters. But other than that, this is old-fashioned analog storytelling. Be patient during the first half -- turn your other screens off -- and follow along as two old friends try to solve the world's problems. As I look around, I see that Shawn and Gregory did not succeed in their mission, but neither have my friends and I. That doesn't mean these meals have been a waste of our precious time.

FOUR FRIENDS (B+) - Written by Steve Tesich (following his breakthrough "Breaking Away"), this earnest drama follows the lives of four friends as they pine for a girl while navigating the turbulent cultural changes of the 1960s. It struck a powerful chord with my young self. Does it still?

Craig Wasson (always, to me, a poor man's Bill Maher) stars as Danilo, the wide-eyed son of gruff immigrants who craves both stability and a livelier world. He and two childhood pals -- David (Michael Huddleston),  and Tom (Jim Metzler) -- all have crushes on the free-spirited OG Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Georgia (Jodie Thelan), who flatters herself by thinking she's the reincarnation of dancer Isadora Duncan. When Danilo gets to college, his roommate Louie (a young Reed Birney) will join the Georgia fan club (its members are fond of singing along with Ray Charles to her theme song and they are rewarded by being called "Kiddo" by her).

Wasson is the perfect butt-hurt thespian to imbue Danilo with a solemn and prudish devotion to both woman and country. His education and musical talent will at first rescue him from the fate of his father (Miklos Simon), who toils at the East Chicago iron foundry and takes out his immigrant frustrations on his son, including the occasional back-hand across Danilo's jaw. Thelan hams it up as a young woman eager to shed the pre-Beatles era of repression for expressions of free love later in the Sixties. 

Their lives get complicated. The two other friends fade more into the background -- one goes off to Vietnam, the other takes over his father's mortuary business. The hippie uprising challenges Danilo's dewy-eyed love of the America that took him in as a boy, and Tesich's screenplay offers a sweep of history through one man's personal journey.

Tesich balances maudlin nostalgia with a few sharp insights into the culture, while peppering the script with wholesome humor. The film has the whiff of the soap operas of the early '80s -- there is a tragic arc of Danilo seeking to marry into a rich family (catch Lois Smith as his impending mother-in-law) -- and the gravitas of a page-flipping historical novel. Like with "My Dinner With Andre," this movie digs for universal truths in a way that can still resonate more than 40 years later.

Doc Watch: Addictions

 

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (B) - Overlong and sluggish, this appreciation of avant-garde photographer Nan Goldin and her crusade against the Sackler family's Oxycontin empire suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. It is torn between homage and polemic.

Laura Poitras ("Citizenfour") takes an unusually solemn tone, dwelling on Goldin's early family tragedy and rough upbringing to bathe this biography in pathos. This is sophisticated filmmaking, but it creaks under the weight of a full two hours. 

Half the movie is about Goldin's groundbreaking photography from New York's punk era and her work within the alternative scene.  The other half is about Goldin, a former junkie herself, leading protests against the Sackler family and their art philanthropy. Poitras uses the 1980s AIDS epidemic as a bridge between those worlds. However, each of the stories here keeps getting interrupted. It's as if she has two (maybe even three) good hour-long films here, but the stories detract from and trip over each other too often. It's a simple lack of focus.

Poitras doesn't do herself any favors when she allows the film to be hijacked by an extended detour featuring activist artist David Wojnarowicz, a relentless AIDS activist who just a year ago was the subject of a much sharper documentary. His presence reminds us of how raw and insurgent both activism and filmmaking can be. By contrast, Poitras seems overly reverent toward someone who survived a wild youth and now is placated with a prim retrospective in old age.

Poitras takes on a lot here, and much of it is impressive. If only it congealed into something a little more urgent or compelling.

TAKE YOUR PILLS: XANAX (B+) - Here's another surprisingly solid documentary from Netflix (see also "Money Shot" about Pornhub), a level-headed look at anxiety in the modern digital world and how Big Pharma offers an enticing solution.

Director Blair Foster and writer Claire Gordon keep this at a healthy pace as they alternate between psychologists delving into the pluses and minuses of Xanax and regular folk who both sing the drug's praises but also warn of its deleterious effects. One man in particular conveys the horrors trying to withdraw after building up his tolerance for decades (suicidal thoughts can be a serious consequence). Another, journalist Scott Stossel, describes anxiety in terms of any other physical condition that must be regulated with well-regulated meds. One young woman discusses the shame that Xanax users face.

Foster and Gordon keep the science simple and straightforward. They explore the ills of a society driven to the edge by social media and other pressures. But they never settle for facile arguments or shoot at easy targets. This is not a hit job Pfizer or any other drug company. The film is thoughtful and considerate of all sides of the debate.

New to the Queue

 Flipping to a new chapter, bubbling with promise ...

Master storyteller Kelly Reichardt ("Certain Women," "First Cow") re-teams with Michelle Williams ("Wendy & Lucy") in a portrait of an artist, "Showing Up."

Another of our favorites, Francois Ozon, follows a woman assisting her dying father, "Everything Went Fine." 

Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch ("The Broken Circle Breakdown") dramatize the friendship between two men in "The Eight Mountains." 

A documentary about half-brothers searching for their mother who disappeared years ago, "Sam Now."

From France, and writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski ("An Easy Girl"), a relationship drama, "Other People's Children."

An old woman ponders her future after the Japanese government incentivizes euthanasia, "Plan 75."

From Argentina, a nested four-plus-hour rumination about a botanist who goes missing, triggering a mystery that unspools going back in time "Trenque Lauquen."

Girls Night Out

 A cool double-bill last week at Sister Bar:

Snail Mail, led by Lindsey Jordan, headlined a night of mildly edgy music in downtown Albuquerque. But Snail Mail was overshadowed by a much more lively set from opening act Water From Your Eyes, a band that debuted on Matador Records this year. 

Water From Your Eyes -- Rachel Brown and Nate Amos -- have the pop pout of Wet Leg, the dance grooves of Siouxsie and the Banshees and a general metal edge. Amos, who worked a lot of foot pedals, slashed at his guitar throughout the set. With his shaggy blonde hair and adventurous chord progressions, he came off like Kurt Cobain learning how to play guitar. Brown -- dressed like a seventh-grader headed out for a field trip -- tossed out stream-of-consciousness banalities and awkward stage banter. 

At one point, Brown insisted on complaining to us how difficult it is to play 18 shows in 19 days. By this, Brown meant having to play a half hour of music once a day. Brown also complained about being under the weather but had time that day to traipse through the volcanoes on the west side of town. So having to play music for a half hour a day isn't that exhausting, after all. 

Brown seemed to struggle at times to sing on key, but it was more a matter of talking than singing much of the time, and Amos and a second guitar player really brought the noise. Here's a highlight, "Barley":

Matador darling Jordan also was feeling feverish when she took the stage with a full band just before 10 o'clock. She warned that she might "spew," which was considerate of her to those up front.

 

I love her music -- she gets tossed into that vague category that includes Jessica Lea Mayfield and Soccer Mommy -- but her stage act just never electrified the crowd, especially in the shadow of Water From Your Eyes' reckless abandon. There were occasional flashes of Kristin Hersh fronting Throwing Muses, but at half speed. At one point, Jordan kicked the band off the stage to do an acoustic set, and she struggled to hit some chords, as if she was taking the opportunity to just practice her playing while the paying audience looked the other way.

Let's leave Snail Mail on heavy rotation via disc and streaming and not expect a killer show from them in the future.

BONUS TRACKS

Here's a pair from Snail Mail. First, "Pristine" from 2018:

And a three-song set from those early years via a Tiny Desk performance:

We missed opening band Dazy and its power pop. Here's a fun song:

Godard Lives: '80s and '90s

  In this occasional series, every once in a while we will view and re-view the films of Jean-Luc Godard, who died in September 2022.

HAIL MARY (1985) (B-minus) - Jean Luc Godard's take on the Catholic virgin origin story starts out flat and never really fills the screen in a compelling way. It was also confusing to watch it on DVD, because it started out with a half hour film by Godard's companion, photographer Anne-Marie Mieville, "The Book of Mary," about a precocious child acting out while her parents' marriage corrodes. 

That first film is a fascinating study of an 11-year-old (Rebecca Hampton) who seeks sanctuary in books and music while sometimes navigating the evolving relationships with her parents (including Aurore Clement ("The New Girlfriend") as the mom. "Hail Mary," at 72 minutes, pales by comparison. This Mary -- a different one or the same as the girl in the short? -- works at her father's gas station (that sort of plot was considered blasphemous in itself three decades ago) and becomes pregnant even though she has never had sex with her boyfriend, Joseph.

Mary (Myriem Roussel) plays volleyball in college and often is vexed by her dilemma of biblical proportions. she claims to be perplexed by Joseph's grumpiness and frustration -- at not only how she got pregnant but by his inability to touch his own girlfriend. Godard distracts us with seemingly unrelated B-plots (one includes a young Juliette Binoche; another includes a woman named Eva (Eve?) who is sleeping with her married professor). 

But he continually circles back around to the endless loop of Mary and Joseph. In the second half, the curiosity about the young actress overcomes Godard, and she starts unleashing regular full-frontal nudity. It happens often enough that it feels exploitive of Roussel (in her early 20s at the time), who doesn't really show much flair for performing on screen.

Godard flings around some philosophical musings. He cuts away to a lot of shots of the sunset, the moon, flowers and flowing water. He wraps things up with a flash forward, but by then, nothing can rescue this from mediocrity. 

HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA (1998) (B-minus) - Do you wonder what angst the boomer artistic class was going through at the end of the millennium? Here comes Jean Luc Godard to empty his brain onto the screen for four and a half hours. Good luck sifting through it.

As you might expect, this attempt to chronicle the early days of cinema -- including the heyday of the French New Wave of the 1950s and '60s -- isn't really so much about movies as it is about the traumatized psyche of a postwar auteur. Godard wallows in images of the Holocaust for most of the run time here, which is divided into a 90-minute two-part introductory segment and then six more half-hour pieces.

As Godard liked to do, especially late in his career, he assaults the viewer with words -- both written on the screen and spoken. Add in subtitles, and it often is too much to comprehend. There were times when words flashed on the screen and subtitles tried to keep up with two or three voices. Words sometimes go untranslated. I gave up trying to follow all of it, or most of it -- especially when he starts to lapse into Latin.

Godard wallows in "an industry of masks," and his common themes are sex (or beauty) and death. He pays homage to early films (he argues that Elizabeth Taylor's career would not have taken off without the scut work of 16mm pioneers). He dedicates each segment to various people, many I've never heard of; Section 1B is devoted to John Cassavettes. By section 3A, Godard asks "What is cinema?" (Nothing.) "What does it want?" (Everything.)

The images flicker and flash. Colors bleed and figures fade in and out. Halfway through it is apparent that Godard is as enamored of art and photography as he is in cinema. Even deep into the run, we get transported back through Nazi symbolism and death-camp horrors. Section 3A ends with a collage of war atrocities alternating with shots of pretty women. In 3B we get a glimpse of Jerry Lewis in clown makeup from Lewis' infamously unreleased Holocaust movie. It takes that deep into the run to finally start acknowledging the New Wave that Godard was central to. By the final segments, Alfred Hitchcock is raised up as a deity -- we are told that the master of suspense succeeded where despots failed. Clips from American Westerns also hint at the French auteurs' key influences.

In the final reel, Godard heaps a final few scoops of scorn on the "peddlers" of the multiplexes. He laments at the "inexorable decline" of western civilization. We are doomed to corruption and chaos. Our leaders are fools and totalitarians. Cinema is an escape. "It is the end of the world," he intones. "But the sun (son?) returns."

BONUS TRACKS

Previous takes on Godard's oeuvre:

• Contempt
• Band of Outsiders
• Masculin Feminin
• 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
  
• Goodbye to Language
  
• Film Socialisme
• The Image Book

Visual Math

 

I have always struggled with remembering the names of and distinguishing between Emily Blunt and Rose Byrne. I file this placeholder so I don't have to wrack my brain each time this dilemma comes up. I can just do a quick search. Brain space freed up

So, the problem is: Rose Byrne (Australian) vs. Emily Blunt (British).

 The solution is: Rachel McAdams (Canadian).

That '70s Drift: Retro Kitsch

 

PAINT (B) - What silly fun. Owen Wilson does that thing of his, and he takes a ridiculous premise and somehow makes it work, in this surprisingly funny riff on the Vermont life of a frizzy-haired artist inspired by PBS legend Bob Ross.

Wilson stars as Carl Nargle (the goofy name is the first of many red flags you must ignore to make it through this), who has carved out a niche as a hack painter at the local PBS affiliate in Burlington, where he has assembled a stable of female admirers who jockey for the right to be invited into the pullout bed in the back of Nargle's upholstered van. But when a rival comes along -- young, beautiful Ambrosia (Ciara Renee) -- Nargle's star power quickly fades toward obsolescence. 

Ambrosia not only takes over part of Carl's screen time, but she also makes a play for his ex, the meek director Katherine (Michaela Watkins). This all plays out with the goofiness of an Afterschool Special. It takes place in the present day (Carl is flummoxed by Uber), but the styles and the soundtrack are stuck in the 1970s. Sappy singer-songwriters of the day -- John Denver (the cloying "Annie's Song" makes several appearances) and Gordon Lightfoot -- dominate the soundtrack. Some songs land, such as Jerry Reed's "When You're Hot You're Hot":

Other oldies, like Heart's "Barracuda" and Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors" are clunkier and fall flat. (Maybe it's the misogynist milieu.) The movie itself -- from the mind of writer-director Brit McAdams, who cut his chops with B-list comedians like Katt Williams and Daniel Tosh -- is such a mish-mash of ideas and gags that there is no reason any of this should work as well as it does. Part of that is Wilson's commitment to such a ridiculous character. Carl is comically zen but also lacks self-awareness; while watching an old clip of his show he scoffs at the shirt he was wearing, only to realize he is still wearing the same style. He is chronically stuck in the '70s, and it's amusing to watch women fall all over him (until, of course, Ambrosia starts siphoning off everyone's attention). The supporting cast of mostly character actors helps sell this. Watkins, abnormally subdued, makes the most of her deadpan deliveries, and Stephen Root does what he can as the inept station manager.

Part of the time I was rolling my eyes and wondering why this was much longer than a TV sketch. But the rest of the time, I was laughing out loud. Perhaps the best shorthand explanation is to point out that Chekhov's gun here is a salon-grade hair dryer that looms in the background until just the right time to deploy it for comedic effect. 

"Paint" is even downright sweet at times, and again, give credit to Wilson's subtle skills as an actor and comedian. McAdams wrings actual emotion from the scenes between Carl and his barber, in spite of the goofy premise that entails to begin with. Wilson also wrings some pathos out of this emotionally vacant yet yearning pseudo celebrity. Carl barely bothers to diversify his portfolio; he likes to paint the same mountain over and over again. He smokes a pipe unironically. And he thinks his viewers are traveling to a "special place" with him every episode. How do Wilson and McAdams manage to wrap this up with some authentic sentiment? 

Even John Denver wrote a good song once in a while. Some things just inexplicably work.

BONUS TRACKS

The references to John Denver brought to mind Monty Python's takedown of the chipper popster:

The final credits kick in to a nugget from one of the '70s' would-be New Dylans, Steve Forbert, with "Romeo's Tune":

And that segues into one of my favorite cheesy country tunes from the era, Don Williams' "I Believe in You":

Ennui

 A pair streaming on Mubi:

ACTUAL PEOPLE (B-minus) - Every generation gets the Mumblecore touchstones it deserves. Kit Zauhar writes, directs and stars as a college philosophy senior who can't be bothered to pass her last class before graduation, letting her jumbled love life get the best of her.

Zauhar stars as Riley, an attractive 22-year-old whose mind is just not in the game and who seems distracted by random micro-aggressions, to the point where she must eventually explain to her parents why she won't be graduating in a few weeks. Her main distractions are men and sexual politics. Maybe she can't pass her last class because she flunked the Bechdel Test. Zauhar's debut has all the hallmarks of a student film and presents herself as an antiquated anti-feminist. 

She sleeps with her roommate once and then wonders why he's bothered to the point of not wanting to renew her lease. She's hung up on her ex -- who cheated on her -- and then crushes too much on a hunk from her hometown of Philadelphia. Several times she is seen wincing from a yeast infection. She has a wry habit of gulping glasses of water. 

Riley's friends come and go so quickly that it is hard to keep track of them. Some of the men also seem indistinguishable. A few adults show up -- a teacher, a therapist -- and they highlight Zauhar's awkward weaknesses as an actor. She can be quite appealing, especially with little quirks, but a couple of emotional episodes really stretch her talents. (Zauhar's sister shows up as Riley's younger sister, and she has much more pizzazz.)

Visually, she has a fondness for shaky hand-held camera shots and uncomfortable close-ups. She provides occasional interludes, showing characters out of context, usually splitting the screen three ways. In sum, this is a bit of a mess, but it's not without its charm. Zauhar has a decent ear for dialogue, and she captures the angst of a young adult on the brink of graduation, torn about which direction she should take -- which describes Zauhar and Riley alike.

ZERO FUCKS GIVEN (B) - Adele Exarchopoulos ("Blue Is the Warmest Color") stars as a screwed-up flight attendant who can barely keep her life together as she soldiers through her thankless job at a low-rent airline. Her Cassandre is an expressionless hedonist who cares about little other than surviving from moment to moment.

That involves a lot of alcohol (often in tiny bottles) and zipless sex without strings attached, as she flies from city to city all over the world. Exarchopoulos manages to convey a range of feelings via this emotionally stunted character. She isn't so much dead inside as comfortably numb. Cassandre has her moments of joy and human connection; it's just that it never leads to anything lasting.

The script seems to leave room for improvisation, and that gives the movie a lived-in feeling. Newcomers Julie Lecoustre and Emmanuel Marre (with an assist from co-writer Mariette Desert) create a narrative arc that gradually builds to a grounding of Cassandre, where we finally get a glimpse of her family life -- and somewhat of an explanation for the state she is in.

Without Exarchopoulos, who has a face made for the big screen, this could have been dull and listless. But she brings depth and warmth to a character whose outward expression tells the rest of the world to fuck off.

BONUS TRACK

From the end credits of "Actual People," Lightning Bug with "October Song, Pt. II":

And from the final scene of "Zero Fucks Given," Viyolin with "Faded."

Uh-oh: A.I.!

 

M3GAN (A-minus) - Sometimes a movie comes along whose plot or trailer might make you roll your eyes, but which captures the zeitgeist and finds just the right wavelength or carry you through its improbable premise. It's tough not to love this horror story about a robot girl who starts to outfox her creators. "Frankenstein" just never gets old.

Allison Williams, with that flat affect of hers, is kind of perfect as Gemma, the scientist who suddenly takes custody of her tween niece after Gemma's sister and brother-in-law die in a car crash. Little Cady (Violet McGraw) inspires Gemma to graduate from making robot pets to reviving her idea for a robot girl. Thus we get M3GAN, a creepy humanoid who "pairs" with Cady and instantly becomes her best friend, confidant and tutor, all in one.

The problem is that Gemma hasn't really fully beta-tested M3GAN (it's an acronym), so it's not hard to see this all falling apart quickly. M3GAN is synced with Cady, which means she not only lends a sympathetic ear to her charge but also is imbued with the killer instinct of a feral mother in the wild. Because she is programmed to protect Cady, M3GAN will stop at nothing to protect this broken little girl. You can get a sense of her ferocity in the trailer.

But the movie -- directed by journeyman Gerard Johnstone and written by TV veteran Akela Cooper and story specialist James Wan -- meticulously builds its story piece by piece. M3GAN often sits in the background, as obedient as a choir girl. She reads to Cady and is much more effective at grief counseling than the child's therapist is. But, gradually, the bot's "personality" starts to emerge. Her eyes deepen and narrow with the seeming flip of a switch. The first time she talks back to Gemma -- like a typical kid but with obvious menace -- it's subtly chilling.

The movie has a coy sense of humor. M3GAN gets dressed up for an outing in a prim winter coat and gloves. She recruits the home computer system (a Siri clone) into her schemes. Her spaghetti-armed dance moves are instant memes. Gemma's co-workers provide a Greek chorus of skeptics back in the lab, which is under pressure to produce the next big toy, under the thumb of an obnoxious tech bro who is too greedy to let the A.I. program take its natural course. A side story of an office assistant who might be stealing company secrets weaves in perfectly during the film's climax.

Meantime, the suspense feels earned throughout; this is not a lazy or cheap horror story. Johnstone keeps you alert, and the storyline carries the viewer along through every turn of the tightly compacted narrative. There's not a wasted moment, and the inevitable violent climax is satisfying. The film winks and nods at other films -- either overtly or covertly -- ranging from the Chucky films to "Terminator" to "Fatal Attraction." But in the end, it is its own satisfying night at the movies.

BONUS TRACK

Maybe the producers could not afford the rights to the full, original version of David Gueta and Sia's "Titanium," but we get a sample of the song, and it would have been perfect over the final credits.

Mission Control

 

THE BLIND MAN WHO DID NOT WANT TO SEE TITANIC (A-minus) - From Finland comes this brutally honest and gripping account of a handicapped man embarking on a mission, by himself, to finally meet his online soul mate.

Petri Poikolainen, who himself suffers from the maladies (including blindness) that his character does, plays jovial Jaako, a fervent movie buff for whom movies are now mostly a memory -- and a defining character trait. He's the kind of persnickety film connoisseur, present company included, who turns up his nose at uber-popular box office darlings like "Titantic" (and the rest of James Cameron's over-the-top oeuvre). Marjaana Maijala plays (mostly the voice of) Sirpa, whose phone communications have the regularity of Groundhog Day, as she lovingly likes to point out.  Every day is a struggle for him, let down by his own useless legs, whom he refers to as Rocky and Rambo; he constantly dreams of running, only to wake up severely cramped.

Sirpa is ill (perhaps dying), and Jaako insists on heading out in his wheelchair and taking a train to visit her, but his assistant is unavailable. So he daringly maps out a strategy that relies on the kindness of strangers to help him in and out of trains and cabs. What could go wrong? Exactly what you think. Thugs exploit his helplessness, and we worry ourselves sick over whether this hero will overcome his obstacle.

The film by Teemu Nikki grabs you from the start with its elegant dialogue and its urgent cinematography. Until the final shot, the entire movie is filmed in close-up on Jaako, either head on or behind his ear, in a way that turns the rest of the frame out of focus. It's a clever device to immerse the viewer into Jaako's blurry world. The narrative ricochets along, and the movie is like a great novella you just can't put down.

There are times when this chronicle of Jaako's daily, endless struggles to get through each moment veers toward torture porn. That might be a little too much for some. But it can't be denied that Nikki, with his brave leading man, has crafted a powerful, assured story, with an ending that will grip your heart.

LINOLEUM (C) - Imagine the movie pitch here. A middle-aged astronomy nerd runs into his doppelganger, a much brasher and more successful former astronaut who is as rotten as the shlub is nice. Comedian Jim Gaffigan stars -- and there is most of your problem here -- as both characters, mainly Cameron, the affable husband and father who hosts a sarcastic science show on local television.

The movie takes places during an indistinct olden time -- we see station wagons and saddle shoes -- and that's a hint to the convoluted trickery that casually unspools over the movie's creaking 101 minutes. Bizarre events occur, and relationships are not always what they seem. Some characters don't talk, and others don't get named -- and it's all in the service of a late swerve, an unconvincing reveal in the movie's final minutes. Rather than knock us out, the concluding sleight of hand just feels like a big cheat and a waste of an hour and a half.

Gaffigan, a wonderful standup comic, just doesn't have what it takes to carry a film. He is paired with Rhea Seehorn (TV's "Better Call Saul"), who is distractingly flat as Cameron's wife, Erin, who used to co-star on his TV show but who now is in the process of divorcing him and maybe moving on with her own career. Katelyn Nacon steals the show as their daughter, Nora, a bright, brash teenager who slips into a sappy friendship with the new kid in town (Gabriel Rush), the mopey son of the doppelganger who happens to move in across the street from Cameron's house. A movie devoted to Nora might be worth seeing.

The tone here is erratic. The humor is subdued and gets overwhelmed by the mawkish melodrama, which keeps adding layer upon layer of treacle from scene to scene. The hook here is that the middle-aged nerd is going to build a rocket from the parts of an Apollo 10 craft that has crashed into his backyard. (So is it 1969? Unclear.) The regular-guy-builds-his-own-rocket story was done much better (and funnier) in 2007's "The Astronaut Farmer," and that movie boasted Billy Boy Thornton and Virginia Madsen -- you know, movie stars. 

This version is earnest and occasionally affecting. Newcomer Colin West, who wrote and directed, poured his heart into it. He came up with a clever idea, but it tied him up in knots. "Linoleum" (that's a lousy title, too) is not really a bad movie; it's more of an unsuccessful one.

BONUS TRACK

From the closing credits of "The Blind Man," Pekko Kappi and KHHL with "Ikoni":