Doc Watch: Buddy Movies

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BONUS TRACK

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

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

The Bachelor

 

WOMAN OF THE HOUR (B) - Anna Kendrick lends her own star power to her directorial debut about a struggling actress who goes on "The Dating Game" in the late '70s, where she will cross paths with a serial killer.  

Kendrick takes a tight script from Ian McDonald ("Some Freaks") and creates a jangly but low-key thriller with fun period sets and costumes. She plays Sheryl, a somewhat ordinary actress who fails to grab attention at auditions where she competes with more glamorous L.A. starlets. When her agent books her on "The Dating Game," she figures she has nothing to lose.

Sheryl's story runs parallel to that of Rodney (Daniel Zovatto), a charming photographer who preys on young women. One young woman, a runaway named Amy (Autumn Best), manages to string Rodney along after surviving his initial attack, and their cat-and-mouse combat grows much more interesting than the episode of the game show that threads through the film's 95-minute running time. It's a clever move for Kendrick to cede that space to that darker understory.

The "Dating Game" episode (presented, for no good reason, as if it were airing live) is played for macabre laughs. Tony Hale is underwhelming in Jim Lange's host role. But it's fun to watch Bachelors No. 1 and 2 struggle mightily in the face of both Rodney's verbal dexterity and Sheryl going off-script by ad-libbing complex questions to the would-be beaus.

Other subplots are not so successful. Pete Holmes (HBO's "Crashing") is a drag, bookending the film as the puppy-eyed neighbor crushing on Sheryl. And there's a senseless distraction involving a woman in the show's audience (Nicolette Robinson) who recognizes Rodney from a beach party and tries in vain to get security guards and police interested in hearing her story.

But as Netflix fare goes, this one hums along like an edgy episode of "Police Woman" or "Rockford Files." Both Sheryl and Amy's stories have smart endings, and Kendrick shows an assured hand juggling those plot lines while presenting understated visuals, in an act of restraint for a first-time filmmaker.

Baby Bros

BABES (B+) - Two engaging leads elevate a script that is the messy, raunchy embodiment of childbirth in Pamela Adlon's comedy about best friends going through pregnancies. Ilana Glazer co-wrote the rat-a-tat screenplay and riffs through it with Michelle Buteau.

The two of them get a long leash from Adlon, and they do not abuse the privilege. Glazer plays Eden, a fairly unserious 30-something who enjoys a one-night stand with a man she met on the subway and with whom she had enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner of sushi while commuting (it's a very New York film and this is an endearing scene).  Meanwhile Buteau is Dawn, who starts out the film about to burst with her second child and who is much more advanced in adulting than Eden is.

Eden ends up pregnant, with the father out of the picture, and her self-centered nature goes into hyper-drive, to the irritation of Dawn, whose post-partum experience and strained marriage leaves little room for the antics of her childhood BFF. How they endeavor to work that out is part of the charm and even a level of gravitas that probably owes a debt to Adlon, the former "Louie" actress who went on to create the acclaimed cable TV series "Better Things" and makes her big-screen debut here.

What she and Glazer (and co-writer Josh Rabinowitz) have created here is a modern gal-pal rom-com. Glazer (who made her cable TV bones as one half of "Broad City") jumps into the fray of gross-out chick flicks that have evolved since "Bridesmaids." Eden and Dawn's connection is so intimate that there are no gynecological barriers between them; they're not afraid to get all up into each other's plumbing when the other is in crisis. It's certainly a fresh take on motherhood.

The one-liners zip by nonstop, in keeping with the Tina Fey shotgun approach of comedy by volume. Glazer and Buteau rifle through some improv moments and seem to have workshopped the script to a fine point. Glazer is generous in scattering the funny to a talented supporting cast. John Carroll Lynch ("Fargo," TV's "The Drew Carey Show") has a blast as Eden's OB-GYN who suffers through embarrassing phases of hair-loss strategies. Twins Keith and Kenneth Lucas (HBO's "Crashing") perform their deadpan shtick in stereo. Oliver Platt is the right kind of loopy as Eden's arm's-length, emotionally stunted father. And Stephan James (who has portrayed Jesse Owens and John Lewis on screen) oozes appeal as Eden's fleeting love interest.

It is sloppy at times, and its vulgarity can occasionally feel a little forced, but this is a cohesive film with a rather poignant story to tell about love and friendship (and loss). Everyone has a good time telling a funny and touching story.

BONUS TRACKS

The film bops along to a peppy soundtrack. The closing credits feature Bloods with "Thinking of You Thinking of Me":

And there's always room for Le Tigre, with their go-go ode to the subway, "My My Metrocard":

Doc Watch: Revisionist History

 

BS HIGH (A-minus) - Netflix set the modern standard for outrage documentaries five years ago with "Fyre," about a sham music festival, and HBO jumps into the fray with this profile of a scam artist who fielded a motley high school football team in Ohio that got exposed big time on ESPN. "BS High" is another product of the Trump era.

The "star" of the film is Roy Johnson, who doesn't even try to hide the fact that he spews bullshit for a living. He is a narcissist who revels in the the role at the center of a movie, even if it tears to shreds any hint of credibility he might have ever possessed. He is downright giddy being a sociopath.

Directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe produce a slick, lively tick-tock of the incredible story of Bishop Sycamore, a school in name only, where Johnson recruited 19- and 20-year-olds, preying on their gap-year desire to make it to a Division I football school. Free and Roe let Johnson bob and weave in the hot seat, but they never let him off the hook. 

They bring on entertaining talking heads -- an investigator for the high school association; a journalist who chronicled the catastrophe; and Bomani Jones, a plain-spoken TV sports guy who serves as the conscience of the film. The filmmakers also assemble the key players who got hoodwinked by Johnson; each one is thoughtful and sincere in revealing the scars that this saga caused them. 

Bishop Sycamore is famous for ending up on national TV playing the biggest powerhouse in the country (IMG Academy from Florida, which would eventually get bought up by a billion-dollar equity firm) -- despite having little preparation or even enough helmets to go around. Turns out that Johnson was a con artist who didn't pay his bills, even if it meant his students would get evicted from the hotels they were housed in. BS got crushed on national TV, sending social-media critics into an instant feeding frenzy, and embarrassing the young men as the program crumbled and Johnson was exposed as a charlatan.

Free and Roe wring juicy quotes from their commentators, and their fascinating story zips along in 95 minutes, some of it so ludicrous that it is laugh-out-loud funny. But it's also heart-wrenching at times -- these are young men from rough backgrounds who got taken for a ride -- and it has some deep thoughts to offer about capitalism's football-industrial complex. It is highly entertaining but also wise and penetrating.

THE SKYJACKER'S TALE (2017) (B-minus) - This archeological dig into another scam artist -- a criminal from 1970s Virgin Islands who escaped a life sentence by hijacking a plane to Cuba in the '80s -- is a low-budget affair that lacks focus and drowns in cheap re-enactments. There is a great movie to be made about Ishmael Muslim Ali, but this one is not it.

Ali (born Ishmael LaBeet) was a self-styled anti-colonialist revolutionary who was convicted of leading a gang of gunmen that killed seven people at a country club in St. Croix, a place then dominated by Hess Oil. Twelve years later, while being flown from the mainland United States back to the islands for a habeas hearing, he emerged from the plane's bathroom with a gun and diverted the plane to Cuba, where he walked away a free man. 

The best scenes involve interviews with the elderly Ali, who apparently is a family man who occasionally parties like a pimp. Filmmaker Jamie Kastner tracks down some interesting characters, including a local detective who has a few revelations to share decades later. The best quote comes from a waitress who survived the traumatic event; describing the Virgin Islands in the early '70s, she says, "It was nice. Until the massacre happened."

But endless re-enactments -- of the siege on the country club and the hijacking, in particular -- are awkwardly staged and distracting. (Kastner pulled similar antics in "The Secret Disco Revolution" a decade ago.) Either make a documentary or a drama. Pick a lane. This hybrid just doesn't come together in the end.

New to the Queue

 "Working on a world ... that I may never see ..."

Our guy Sean Baker ("Red Rocket," "The Florida Project") returns with another romp involving the sex trade, "Anora."

A painter struggles to reconcile with the abusive father from his childhood, "Exhibiting Forgiveness."

Anna Kendrick directs a period piece about a serial killer who uses "The Dating Game" to stalk his next prey, "Woman of the Hour."

A documentary chronicles the organizing of Amazon warehouse workers, "Union."

An adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning novel about two kids at a reform school, "The Nickel Boys."

O, Canada

 

MY OLD ASS (A-minus) - There's something refreshing about taking a break from the culture of the U.S.A. Even a skip across the border can provide a welcome respite from the assault of the American way.

The sophomore directing effort from Megan Park ("The Fallout") is a bittersweet feel-good story about an 18-year-old who, during a hallucinogenic trip, meets her 39-year-old self and then keeps in touch, besieged by the older self's warnings about how life will turn out. Maisy Stella carries it all on her shoulders as young Elliott, the alpha female in a trio of friends, whom she is leaving (as well as her family) to go off to college in Toronto. Whereas 18-year-old Elliott is full of life and hope, her older version comes in the form of a dour, cynical woman played by Aubrey Plaza, lending gravitas to the proceedings.

 

Park's script is sharp, tackling philosophical subjects but with an often light touch. She doesn't overthink the simple sci-fi trick -- old Elliott puts her number in young Elliott's phone, and it somehow works -- passing it off with a shrug and a few self-deprecating lines. Old Elliott tells her young self to appreciate her family more, and the 18-year-old's attempt to bond with her mom and brothers is amusing. Old Elliott's biggest warning: Don't go near any guy named Chad. But, of course, who shows up as a worker on the family cranberry farm? A gawky, charming young man named Chad (Percy Hynes White), who is hard to resist. 

Stella creates a complex character, an emerging woman who is confident but sometimes confused, with an engaging sense of humor that shows hints of the cynicism to come. Plaza mostly appears only vocally, by phone, and her Elliott has a passive-aggressive way of hinting at tidbits of dystopia 21 years into the future. (Apparently the salmon have disappeared. What else is she not telling us?) Plaza brings her standard sly comic style as she essentially bookends the film with her appearances. Her best advice to her younger self? "Wear your retainer."

White tips it all in as goofy Chad, and even Elliott's friends -- Kerrice Brooks and Maddie Ziegler -- bring depth to their sidekick roles. And Park has a smooth twist ready for the final reel. Like many plot devices she uses, the key reveal could have been dragged down by shmaltz, but she manages to make a movie that is endearing but never sappy. It has heart and a spine, and an old-fashioned sincerity that is refreshing. It avoids the cynicism that old Elliott has fallen victim to. You go, young Elliott.

Fast-Forward Theater: Col. Urinal*

 An occasional feature whereby we make it through slow-paced movies by deftly employing the FF button.

PERFECT DAYS (C+) - Wim Wenders ("Wings of Desire") takes a great idea and turns it into a Boomer wank, as he celebrates a simple Everyman who cleans public toilets in Tokyo while savoring the beauty of the every day. It's about as sappy as movies come these days.

Koji Yakusho is perfectly charming as Hirayama, a middle-aged regular Joe who refuses to let his lowly job define him. Rather, he studies photography, embraces nature, and reads highbrow books before nodding off to sleep each night on a simple mat in a humble home. He always has an amused look on his face, and he is a man of few words. Ah, let us celebrate the noble working man! (One who never gets his uniform dirty and who absent-mindedly scrubs away at porcelain that's already in cinematic ship-shape, as if the Japanese don't leave a mark on their public potties.)

Of course, Wenders imbues Hirayama with the exact musical taste you would expect Wenders to have. He pops a cassette (old school, but of course) into his car stereo on his daily commute and blares one overplayed classic pop song after another. (The world just never needs to hear "Brown-Eyed Girl" in a movie ever again. And "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay" is a close second.) And wouldn't you know it, young people -- especially young women -- go gaga over his taste in music and analog ways. One even crushes on him and gives him a peck on the cheek. Happens to us geezers all the time!

The plot, you ask? There really isn't one, and that's supposed to be the cloying point, I suppose. Hirayama's younger colleague Takashi (Tokio Emoto) makes a play for one of the women, a stereotypical manic-pixie dream girl, but the two men often toil in silence -- convenient for fast-forwarding through the toilet-scrubbing and the leaf-gazing. Hirayama's niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) comes to visit, and of course she is completely smitten with his zen bachelor-pad aesthetic -- not to mention his taste in literature, because what teen wouldn't want to live like a 60-year-old man. 

If Hirayama were believable as a real working slug instead of an idealized slumming intellectual, this might have more than Hallmark appeal. But with so little action, the weaknesses and wish-fulfillment are glaring.

BONUS TRACK

ONLY IN THEATERS (C) - It's hard to describe how misleading and annoying this documentary -- about Los Angeles' elite art-house cinema chain, curated for decades by the Laemmle family -- is. You settle into your seat and hope to celebrate the dying communal experience of watching quality films in a quaint theater, only to be stuck with a dreary, drawn-out hagiography of the clan that has exhibited movies for nearly as long as Hollywood has been making them. 

No one has an unkind word for four generations of Laemmles, and the filmmakers hang their narrative on friendly Greg Laemmle, the middle-aged grandson of the founder, who finds himself seriously considering unloading the chain when we meet him in the late 2010s. We hear praise from a wide range of eminent talking heads -- Ava Duvernay, Cameron Crowe, James Ivory, Nicole Holofcener and even old Leonard Maltin. The filmmakers are grateful for this type of theater chain that reached its heights during the '90s heyday of boutique indies. 

But things here bog down about halfway through when Covid hits. Director Raphael Sbarge thinks he's got grand drama on his hands, but instead his documentary drops like a lead balloon. There is little narrative spark to be derived from rehashing the pandemic's closures and panic. (A nice touch is a running visual accounting of the clever marquee movie references the shuttered theaters feature during the shutdown.) Greg Laemmle and his fawning wife move to Seattle, and it's just hard to care how this all turns out. (You'll likely be as disappointed as Sbarge probably was at the outcome.) For some reason, Greg's kids, who have nothing interesting to offer, get a lot of face time, including during bland family gatherings.

Meantime, interview after interview waxes poetic over how precious these theaters are and how crucial it is that we watch prestige films in these hallowed group settings. No one finds an original or interesting way to articulate that. And when the narrative here stalls, you'll be grateful that you are watching this on home video so that you can fast-forward through this indulgent family album.

* - "Col. Urinal" comes from my days working in the kitchen of a catering company on the southwest side of Chicago during high school and college. It was the honorary title conferred on the employee who was assigned that day to clean the bathroom.

Digging Out the Truth

 

SUGARCANE (A-minus) - Heart-wrenching isn't an adequate word to describe this documentary about the ghosts of the past that are stirred up by an investigation into an Indian residential school run by the Catholic church, which enabled some unspeakable horrors over the past century. 

Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat, who also plays a lead role, take a highly polished approach to this searing dramatic story they have to tell. At times the visuals and narrative flourishes feel almost too stylized for the harsh truths they are unearthing. But there is no denying the power of the story.

Julian's father, Ed Archie NoiseCat (below), is one of several middle-aged Native Americans who continue to cope with the abuse they suffered at the hands of nuns and priests. (What is laid out is probably even worse than you imagine, even knowing the evils of the Catholic Church and its penchant for shuffling pedophiles from parish to parish.) Ed's harrowing origin story -- he was born under dire circumstances while his mother was a student at St. Joseph's Mission near Williams Lake, British Columbia, around the late '50s -- grounds this grave and clear-eyed film. He, understandably, had demons to slay, and he walked away from Julian at some point, though they reconciled and form the heart of the film. Their conversations are touching. Ed's mother appears, but she has never wanted to talk about what happened.

The narrative is scaffolded on a reconciliation project that returns to the school land in a grim hunt for human remains. We watch key figures from Canada's indigenous community diligently engage in research and forensics. A B-story involves an elderly survivor, Rick Gilbert, still beholden to his religious faith, going on a mission to the Vatican. He seeks a final healing or explanation but is greeted with not much more than sympathetic looks and shrugs from one of the Pope's flunkies. 

A young Chief, Willie Sellars, gamely shows respect for the investigation but also serves as a bridge to the modern era, forging ahead and trying to outrun the past, while still honoring the victims. At nearly two hours, the documentary can be daunting to sit through, and maybe that's why Kassie and NoiseCat, along with cinematographer Christopher LaMarca, imbue the visuals with such beauty and reverence. Maybe the dissonance is their own way of trying to reconcile the past with the present.

BAD PRESS (B) - This interesting but overlong documentary spends years chronicling the fate of Muscogee Media, which fought for its free-speech rights against the Creek Nation in Oklahoma, where, like almost all of the 500-plus tribal lands, there is no First Amendment.

We meet scrappy reporters and editors, notably Angel Ellis, as they fall victim to the whims of the tribal council, which, at the beginning of the film, repeals a statute that had guaranteed independence to Muscogee Media. The filmmakers embed themselves with the staff (both video and print) and dig in for the long haul as political fortunes hang in the balance.

The movie is more about politics than journalism much of the time. It begins with the repeal in 2018 and slogs its way through several election cycles, to diminishing effect. The villain is the head of the 16-member council, Lucien Tiger III, who eventually runs for chief. The second half of the 98-minute film bogs down in a 10-person primary and then a two-person runoff. But even after a favorable candidate grabs the chief position, the next hurdle is trying to get approval for a ballot initiative for a constitutional amendment enshrining the right of a free press. A lot of the characters, who seem like good guys, come off as corrupt as the mayor of New York.

Directors Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler have a sly eye for artsy establishing shots, and they certainly steeped themselves in the fine details of Creek life. Sometimes that is to their detriment, as the passing years -- including an apparent break for COVID -- can be wearying to the casual viewer. They place a huge burden on Ellis, and there are only so many times we can empathize with her as she lights another cigarette and spews frustration. But this is a fine David vs. Goliath tale, as well as an insightful examination of a culture torn between tradition and progressive values.

The Wilder Wild West

 Dare we dig up a relic and once again confront the consequences of a misspent youth?

BLAZING SADDLES (1974) (B+) - About 20 years ago, I was dating a woman 12 years younger, and I thought it would be fun if I schooled the young woman on the great joy of watching "Young Frankenstein." This was 30 years after its release, and I'll never forget how, after about 10 minutes of Borscht Belt slapstick (the worst part of the movie) that left my date stone-faced, I leaped for the remote to turn it off, embarrassed that I was now on the wrong side of my 40s and out of touch with the person on the couch who born the year the movie came out.

 

So it was with trepidation that I approached the whole idea of screening "Blazing Saddles," the other Mel Brooks-Gene Wilder collaboration, released earlier in 1974. And this one comes with a whole nother hornet's nest of pitfalls -- it has a script riddled with the n-word, and it leaves few vulnerable groups unscathed as it employs Brooks' patented broad vaudevillian humor to skewer the western genre that he and others grew up with. Good lord, should anyone watch this anachronism anymore? 

The screenplay was a five-person effort, which included Richard Pryor, who gave cover to Brooks' regulars to let fly with the racial epithets and who was supposed to star, but for his drug and alcohol battles rendering him unreliable. Enter Cleavon Little, who is a revelation as Black Bart, who lucks out when he's plucked from a lowly railroad job and foisted on the town of Rock Ridge as sheriff. This is the plan of Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman), who needs the town's real estate to reroute his railroad through. The plan is that the sight of a black sheriff will cause all the townsfolk to flee.

Surviving the initial backlash, Bart teams up with the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) to win over the residents and fend off Lamarr's henchmen, which includes the monstrous moron Mongo (football player Alex Karras), who achieves screen-legend status when the character drops a horse with one punch. Lamarr also sends in a German chanteuse -- the impeccable Madeleine Kahn satirizing Marlene Dietrich -- who succumbs to Black Bart's charms because ... well, you know what they said back then about the brothers. 

This all gets quite silly, of course. And the movie has burnished its notoriety with scenes and one-liners that got passed around my junior high back in the day -- bean-eating cowboys farting around a camp fire; "Where the white women at?"; and, of course, "Excuse me, while I whip this out."

It's been 50 long years since even the idea of a spoof of westerns seemed like something that could work. Jokes about a man constantly being mistaken for Hedy Lamarr ("It's Hedley!") certainly don't age well. The kitchen-sink slapstick can still elicit belly-laughs, but too much now just seems more embarrassing than gut-busting. You can carve out a pretty fun drinking game every time a new vulnerable group gets made fun of. (Even Kahn's character, Lili Von Shtupp, not only has a slut-shaming name as subtle as a poke in the eye, but she comes with a wacky speech impediment.) Back then, you could be an equal-opportunity offender and be rewarded with a hit movie; these days, the few of us who bother to revisit that era will find it more quaint than hilarious. We won't even get into the beta-meta ending, which breaks the fourth wall and offers a spectacle of anarcy, featuring hundreds of extras, that would make Cecil B. Demille blush and which would leave anyone under 40 baffled as to how this would ever be considered amusing.

But, "Blazing Saddles," for better or worst, is a snapshot of a moment in time. In 1974, it had been less than 50 years since Al Jolson performed in blackface. Hollywood of the '40s and '50s was still a fresh memory, and Brooks was the master of satire. Nazis and Klansmen were played for laughs. Effeminate men were a riot. Ethnic putdowns were the coin of the realm. You could argue that the excessive use of the n-word is so over the top that it makes a powerful argument against racism. Who can say anymore? Who cares? Why did I even bring it up? (Counter-argument: the Library of Congress has preserved the movie in the National Film Registry.)

That said, there is much to enjoy about this crazy production. Little is smart and charming. Wilder is an understated gem. Kahn was probably the funniest actress of her generation (she would re-team with Wilder, more famously, in "Young Frankenstein"). I laughed when town leader Howard Johnson (again, that name was funny back when Nixon was president) held up a floral wreath and announced that he wished to "extend a laurel ... and hardy handshake" to the new sheriff. That one will always trigger the 12-year-old in me. Even during this enlightened era we now live in.

REMEMBERING GENE WILDER (C) - This is a rather glum hagiography about the career of Gene Wilder, narrated in his monotone from beyond the grave, presumably from the audio version of his 2005 memoir. He was not only a great comic actor who peaked in the 1970s, but he went on to make his own movies and was also a published author.

But this unimaginative slog through his oeuvre leans heavy on the likes of Mel Brooks -- almost certainly spinning apocryphal, embellished tales of their time together, especially that great run of "The Producers," "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein -- and, for some reason, Harry Connick Jr. Other random folks who show up include Alan Alda, Richard Pryor's daughter, and Eric McCormack. Ben Mankiewicz puts on his serious glasses to play cinema historian for the guy who played Willy Wonka.

Wilder was intensely funny. The bar he set in "Young Frankenstein" will always be tough to clear for any actor. But it almost diminishes his contributions to have folks fawn over him as if he were some sort of saint. His relationship with Gilda Radner -- her cancer was diagnosed not long after they fell in love -- gets surprisingly short shrift, with a couple of backhanded digs at the former "SNL" star's troubles. Wilder's widow -- whom he met within a year of Radner's death -- dominates the second half of the film, which takes up Wilder's descent into dementia (in a Hallmark fashion). The man (and poor Gilda) deserves better.

Finding Your Voice

 

BETWEEN THE TEMPLES (A-minus) - There they are, at the top of the ticket, a dream team: Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane. You go into it thinking "Please don't screw this up." Thankfully, filmmaker Nathan Silver -- who has flown under our radar up until now -- delivers, along with his stars.

Schwartzman plays Ben, a depressed cantor who has lost his voice -- but not his job, because his two moms are big donors to the temple. He gets drunk (and slugged) at a dive bar. He lies prone in front of an oncoming truck (to no avail; it easily stops before it gets to him). By chance, he runs into his childhood music teacher, Carla (Kane), who decides to take his bat mitzvah class, along with a bunch of tweens, as a sly way of getting closer to him to look out for him. 

 

What develops is a charming update of "Harold & Maude," featuring a quirky odd couple who develop an improbable but deep bond that helps heal each person's psychic wounds. No one is better at this than Schwartzman, the master of intellectual quirk, and Kane (TV's "Taxi" and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt"), who can find the humanity in any screwball character. The two of them make the screen ripple with joy and melancholy, as they blithely carry every minute of the nearly two-hour run time. 

It's a little disconcerting to see Schwartzman -- the breakout youngster from "Rushmore" and then so many other Wes Anderson films and lo-fi indies -- start to descend into a chubby middle age. But that aging process, while it threatens to take the zip off his fastball, has the effect of wiping that smirk off his face and revealing another layer to his personality. Kane looks surprisingly youthful here, a cross between Ruth Gordon and Julie Delpy, a savvy mix of would-be cougar and mother hen. Their bond is ostensibly platonic, but it does intrude on others' efforts to set Ben up with the rabbi's daughter, Gabby (a vivacious Madeline Weinstein), whose healthy lust is too much for Ben to contemplate these days. (The rabbi is played by gagster Robert Smigel, who delivers one-liners with a low-key confidence.)

None of this would mean much if Silver didn't imbue it with smart humor and carefully layered characterizations. The whole production has the grittiness of a 1970s comic morality play, even copping the retro graphic styles for the opening credits (plus, see the soundtrack samples below). And the cast sinks its teeth into the clever dialogue, much of it subtle and deliciously Jewish. At one point Ben has to explain away the concepts of the afterlife: "In Judaism, we don't have heaven or hell; we just have upstate New York." Upon first meeting Carla, he tries to jog her memory, bragging that he got top grades. Her retort: "It's music class; everybody gets an A."

You can never be certain, right up until the end, if Ben will get his voice back (and if that matters), or if he seriously thinks he has more of a future with a woman decades his senior while passing up a romp with a randy younger woman. But the particulars of romantic possibilities are not really the point here. Toss aside your scorecard and let a movie by adults, for adults, carry you away with its nuanced storytelling.

BONUS TRACKS

The soundtrack adds to the '70s vibe with a bunch of folky throwbacks, many in Hebrew. They set a Lee Hazelwood mood. There are a couple by Arik Einstein, including "Hi Tavo (She Will Come)":

 

There is the glum "Wish I Was a Single Girl Again," from Tia Blake from 2008:

 

And this dusty from Buddy Gibson, "To Be or Not To Be":

New to the Queue

 Winning as often as we're losing, and that's not bad for an underdog ...

Our gal Aubrey Plaza ("Emily the Criminal," "Ingrid Goes West") stars in the story of a young woman who meets her older self, "My Old Ass."

Our guy Matt Johnson ("BlackBerry") co-stars as a man meeting up with his married female friend from college, as complications ensue, "Matt and Mara."

A couple of music docs: "Boom: A Film About the Sonics" and "Louder Than You Think: A Lo-Fi History of Gary Young and Pavement."

Let's see if Azazel Jacobs ("The Lovers," "French Twist") is back on his game with a fine cast in "His Three Daughters."

We're game for Demi Moore in a de-aging sci-fi thriller, "The Substance."

Sebastian Stan stars in a dark comedy about a guy struggling to like himself, inside and out, "A Different Man."

Microaggressions

 

THE TEACHERS' LOUNGE (B+) - Writer-direct Ilker Catak spins a fascinating story about small-stakes accusations and misunderstandings that consume a new teacher and the middle school staff and students around her. It's a small but compelling film that's tough to look away from.

 

Much of that comes from the star, Leonie Benesch, who plays the cool, caring Carla Nowak, an immigrant to Germany battling some cultural prejudices involving her and her students of color. The film begins with the administration's interrogation of Carla's seventh-grade class after a Turkish boy is seen carrying an unusual amount of money. Carla shows sympathy to her students and to the boy when his parents are called in for a tense conference with administrators.

It turns out another bright student, Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch), grabs the teacher's sympathies, especially after Carla, through surreptitious video surveillance from her laptop, apparently catches Oskar's mother, a staffer, of stealing in the teachers' lounge (she's not the only one nicking things). The mother is sent home on admin leave, and Oskar becomes a sort of folk hero among students. (The supporting cast of students is another asset, especially the rebellious student-newspaper staffers.) Carla's group conference with parents brims with tension.

Catak, writing the script with Johannes Duncker, has a compelling message to convey about "outsiders" and the passive-aggressive ways that closed social systems manipulate the truth and create sparring factions. At only a few ticks past 90 minutes, the film unspools its story methodically, showing a subtle transformation in Carla as she learns to navigate her new environment. (In a telling scene, she insist that a fellow Polish teacher speak German in the teachers' lounge.) The ending is heartfelt, with a whimsical final shot that suggests the dangers and rewards of bucking the system. 

BONUS TRACK: Life Is Short     

Screenings don't get more timely than "Mountains," a minor-key mini-drama about an immigrant couple getting by in Miami's Little Haiti community. If only this debut film had a little more chicken meat on its bones. Xavier and Esperance are a sweet couple, but the monotony of their days eking out a living in a gentrifying neighborhood is too often as dull as plain white rice.

You can tell their neighborhood is gentrifying not only by the "We buy houses" door-hangers but also by the presence of an improv theater. Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) works on home-demolition sites, and Esperance (Sheila Anozier) earns money as a crossing guard when she's not at home cooking and sewing. Surrounded by increasing affluence, Xavier spots a nice house that's bigger than their rundown one-bathroom place, seeing an opportunity to move up on the social ladder. Their son, Junior (Chris Renois) a college-dropout is a typical Americanized young man who has little patience for his parents' boring traditional lifestyle. 

We find out halfway through that Junior is honing a standup act at the improv theater. Director Monica Sorelle gives us little to glom onto narratively in the first half -- how many times can we watch Xavier clear debris (to make way for McMansions) or dutifully eat his lunch out of Tupperware. Nazaire has a Mike Tyson roughness and gruffness to him, but there is no real dimension to this stereotypically noble blue-collar man. Junior's standup set, about five minutes, shakes the film out of its stupor. But I just didn't have it in me to return to the worksite and find out if Xavier and Esperance get the chance to rise in the wake of the gentrifiers. Sorelle has crafted a sweet, quiet slice of life that floats in Haitian culture, but she needed more of a hook to hang a feature on.

Title: MOUNTAINS

Running Time: 96 MIN

Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  50 MIN

Portion Watched: 52%

My Age at Time of Viewing: 61 YRS, 9 MOS.

Average Male American Lifespan: 77.3 YRS.

Watched/Did Instead: Went home and started in on this review.

Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 3-1 (maybe I'll catch the ending some day)

Life Is Short: Let the Story Begin

 

What is it with annoying mother-daughter movies this year? We stuck it out for the execrable "Tuesday" a few months ago. But we were not as patient with "Janet Planet," a tedious tale of maternal melancholy told through the perspective of the nerdy tween daughter, an obvious avatar of first-time filmmaker Annie Baker.

We waited a half hour for a plot to develop, and it just never materialized. When tween Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) went to a bread-and-puppet show with her mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), and the hippie-dippy performance droned on for a minute or two, it was time to bail out. Before then, Baker was meticulously trying to craft a relationship between friendless Lacy and her depressed mother who is in a dead-end relationship with a monosyllabic cipher named Wayne. Janet likes to lie in bed with her daughter to help Lacy fall asleep, and it presents an opportunity for Janet to inappropriately whine about her unhappiness to an unhappy, though highly clever, girl.

Lacy dominates the first half hour, and there just is not enough narrative to sustain the film. Her best shot at having a friend comes when Wayne's daughter joins one of their outings, but it's obvious that Wayne will get the boot soon, and so too will go the daughter. We are forced to watch Lacy entertain herself with nerdy pursuits. For some reason we have to watch her practice the keyboards three separate times -- in extended sequences that grow more and more annoying. We also have to tolerate Lacy being annoying to Wayne when he is suffering from a migraine, and it's not clear whether he's supposed to be seen as a jerk for not wanting Lacy to keep pelting him with questions when it's obvious that she should know better.

Baker takes a molasses-like approach to her scenes, in no hurry to bring this in at much less than two hours. If I'm going to watch a mother and daughter mope around, it would be advisable to start developing the plot in the first 20 minutes or so. Otherwise, it's just your old '90s diary performed as rural hippie theater.

Title: JANET PLANET

Running Time: 113 MIN

Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  30 MIN

Portion Watched: 27%

My Age at Time of Viewing: 61 YRS, 9 MOS.

Average Male American Lifespan: 77.3 YRS.

Watched/Did Instead: Talked politics with my movie pal who bailed with me.

Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 10-1

Throwback Thrills-Day

 

MAXXXINE (B) - God bless movie star Mia Goth and writer-director Ti West for their commitment to their trilogy of retro horror films, a delightful mix of spoof and homage. Here, they take their story -- which began with "X," set in the 1970s -- into the day-glo '80s around the seedy San Fernando Valley's porn industry as Goth's lead character Maxine yearns to cross over into the respectability of Hollywood.

 

Goth is riveting again as the cut-throat striver who will do anything to be a movie star, even as the friends around her start falling victim to a serial killer stalking L.A. In "X," she survived a slaughter on a porn shoot at a Texas ranch, with a dual role as the murderous old lady in the farmhouse, whom Goth then portrayed in the heady prequel "Pearl," set during the 1918 flu pandemic. Now set in 1985, the story finds Goth running from her past -- not just that '70s bloodbath but also her strict Christian upbringing, which is brought into stark relief through a single opening flashback scene to her childhood.

West crafts the story around his meal ticket, and he has an uncanny ability to not only send up the thrillers of the '80s era, but also to steep this film in the texture and tropes of the movies of that Cinemax era. (The needle drops of hits by ZZ Top and Kim Carnes don't hurt.) He also has a facility with writing dialogue that also walks the line between authenticity and parody.

Goth (who also stole a few scenes in "Emma" a few years ago) carries this on her shoulders, with a placid facial expression that brings to mind the mask-like visage of Isabelle Huppert. While portraying characters (Maxine, as well as Pearl) who were desperate to be stars, Goth emerges from this sequel as a classic movie idol. She gets solid support from veterans Giancarlo Esposito (as her sly business manager); Elizabeth Debicki as the mother-hen horror-movie director; and Kevin Bacon as a creepy Cajun private eye, chewing up scenery as if he just got kicked off the set of "The Big Easy" for overacting.

I could watch West and Goth follow this saga for a few more decades. It's a lot of dumb, juicy fun.

BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) (B+) - It was an interesting experiment, revisiting this onetime indie phenomenon on its 25th anniversary screening, along with a full house full of 20- and 30-somethings at a midnight show. I was wondering how it would hold up and curious about how it would play to a generation steeped in the internet and social media.

I first watched this on video some months after it was released in summer 1999. It was notable at the time for a brilliant PR campaign that tried to dupe us -- in the early days of the internet -- into thinking that this found-footage film was real (going so far as to hide the three stars from the spotlight during the rollout at film festivals). That all now seems quaint looking back from our jaded media-saturated land of artificial intelligence.

I heard several millennials grumble their disappointment as the lights came up and the final credits rolled, and the woman in front of me spent much of the final climactic 20 minutes of the movie scrolling through her cell phone. I was able to appreciate a slow burn of a thriller with fresh eyes and an open mind. When I first saw it, the steadily building terror had me jangled, even though I knew that it wasn't a real documentary.

This time, I was surprised to see how methodically -- and often blandly -- the suspense builds. And I was impressed by the three actors -- alpha female Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard (the only one to go on to have a decent acting career, including in "Humpday" and "Fully Realized Humans") -- who mostly improvised the dialogue and who wielded the handheld cameras, a key visual effect throughout the film.  

Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez conceived the movie and directed it and even edited it. The banality of three young adults getting lost in the woods, spooked by some strange but not necessarily scary sounds, dominates the running time until really the final 10 minutes when everything bursts into full-on horror. That includes the now-iconic scene of Donahue, snot running out of her nose, doing a video-selfie, her character apologizing on camera to the group's parents for her role in stranding the trio, and the final image before the cut to black. 

It is difficult to reconcile the experience of 1999 with that of 2024, but you can still say that "Blair Witch" is a successful horror film, that can jangle your nerves even after multiple viewings.

BONUS TRACKS

"Maxxxine's" soundtrack blasts through era hits from New Order and Judas Priest, plus Animotion's synth earworm "Obsession":

And near the climax we are treated to Carol Burnett, of all people, belting out "There's No Business Like Show Business." (One character during the film reminds Maxine of the cutthroat nature of the industry: "It's not called show friends; it's called show business."

Undercover Operations

 

HIT MAN (B) - Every generation gets the Brad Pitt it deserves. Glen Powell is an engaging actor, easy to look at, and he has just enough charisma to carry a movie. Here, the star of last winter's guilty pleasure "Anyone But You" re-teams with indie darling Richard Linklater ("Everybody Wants Some") for this based-on-a-true-story tale of a nerdy college professor moonlighting with the police department as a fake hit man.

 

Problems arise when Powell's Gary Johnson goes rogue and falls for the sexy divorcee (Adria Arjona) whom he had previously talked out of hiring him to kill her estranged husband. He stays in character as the brawny tough guy while secretly dating her, but then his police colleagues get suspicious after the woman's ex ends up shot to death. It's a clever narrative (Linklater and Powell co-wrote it), and Linklater, settling into middle age, is content to create something that's good enough for Netflix. 

It's too long, at just under two hours, but Powell and a strong supporting cast manage to inject this with enough zing to make it to the finish line. Arjona is not just another pretty face; she has a good feel for verbal and physical comedy. Retta is underused as a sassy, sarcastic detective. Austin Amelio is sharp as the grungy detective who has gotten pushed aside by Gary's rising stardom as the hunky fake hit man.

You can't ask for much more from an actiony romantic comedy, even if the final 20 minutes limp to a preposterous ending. Powell takes his shirt off a lot -- what philosophy isn't that ripped? -- and he and Arjona look good simulating R-rated sex. There is surprisingly little violence, which is refreshing. Powell and Linklater had to embellish the real Gary Johnson's story in order to attempt an entertaining twist in the final reel, and that elevates this to a pretty good date-night film.

BURN AFTER READING (2008) (A-minus) -- A wonderful cast sinks its teeth into this mid-career Coen brothers romp about a couple of goofballs from a local gym getting swept into international intrigue after a CD full of classified information falls into their hands. This expertly paced farce might make you nostalgic for the days in which truly talented filmmakers -- Joel and Ethan Coen -- showed a mastery of making a movie, from beginning to end.

Frances McDormand steals the show as Linda Litzke, an average-looking middle-aged woman eager to raise money for enough plastic surgery to make her appear youthful again. Brad Pitt hams it up as Chad, the air-head personal trainer who schemes with Linda to blackmail the spook whose secrets spilled out. That spy -- actually fired by the CIA in the opening scene -- is Osborne Cox, played with juicy style by John Malkovich, whose powerful performance right from the opening scene also reminds you of a meatier era of movies. 

What a cast they lead. George Clooney, actually a little flat here as a federal marshal, having an affair with Cox's wife, played by Tilda Swinton, before also falling into bed with Linda. Richard Jenkins as the gym owner who pines for his employee Linda. J.K. Simmons plays a CIA superior, and let's give a shout-out to character actor Jeffrey DeMunn who steals scenes from McDormand as her plastic surgeon.

The Coens weave an airtight plot that continues to fold onto itself, they set off a gun at just the right moment, and they generally get out of the way of their actors. A few of them can be just a little too cartoonish -- Pitt especially, though he's charming as ever -- and those indulgences might bother some viewers. This is a fun diversion sandwiched in the brothers' catalog between their masterpieces "No Country for Old Men" and "A Serious Man."

BONUS TRACK

From the closing credits of "Burn After Reading," the Fugs with "CIA Man":