Double Feature: It's a Living

 A pair of films featuring Alia Shawkat ("Nasty Baby," "The Intervention"), who surely is banking dollars while awaiting substantive scripts to be offered to her.

ATROPIA (B-minus) - Alia Shawkat carries this shambling narrative from first-time writer-director Hailey Gates, about a group of actors sequestered in the California desert who role-play terrorist scenarios for U.S. military personnel poised to be shipped to Iraq before the 2006 surge. 

 

Shawkat (whose Iraqi father, Tony, co-stars) plays Fayruz, an American actress who believes that this military exercise will lead to a big break in Hollywood, if only she can finagle juicier dramatic parts in the various simulated war-game scenarios. She will eventually fall for Abu Dice (Callum Turner), one of the military men portraying an insurgent. They have to sneak around, because everything in The Box is monitored, and participants are required to stay in character 

This all has a jangly "MASH"-like black humor to it at times, but Gates has a tough time corralling it all into a coherent story. Tim Heidecker and Chloe Sevigny are wasted in minor roles as the administrators of the production; their deadpan readings come off merely as not funny enough. Shawkat can do only so much. Turner -- whose appeal comes from a ranginess and beady eyes (every generation gets the Richard Gere it deserves) -- can be blandly alluring at times, but his comedic chops are a little under-developed. 

Historical hindsight allows Gates to make the case that the U.S. government was sending woefully unprepared young men to their eventual doom in a vicious quagmire in the Middle East. The director shows an eye for arresting visuals -- a tender moment between the two stars is shot via night-vision technology -- but it would require a little more discipline to maintain focus and produce a tighter story. Shawkat's magnetic personality can take a movie only so far.  

THE WRONG GIRLS (C+) - This unnecessary but amusing stoner-buddy comedy asks the long-lingering question: What if Cheech and Chong spent a whole movie doing psychedelic drugs too? 

 

Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat are all-in as buzzed roommates who inadvertently intercept a briefcase full of vials containing an experimental psychedelic potion. Of course, in stoner-comedy fashion, the dullards decide to sample the glowing liquid. The secret substance gives them telepathic abilities, allowing them to hear each other's thoughts, as well as the thoughts of their two fraidy cats, Dio (voiced by Seth Rogen) and GG (Kumail Nanjiani). 

This one starts out stupid and somehow gets dumber as it goes along. Shut off your brain and let the idiot plot unfold (or, more accurately, unravel). Appreciate Stewart's willingness to get silly as Frankie and Shawkat's skill at finding an ounce of emotional depth in the well-meaning pot-head Molly. Give points to Zack Fox as the level-headed boyfriend of Molly. And watch Chris Estrada nearly steal the movie the girls' blathering nerdy vato neighbor Jose.

This is also a debut feature, and Dylan Meyer has an idea that is about as clever as a late-series "Get Smart" episode, and her production budget must have been squeezed. There are scenes that involve Tony Hale where it's obvious that he's not actually on set with Stewart, but instead stand-ins are doing the heavy work. Rogen and Nanjiani might as well have phoned in their lines, which are about as funny as lines written by actual cats. Kate McKinnon injects some life into the proceedings as the scientist behind the concoction, and McKinnon is smart enough to know that if the potion has a complicated, hard-to-pronounce name, it gets funnier each time you say it in a heavy accent. (A nod to Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr?) Geena Davis shows up at the end for a pointless cameo.

I laughed just enough to consider this a minor success. The gals bond over a love of Celine Dion. The bad guys are Danish (instead of, say, Russian or German). Shawkat's character tries to remember her roommate's major before getting kicked out of Stanford: "That train thing ... you know, where you ... make stuff?" (Engineering.) Stewart gets a late laugh with her theatrical line reading of the phrase "FEDERAL BUILDING" when seeing it depicted in big letters. You kind of have to be there to appreciate the humor, and the big question you should ask yourself is whether you want to be there in theater watching these hijinks. 

BONUS TRACK

"The Wrong Girls" has a giddy soundtrack. Early on we get a chunk of a sentimental favorite, Tacocat's "Bridge to Hawaii":

 

Mannequin Pussy shows up as the concert band in a pivotal early scene, with "I Got Heaven":

Noir Chroncles: Suspicion

 

REAR WINDOW (1954) (A) - Alfred Hitchcock's first of four consecutive collaborations with screenwriter John Michael Hayes succeeds as much through dialogue and narrative flourishes as the director's patented visuals. It is clever, funny, sexy and, as you'd suspect, suitably suspenseful.

 

That suspense is awfully muted, though, and it is leavened with a good deal of dry comic line readings and a touching relationship tussle between James Stewart's injured photographer L.B. Jefferies and Grace Kelly's dilettante Lisa Fremont. Throw in well-timed wisecracks from Thelma Ritter as Jefferies' day nurse and Wendell Corey as skeptical detective pal Tom Doyle, and you probably have one of Hitchcock's better comic offerings.

You also have one of the master's better set-ups. It's as if we are sitting in Stewart's lap in his temporary wheelchair as we view the goings-on in the courtyard of his Manhattan apartment complex, where we watch a cavalcade of characters try to distract us from the suspicious activity of a man across the way who is suspected of killing his invalid wife, who may just have slipped out while Jefferies nodded off and taken a train upstate for some R&R. We see "Miss Torso," a dancer who exhibits limber moves while she goes about her household tasks; a frustrated songwriter haggling with writer's block; "Miss Lonelyhearts," who play-acts dates with fictional suitors; newlyweds who shut their shades and apparently are going at it like giddy rabbits; a couple who sleep on their balcony and lower their fluffy dog to ground level in a basket; and, of course, jewelry salesman Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), who engages in sketchy behavior at all hours of the day and handles rope, a knife and a saw. 

Doyle reluctantly digs around and comes up with a rational answer for every bit of evidence Jefferies tosses out. Lisa and the nurse, Stella, get in on the investigation, sneaking across the way to sniff out the activities. Lisa is at least guilty about nosing around in other people's business without any proof; she tells Jefferies, "We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known." 

This all unfolds over a running time just shy of two hours. With Stewart in command, we don't mind how long it takes to sort out. The various scenes he monitors play out like an advent calendar come to life. Jefferies -- who broke his leg on assignment shooting an auto race -- is a well-carved character. While Lisa is a vision to behold -- swoon with Hitchcock's camera when Kelly first emerges in closeup, a shot that then melts into a slow-motion kiss -- Jefferies is a restless globe-trotter who also is suspicious about his long-term chances settling down with what seems to be a perfect woman. (She serves him a candlelight dinner while wearing an $1,100 dress.)

Stewart and Hitchcock were reviving a collaboration that would soon produce "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Vertigo" (each two years apart), and Stewart's lowkey Everyman persona seems to rein in Hitchcock's more extreme tendencies. There's a lot going on in "Rear Window," and I don't just mean the intricate set pieces. Stewart is both leading man and set-up man. (Ritter gets most of his underhanded pitches. She notes that she once treated the director of GM and knew it was a case of nerves on the brink of the 1929 stock market crash: "When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country's ready to let go." Also: "You'd think the rain would've cooled things down. All it did was make the heat wet.") 

Jefferies is the director of the action before his eyes, stuck in the chair with a zoom lens as his main tool. In that way, Stewart and Hitchcock are the perfect co-leaders here, executing Hayes' perfect script. Sit back and wait for the wry ending.

THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) (C+) - Heavy with dialogue and excessive exposition, this classic film with a vaunted reputation doesn't hold up to modern scrutiny. Like "Citizen Kane," it might have been provocative for its time, and we should be glad that it made Humphrey Bogart a star, but in the end it's a sloppy and confusing story with not much at stake.

Bogart is fantastic as Sam Spade, the slick-talking gumshoe who walks a fine line between the cops and robbers after his PI partner is offed during a surveillance operation. However, Mary Astor is staid and dull as the aspiring femme fatale; she comes from the old-fashioned fainting-couch school of overacting. Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (below) are both delicious in their own unique way as the bumbling globe-trotters in pursuit of the jewel-encrusted statuette of the black bird that has been coveted for centuries all over the world.

 

The plot -- from writer-director John Huston adapting the novel by Dashiell Hammett -- is convoluted from the start. By the time the final half hour lumbers in, the characters take turns dumping lines and lines of exposition. And it all leads to a frustrating anti-climax. 

But you can see why this early noir is considered one of the all-time greats. Bogart propels the narrative as a one-man plot driver. The corpulent Greenstreet is having a ball as a bon vivant villain. And Lorre is a bundle of nerves who tosses out line readings as if he is learning English on the spot. The one-liners from Hammett and Huston fly by almost two quickly to appreciate. A classic line from Bogie: "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it!" And he's not even addressing a woman! 

Dragged out to 100 minutes, the film falls apart in the final act, as the lack of chemistry between Bogart and Astor just drains the final scene of any true drama. "Citizen Kane" or "Casablanca" this is not.

BONUS TRACK

The music in "Rear Window" is dreamy at times. That includes an instrumental version of "That's Amore" and a group singalong to "Mona Lisa." Here is Bing Crosby with "To See You (Is to Love You)":

New to the Queue

 All the time in the world ... or at least in the city ...

Willem Dafoe plays a poet rediscovered decades after his initial blip of a success in "Late Fame."

We are willing to shut off our brains and watch a stoner comedy starring our gal Alia Shawkat and Kristen Stewart, "The Wrong Girls."

An HBO documentary from Penny Lane ("Hail Satan?," "Nuts") about the odyssey of an owl that escaped from a New York zoo, "Wild Inside."

We are willing to give Jane Schoenbrun ("I Saw the TV Glow") another chance, with her neo-slasher take, "Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma."

A found-footage memory experiment about growing up in Lebanon, "Do You Love Me."

Now & Then: Missed Connections

 A pair of films, 37 years apart, from Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi:

SILENT FRIEND (B) - This contemplation of the connection between humans and plants -- and between humans across generations -- is languid and effervescent. It's easy to lope alongside and to drink in, but you might miss a tangible aftertaste. 

We lock in first on Tony Wong (Tony Leung), a neuroscientist who studies the brain waves of babies and compares them with the pings and zaps he can coax out of plants, in particular a massive, ancient ginkgo biloba tree in the middle of a storied college campus in Germany. Flash back one hundred years to that same campus and a much younger tree, and we see a youthful Grete (Luna Wedler) soldiering through some sexist oral exams to secure her spot as the first female student. She will end up skewing toward photography, as a way of capturing her research samples.

 

In between these eras are a pair of characters attending the university during the student activism of the 1960s. There we find a young woman, Gundula (Marlene Burow), attaching electrodes to a beloved geranium that sits in her dorm window. She entrusts the plant to a fellow student, Hannes (Enzo Brumm), to water and to monitor the continuous printout that resembles a seismometer, its jagged arm recording something coming off the plant. Hannes learns to interact with the geranium, developing a form of communication that is quaint and magical. 

Writer-director Ildiko Enyedi smoothly bops around among the three eras, casually spending time with each of her main characters as they go about their quirky research, often wordlessly. She unfolds this over 147 minutes that never feel like they are dragging. She avoids silly attempts at magical realism, and instead leaves a lot to the imagination of her characters and of her viewers. Leung, in particular -- the veteran from such classics as "In the Mood for Love" -- takes a laid-back, wistful approach. It helps that he is glumly corsetted in a COVID-19 environment (which has interrupted his regular research), spending much of his time alone or zooming with a French colleague (an underused Lea Seydoux). 

Patience is required. This played to a well-attended screening at 4:30 on a Friday, and the audience was mostly rapt. My mind wandered a couple of times into a hallucinatory zone, while I let the simple story wash over me, and I'm sure Enyedi won't mind if your neurons wander off a bit while she entertains you. 

MY TWENTIETH CENTURY (1989) (B-minus) - Ildiko Enyedi made her name with a somberly entertaining dabbling in magical realism somewhere in the realm of Krzysztof Kieslowski and Guy Maddin, a fairy tale about twin sisters separated during childhood and living dramatically different lives at the turn of the 20th century.

 

Dorota Segda stars as both Dora and Lili (and as their mother in an early birth scene), with Dora (above) as the good-time floozy who likes to steal from her marks and Lili as an earnest revolutionary in pre-World War I Europe. Threaded through the narrative is Thomas Edison's invention of the light bulb and the onset of the modern world. 

The sisters, who communicate to the viewer through their thoughts that advance the narrative, will pass through the same spot right before midnight on New Year's Eve at the dawn of the year 1900, but they don't interact. In an echo of Kieslowski's "Blind Chance," the siblings are essentially two ships (or trains) passing in the night. One man will interact with both of them, separately, and of course confuse the two of them. 

This is a movie unafraid of of straying from a traditional narrative -- the stars in the sky communicate with characters (recalling "It's a Wonderful Life"), and the camera travels to far-flung places like Burma, where we hear the thoughts of apes in the wild. And the bombs wielded by revolutionaries are cartoon-like -- black balls with a wick sticking out of the top. (Maybe that is historically accurate.)

Segda is arresting in both roles, finding nuance in the two women and contrasting Dora's joie de vivre (which rings hollow at times) with the mousier Lili. Each has a distinct way of dealing with the oppressive male gaze of the era. A climactic scene in a house of mirrors (a little too on-point) pays homage to Orson Welles. Despite the derivative nature of the film, Segda can make this quite moving at times. 

Doc Watch: Old World

 

POMPEI: BELOW THE CLOUDS (C+) - The idea here involves a study of Naples and Pompeii, under the glower of Mt. Vesuvius, as volcanic tremors beset the residents and otherwise life goes on as it has for a couple of millennia since the infamous eruption of 79 A.D. With an eye also on continued archeological digs, this luscious black-and-white documentary from Gianfranco Rosi is intrigued by the contrast between the old world and modern life, presented most notably through residents' mundane calls to the fire department during the series of tremors.

 

This is all presented without narration or even sufficient context in many places, and so Rosi leans on academic lectures and incidental conversations to get some points across and help orient the viewer. Random scenes occur, as if excerpted from a stem-winder by legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman ("City Hall," "In Jackson Heights"). Children work with an elderly tutor. Ukrainian grain is elegantly dispensed into a storage facility -- a gorgeous visual, but to what end? One scene of two Muslim sailor bros lifting weights and discussing weighty issues has the whiff of being somewhat scripted or staged. Again, what's the point here, besides a sociological study of this place during this moment in time?

A lot of time is spent in tunnels. Scenes artfully lit by flashlights provide a whiff of film noir. Statues and frescoes are scrupulously revered, as you'd expect of Italian classicists. The turgid establishing shots -- while lovely -- can get repetitive and frustrating. The second half goes heavy into the art and excavation detective story and feels like a niche polemic that translates poorly from Italian. The visuals would be fun to watch for an hour, but at 114 minutes, it's just too ponderous.

What's most interesting are the random phone calls that come in to the fire department, many ostensibly about the recurring tremors that have residents on edge, but others are off-topic, like a report of a stranded kitten, or the old man who calls in every evening to ask what time it is. (That thread will culminate in a harrowing domestic-abuse call.) Now that focus on a dispatch center would make for a more interesting film.

FIUME O MORTE (B-minus) - Let's go back a century and revisit the onset of the fascist regime in Italy, when a rogue poet took over the Croatian town of Rijeka after World War I. 

Writer-director Igor Bezinovic creates a fun and amusing romp that sheds light on the period when Italian separatists violated the post-war international treaty and grabbed Rijeka from the newly formed Yugoslavia. The uprising was let by Gabriele D'Annunzio, a writer and bon vivant, who, in defiance of the Italian government, marched into Rijeka (under the banner of the film's title, "Fiume or death") and brought it under the Italian flag. It was dubbed Fiume and was known grandly as the Italian Regency of Carnaro. D'Annunzio boldly destroyed the bridges to the Croat sister city across the river, Susak. Eventually, Mussolini and the fascists took over Italy and embraced Fiume, which would not return to Yugoslav control until after World War II. D'Annunzio himself burned bright and ruled for only a little over a year, until he ran afoul of Italy's rulers and was run out of town.

That's a lot of history, and it was intriguing to be able to learn much of it from this entertaining documentary. Bezinovic begins with person-on-the-street interviews to gauge the awareness of Croatians about that time around 1920. He then recruits several actors to portray D'Annunzio and an army of extras to help re-create photos and film footage from that time. 

One problem is that Bezinovic drags out this sobering romp to nearly two hours. He also is not helped by comparisons to a much more serious film of more recent vintage. "Fiume o Morte" owes quite a debt to Robert Greene's "Bisbee '17," which is much more somber and profound in looking back 100 years at an atrocity. That film involved the brutal repression of union activity at the mines in Bisbee, Ariz., in 1917, and Greene also hired actors to re-enact some of the horrific events.

By contrast, Bezinovic keeps things in Croatia light-hearted; he seems to have confidence in his compatriots and their long memories and firm spines against any potential return of authoritarianism near their border above the Adriatic Sea. While that makes this film feel inessential at times, it certainly is an entertaining way to learn some rather obscure history. 

BONUS TRACK

The bouncy trailer for "Fiume o Morte": 

 

The Noir Chronicles, Part 2: On the Edge

 If it's July, it's the annual Guild Cinema festival of film noir. We managed to catch well more than half of this year's 10 entries present in double features over 10 days. Part 1 is here.

THE LAWLESS (1950) (B+) - A strong no-name cast takes on this tale of a small (and small-minded) town and its prejudiced treatment of Mexican fruit-pickers. Lefty director Joseph Losey hammers his message with emphasis, but he skirts the pitfalls of melodrama as he teams race issues with a slap at the tabloid media as well.

 

Lalo Rios plays Paul Rodriguez, who works with the more dour Lopo, who gets into a fender-bender with a group of Anglo teens, who call them names and start a fight. Things snowball for Paul from there, as accidental misdemeanors and felonies accrue during the hunt for him. Meantime, former big-city newsman Larry Wilder (Macdonald Carey, above), strikes up a flirtation on the the other side of the tracks with a news competitor, Sunny Garcia (the sunny Gail Russell, above), and he comes to the defense of Paul, all while the rest of his colleagues and competitors dish out salacious rumors. ("What is it with newsmen?" one character wonders. "Why can't they be normal?")

As Paul remains at large, and misunderstandings mount, a small-town mob gradually builds, and Wilder's news offices (The Union) become the target of their wrath. Losey ("The Sleeping Tiger," "The Big Night") has his heart in the right place, and he crafts an earnest, thought-provoking narrative that builds suspense across 82 taut minutes. Carey and Russell have a solid chemistry, and the cast is able to find enough nuance in their characters to avoid the cliches of the day. An A for effort.

SPOTTED: Pulp reporter Jonas Creel is played by Herbert Anderson, who would go on to play the father on "Dennis the Menace" (billed here as Guy Anderson). ... This was also the film debut of 19-year-old Tab Hunter as one of the Anglo troublemakers. ... John Hoyt, who plays an upstanding father here, would be the grumpy grandpa on "Gimme a Break."

RUTHLESS (1948) (B+) - This story of a dynamic titan of industry has a surprisingly soft underbelly. It's a love triangle with a twist, using flashbacks to tell the story of boyhood pals who fall for the same girl -- and then in adulthood for her doppelganger. 

Zachary Scott ("Guilty Bystander," "Born to be Bad") is the suave hero, Horace Vendig, who came from a broken home, with a derelict father, but is raised by a wealthy family. The scenes of youth take up the first half of the film. As a boy Horace is played by Bob Anderson, who also played a young George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life." In college, Horace steals Martha (Diana Lynn) from his pal Vic (Louis Hayward) and then dumps her to pursue a business career in New York City (after a stint at Harvard). Approaching middle age, Vic shows up with Mallory (Lynn again) on his arm, and the same dynamic threatens to play out again. 

This has the mood, demeanor and patter of a classic soap opera. Scott is an appealing stony leading man ("I'm an adding machine"), and it's hard not to get hooked on the melodrama, despite the corny production. It's a tale of repressing our negative memories and soldiering on. Throw in a creepy Sidney Greenstreet (bragging about having a wife just old enough to vote and spouting ominous Bible passages) and another smoldering love interest in the form of Martha Vickers ("The Big Sleep"), and it can be a heady mix of romantic intrigue and high-wire high finance.

SPOTTED: Raymond Burr plays our hero's wayward father during the boyhood flashbacks. Do you prefer him on TV in "Perry Mason" or "Ironside"?

BOUND (1996) (B+) - Leave it to the 1990s to come up with the idea of a film noir led by two erotic femmes fatale. Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly steam up the screen and team up to try to bilk a bunch of goombah mobsters out of a suitcase full of $2 million.

 

This is the stylish debut of the Wachowski siblings, who would eventually go down the "Matrix" rabbit hole. The first half hour is as cheesy as lipstick lesbianism gets; it would make Zalman King blush and Adrian Lyne roll his eyes. Gershon and Tilly are not shy in their two main love scenes, the second one more explicit than the first, but nothing that would be considered shocking these days.

Gershon plays Corky, the tough ex-con who does handyman work and is neighbors with Tilly's femme Violet and her mobbed-up oaf, Caesar, played to the hilt by Joe Pontoliano, who made his bones as a made man throughout his acting career. Corky and Violet (who essentially has an arranged set-up with the boorish Caesar) concoct a scheme to rob Caesar and his bosses of a $2 million score. Corky lines out a scenario that will make Caesar and his compadres turn on each other.

The Wachowskis certainly know their way around a stylish visual palette, toying with the idea of the two women on opposite sides of thin walls. The mob stuff is pro forma (Pontoliano did much better work on "The Sopranos"), but the suspense builds nicely, and the two leading ladies are hard to resist as they fight for their freedom.

SPOTTED: Mob nepo baby Johnnie Marzzone is played by Christopher Meloni, who would go on to star as Det. Stabler on TV's "Law & Order: SVU."

NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947) (B) - Like Zachary Scott in Ruthless, Tyrone Power methodically builds a devious character -- this time a carnival barker who steals a scam mentalist routine and uses it to con society suckers out of their riches.

Scott is Stanton Carlisle, who worms his way between Mademoiselle Zeena (Joan Blondell) and her alcoholic co-conspirator, Pete (Ian Keith), managing to push Pete out of the way so that he can work with Zeena and learn the code she uses to feign extra-sensory abilities that wow the crowds. Stan also makes his move on cute young Molly (Coleen Gray), the skimpily clad assistant to the strongman, Bruno (character actor Mike Mazurki). 

 

Stan eventually takes over the act and makes it big in Chicago, in part by working on the side with psychologist Lillith Ritter (Helen Walker), who has no qualms about sharing secret recordings from her patients' therapy sessions to help Stan get background dirt that he can use to pretend to read the minds of those patients who attend his shows. Eventually, Stan will imbue his act with an evangelical fervor, and you can expect his hubris to bring him to a crisis point.

It's a great story, even at times it strains at the length of 111 minutes. The script -- by Jules Furthman, who worked with William Faulkner on "To Have and Have Not" and "The Big Sleep" -- is sharp and never hangs Power out to dry. Director Edmund Goulding is fond of classic blocking like in the image above, which gives this a bit of a soap opera feel in spots. The bookending ending is a little too convenient, but this early noir has enough gravitas to keep you intrigued until the end.

SPOTTED: I don't know who "Carnival Patron" Chet Brandenburg is, but he has 477 IMDb entries. He appeared as a "barfly" in 29 different titles. He was in 44 episodes of "Gunsmoke," 8 episodes of Bonanza, 15 episodes of "The Outlaws," and 79 episodes of "The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp," including as a barfly in at least one episode of each TV series. 

BONUS TRACK

Over the closing credits of "Bound," the hit single "She's a Lady," written by Paul Anka and performed by Tom Jones:

Soundtrack of Your Life: S'alright, S'alright

 

  Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.

The first time I heard the full version of John Lennon performing live with Elton John recorded on Thanksgiving 1974, it gave me chills. It was on a 10-inch single released after Lennon died in 1980. It is the introduction of Lennon -- to a stunned, thunderous crowd at Madison Square Garden -- that does it to me. ("Seeing as it's Thanksgiving ...").

Lennon had promised Elton that if the song they collaborated on -- "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" -- went to No. 1, he would join the superstar on stage and sing it with him. The song did, in fact, hit the top of the charts, Elton visited MSG, and Lennon, a bundle of nerves, jumped onstage for three songs. They played Lennon's recent No. 1; Elton's same-year hit cover of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds"; and an old chestnut (from "an old, estranged fiance of mine, called Paul ... one I never sang"), "I Saw Her Standing There" ("a number to finish up with so that I can get out of here and be sick"). They brought the house down. (That was also the night that Lennon began his reunion with Yoko Ono, who was also invited backstage.)

"Whatever Gets You Through the Night" is not just another peppy track on one of my favorite albums, "Walls & Bridges," released when I was 11. So when I walk into a hardware store and it's spilling from the speakers, I still get that Thanksgiving buzz. (The small-town Ace Hardware was big enough to have two sound systems playing, one in each half of the store. The other side was spinning Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4.") 

In 1974, Elton John was approaching the height of his powers and fame. This fluke of a concert appearance would be Lennon's last, which would not become apparent for six years. The live recording -- teased first with the 1975 "Philadelphia Freedom" single, which features "I Saw Her Standing There" on the B-side -- is 14 minutes of pure joy. Imagine having been there that night. (Instead, I went to see Elton with family in 1976 at Chicago Stadium and was treated to Billy Connolly as an opening act singing "The Shitkickers Waltz." But Kiki Dee was there, too, so ...)

Date: July 29, 2026, 11:11 a.m.

Place: Ace Hardware, Taos, N.M.

Song:  "Whatever Gets You Through the Night"

Artist: John Lennon

Irony Matrix: 4.5 out of 10

 

The Noir Chronicles, Part 1: On the trail

  If it's July, it's the annual Guild Cinema festival of film noir. We managed to catch well more than half of this year's 10 entries present in double features over 10 days.

MURDER IS MY BEAT (1955) (B-minus) - Part of an Edgar Ulmer double feature (see "Ruthless" in Part 2), this peppy whodunit wrings manic energy from journeyman Paul Langton (TV's "Peyton Place") as a cop who has second thoughts about his role in the conviction of a woman for murder and who spends a crazed week trying to clear her name and make amends.

 

Langton stars as Det. Patrick, who seems to have an open-and-shut case when a businessman is found face-down in the fireplace, clubbed with a statuette, almost certainly by his young girlfriend, the blond bombshell Eden (Barbara Payton). After her conviction, he accompanies her on the train to prison when she suddenly exclaims that she saw the purportedly murdered ex standing on a train platform, alive and well. Has she been railroaded? Patrick will get slugged as he noses around, and of course, he'll fall for the dame.

Ulmer shakes up the narrative with flashbacks, and he employs a few misdirections, one of which involves Eden's nightclub co-worker Patsy (a simmering Tracy Roberts). The dialogue is set at full ham, and the cast chews the gristle with delight. It was, quaintly, a time when cops described female suspects by their girlish figures. The ending comes along too quickly and is awfully pat, but you should walk away entertained.

SPOTTED: Hank Patterson gets barely a glimpse as a medical examiner at the scene of the murder. He would go on to star as grumpy Fred Ziffel ("father" of Arnold the pig) in "Green Acres."

NAKED ALIBI (1954) (B+) - A boffo cast powers a cynical manhunt drama based on a hunch about a suspected cop killer. Sterling Hayden and the combustible Gloria Grahame light a flame under this slow burn that crescendos along the Mexican border (in a town creatively called Border City). 

Hayden plays Joe Conroy, a chief of detectives who gets fired for blowing his top after three of his men are killed, and he suspects local baker Al Willis (Gene Barry) of carrying out the hits, but can't prove it. Conroy yields his badge and follows Willis to the border, where the married suspect shacks up with a local pub singer, Marianna (Grahame), the kind of tough-luck gal who gets turned on by a slap but who also has a generous heart, which comes in handy after Conroy lands in her lap after getting stabbed by thugs.

 

It's quite a tight knot tied by three screenwriters and journeyman director Jerry Hopper. Hayden (above right) is understated as the possibly delusional lug, and Grahame torches the screen with a mere arch of an eyebrow and a knowing pout. Barry -- who would go on to hit the TV hat trick with "Bat Masterson," "Burke's Law" and "The Name of the Game" -- works from the James Cagney "Come and get me, coppers" school of (over)acting. (An alternative title for the film is "Cry Copper," sans comma.) He is manic from the start, complaining of false accusations.

But the narrative evolves, and the characters' motivations morph once the film picks up after a slow half hour of set-up and heads to the border, where intrigue lurks in the shadows. Grahame -- endlessly appealing in "In a Lonely Place," "Crossfire" and "Odds Against Tomorrow" (and the subject of "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool") -- brings layers to Marianna, who turns both men on and sets both of them right. She will put herself in peril as the menace around her swells and this builds to a satisfying climax. 

SPOTTED: The glowering detective captain in the first act of the film is played by Chuck Connors, from TV's "Rifleman." ... The police lieutenant offed in the first five minutes is played by familiar character actor Max Showalter, who was Ward Cleaver in the pilot for "Leave It to Beaver" and whose career culminated as Grandpa Fred in John Hughes' "Sixteen Candles."

STRANGER ON THE PROWL (1952) (C) - Even if you could understand the dialogue in this Italian production from an exiled Joseph Losey, the plot of this manhunt thriller might perplex and confound even the most patient viewer. An overwrought performance by Paul Muni as a drifter stranded in an Italian port town doesn't help.

This one is occasionally unintentionally funny. But mostly it is a melodramatic tale of The Man (Muni) as a stowaway who shows up broke and needs to raise money to pay off his smuggler -- and to eat. However, he is immediately targeted by residents as a vagrant, and when he accidentally kills someone out of desperation, he becomes a wanted man. In tow he has a willing local 8-year-old boy who empathizes with him and helps the Man pass as a father taking his son to the circus.

The film -- Losey's first after being drummed out of the U.S. during the red panic of the '50s -- makes a pretty cogent case for treating poor people with dignity. But the sketchy sound quality and incongruent performances -- including Joan Lorring as a sexually harassed young woman -- drag this into B-movie territory. Muni, 20 years from his career defining role in "Scarface," comes off as more grumpy than desperate.  

SPOTTED: This is tough, considering it's an all-Italian cast. The police inspector is played by Arnoldo Foa, whose credits include such racy titles as "The King's Whore," "All the Moron's Men" and "Do You Mind if I Kiss Mommy?"

BRICK (2006) (B+) - The modern ringer in the group is the debut of writer-director Rian Johnson, who went on to bring you "Looper," the "Knives Out" trilogy and the penultimate "Star Wars" movie. This one hits differently than it did upon its refreshing splash 20 years ago.

 

The idea here -- setting a classic gumshoe noir at a modern high school -- felt fresh and clever at the time of the movie's release (I gave it an honorable mention in 2006), but now it comes off as more of a flimsy, cloying gimmick. Star Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the perfect brooding Sam Spade stand-in, spitting out glib one-liners in a gangland patois that would never exist in the head of even the brightest high school kid at the turn of the millennium. The dialogue comes at you rapid-fire and is so squirrelly and off-kilter that I had a lot of trouble understanding some of the key lines. (I surrendered to subtitles at some point.) That's not a way to keep a viewer immersed in your narrative.

The plot is also fairly dense, but unpacking it along with Gordon-Levitt's persistent Brandon is part of the fun here. Brandon traipses through a sunny California suburb as he investigates the death of an ex-girlfriend, Emily (Emilie de Ravin), whose frantic phone call drops clues about a missing brick of heroin not long before he discovers her body in a drainage ditch. He and his pal The Brain (Matt O'Leary) game this out, frequently deploying phone-booth communications, and Brandon slowly sinks into the muck of the local drug trade and its creeps. He's got a femme fatale, the prissy Laura (Nora Zehetner) ostensibly on his side (at least she's handy for car rides so he doesn't have to borrow his mom's vehicle). 

Brandon gets knocked around a lot -- but of course he has superhero strength somehow and manages to plod on despite a hacking cough that suggests some internal bleeding. In a nod more to "Charlie Brown" cartoons than to "Chinatown," police are only hinted at -- we occasionally hear sirens but they are never seen. This is a sealed world of teens role-playing as adults. It's amusing for a while, and it wraps up well, but your mileage may vary depending on your age group.

SPOTTED: Richard Roundtree, the original "Shaft," plays the vice principal who nags Brandon like a police captain would a rogue detective.

BONUS TRACK

An edited version of Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" serves as the outro for "Brick":

 

The trailer for "Naked Alibi," with a snippet of Gloria Grahame singing Cole Porter's "Ace in the Hole":

Couples Counseling

 We hand out our first straight A to a feature film in 2026, and only our second straight A overall. 

THE INVITE (A) - Every so often a movie is so good that it feels rude to write about it and reduce it to standard two-dimensional criticism. Here we have four people, one setting and a juicy script, all corralled with manic skill by director Olivia Wilde, who also sandblasts the screen with a memorable performance.

 

Wilde plays Angela, a hornet's nest of anxieties who lives with under-achieving musician Joe (Seth Rogan) and spends most of her tedious days decorating the San Francisco apartment they inherited from his parents. The latest crisis in their tense relationship is the impending arrival of their neighbors for dinner, not long after Joe has slogged home on his collapsible bicycle across the hilly city from his dead-end job as a college music teacher.

Pina and Hawk, the neighbors, are on Joe's shit list, because they have loud sex, often. (As you might expect, Joe and Angela, who have a tween daughter, don't have a intimacy to flaunt like that.) Angela is desperate to impress the neighbors and to offer her own mea culpa for the noise generated by their recent apartment renovation. She tosses a souffle into the oven, splays out some cheese and jamon, and insists on opening a rare bottle of wine they had been saving for a special occasion.

Pina (a bleach-blond Penelope Cruz), a therapist, swans into the room with swagger and skepticism. Her partner is Hawk (Edward Norton), a touchy-feely kind-bro who -- upon entering the apartment where Angela and Joe had obviously just been fighting -- announces to the room, "It's OK. We love a contentious environment." Rogan's Joe has a field day mocking the other couple's whole New Age vibe (if "New Age" could be said to encompass a lifestyle that involves open marriages and orgies). Cruz lends gravitas as the educated voice of reason; Pina is genuinely appalled that her neighbors are squandering their life together by smothering the pleasure out of it. 

 

This simple yet combustible set-up is arranged by screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack (remaking a script by Spanish writer Cesc Gay). They stuff this powderkeg with enough dry powder to demolish the entire building complex in one take. It is imbued with both high-stakes emotion and razor-sharp comedy by Wilde, whose facial reactions range from horrified to ecstatic, sometimes in the same breath. 

The proceedings take off when it becomes apparent that Pina and Hawk have designs on Joe and Angela, eager to initiate them into the world of spouse-swapping and group sex. What follows is about as believable a depiction of such a situation as you could hope for in a movie. At first, Angela and Joe are super-curious, asking all kinds of questions about the logistics and mechanics of marital hook-up culture. In a fascinating insight into her character, Angela instinctively throws out the phrase DP (double-penetration), betraying a deep-seated hunger to explore and probably a decent history of watching porn during her relationship drought. 

To say that Wilde stands out here is high praise, because Rogen is wonderful as he goes way beyond his usual smart-ass banter; Cruz gives a master class in restraint; and Norton digs deep into the psyche of a well-drawn (and annoying) character. Besides an opening montage with incidental extras, the only actors are these four, and it would be difficult to imagine any other actor subbing in for any one of them. You don't get ensemble performances (let along within a modern chamber drama) at this level. "The Invite" makes a classic like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" look stagey. It makes Mike Nichols' "Closer" seem forced.

Instead, this is Wilde's masterpiece, a welcome recovery from her universally panned previous effort, 2022's "Don't Worry Darling" and a leap in style from her fine debut, "Booksmart."  Jones and McCormack (like Wilde known more as actors) teamed up in 2012 for a more uneven look at a relationship, "Celeste & Jesse Forever." They almost certainly were assisted here by extensive work-shopping and improvising by the cast, but the one-liners (sometimes rapid-fire during overlapping dialogue) are precise and insightful. The bawdiness can be belligerent. When Pina and Hawk reveal that one of their shared lovers is an older woman, but they don't know her age, Joe advises them, "Next time you're in there, count the rings." Joe can't believe Hawk used to be a firefighter, because firefighters are brawny and have mustaches. (He's not entirely incorrect.)

My favorite scene might be a quiet one between Angela and Hawk, who shows an interest in her decor, especially the rugs. Angela shows him three huge paint swatches on a wall, and Hawk analyzes the three virtually indistinguishable shades of blue-green deeply before landing on the choice that she'd hoped he would. When she tells him that Joe -- like most of us -- considered the colors to be essentially the same, Hawk intones earnestly, "Is he colorblind?" 

That's an example of why writing about the movie feels pointless. It's hard to convey why that last line is so funny. You have to invest in the film and sync with its rhythms, settle in with the characters. You'll either buy it (and what do I know; I've never been invited to have group sex) or you won't from the start. (I have experienced a "contentious environment" or two during marriages.) I could pick a couple of nits here -- there is the cliche of the unplayed instrument in the house shunned by the failed musician; Pina's turn against Hawk at one point feels a little contrived -- but I went to see this a second time and appreciated it even more.

Perhaps the third time will be a charm.

BONUS TRACKS

Wilde charges out of the gates confidently in the opening scenes with this dollop of faux '60s Britpop, "I'm Confessin'" by Fabienne Delsol from 2007:

 

And over the closing credits, the demo for "Our House," where Joni Mitchell joins Graham Nash:

Space Cadets

 

PROJECT HAIL MARY (C+) - I tried to refrain from rolling my eyes during the first hour of this naive space opera about a bumbling American on a remote -- and presumably doomed -- mission to rescue the stars in the solar system. It is mainly a vehicle for Ryan Gosling to be silly and charming while surrounded by neat CGI tricks and master puppetry.

It takes nearly an hour -- of this 2-hour, 36-minute spectacle -- for Gosling's astronaut Ryland Grace to coincidentally run into a another spacecraft and life form (small world!) and, like a kindergarten teacher, find ways to communicate with it. (The creature resembles a spindly rock, so Grace calls it Rocky. Kute!)

 

As my partner pointed out, this earnest production seems like a film for children, or maybe adults who have given up on the idea of fending off even the slightest challenges to their intellect. The first hour is mostly set-up, with Grace plucked from his lowly gig as a middle-school science teacher to help the government(s) figure out the substance that is implanting itself between Venus and the sun (and happening to all but one of the other stars in the solar system), such that the cooling of Earth in the coming decades will render the planet mostly uninhabitable. Clever idea, but it plays out in ridiculous fashion, with Grace, in flashbacks, plopped into a remote lab to do science experiments while bureaucrats look on and their ringleader, the sarcastic Eva Stratt (Sandra Hueller), mocks him and treats the whole project like goofy game show.

None of that works well. It is a mess brought to you by filmmakers who dabble in wacky animation (Meatballs and Legos) and the Spider-man franchise (co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller), or the universe that encompasses "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Cloverfield" and "World War Z" (co-writer Drew Goddard, a Los Alamos, N.M., native), all based on a novel by Andy Weir ("The Martian"). That's quite a creative soup, but then again, too many cooks ...

Gosling is amusing enough, as he can't help but be. I guess we're supposed to laugh at all the tools and tricks he has on board his spaceship, which is light-years from civilization and on a mission designed for no possible return flight. (Though I suspected late in the first hour that Grace and Rocky might have a hack up their sleeve. We'll see.) It's not just improbably but virtually impossible that this shlubby science teacher would master all the controls of the massive spaceship and have the wherewithal -- with no training -- to blithely traipse through spacewalks. (But it's just a movie!)

We paused 45% of the way to save the rest for a second night. We agreed that we could fast forward through much of it to just get to the ending. Except we didn't deploy the remote, and I kind of half-watched a lot of the rest of it. I had no desire to sit through more of Grace and Rocky's child-play that resulted from their interstellar meet-cute. (At one point they tap out the theme from "Close Encounters" to each other. Huh?) There were a few audible sighs during the final 90 minutes.

And so, this goes on and on. The flashbacks pile up, but the dribs and drabs of backstory can be tedious. Meanwhile, Grace and Rocky develop a relationship with the depth and banter of a mid-level sitcom. Somehow they find the time to pursue a solution to the problem they were both tasked with solving. They develop a computerized method to translate each other's voices into their own language, so they can chat. Thus, Rocky talk like Tarzan. Or maybe Mork from Ork. In fact, brace yourself: Whenever the music swells and talk gets serious (about their survival), the depth of emotion rivals that of a Very Special Episode of "Mork & Mindy." 

I suppose this is just what the Hollywood doctor ordered for a populace that wants to pretend it can rise to the challenge when fate plucks one of us from obscurity to save the universe. Our Prime Video training will have served us well. 

BONUS TRACK

Would you believe the filmmakers and Paul McCartney stoop to including the Beatles' "Two of Us" on the soundtrack? Yes, things get that treacly. Much better was an opening sequence in which a Manson-bearded Grace is roused from his induced coma, and he flails around the cabin to the tune of Kris Kristofferson's hangover anthem "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down."

That '70s Drift: Do You Remember?

 A pair of documentaries from HBO Films:

EARTH, WIND & FIRE (B-minus) - Here comes the documentary about Earth, Wind & Fire that you didn't know you needed. And it's still questionable whether this two-hour effort -- subtitled "to Be Celestial and That's the Weight of the World" -- was essential filmmaking.

 

Helmed by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson of the Roots -- and the man behind the impeccable "Summer of Soul" -- this exercise follows music guru Maurice White, who left the Ramsey Lewis trio's drum kit to explore his "Afrofuturism" and Zen philosophies to create Earth, Wind & Fire, one of the most popular bands of the 1970s. White, of course, is a complicated and flawed hero in this story (mainly tyranny and infidelity), lending this a VH-1 "Behind the Music" narrative arc. 

Shortly after the band left Chicago and headed to Southern California around 1970 -- and after White overhauled the fledgling group -- the songs started to click, culminating in the No. 1 hit "Shining Star" from the 1975 album "That's the Way of the World." (Thompson is more coy with the group's most enduring hit song, dropping a ghost of a sample at the very beginning of the film and then using it at the end to punctuate Earth, Wind & Fire's universal acclaim.)

White was abandoned as a 5-year-old boy in the South -- his father died, and his mother left him with a neighbor so she could go off to Chicago and start a big family with a physician husband. That trauma is revisited repeatedly during the documentary, a way to explain and forgive White's aversion to marriage and his distant relationship with the children he fathered with multiple women. Thompson employs crude animation and stale stock footage to go back in time and try to juice up what is an average story of a famous band. (A few clips click, like the fun Afro Sheen commercial from the Black is Beautiful era.)

The director does assemble an impressive array of talking heads (White, who died in 2016 from Parkinson's, is seen in archival clips), including bandmates Philip Bailey and Ralph Johnson; contemporary Booker T. Jones; Stevie Wonder (who admits that he cribbed from "Shining Star" to write "I Wish"); recent artists H.E.R. and Anderson Paak; White's longtime partner Marilyn and two of his sons; and the Obamas, who refuse to mask their joy and nostalgia over the joy's of Earth, Wind & Fire's music. (One demerit for Thompson is the way he races through screen IDs and other critical information, too quickly for the average reader.) We get a solid sense of the passion behind the band, including the stage presentations and elaborate costumes during the heyday.

Some talking heads dance around White's infirmities (there was a battle over royalties). As an example, when White broke up the group in 1983, he had others break the news to his brothers in soul. As one person puts it: "Maurice did not like confrontation." Another counters: "He was chicken-shit." White would soon be humbled by his solo-release face-plant (please, do not subject your ears to his limp cover of "Stand by Me") and Bailey's uber-smash with Phil Collins, "Easy Lover" (accompanied by the horn section that Collins had poached from the bickering band).

There is no doubting White's talent, and the way the band cruised for a solid decade of hits. (White also produced and co-wrote a hit for the Emotions, "Best of My Love.") And Thompson certainly has established himself as an expert archivist and chronicler of culture. But you'd have to appreciate the music to fully enjoy this documentary.

BANG MY BOX: THE ROBIN BYRD STORY (B) - Remember the glory days of community cable television? In New York, the queen of R-rated late-night local content in New York City was the gal in the crocheted bikini, Robin Byrd. This 79-minute documentary does justice to that specific moment in time. 

 

A tag team of directors weaves several story lines into the tight format. There is the launch of the show -- hosted by Byrd (with her girl-next-door blond shag) and featuring many performers from the porn industry -- and its initial popularity in the late '70s and into the 1980s. The middle portion pays tribute to the show's support of gay rights during the AIDS crisis, albeit in a formulaic way. One through line involves Byrd's videotaped archives, and the debate over whether to turn them over to academia. A coda emphasizes the legal challenges she was involved in and the fight to protect the First Amendment.

Byrd turns 70 during filming, and she has gained a lot of weight, no longer confident enough to don a skimpy swimsuit. And she is coping with her longtime partner, Shelby (more than a decade older than her), who is declining due to dementia. Extra credit to the filmmakers (Jyllian Gunther and Stephanie Schwam) for dealing with it matter-of-factly rather than mawkishly. He was tolerant of her bisexual adventures, and their scenes together here are sweet instead of sappy.

There is not much at stake here, and the production values are fairly humdrum, but there is an inherent charm in the lo-fi DIY ethic that gets celebrated, and Byrd herself is a bittersweet leading character.

BONUS TRACKS

EW&F with their mega-hit "Shining Star":

 

The "Byrd" trailer:

Song of Ourselves

 

TIGUEX (A-minus) - What a wonderful ode to an American city.

Albuquerque resident Raven Chacon, originally from the Navajo Nation across the Arizona border, has a worldwide reputation for his musical work. In 2022, Chacon won a Pulitzer Prize for his composition "Voiceless Mass," for organ and ensemble.

In September last year, he took on an epic task. Across 10 hours, he and hundreds of collaborators fanned out across Albuquerque to perform the multi-faceted "Tiguex," a sprawling composition made up of 20 movements performed sequentially from dawn to dusk, from the peak of the Sandia Mountains to the banks of the Rio Grande. It involved more than 200 musicians and vocalists.

 

The movement called "Tiguex" was exhaustively documented, and Chacon now gets credit as director of the 85-minute film presentation of his work. If a film could be both stunning and low-key at the same time, this is it. It shares some DNA with the genre of mostly wordless quasi-documentaries, usually about rural areas, such as Michelangelo Frammartino's "Le Quattro Volte."

The genius of the film -- and the individual pieces crafted by Chacon -- comes in the clear-eyed view of Albuquerque as a city. The depiction is neither fawning nor dismissive. It highlights the simple pleasures of the city -- its gritty landscape, the modest downtown, its Latin traditions, its pioneering role in ballooning -- and finds the heartfelt beauty in all of it, turning the pillars under an interstate into an echo chamber for a soaring cantata. 

There is minimal narration -- from a British-accented host at public radio KUNM-FM, which chronicled the whole day -- as the images unfold. These are some of the scenes we are treated to:

 

A cellist performs along the banks of the Rio Grande in a "Ballad for Two Cellos"; one of the instruments simply floats lazily down the river. Horseback riders lope along the bosque trail. A lone trumpet bookends the film from atop Sandia Peak. A ragtag procession snakes through Old Town. Guitarists and singers jam on a rooftop. Drummers and bassists perform "blast beats" outside a nuclear museum. A mariachi band performs merrily aboard a flatbed trailer. Eight low-riders rev engines and blare sirens along Route 66. A choir on the West Mesa. A trombonist performs solo as a hot-air balloon lifts off from a schoolyard. 

It all culminates in eight singers wandering amid the pillars under I-40 at sunset intoning the ethereal sounds created by Chacon and co-writer Marisa Demarco. It is at this point that you might levitate in the cinema.

I have lived in Albuquerque for 24 years, and this is the adopted metro area I'm familiar with, and the film surely speaks to longtime natives. This ain't the "Breaking Bad" tour. It comes from the perspective of an artist who appreciates the ordinary loveliness of your average city, with its quirks and detours. It de-emphasizes the trite, myopic topics -- the tough weather, the perceived crime issues, the percentage of unused office space  -- and merely walks its streets and trails. Many of the performances feature residents as audience in the mix, making this seem like just another day in the neighborhood. It's quite an understated accomplishment. 

BONUS TRACK

Here is the raw video of the 10-hour presentation, which doesn't do justice to the 85-minute film:

With a Vengeance

 

IS GOD IS (A-minus) - This propulsive debut film -- about adult twin sisters seeking revenge on the father who set fire to them and their mother when the girls were little -- is marred only by its pulpy bloody final 20 minutes. Until then, its script is flawless and its depiction of sisterly bonds profound.

 

Aleshea Harris adapts her own play, exhibiting a sure hand, and carrying over some of the best elements of the stage (mostly the dialogue) without sacrificing a cinematic flair. She has an ear for  patois -- the girls us "finna" in place of "gonna," and as one of them intones early on: "Dis destiny-type shit." The callbacks to literary stylings pair nicely with the hectic modern soundtrack (see below).

Kara Young (above left, as Racine) and Mallori Johnson (as Anaia) are believable out of the gate as sisters who share not only the fertilized egg that they came from but also an uncanny mind-meld, in which they complete each others' sentences and communicate telepathically (through words splayed on the screen). After their father torched their mother in a bathtub, leaving Racine with scars on her arm and Anaia facially disfigured, the girls were abandoned to the foster-care system, told that their mother had died.

But, no, their mother Ruby (Vivica A. Fox, below) -- whom they refer to as God (because Ruby made them) -- summons the girls, now adults, to her bed chamber with instructions to "Make your daddy dead. ... Real dead." While Anaia is reluctant to set out on a mission of vengeance (massaged as a mission from "god"), Racine is all-in, assuring her sister that she will take care of the dirty work. 

 

The pair embark on a classic road trip through the South, meeting up with the crazed preacher named Divine (a delirious Erika Alexander) who took up with their dad after his arrest (and bore a son), the lawyer (Mykelti Williamson) who represented their dad back in the day (and was himself disfigured by his demonic client), and eventually their dad (Sterling K. Brown), who now lives in a mansion with a trophy wife (Janelle Monae) and another set of twins (aimless young-adult sons).

Along the way toward the climax, the girls' banter is sharp and incisive, and the set pieces with the preacher and the lawyer are laugh-out-loud funny. Harris cleverly skewers religious fundamentalism and the criminal-justice system, on a broader mission herself to explore the moral implications of exacting vengeance for an unspeakable act. Despite the heavy themes, the film is often loose and fun, with Racine and Anaia mostly having a blast. We get to peel the layers of each twin and learn that there are a lot more differences than we suspected -- and not just the obvious physical disparity that has given Anaia a lifetime of angst over her looks. Racine might have the pretty face, but she also exhibits a dark side, eager to lash out at the slightest provocations.

This all skates along effortlessly until the final reel, and the showdown with their father's family. I'm not familiar with Harris' original play or her first draft of a screenplay, but I have to believe that a Hollywood producer intervened, demanding a decidedly Tarantino tilt to the final 20 minutes. Like Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood," the bloodbath veers off the rails, and a near-perfect movie turns into just another reckless action flick. Harris does wrap things up in a rational manner, and the denouement is a mere blip in a powerful film.

I LOVE BOOSTERS (Incomplete) - I guess Boots Riley just ain't my jam. I devoted a little over an hour to the latest provocation from the writer-director whose previous film, "Sorry to Bother You," also brought ham-handed lunacy to an anti-capitalist diatribe.

 

Candy-colored and slap-dash in production, "I Love Boosters" is an adolescent's idea of a polemic. It relies on a ridiculous mid-movie twist that is just as silly as the gimmicks Riley tossed out in "Sorry to Bother You." If you don't mind cartoons, contrived storytelling and far-fetched plot twists, then settle in. (And who am I to argue with a full house of millennials, who hooted and laughed throughout the screening this week.)

The Boosters, who steal couture clothes and resell them, are brash young women (depicted from left above), Sade (Naomie Ackie), Mariah (Taylour Paige) and Corvette (Keke Palmer), determined to outsmart the evil designer Christie Smith (a scrawny Demi Moore) and make rent money while dismantling the bourgeois system that exploits workers (in China) and brainwashes the masses. But the plot is almost beside the point; instead, the brash visuals dominate the proceedings. Riley seems to have taken his cues from childhood screenings of TV episodes of "The Monkees," both aesthetically and philosophically. Christie Smith works out of a high-rise apartment that is built on a slant, so it's difficult to keep one's footing at the 45-degree angle. Yes, it's that level of klever.  

Perhaps Riley's worst offense involves the sound mix. He commissions a corny circus-like soundtrack of tuneless noises from Tune-Yards, much of which obscures the dialogue, some of which is mumbled. I must have missed half the "jokes" here. There was nearly an hour left to endure, and I just couldn't bear to sit through the rest. I peeked at the Wikipedia plot summary, and I'm glad I bailed; it gets goofier.

It's a shame, because Palmer and the rest of her co-stars (including Lakeith Stanfield and Eiza Gonzales from "Baby Driver") are animated and committed. But too often they are tripping over Riley's awkward dialogue. Some people won't mind the mess. 

BONUS TRACKS

"Is God Is" uses music masterfully, with a wide range of genres and eras. A key car scene features Racine head-banging to Death Grip's "Guillotine": 

 

The film shares an energy with "Miss Me" by Leikeli47: 

 

The film reaches back for some '70s funk vibe, courtesy of the retro "Groovy Flute" by Manu Dibango:

 

Finally, a beautiful gospel song from the '60s, revived in 2012, Shirley Ann Lee with "There's a Light":

Just a Hunch

 

A PRIVATE LIFE (B-minus) - Jodie Foster is the perfect late-career star to shepherd this off-kilter light-hearted dramedy about a psychiatrist in Paris who feels compelled to investigate the suicide of one of her patients, with frustrating results. 

The movie is corny and derivative, but it is somehow held together by Foster -- speaking passable French as Dr. Lilian Steiner -- and by a weird puzzle-like structure that manages to cohere until its droll ending. It's almost an obsessive homage to not only old film noirs but also 1970s cop/private-eye TV shows like "Columbo," "Rockford Files," or "Police Woman." 

Foster's Lilian struggles to connect with or pay close attention to her clients. She insists on recording her sessions on digital tapes, despite the long-outdated nature of the technology. She reconnects with her ex-husband (a wonderfully wry Daniel Auteuil) and feuds with the dead patient's husband and daughter, played by the impeccable Mathieu Amalric ("If You Don't, I Will" and Wes Anderson ensembles) and wide-eyed Luanna Bajrami. The father and daughter understandably have issues with Lilian's treatment of a woman who was driven to suicide; Lilian doesn't buy the suicide story (an overdose from a prescription penned by Lilian) and suspects the father and/or daughter of murder.

Virginia Efira ("Madeleine Collins") is seen in flashbacks as the dead woman, Paula. The scenes from her therapy sessions have a dream-like quality, often including voice-overs, as if she is speaking from the grave. The tape of her final session goes missing, and the husband might be involved in a break-in at Lilian's office. There is also a disgruntled patient of Lilian's (Noam Morgensztern), who is suing her for years of pricey sessions wasted, when all it took for him to quit smoking was one session with a hypnotist. 

Lilian goes to visit the hypnotist, to be put under a spell (she is trying to cure the inexplicable onset of tears that beset her), and this is where the film wanders into the territory of a Woody Allen farce. Writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski is on thin ice with this and other trite touches that occasionally pop up along the way. (We get the requisite scene of Lilian distracting a worker in order to sneak into the files that include the name of Paula's aunt (the arresting Aurore Clement ("The New Girlfriend") in a cameo. Then she does a similar thing late in the film.) We also see Lilian, during her hypnotic trance, flashing back to Nazi-occupied Paris, where she and Paula play together in an orchestra and are lovers. Visually, Zlotowski is  fond of shooting up at or down from spiral staircases, in a lazy wink at Hitchcock.

In anticipation of this current release, we sampled the previous film by Zlotowski, "Other People's Children," which was watchable but which we found to be "tripping over the line between legitimate drama and Hallmark shmaltz." Here she has two co-writers. And most important, she has a game Foster, who does a fantastic job of rolling out a world-weary ennui disrupted by a genuine desire to prove her hunch (and to essentially uphold Lilian's professional reputation). Lilian also has a strained relationship with her son, Julien (Vincent Lacoste), and a Freudian aversion to her own grandchild.

It helps if you don't take this too seriously. It is an airy caper that doesn't always make sense. (The final reveal didn't need to be as confusing as it plays out, either.) But the puzzle does eventually come together, like a satisfying two-part episode of "Murder, She Wrote." 

BONUS TRACKS

From the film's climax, a little ditty from J.J. Cale, "Don't Go to Strangers":

 

And this snippet from the closing credits, "Wander 12" by Rob Lahana:

Doc Watch: Love and Death

 

ANDRE IS AN IDIOT (B+) - Andre Ricciardi is a loquacious bon vivant who waited too long to get a preventative colonoscopy. When he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in his early 50s, he decided to proudly and defiantly chronicle his final days, in this sharp and surprisingly upbeat documentary from newcomer Tony Benna.

 

They jump out of the gate with Andre talking into the camera about a masturbation mishap from his youth, and the honesty and raunch do not let up the rest of the way. Andre walks us through his diagnosis and treatment, and we join him on a journey of the acceptance of death. He comes across as unusually chipper, though he does not seem to be in denial. He and his best bud Lee (above right) subscribe to the theory of comedy which holds that nothing is sacred or off-limits when it comes to joking around.

Andre's wife -- they married as a green-card convenience for her and then fell in love -- and his two daughters help build a complex profile of a glib man who lent his talents to the advertising game and wasted too much of his down time indulging in alcohol and drugs. (Andre kind of looks and acts like the actor/skateboarder Jason Lee and sounds like Steve Carrel; his wife comes off as a soccer-mom version of Lisa Kudrow.) Andre's dad didn't want to participate, so he brings in Tommy Chong as a substitute to take bong rips with. 

Despite the dire diagnosis, the chemotherapy does a good job keeping him alive and relatively functional. He is surprisingly spry throughout, and you don't get the sense that he is just keeping a stiff upper lip for the camera. He is irreverent and refreshingly candid about the battering his body takes. (He relishes the idea at first of losing weight.) He takes us on his spiritual search, aided by an insightful therapist, rabidly curious about some sort of meaning of life before his time runs out.

Andre is a unique individual, an outsized personality and a worthy random subject for a film treatment. It's hard not to fall for this rascal or to laugh and cry with him all the way to the grave. 

MISTRESS DISPELLER (C) - Call me a skeptical grump, but I just did not buy the claim that this documentary, about a woman for hire in China who breaks up marital affairs, is on the level throughout. It is a slick, mannered portrait of a struggling couple trying to get through the husband's infidelity.

A disclaimer at the start of the film calls this a "real" case and says that nothing was "scripted" or "re-enacted." It says nothing about coached or manipulated. Or maybe the subtitles fluffed the dialogue? (IMDb reports that the production crew followed multiple couples over three years until they found one that stuck it out till the end and gave consent.) Either way, the film blends scenes with the production value of soap operas with glum, moody interludes heavy with artsy establishing shots. 

The various configurations of interactions here -- husband and wife (a Mr. and Mrs. Li); wife and mistress dispeller (a friend of the wife's cousin); mistress dispeller and Fei Fei (the other, younger woman), etc. -- play out in formal set pieces, with flawless dialogue and a striking lack of emotion. (A "Real Housewives" episode this is not.) I don't think this is merely some cultural quirk, where Chinese people are so cold, stiff, formal and forgiving. The pristine dialogue just beggars belief at times. Philosophizing about the mistress dispeller, the young mistress intones: "Her influence is like a gentle drizzle, soft and soundless." What non-actor speaks like that for the camera, let alone some random delivery woman? 

The main sin here, though, is that the members of the love triangle are so listless and uninteresting. There doesn't seem to be much at stake. This feels like a dedicated experiment in filmmaking by Elizabeth Lo, whose other feature follows stray dogs in Istanbul. (Lo also takes a writing credit here (curious), sharing it with Charlotte Munch Bengsten, an editor by trade.) I admire her perseverance, but maybe she should have realized at some point that her idea wasn't panning out like it ought to have. 

Meanwhile, the story drags on slowly, even though it runs only 94 minutes. Lo's camerawork is stilted, setting up sitcom-style with a lot of scenes taking place at a table during meals. The principals seem pushed into awkward conversations, none of which reveal much about them as people. The mistress dispeller manipulates situations in order to carry out her mission of weaning the husband and girlfriend off of each other. That's understandable. What I don't get is how this gets passed off as authentic when it is oddly sterile and just not entirely believable.