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 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 -- 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, with a ghost of a sampling 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; 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 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 clicked 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 dealing 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.  

Death's Door

 

RIMINI (2023) (B) - Richie Bravo's best days are behind him, and in middle age his gut is in front of him. He hangs out in Rimini, an Italian seaside resort town where only diehards come out in the winter, some of them to watch Bravo, a onetime Austrian pop star, belt out his corny Italian love songs. He makes money on the side sleeping with his older female fans for cash.

 

This film from Ulrich Seidl (the "Paradise" trilogy) has been described as darkly hilarious, but I found it pretty depressing, albeit headlined by a bumbling and self-aware lead, played by the actual crooner Michael Thomas, for whom Seidl wrote the film. Hanging over the antics of Bravo is the death of his mother at the beginning of the film and the physical/mental decline of his father, who withers away in a nursing home. 

And then there is Bravo's estranged daughter (Tessa Gottlicher), who appears in his life and is expecting payback (some of it literal) for having abandoned her and her mother for her entire childhood. She has a Muslim boyfriend, which is a challenge for Bravo, though you sense he is papering over his true feelings. (The dead town seems to have its share of street people, presumably immigrants.) The father-daughter face-off dominates the second half of the film. 

Bravo is a drunk and a hack -- he is not above hocking jewelry or renting out his house to make ends meet (or even deploying a little blackmail when desperate) -- but he still fashions himself as a stud in middle age. He keeps his hair long, sports a knee-length sealskin (or so he says) coat, and wears a girdle when he performs on stage (doing glorified karaoke featuring a cheap backing track). Most of the time he can still please a woman -- the sex among the geezers gets pretty graphic at times -- but his whiskey-dick too often betrays him. He knows that his fans are easy marks. His main slam is Annie (Claudia Martini), who is a tiger in bed but also must tend to her own dying mother who lives with her and needs a lot of attention. To watch two older people try to be porn stars under the literal shadow of death can be a haunting challenge for the viewer. 

I appreciated that depth of despair as much as the awkward humor that meandered throughout the lazily paced film. This could have been a more frivolous enterprise -- Thomas could have played Bravo more like The Dude in "The Big Lebowski" -- but instead Seidl crafted a bittersweet paean to the winter of our years.

TASTE OF CHERRY (1998) (B) - This Iranian classic has one of the best elevator pitches in cinema: a man intending to commit suicide drives around in his car in search of someone who will agree to bury him under a cherry tree. And this slow-paced, mostly ad-libbed film from Abbas Kiarostami delivers exactly what it promises, unfolding over 95 thoughtful minutes.

 

Homayoun Ershadi stars as Mr. Badii, a depressed man who never reveals the reason why he has dug his own grave and now seeks out a helper -- with a decent offer of money as payment for the helper's labors -- who would be tasked with checking on him in the morning and either fetching him out of the hole (if the suicide attempt did not succeed or was aborted) or shoveling 20 spadefuls of dirt on his dead body. Kiarostami, like his contemporary (and occasional collaborator) Jafar Panahi, shoots a lot of the scenes in Badii's car, as he makes his pitch first to a Kurdish soldier, then to a reluctant seminary student who objects on obvious religious grounds. 

It is not until he snares a taxidermy professor, Mr. Bagheri (Abdolrahman Bagheri), that he finds a willing accomplice. But Bagheri will give Badii much to consider, including a long fable about a different suicidal man who found the will to live after sampling a mulberry fruit and regaining his senses. Kiarostami gives us a lot of driving and talking, sometimes just hovering his camera at bird's-eye view and observing Badii's Range Rover navigating the rural dirt roads. That technique suggests the journey of life, as narrated by random Greek chorus members. And Ershadi (the only cast member to go on to have a full acting career), with his brooding leading-man looks, projects the perfect air of mystery and humanity.

Kiarostami's more recent films have included the so-so "Certified Copy" and "Like Someone in Love," after a heyday around the turn of the millennium with films like "Crimson Gold" and "The Wind Will Carry Us." Here, he is in a zone as a confident storyteller.

In an inverse of "Rimini," "A Taste of Cherry" takes this grim subject and plays out mostly as an absurd comedy, full of droll one-liners that don't come off as written jokes. I won't divulge the ending (what there is of one), but suffice it to say that Kiarostami's bold switch of narrative devices at the end continues to generate debates three decades after he shot it.  

BONUS TRACK

An interesting choice for the final credits of "A Taste of Cherry" is Louis Armstrong's "St. James Infirmary Blues":

New to the Queue

 After the gold rush ...

 

John Early (TV's "Search Party") writes, directs and stars (in drag) in this spoof of old movies-of-the-week, "Maddie's Secret."  

A documentary about one of the most impactful poets of recent vintage, "Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World."

Olivia Wilde's last outing was, by all accounts, a bust (after a solid debut with "Booksmart"), and we're willing to give her another try (lured by Penelope Cruz and Seth Rogen), the couples intrigue of "The Invite."

A look at the porn actress and cable-access pioneer of the 1970s, "Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story."

A young woman delves into the mystery of her parents' deaths, amid family secrets, in "Romeria." 

A Month of Fun Days

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

Doc Watch: But I Play One on TV ...

 

EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU FOR MONEY (B+) - Ben McKenzie seems like a nice guy. Good looking. Smart too. Wrote a book. And, hey, wasn't he that guy on "The O.C." 20 years ago? And Det. Gordon on "Gotham" 10 years ago? 

 

I wasn't familiar with McKenzie but he comes off as amiable and charming, and he has a degree in economics, so he's as good a person as any to turn a skeptical eye to the cryptocurrency market. McKenzie sets out to expose the flimsiness of the cryto schemes and dares the Doge bros to prove him wrong. Among his targets is a soft one, Sam Bankman-Fried (above left), who in retrospect seems like an obviously disturbed con man. (He ended up in prison.)

McKenzie brings a breezy, self-deprecating style to his fast-paced 90-minute documentary. He jumps out of the gate with a clever misdirection, and the comedic tone is set. He is fond of recording fans recognizing him out of context in the wild. He banters with an old buddy, whose curiosity about crypto helped inspire a book by McKenzie and this movie, filmed over several post-COVID years.

McKenzie knows a good hook when he sees one, and when you are married to Morena Baccarin ("Deadpool," TV's "Homeland"), you work her into the narrative. (She's good with a spousal side-eye.) Who am I to kick Morena Baccarin out of any movie; at times, though, her appearances come off as a humble-brag by the writer-director-star. He hangs out on the set of a movie starring Baccarin and Gerard Butler, proving the hunky leading man to offer an Everyman's opinion on the topic. (It also generates a typically droll one-liner from McKenzie, when he transitions to the next scene by intoning, "Maybe Gerard Butler was right.") However, McKenzie also feels the need to work his kids into the story, and that's where this spills into the self-indulgent. 

We watch McKenzie crash crypto events, expose potential charlatans and testify before Congress. I don't know enough about the topic to know which side is right and which is wrong, and you don't need to take a side to enjoy the film. You can be agnostic and appreciate McKenzie's genuine journalistic inquiry and get swept up in this obvious labor of love from an appealing guy. 

BONUS TRACK

From the end credits, "Joining a Cult" by Annika Norlin:

A Peek at Bleak Week

 

The Guild Cinema is participating in the downer of a global film festival, Bleak Week, with grim movies that are probably best viewed in pairs, lest the dark clouds of the soul overcome you. 

Bleak Week features some legendary titles -- about 300 of them, according to the AP -- from which independent cinemas can cherry-pick for screening during the coming week. We were there at the Guild to kick it off with a re-viewing of "Werckmeister Harmonies," the Bela Tarr epic from 2000. From its opening 11-minute single-shot scene -- and using just 39 leisurely paced shots across 140 minutes -- Tarr (who died earlier this year) and co-director Agnes Hranitsky examine the irrational actions of ignorant towns-folk who don't take kindly to a circus that is brought to town. 

"Werckmeister Harmonies" hits a little different two decades later -- now that we are living in a world of destructive know-nothings dismantling civil society. Lars Rudolph, as the sad-sack hero Janos, who sees the arrival of a whale exhibit as a wondrous example of God's work. The fluid camerawork results in some gorgeous revelations as scenes unfold glacially. It's a wonder of visual choreography. There is definitely a pall cast over this black-and-white Hungarian landscape, but the glimmers of humanity still peek through. If you want truly bleak, check out Tarr's "The Turin Horse."

Other titles at the Guild include one of our favorites, Werner Herzog's '70s romp "Stroszek," plus the 7-plus-hour "Satantango" (considered Tarr's masterpiece) and the "shocking" "Christiane F."

BONUS TRACK

From a key scene, "Valuska" by Vig Mihaly:

 

And another from Mihaly, "Kesz Az Egesz (It's All Done)":

New to the Queue

 New day rising ...

 

Glasgow residents rise up in an impromptu protest to protect immigrant neighbors from a police roundup, "Everybody to Kenmure Street."

Every generation gets the "Bonnie and Clyde" or "Natural Born Killers" it deserves: "Carolina Caroline."

Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson ("Summer of Soul") flashes back again for the biography of "Earth, Wind & Fire (To be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World)."

A randy 20-something and her depressed mother find themselves at an exotic couples resort, "Honeyjoon." 

A documentary about the Beatles-adjacent record producer to the '70s stars, "Peter Asher, Everywhere Man." 

BONUS TRACK

Our title track, from Husker Du's album of the same name:

On the Fringe

 

BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY (2024) (B+) - 48-year-old Etero seems to enjoy her independent life of relative solitude. She has no man to take care of; her oppressive father and brother have died; and she enjoys a big slab of cake whenever she wants. She has a near-death experience while out picking blackberries, and so she feels bold enough to begin a fling with the kind man who delivers cleaning products to her modest store in rural Georgia.

 

Etero (Eka Chavleishvilli) is overweight and masculine looking, but she gives up her virginity to a married man, Murman (Temiko Chichinadze), who eventually accepts a change in his route, putting their fling on hiatus. Etero is wide-eyed but wary of all those around her, especially the Greek chorus of biddies she hangs out with. She seems to have been object of curiosity her whole life, since her mother died in childbirth. The struggles taking care of her father and brother are mostly hinted at. 

 Director Elene Neveriani (writing with two others) spends nearly two hours peeling away the layers of her stoic heroine. I was reminded of Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening. Neveriani does not shy away from middle-aged nudity and the sexual antics of her ordinary stars. Her camera also alights on the the little wonders of nature, including the blackberries and blackbirds that give the film its title.

Chavleishvilli carries the film on her shoulders, as Etero always has a sharp comment to defuse a situation, no matter the context. A potential crisis arises late in the film, and her journey to the big city of Tbilisi appears to be the character's first ever adventure outside of her bubble. Of course, she insists on going it alone. She still fiercely guards her independence, but we now know that her walls are not impenetrable. 

ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT (2023) (B) - It rains a lot in this tone poem that cycles through the memory of a woman from girlhood to middle age.  It's all about atmosphere and random sounds and the touch of loved ones -- the types of images that your brain might fire off when looking back at your life. 

This is the debut feature of Raven Jackson, who clearly has a eye for powerful visuals. She is partial to intense close-ups, partial faces, characters' hands, the patter of rain -- lots of rain -- the bathing of a baby in the kitchen sink. It's as if she was able to capture her own dreams or flashes of memory from a therapy session. The sum total of all the dialogue in the film might fill about five pages of a script. 

 

Jackson might try your patience as she jumps back and forth in time across 92 minutes as she unspools the life of Mack (played by Kaylee Nicole Johnson as a youth, Charleen McClure as an adult) in the rural South. We track an on-again/off-again relationship with a would-be soulmate, Wood, and piece together the other highlights of her life, from an opening scene fishing with her father to her time approaching middle age.

The centerpiece is a wordless eight-minute scene between Mack and Wood. In the middle of that scene, a hug that lasts three minutes, an eternity on screen. That interlude, along with a scene of young Mack's parents dancing in the house to and R&B dusty, can bring to mind Charles Burnett's foundational independent film "Killer of Sheep." In the end, Jackson does not quite have the command that Burnett had and his confidence in crafting a compelling narrative. 

BONUS TRACKS

The climax of "Blackbird" features a variation on the Georgian song "Gamodi," here interpreted by Georgia's alternative-music artist Robi Kukhianidze of the punk band Outsider:

 

The soundtrack also features a Big Band-era song called "Gamodi" by Lili Gegelia:

 

"All Dirt Roads" features a luminous scene of young Mack's parents dancing to "If I Were Your Woman" by Gladys Knight & the Pips:

The Watchdogs

 

STEAL THIS STORY, PLEASE! (A) - This pristine profile of the dogged reporter Amy Goodman and her 30-year radio polemic "Democracy Now" is also an urgent ode to old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism. It provides a polished gloss to Goodman's gritty low-fi style across a career holding the powerful accountable.

 

Directed by the distinguished team of Carl Deal (Michael Moore's longtime producer) and Tia Lessin ("The Janes," "Trouble the Water"), "Steal This Story, Please!" (the title nods to open-source information like the Creative Commons) is a lively retrospective of Goodman's career as a noodge to those in power and the voice of oppressed people the world over. The film starts with her chasing a dodgy Trump official through an airport, an homage to her tenacious reporting methods and her cardio fitness.

Deal and Lessin then ground Goodman's back story in her harrowing reporting from the front lines of the 1991 siege of East Timor by Indonesia's military junta. Goodman and her producer, Allan Nairn, were attacked, and 271 democracy protesters died in gunfire. Archival footage from that event and from "Democracy Now's" fledgling early days propel the narrative, while talking heads fill in blanks and tell compelling stories. Key colleagues -- Juan Gonzalez (whose roots going back to student activism are chronicled here), Nermeen Shaikh, Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous -- bear witness to the many struggles and successes of the seat-of-the-pants operation that started out with 9 affiliates and now is carried by 1,400 radio and TV stations worldwide.

At the core is Goodman, a disciple of Phil Donahue, and a beacon of pure journalistic integrity, if there ever was one, albeit one with an aggressively progressive political leaning. There is no doubting her devotion; long based in New York City, her studio was just a few blocks away from the Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks, and she insisted on hunkering down amid the dust and smoke, lest she leave and not be let back into the restricted area. She has no compunction about hounding the first President Bush and asking him what he thinks of being labeled a war criminal. When President Clinton phones the studio for a a few minutes of pre-scripted Election Day get-out-the-vote happy talk, Goodman harangues him for a half hour, pushing his buttons at every turn -- creating riveting news that every other radio hack ignored.

Every moment of the 98-minute running time is essential, entertaining, and thought-provoking. You might disagree with Goodman's politics, but I don't know how you can take issue with her watchdog bona fides. The film provides example after example of journalistic courage and integrity, and by silent comparison, indicts the rest of the media landscape in America. "Steal This Film" has the zing of Michael Moore's polemic exercises but ditches the whimsy for matters of life-or-death, such as her expose of Chevron's deadly dealings with Nigeria's military. 

Despite all the heavy topics, Goodman's plucky personality buoys the film. We bop along with her and her faithful dog Zazu (named not for the "Lion King" character but for the French youth who resisted Nazi occupation in World War II) as she shows no sign of slowing down as she approaches age 70. (Goodman and Zazu are touring the country with the film, stopping in Albuquerque for two screenings Memorial Day weekend, and speaking eloquently after the matinee.) As a pal used to say while promoting "Democracy Now" on the local public radio station, where Goodman's production followed his music show -- and with a nod to Modest Mouse -- this is good news for people who love bad news.

MUSCLE BEACH (B-minus) - A movie about muscle-bound meatheads should not be this contemplative and artsy. It all revolves around the mystery of a missing person at Venice Beach and the scourge of illegal drugs circulating among bodybuilders.

 

The chiseled Ike Catcher (above right) stars as Abe, a good guy beloved on the boardwalk who is hunting for clues about the disappearance of his best friend, Jay. Does it have something to do with the tainted drugs going around? Or perhaps a shady real estate deal? 

Writer-director Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman, in his feature debut, teams with cinematographer Doug Frerichs to capture the people and the vibe of Venice Beach's mix of bodybuilders, tourists, freaks, and vendors. They have a keen eye for trippy visuals, luxuriating over the water and sky. They also mix in retro footage from bodybuilder competitions and other ephemera. And their camera loves Catcher, who is a bumbling but charming mix of Lou Ferrigno and Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the handsome looks and towering physique of Aaron Judge.  

Abe glad-hands and back slaps with some authentic iron-pumpers at Muscle Beach (this is often a quasi-documentary), and he makes time with Jay's bitter abandoned baby mama, Alice (a wonderfully snarky Lindsey Normington from "Anora"). He also schmoozes with dealmaker Chase, played by Kirk Baltz, who will go down in film history for his role as the cop tortured by Michael Madsen in "Reservoir Dogs."

The story sometimes has the thin feel of a made-for-TV gumshoe flick, but Hurwitz-Goodman has an ear for off-kilter dialogue, and the core cast is totally dialed in. It's worth straying off the beaten path to experience this curiosity.

BONUS TRACKS

The trailers:

 

Auteur, Auteur

 A pair of films from two of our favorite storytellers, screened this month at the Guild Cinema.

 

THE STRANGER (B+) - It is no easy task to convert Albert Camus' 1942 novel L'Etranger to the screen, but this lush adaptation by Francois Ozon dives smoothly into the narrative and the mid-century era using crisp, tactile black and white.

 

Benjamin Voisin, as the anti-hero Meursault, is more male model than brooding cipher, but he gets the job done as emotionally vacant man who shoots an Arab in 1940s Algeriers for no apparent reason. (I suppose  he can kind of complain that the sun was in his eyes.) Rebecca Marder ("The Crime Is Mine") brings depth of character as the love interest Marie. And Pierre Lottin provides the passion as the suspected pimp Raymond Sintes. 

Ozon takes his time setting the table, following Meursault to his mother's funeral (at the retirement home he had consigned her to), where he can't be brought to tears. That will be one of the absurd assertions used by the prosecution at Meursault's murder trial, as an example of the gunman's heartless nature. Ozon spends two dreamlike hours on Camus' narrative, cutting back and forth among the young couple's love story, Meursault's grimy incarceration, and the circus trial, turning the production into a bit of a shaggy-dog tale.   

The director luxuriates in languorous images as if re-enacting a classic film noir.  He is especially partial to camera shots of light sources streaming down from above. He shoots the sun from underwater, and a beam of light filtering into a prison cell. One angle, from the perspective of a light fixture, is transfixing.  

I haven't read the book in ages (it's on the list), and I haven't seen other adaptations. But this is a mostly faithful rendering, and visually it is a modest work of art.

MIROIRS NO. 3 (B) - Paula Beer has been the star of the past four movies of Christian Petzold (and also Ozon's "Frantz"), going back to "Transit" in 2018, and she's up to the challenge again in an understated tale of a woman recovering from a car crash that killed her boyfriend.

In a photo negative of "Misery," Beer's Laura is doted on by Betty (Barbara Auer), who is estranged from her own husband and son, both of whom work as mechanics in town. Betty showers attention on Laura, who suffered only minor injuries. Laura seizes the opportunity to reset her life -- a pianist back in Berlin, she was unhappy with her jerk of a boyfriend, and she has no good reason to mourn. She revels in the mundane tasks of rural life -- painting a fence, snipping flowers, cooking dinner. 

It becomes clear early on that Betty is the one struggling with grief, and she is using Laura as a substitute to salve her own loss. While the details of that are withheld until the final third of the movie, Petzold supplies plenty of clues, and he is in no mood to cook up mystery or suspense. Instead, he is content to train his camera on Beer as Laura's trauma thaws and she inches toward a reckoning with her former existence. Meantime, Laura is a lure for Betty's son, Max (Enno Trebs), and a reason for Betty's husband, Richard (Matthias Brandt), to try to bond again with his distant wife. 

If that sounds messy, it's not. Petzold zips this along in 86 minutes. He employs a brief snippet of Chopin to encapsulate the sorrow and discord of all of his characters at once. He himself is working in a minor key these days -- the casual pace of the film matches that of "Afire" from 2023 -- but what he lacks in flashy plot twists he makes up for in tangible storytelling. 

BONUS TRACK

Chopin's Prelude in e-minor, Op. 28, No. 4:

  

Ozon goes for an obvious choice for his closing credits, jerking us into the modern era with the Cure's "Killing an Arab": 

Doc Watch: That's Entertainment

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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