New York Punks

 

BUNNY (B+) - The plot goes off the rails by the end, but at a compact 90 minutes this hectic day-in-the-life romp about apartment dwellers dealing with an unexpected dead body revels in its wild characters and is packed with laughs. 

Mo Stark plays the stringy-haired Bunny, a street hustler who is having a trying day. (The opening scene shows him sprinting through the city streets and then changing his clothes, so you know something has gone down.) Stark has the raw manic energy of Simon Rex in "Red Rocket," and he gives Bunny the patter of a recovering drug addict. The dead body that he's responsible for on the fifth-floor landing (it's a bad guy, so we don't feel bad) is ruining his birthday, cock-blocking the gift of a threesome his wife, Bobbie (Liza Colby), has arranged for him. The apartment building is crawling with crazy characters, including a Chinese woman who barely speaks English and a trio of young women planning their own party on the third floor. Bobbie's estranged father, Loren (Tony Drazen), has decided to drop in that day, and the residents get him high to alleviate the awkwardness of the father-daughter reunion.

 

The secret weapon here is Ben Jacobsen, who directed this rager, co-wrote it with Stark and one other, and steals the show as Dino, Bunny's best bud and fellow schemer. Sporting a platinum buzz-cut, he delivers some of the juiciest one-liners with a deadpan stoner delivery. This is Jacobsen's feature debut, and he shows a steady hand and a command of the urban chaos unspooling in the claustrophobic setting. The deep talent of the cast extends to a couple of New York's finest, two suitably incurious officers played wonderfully drolly by Ajay Naidu (Samir from "Office Space") and Liz Caribel Sierra.

As noted, the plot jumps the shark in the second half (another body turns up and gets stuffed into a suitcase), and plausibility is strained, but by then you are hooked, and the dash to the finish is clever enough and consistently funny. It's a crazy day in the big city, and the time flies by.

SMITHEREENS (1982) (B+) - Susan Seidelman ("Desperately Seeking Susan") splashed with this sharp character study of a runaway on New York's Lower East Side trying to scam her way through the waning punk scene of the day.

The low-budget DIY ethic has a meta tinge to it, as Seidelman's characters wink at the fact that by the early '80s, the punk/new-wave scene was dwindling in New York and migrating to Los Angeles. Susan Berman, with a mop of kinky hair, stars as Wren, a teenage escapee from New Jersey who is months behind on her rent while she stalks various bands in order to punch her ticket to the rock world (as a manager? a groupie?). She sports the style of the day, including a houndstooth vinyl miniskirt and matching checkered sunglasses that she swiped from a sap in the subway. She papers the neighborhood with fliers depicting her mimeographed image and the words "Who is this?"

 

Wren uses her wiles to try to seduce a pouty fading punk, Eric, played by Richard Hell of the real-life Heartbreakers and Voidoids. Pining for her is Paul (Brad Rijn), who has ventured from Montana in a beat-up van, which he lives in, in an empty lot, with a gaggle of prostitutes as his neighbors. Wren strings along the naive Paul (by this time she is evicted and needs a place to crash) while she pursues the philandering Eric, whom she sees as her ticket to the L.A. scene.  

Seidelman shoots guerrilla-style along the grimy streets of Manhattan, in grubby apartment units, and at the trendy Peppermint Lounge. She deftly captures the longing of a smart young woman eager to rush toward full womanhood.  The traditional love triangle gets a gruff '80s makeover, where no plot element succumbs to the traditional format. The cast is raw but effective. One sex worker (Katherine Riley) nearly steals the whole movie with the lethargic moves she puts on a reluctant Paul in the front seat of his van. The scene is an instant classic.

Will Wren hone her street smarts into a successful con game? Does she deserve to succeed? Seidelman, whose edge would dull by the end of the decade (see "She-Devil"), will keep you guessing till the end.

BONUS TRACKS

The Feelies provide the core of the "Smithereens" soundtrack with selections from their 1980 album "Crazy Rhythms." Here is "The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness":

 

The Feelies' "Loveless Love" mimics the jangled psyche of Wren:

 

"Bunny" sports an eclectic retro soundtrack, culminating in "Give Me Daughters" from Jonathan Fire Eater, a post-punk revivalist band from the '90s that morphed into the Walkmen:

 

The Stalkers' "In Your Street Today" has a throwback garage energy that syncs well with "Bunny's" frenzy:

 

"Bunny" kicks off with a '70s flashback to Garland Jeffreys' FM anthem "Wild in the Streets":

The Altman Universe: Odd Woman Out

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

BONUS TRACK

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

  1.  Nashville

  2.  McCabe & Mrs. Miller

  3.  MASH

  4.  The Long Goodbye

  5.  The Player

  6.  Short Cuts 

  7.  3 Women

  8.  A Wedding

  9.  California Split 

 10. A Prairie Home Companion

 11. Gosford Park

Doc Watch: The Unraveling

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BONUS TRACKS 

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

 

Heart, "Crazy on You": 

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

 

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

New to the Queue

 Fixing a hole where the rain came in ...

Our guy Matt Johnson ("Operation Avalanche," "BlackBerry") is back with another Canadian romp, "Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie."

A relationship comedy from Canadian Sook-Yin Lee, "Paying for It."

An Iraqi girl is chosen to bake a treat for Saddam Hussein in the debut feature "The President's Cake."

From Colombia, a tragi-comedy about a washed-up loser, "A Poet."

A documentary about the hit-making keyboard whiz, "Billy Preston: That's the Way God Planned It."

Holy Crap!* And Don't Call Me Shirley

 

It was with trepidation that I returned to the "Naked Gun" universe, which I first wallowed in when the Leslie Nielsen TV spoof "Police Squad" had an improbable, silly run of a mere six episodes on ABC in 1982.

 

The comedy was beyond sophomoric but the silly wordplay had a charm coming out of the mouth of Nielsen, who until then had been a journeyman serious actor. This was the brainchild of the Zucker brothers (Jerry and David) and Jim Abrahams, who started the mayhem with 1980s "Airplane!" (the source of our headline reference). Typical dialogue, after a female is apprehended, has the police captain ordering two officers to "take her away and book 'er." Then Nielsen's Frank Drebin introduces himself to the pair of officers: "Sgt. Takeraway. [Shakes hands.] Sgt. Booker." And scene. 

That's hilarious when you are a teenager with few defenses. Nielsen took the franchise to the big screen in three movies that suffered from debilitating diminishing returns. I'm pretty sure I saw only the first one -- "Nice beaver!" -- but had bailed out by the third, which was more than 30 years ago.

 

For no apparent reason, Andy Samberg's Lonely Island pal, Akiva Schaffer, and two co-writers dusted off the franchise and thought they could replicate it. Now starring Liam Neeson, as Frank Drebin Jr., the childish toilet humor falls flat on the screen. It is painful to watch. Hmm. Have I matured? Is this a shtick that just can't be replicated without Abrahams and the Zuckers? (Was it never funny? Nah, can't be.) There's actually an attempted joke in which a character confuses the word "manslaughter" with "man's laughter" -- whoa, Nelly, what a yuk! I got over that pun by fifth grade.

The execution is jaw-droppingly bad. It's not just the juvenile script that flops. Neeson is a dud playing against type as a would-be comedian. He is surrounded by painfully unfunny folks, like Pamela Anderson (standing in for Priscilla Presley and her stuffed beaver), Danny Houston and Paul Walter Hauser. Only Weird Al Yankovic manages a few laughs in an extended cameo (and the final word after the credits.) 

But every scene is a slog, and you can hear the jokes plummeting to the floor and landing like wet bags of sand. Or like turkeys dropped from a helicopter. There are 12 producers credited, including Seth MacFarlane, which might explain some of this mess. As well as the obsession with fart jokes and exploding diarrhea. Would you believe they trot out the ol' gag about scrolling through hours of lapel-camera video showing Drebin engaging in a parade of embarrassing activities? And they beat gags deep into the ground. Cops like coffee? Let's try 26 sight-gags about Drebin carrying or being handed a coffee cup. One visual involves Drebin being spied on as he hangs out with Anderson's femme fatale, and the first image is amusing -- but then the scene goes on for a full minute, repeating the same joke. Say what you will about Abraham-Zucker, but at least they had studied their Marx Brothers.

The violence is cartoonish but disturbing nonetheless; Drebin Jr. rips a man's arms off and then beats him with them. Har-dee-har. The plot is thin, even for something this ridiculous. I could go on, but ugh. It was pointless to bring this franchise back; it's just as pointless for me to go on.

GRADE for "The Naked Gun": D

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.

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

 

Generation X is in a millennial slump. 

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

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

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

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

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

This doesn't take into account:

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

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

***

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

THE TOP 15 of '25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JUST MISSED THE LIST

(Honorables mentioned)

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

 

MORE TOP DOCS 

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

 

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

 

TOP PERFORMANCES

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

 

GUILTY PLEASURES

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

 

THE LEFTOVERS

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

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

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

 

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

(Well, maybe this time it is you. 

Some of our favorites let us down.)

 

• (See above)

COMING ATTRACTIONS

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

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

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

Marriage Counseling, Part 2: Guy Walks Into a Bar

 

IS THIS THING ON? (B+) - There were times while watching Bradley Cooper's bracing portrait of a failing marriage when I thought, "This is as brilliant as a movie gets." But every so often a plot glitch took me out of the zone, and by the time the credits rolled, it was clear that his ending was undeserved.

But Cooper and his star, Will Arnett, lay it all out there as Arnett's Alex spills his guts, initially onstage as an accidental open-mic standup comic and later in his battles with wife Tess (Laura Dern) and others, in a well-packed ensemble comic drama. The secret weapon is actually Cooper himself, who steals the show as Balls, Alex's space-cadet actor buddy; the screen gets a jolt every time Cooper (almost unrecognizable at first in beard and glasses) bursts into a scene. 

 

Balls and his wife, Christine (R&B singer Andra Day, very strong), join a gay couple as a Greek-chorus counterpart to the dysfunction of Alex and Tess, a former volleyball standout who is feeling rudderless as a soccer mom and who is being called back to the sports world as a potential Olympics coach. It is not easy to waste the talents of Laura Dern, but here she is unconvincing in an underwritten role. She just doesn't scan as a star athlete, and her ex-jock angst comes out of left field. (Pushing 60, she seems miscast as a mom of 10-year-olds, and she is way past her prime to be bemoaning her glory days on the court.)

Cooper does create an authentic world, one teeming with genuine relationships, whether it's the three couples who gather at a vacation retreat at the beginning of the film and again a year later at the end, or Alex and Tess with their sons, or Alex falling into bed with a fellow comedian during his break from Tess. Cooper, in fact, shows a keen appreciation for the open-mic standup scene. He casts real comics, including Amy Sedaris as the mother hen of the group and Jordan Jensen as the love interest. But his choice of former quarterback Peyton Manning as a potential distraction for Tess comes off as gimmicky. There also is one of those huge movie coincidences late in the film that provides a shaky fulcrum for the final reel and eventual resolution.

Cooper so far has had mixed results in helming Big Projects; compare "A Star Is Born" with "Maestro." It helps here that he cedes the lead role to Arnett, who exudes a raw authenticity and proves that he has the chops beyond clowning on smart TV shows like "Arrested Development" and "Bojack Horseman." The close-ups are intense throughout; Arnett's face often fills the entire screen, such that you can start to count his whiskers. 

Cooper is probably revered as an "actor's director," and the cast here brings a boatload of talent to the workshopped scenes. He makes good use of Christine Ebersole and Ciaran Hinds as Alex's parents, and he has an understated Sean Hayes on hand, as part of the third friend couple, to provide a bit of a conscience for Alex. Everyone gets an A for group effort.

As noted above, this had the potential to be the best movie of the year. Maybe with a younger filmmaker I'd be more forgiving and grade on a curve. But a more indie filmmaker also might have had the courage to really take the gloves off and present a disintegrating marriage as a true shit-show, rather than this mainstream feel-bad romance. Perhaps a woman might have dug deeper with Dern into Tess' angst. All told, I have a hunch that, despite the flaws on display here, a second viewing might deepen my appreciation for what this team pulls off, in the end.

Marriage Counseling, Part 1: We Need to Talk About J-Law

 

DIE MY LOVE (B+) - The feral director Lynne Ramsay recruits a star to match her ferocity, as she unleashes Jennifer Lawrence onto the screen as a writer and unfulfilled wife who gradually descends into an apparent psychosis.

 

Lawrence dives deep into the role of Grace, who is dragged to rural Montana by her layabout husband, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), to inhabit an old house willed by Jackson's uncle, just down the road from her mother-in-law. Soon they are joined by an adorable baby, which can't quash Grace's carnal cravings, which Jackson mostly ignores. Grace is also nagged by Jackson and others who wonder why she has not returned to writing. The husband disappears on work trips, leaving her feeling abandoned (but apparently not trapped with the baby) and bored (and perhaps imagining infidelities), and when he is around, he does stupid things like adopt a loud, annoying dog for Grace to have to clean up after.

Ramsay, working with two writers to adapt a book by Ariana Harwicz, presents this as more than a case of post-partum depression. Grace's woes are nuanced and complicated, and perhaps they cannot be explained at all. Several scenes show her on hands and knees, slinking like a panther. More than once she hinges at the hips and flops over in half, like a rag doll (or a fentanyl addict). She claws at the wallpaper in the claustrophobic shack. Lawrence's blank face speaks volumes in a simple shot of Grace letting her forehead fall against a glass door. At times Grace wields weapons -- a butcher's knife, a shotgun -- but she is not a danger to those around her; she's a conundrum.

We see flashbacks of Grace trying to communicate with Jackson's senile father (Nick Nolte) and back in the present day failing to click with Jackson's mother, Pam (a compelling Sissy Spacek, reminding us that she invented this genre). There is just no one on her wavelength -- not even her readers -- unless you count a mystery motorcyclist (Lakeith Stanfield) who could just be a figment of her imagination, out there in nowheresville.

Ramsay is known for her gritty character studies, like Tilda Swinton coming to grips with a psychopathic son in "We Need to Talk About Kevin," or her masterpiece about a young woman (Samantha Morton) who thinks nothing of stealing her dead partner's novel in "Morvern Callar." But she also be off-key, like with the intense "You Were Never Really Here" from 2017. With "Die My Love" (only her fifth feature), she brings out amazing interplay between Lawrence and Pattison, some of it certainly improvised. They are the kind of performances that haunt actors for months or years afterward. But Ramsay also trips a few Stephen King tropes by wallowing in the psychosis of an anti-hero with writer's block or just a plain old crazy chick in a stylized horror movie.

The film struggles to pin down a raison d'etre, even if it is compelling visually and propelled by an eclectic soundtrack. (The couple has a turntable and a fun album collection.) Maybe it worked better as a novel, but across two hours on screen it can feel jumbled. (The flashbacks can be confusing.) The film begins and ends with an inferno, and in between Lawrence burns like an out-of-control wildfire. Yet there were plenty of times when Grace came across as the rational one surrounded by soulless zombies. Few can match the passion and intensity of the filmmaker and star, but were Ramsay and Lawrence even on the same page about the story they were trying to tell and the point they were trying to make? 

BONUS TRACKS

The soundtrack is wide-ranging and worth the price of admission itself. Ramsay wrote some songs with George Vjestica and Raife Burchell, and sings here on "Fire," which opens the movie:

 

The film is also bookended by renditions of "In Spite of Ourselves" by John Prine and Iris Dement:

 

There's David Bowie's "Hunky Dory" deep cut "Kooks":

 

And finally, some groovy '60s hip-swinging, "Paladium (The Hip)" by Liz Brady:

The Ballad of John & Yoko ... and May

 

ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO (A) - I ordered the new Yoko Ono biography from the library, and it was available for pickup on December 8th, the 45th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. The anniversary fell on a Monday, just like the date in 1980, when late at night my sister poked her head into my bedroom to tell me that Howard Cosell had announced the shocking news on "Monday Night Football." 

Forty-five years later, I spent the week reliving that surreal experience of my senior year (which also involved the election of Ronald Reagan). I skipped ahead in David Sheff's book to the run-up to and aftermath of the assassination by Mark David Chapman. And I also dove back to the New York of Lennon's era thanks for the truly mesmerizing deep-dive documentary "One to One" from Kevin Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland") and editor Sam Rice-Edward, with writer Clare Keogh. It is a fascinating immersion into the early '70s -- not just an examination of Lennon and Ono during their militant period but a granular sampling of American culture during a turbulent time. It all leads up to Lennon's only true post-Beatles solo concert, the One to One benefit for special-needs children, performed in Madison Square Garden in August 1972.

 

The filmmakers masterfully curate both familiar and obscure cultural moments from 1972 and 1973, mostly in New York. They brilliantly edit rarely seen footage -- including from Lennon's home life in a Greenwich Village apartment -- into an intoxicating montage. Even the most devoted Lennon fan will find something new here. The exhilarating filmmaking makes the music -- drop-ins from the couple's One to One concert, including "Cold Turkey" and "Come Together" -- again feel fresh and urgent. 

We listen in on the phone calls that Lennon obsessively recorded -- whether it is planning an anti-war national tour with rabble-rouser Jerry Rubin, or Yoko explaining to their manager how to dispatch underlings to gather up flies for her latest art project. We see archival footage of the couple soaking up the vibe of New York City at its grungiest. The filmmakers re-create the Lennons' small Village apartment, with a droning TV prominently featured (Lennon was addicted to the tube). 

The seemingly random archival footage -- gleaned from new reports, TV commercials and truly obscure sources -- replicate the maelstrom of the era. The events fly by chronicling Vietnam, hijackings, the Yippies, an election year, Watergate, street crime, FBI surveillance, political assassination attempts, Geraldo Rivera's expose of a mental institute for children. That last story inspired Lennon and Ono to stage the One to One concert as a benefit. Macdonald pairs the live performance of "Imagine" with clips of mentally handicapped children frolicking in a park at a huge picnic. During "Instant Karma" ("We all shine on") we see clips from Vietnam (bombs falling, dead bodies, Hanoi Jane) interspersed with footage of Nixon dancing with his daughter at her wedding.

The spiral into the minutiae of 1972 and '73 is dizzying. We meet the infamous man, A.J. Weberman, who went through Bob Dylan's garbage. (Dylan is generally portrayed as a capitalist sellout by this point, though still the godfather of the antiwar movement.) We see Lennon and Ono attending the first International Feminist Planning Conference in Salem, Mass., blurry super-8 images of the gamboling couple and local haunts whizzing by. There is Allen Ginsberg reading his poem about bathroom hygiene. Later, he is om'ing with Walter Cronkite from the floor the Democratic National Convention. It is all edited to mimic Lennon channel surfing between news reports (the bank heist that inspired "Dog Day Afternoon" for example) or ads or show clips. 

Lennon and Ono make their peace pitch to middle America, hanging out on the talk-show circuit with Mike Douglas and Irv Kupcinet. On a recorded phone call, Lennon starts distancing himself from the anti-war radicals; he was always a bit of a coward when things got dicey. Wherever they went, he and Ono were baring their souls in their pursuit of an elusive utopia. This collage of sights and sounds captures a very specific time and place, an era that is now so long ago. It was the first unraveling I would witness as a kid, during a decade that ended with gunshots. 

THE LOST WEEKEND: A LOVE STORY (B-minus) - May Pang, who famously kept John Lennon company in Los Angeles in 1974 after Yoko Ono kicked him out of the Dakota Building, oversees this insider peek into the ex-Beatle who was spiraling out of control. It suffers from cheap production values but it's full of heart and filled with exclusive photos, drawings and videos from that time.

Pang was barely 20 when she started working for Allen Klein's ABKCO, the Beatles' publisher at the time, and in 1973 she moved on to work full-time for Lennon and Ono, who had just moved to the Dakota Building from Greenwich Village. (She did a lot of production work on Ono's avant-garde films.) Lennon was drinking and philandering, and the generally accepted story was that Yoko kicked him out and ordered Pang to accompany him, apparently not caring if they slept together. (Ono had her own fling during this time.)

Pang's narration comes across as naive but earnest, and her story feels like more truth than myth. This was both Lennon's drunken "lost weekend" but also a fertile time for him -- making the "Rock 'n' Roll" album with Phil Specter and writing and recording "Walls and Bridges," one of his best. He wrote "Fame" with David Bowie and scored his first solo No. 1 single with Elton John's help -- "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" was inspired by a late-night TV preacher's sermon.

As Pang notes, it was Lennon's first real opportunity to explore America, and we see him bopping around the Southwest as well as relaxing by the Pacific Ocean. Pang narrates (and provides video evidence of) Lennon's reunions with son Julian and ex-wife Cynthia and a "Rock 'n' Roll" jam session with Paul McCartney. She witnesses the debauchery with the Hollywood Vampires -- Harry Nilsson, Alice Cooper, Keith Moon, Bernie Taupin, Micky Dolenz and Ringo Starr. We see clips of his "Mind Games" TV advertisement and his first L.A. interview with Elliot Mintz for local Channel 7. We learn that Lennon adored his cats, one black and one white, named Major and Minor, after the piano keys. She was on the rooftop in New York for the famous rooftop photo session of Lennon in his sleeveless New York City T-shirt.

The production level throughout the documentary is on a par with a VH-1 special. She cannot afford the rights to Lennon's songs, so we get Eddie Money and the Raspberries instead. Julian Lennon is a key contributor, and his stories are quite touching when twinned with Pang's determination to fashion this as an old-fashioned love story. Despite the obstacles in her path, she succeeds.

BONUS TRACKS

A grinding live version of "Come Together," with Lennon replacing "over me" with "Stop the war!":

 

A snippet of Lennon, discussing performing live as a Beatle, from an interview on "Kup's Show" on WGN in 1972:

 

A gorgeous, haunting piano ballad from Ono, released in January 1973 -- shown in "One to One" along with grainy black-and-white footage from Salem, Mass., and a car trip back to New York City -- "Looking Over From My Hotel Window":

 

This one rolls over the closing credits of "One to One," "Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple)": 

 

Lennon wrote "Surprise, Surprise" for May Pang in 1974:

 

And Julian Lennon contributed to "The Lost Weekend" soundtrack with the shimmery "Saltwater":

Doc Watch: Birdbrain

 

LISTERS (A-minus) - A hat tip to SlashFilm for alerting us to this DIY documentary by a couple of stoners who decided to go birdwatching for a year and compete for the honor of spotting the most birds in 2024. It is a no-budget gem and a hoot from start to finish.

 

Owen Reiser (above right) is the man behind the camera, handling a lot of narration. Quentin Reiser, rockin' a porn 'stache and bed-head mullet, is the engaging star of the show. They set out in a 2010 Kia Sedona minivan, tricked out with a bunk-bed so they don't need hotel rooms, and will cover most of the country over 12 months. They have a special affinity for Cracker Barrel, which allows them to park overnight in their lots without having to buy a meal, even while, on one occasion, they observe a body being removed from the restaurant ("From the grits to the gallows," the boys solemnly observe).

The Reisers are pretty sharp guys (they are quick studies when it comes to identifying birds by sight and sound), but they like to play goofy for the camera. They respect the birding world for the most part, though they do have a little fun at the expense of those who might take it a little too seriously. They sit at the feet of the GOATS among the Big birders, David and Tammy McQuade, whose armchair reminiscences are entertaining. But make no mistake: the brothers are here to amuse us. Call it "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 3."

Everything that could pass through the mind of a 12-year-old boy is fair game here. The brothers' Beavis and Butt-head banter shows an appreciation for the classics, like "Thrasher? I barely know 'er." They observe that calling a bird a dickcissel sounds like a putdown (especially when you pronounce it "dicksissy"). A fellow traveler pens an ode to "tits, cocks, suckers and boobies." The brothers refer to a trogon as a "trojan." When they spot a sandpiper they note, "That thing was pipin' sand all day!" At times, the comments approach the sublime; one bird is described as "holding its wings like theater kids hold their arms." 

The visuals are striking throughout. It's not clear whether all the wonderful bird visuals were taken by them (the credits list a host of "contributers" and five camcorder operators), but the cinematography is stunning at times, on a par with the best nature documentaries. Along the way, the brothers roll out crude but effective graphics. They have jaunty descriptive identifiers for the people they run across, like "looks kinda Amish"; when they incorporate their hockey buddies into a scene, one of them is ID'd by his goals-against stats. They have a serious side, too, though. They conduct investigative journalism into birders who have cheated and padded their counts. (There is an honor system among the bird-counting "listers" of the title.) They distort voices and blur out faces; at one point, they playfully blur out the face of a dog. The mix of absurdism and earnestness is deeply charming. 

The Reisers develop an appreciation for the avian heroes of nature. They discuss how the sound of the common nighthawk reminds them of soccer practice as kids. Clocking a particular striking bird in the wild, one of them notes:  "I'd run through a brick wall for that bird." They explore the idea that the use of phone apps and the intense competition might kill the true spirit of birding. One talking head, Hannah Toutonghi, serves as a sort of zen conscience of the film through discussions about the ethical nature of birding.

It is all entertaining and informative, silly and thought-provoking. It very likely is the best film of 2025 that you've never heard of.

Here is the YouTube link. 

BONUS TRACK

Our title track, courtesy of Buffalo Tom:

On the Edge

 

PEACHES GOES BANANAS (C+) - The passionate dance-punk artist Peaches gets the documentary treatment here as she approaches 60, still sexually daring and provocative. The musician who named an album Fatherfucker and whose big hit was titled "Fuck the Pain Away" has barely lost a step, but this film does only glancing justice to her music and career.

 

The cameras mostly follow her along a tour of Europe in recent years. But we get little live audio, as if the filmmakers did not have the budget or technology to produce decent concert footage. Much of the dialogue consists of voice-overs, disembodied words that occasionally sync with the images but too often distract. It's a shame, because her body-positive message and the enthusiasm of her fans seem to make for fun concerts.

French director Marie Losier follows her back home, too, as we meet the parents of the artist born Merrill Nisker in Toronto, and we join visits with her sister, Suri, who suffered from multiple sclerosis. The film, thus, is more of a pastiche, an avant-garde project in its own right. It helps to be a fan (I'm a casual one, mostly from 20 years ago), and if you're not aware of Peaches' music, this one might be tough to get traction on.  

ZEF: THE STORY OF DIE ANTWOORD (B-minus) - This is really nothing more than a glorified expansions of art videos by the South African rap-rave band Die Antwoord, supplemented with interviews with the couple, allowing them to whitewash their history.

Music-video producer Jon Day and animator Jack Shih curate this collection of videos and talking-head interviews with Ninja and his wife, Yolandi Visser, who give off bizarre avant-garde vibes more than a decade after breaking big with viral YouTube videos featuring their eccentric music and video styles. He is tall and angular, tattooed and intense; she is cute and mouse-voiced, with a winnowing glare. Their child, Sixteen, a young adult, has been a prop in their videos and her doe-eyed demeanor captivates in interviews separate from her parents.

We don't hear any of the negative assertions that have dogged the band -- though there is a mild reference to accusations of homophobia, but their default response is to just point to their DJ, Hi-Tek, who is gay, and shrug it off. Photographer Roger Ballen, a longtime collaborator, shows up to support two of his favorite visual artists. 

You just know there is much more to the stories here -- I mean, what was up with their adoption of a troubled 9-year-old, who would later allege trauma from being exposed to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll? How authentic is their cultural affinity for zef culture among lower-class Afrikaners? Their songs can be catchy, but is this mostly style over substance, the provocations of a failed rapper who found his mousy muse?

Regardless, the images can be quite compelling at times, and their hysterical rave-ups can be quite catchy. There's just something lurid about participating in a deep dive into the couple's lifestyle. 

BONUS TRACKS

We previously linked to "Bag It" from Peaches. Here is her signature song, "Fuck the Pain Away":

 

"Tombstone, Baby" live in Los Angeles:

 

The most representative Die Antwoord song and video, "Fatty Boom Boom" (starts at 1:45): 

In just a snippet, the Die Antwoord doc takes a break from the hectic and slips in this trippy interlude from Rodriguez, "I Wonder":

 

From the closing credits of "Zef," the hallucinatory "Age of Illusion" (featuring their daughter, Sixteen):

Doc Watch: Fight the Power

 

COVER-UP (B+) - Laura Poitras makes a pilgrimage to the knee of the granddaddy of investigative journalists, Seymour Hersh, and he curmudgeonly sits for her camera and shares stories, from his breakthrough reporting on the atrocities in Vietnam to his late-career missteps.

 

The first third of the documentary is devoted to the defining story of Hersh's career: his unmasking of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, orchestrated by Lt. William Calley. It is bookended with what is essentially the capstone to his career, his exposing of the torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq two decades ago for the New Yorker. In between, Poitras seeks to dig beneath the stoic exterior of a man who guards his privacy as well as he protects his sources. (He also gets his due for his efforts, competing against Woodward and Bernstein, to break his share of Watergate stories for the New York Times.)

Poitras ("Citizenfour," "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed"), working with co-director Mark Obenhaus, borrows Errol Morris' tactics and plants her camera firmly in front of Hersh, and she places another one above him, sneaking glimpses at his archived notes. At one point she gets him to break down and threaten to halt the proceedings over her invasive questioning. She mixes in old clips of Hersh interviews and pieces it all together neatly. 

Hersh comes off as a diehard soldier devoted to policing abuses of power. His personality is a bit of a tough nut to crack (his take on his gruff parents speaks volumes), but Poitras does an admirable job of picking at an old warhorse's brain and heart.  

THE ALABAMA SOLUTION (A-minus) - Andrew Jarecki ("Capturing the Friedmans," "The Jinx") curates footage from smuggled cell phones to show the horrific conditions in Alabama's state penal system, in an echo of brother Eugene Jarecki's 2013 prison expose "The House I Live In." If you're not numb by now, you'll be shocked and appalled at the treatment of human beings in the deep south.

The scenes in the detention facilities -- blood, standing water, rats, drugged and mentally ill inmates -- might remind you of Geraldo Rivera's harrowing reports from mental institutions in the 1970s or the POW scenes in "The Deer Hunter." Jarecki focuses on a few inmates who communicate through video chats via smuggled smart phones. Robert Earl (aka Kinetik Justice) has done 20 years, five in solitary confinement, and he is an articulate spokesman for the rights of inmates. Melvin Ray is a jailhouse lawyer desperately trying to get the federal government to intervene. As he notes, it has always taken the feds to fix Alabama's ills, ever since Reconstruction; this time, the state is better equipped to fight off the U.S. Justice Department. 

Key events ratchet up the drama. A mother pushes for answers after her son is brutally beaten to death, almost certainly under false pretenses. We see clips of the smug guard who did the killing, as he smirks through his deposition. We watch the mother, who is on oxygen, struggle to catch her breath and report the latest update after returning from a meeting with impotent prosecutors. The family's lawyer takes on the Sisyphean task of seeking justice; a key witness to the killing fears for his life.

Prisoners go on strike, withholding their free labor; that provokes a brutal crackdown meant to starve the men into submission.  Earl is beaten and placed in solitary confinement; he takes video of rats swimming in his toilet. This is the belly of the beast. And Jarecki's camera refuses to blink or make these medieval conditions appear more palatable than they are.

A SAVAGE ART (B-minus) - One of the most celebrated political cartoonists of the modern era gets his due with this documentary subtitled "The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant." It's mostly a hagiography -- Oliphant's daughter is an executive producer, and his son is essentially the narrator -- but the artist's powerful work pierces the platitudes.

A trio of filmmakers cobble together archival footage and clips of old interviews over the years with Oliphant, an Australian native who came to the United States in 1964, in his late 20s, to take over as political cartoonist at the Denver Post, where he won a Pulitzer Prize within three years. (He would later denounce the honor.) In the '70s he moved to the Washington Star, where his profile was heightened considerably in the nation's capital. 

 

The documentary can be a little hard to follow at times, as it jumps back and forth in time and grabs snippets of interviews of Oliphant from a variety of sources. It would help, too, if the filmmakers gave the cartoons more time on screen and room to breathe. As it is, the film stands as a reminder of how potent and raw Oliphant's work could be. One scathing attack on the Catholic church is captured in an image of salivating priests chasing a gaggle of frightened children, withe caption, "The running of the altar boys." The origin of Oliphant's mascot, a penguin named Punk who offered pithy comments from the corner of the panel, is explained, and we get a pretty good sense of the artist's irascibility through the years.

The final third confronts both the decline of newspapers and political cartoons and the physical decline of Oliphant, now 90 and nearly blind, who was a respected painter and sculptor, as well, in his later years (in Santa Fe, N.M.). This all could have been just as insightful as an hour-long PBS special, though the in-depth history of cartooning was appreciated, and it certainly did not need his children papering over their father's personal shortcomings (including two divorces). And it could have let more of the work tell the story. Credit is due for the footage of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, a Washington Star colleague back in the day, paying tribute to Oliphant with saucy memories delivered at a dinner in his honor.

New to the Queue

 But then ...

Laura Poitras ("Citizenfour," "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed") examines the career of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, "Cover-Up."

A debut feature from Slovenia, about teens' sexual and spiritual awakenings, "Little Trouble Girls."

Rebecca Zlotowski ("Other People's Children") lines up Jodie Foster as a psychiatrist investigating the death of a patient, "A Private Life."

A look at four generations of German women exploring family secrets under the yoke of patriarchy, "Sound of Falling."

Other People's Children

A pair of French films streaming on Amazon: 

WHEN FALL IS COMING (B) - I can't think of anyone who could pull off this slight, odd narrative -- about a grandmother's unhealthy compulsion to be with her grandson -- anywhere near as well as master storyteller Francois Ozon. 

Helene Vincent is endlessly charming as Michelle, a stylish grandmother who may or may not be having cognition issues. She picks mushrooms with her dear friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko) and ends up poisoning her own daughter, Valerie (Ludivine Sagnier), who thinks it might have been an intentional act so that Michelle could get more time with Valerie's adolescent son, Lucas (a sharp Garlan Erlos). Eventually something does happen to Valerie (and Michelle might have something to do with that), and Lucas comes to live with Michelle.

Meantime, Michelle extends kindness -- perhaps an unhealthy amount -- to Marie-Claude's ex-con adult son Vincent (a menacing but amusing Pierre Lottin). Helene Vincent shoulders the production like the old pro she is. Michelle's friendship with Marie-Claude (who is unhappy and unhealthy) is sweet, and her generosity -- if that's truly what it is -- is admirable. A couple of narrative zags keep the viewer guessing until the end.

This probably tracks most with Ozon's "In the House," another shaggy-dog story that meanders with some real and perceived twists. It also feels compatible with a recent Ozon film, "Everything Went Fine," which also dealt with death and family relations. Here he crafts a satisfying low-key thriller. 

OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN (2023) (C) - Tripping over the line between legitimate drama and Hallmark shmaltz, Rebecca Zlotowski turns in an earnest examination of a woman with a loudly ticking biological clock who seeks true love with a hunk who has a 4-year-old daughter. Will they make it? Will they make their own baby?

Virginie Efira (who played a woman with two families in "Madeleine Collins") stars as Rachel, a high school teacher who finds her dream guy in ruggedly handsome Ali (Roschdy Zem), who is separated from his wife and shares custody of little Leila. Zlotowski mixes dewy eyed romance and gauzy cinematography (the Eiffel Tower is photographed reverently) with generous "Red Shoes Diary" nudity and R-rated lovemaking.

Rachel falls hard not just for Ali but also for Leila. At school Rachel fends off a randy co-worker and nurtures a troubled student who could be the son she never had. Elsewhere, she bonds with her sister over the continued mourning for their mother, who died when they were little. Meantime, Rachel still must compete with Leila's mopey mother (a miscast 50-year-old Chiara Mastroianni). There is also a dying mother of one of Leila's classmates to ratchet up the melodrama.

The second half descends into soap-opera territory, and the drawn-out theatrics expose Efira's limitations as a leading actress beyond looking good in a shortie nightshirt. (We previously described her as bland, in a Kim Cattrall way.) A heartfelt epilogue helps, but many won't make it to that ending unless they can find a way to care about where all these folks end up. 

BONUS TRACK

The trailer for "When Fall Is Coming":

 

In "Other People's Children," Rachel and Ali cement their affair to Dave von Ronk's "Cocaine Blues" ("... all around my brain"):