Moping Around

 

NOAH KAHAN: OUT OF BODY (B+) - There's emo and then there is Noah Kahan. There are no circumstances in which the sensitive singer-songwriter abbreviates his emotional experiences in this fascinating Netflix documentary that explores his hopes and fears about his recent 15 minutes of fame.

Kahan, known widely for the 2022 title hit from his album "Stick Season," started out by slowly building an online audience before suddenly becoming an unlikely arena rock star, with a heavily young and female fan base. His painfully heartfelt lyrics -- and his willingness to share about his mental-health challenges -- resonates deeply with your typical angsty teenager.

 

Director Nick Sweeney, with intimate access, captures Kahan at a critical point in his career -- blowing up and drowning in adoration, but keenly aware that this could all end soon. Has he peaked? Should he savor this pivotal moment, hours away from playing Fenway Park? (Turns out, he needn't have worried, at least not yet; he is scheduled to play more baseball stadiums this summer -- including four shows at Fenway, and two each at Wrigley Field and Citi Field.) 

Kahan's Vermont family figures prominently in his songs and this documentary. He mourns the change in his father, who never fully recovered from a traumatic brain injury (he sings about "the darkness I inherited from my dad" who "still can't call me back") but who is a trouper here trying to support the son who is living out the old man's musical dreams. His mom is nurturing, and his siblings are supportive and successful in their own right. 

The co-star of the film, though, is Vermont, the site of Stick Season, the depressing wintry labyrinth of bare tree limbs that cruelly follows the brilliant fall colors. Kahan grew up in Strafford (90 minutes southeast of Burlington), and he is constantly forsaking places like Boston and Nashville to return to that ghostly New England milieu and its mix of cold and clouds and the scar tissue of his youth. We watch him sit in his old bedroom and try to conjure up the creative muse that energized him in his teens and early 20s. (He just turned 30 this week.) He constantly frets -- about the shallowness of our culture, the fragility of success, his body type. He sweats out the recording sessions for the big-pressure follow-up album (which finally came out this month after a four-year gap in studio releases, to tepid reviews), knowing that it's very possible he cannot top "Stick Season." But despite his dour demeanor, he has a winning sense of humor, and you can see why the kids swoon.

I wish Sweeney had let the songs breathe a little more here, especially the endlessly clever "Stick Season," which could have been fleshed out more as a defining single before the director jumped to its anthem status as an arena singalong. Outside of that big hit, his songs tend to sound the same. (We'll see if the new album recaptures the magic.)  He's no vocal tour de force -- he trills in a wispy whisper like Ed Sheeran -- and his song structures don't really stand out from other earnest acoustic-driven balladry like you'd get from the Lumineers or the Avett Brothers. (I'm tempted to say that every generation gets the Don McLean it deserves.)

Nitpicking aside, this is a penetrating character study of a true thinking, feeling human being surviving as a cog in our content-creating culture. There is meat on his bones and on the bones of this patient, observant film. You are likely to root for him at the end of an hour and a half, even if he can be quite a pill who needs to realize there are places to live other than Vermont -- you know, where the sun shines a little more often. Though if he did relocate to a place like, oh, New Mexico maybe, what would he have left to grouse about in song? 

OUTCOME (C+) - Jonah Hill is obnoxious and Keanu Reeves is a block of wood in this contrived Apple TV movie about a beloved film star confronting his past sins in the face of a blackmailer threatening to release a mystery video. 

Hill directed this cynical attempt at taking down the Hollywood scene (and he co-wrote it with newcomer Ezra Woods). He has a slack visual style, and just about every actor in his cast is off-pitch. That especially applies to Hill himself, hamming it up as the obnoxious lawyer for superstar Reef Hawk (Reeves, going by the singular form of his name, apparently). By far the worst part of Jonah Hill's movie is Jonah Hill. He thinks it's cute or clever or retro to have his character refer to Reef as "bubbe" constantly and to make his star watch him sit on the toilet, LBJ-style; it merely comes off as strained and tone-deaf, a parody of a boorish '50s agent.  

Reeves lacks the requisite amount of charisma to pull off a Tom Cruise-like character, and he lacks the acting chops to convey the turmoil and fear of having his empire come tumbling down. (He also lacks the acting chops to convince us that his character has won three Oscars.) He is also stuck in quite the idiot plot, a simplistic narrative with the sophistication of an episode of "Baretta." 

Reeves is surrounded by a C-list of co-stars -- how is David Spade still a thing? -- playing the comedy to the rafters. Cameron Diaz -- far beyond her "There's Something About Mary" comedic peak -- is a flop as one of Reef's two loyal high school pals who anchor his entourage and helped cover up his years-long heroin addiction; the other is a stereotypical gay best friend played by Matt Bomer. For some reason we get Martin Scorsese as Reef's former child manager, and Susan Lucci gets dusted off to flaunt her septuagenarian cleavage as Reef's vain mother, a cheap cast member of one of those "Real Housewives" knockoffs. The one bright spot is Ivy Wolk as the motormouth Gen Z slacker assistant. 

There is little tension as Reef goes on a sobriety apology tour (apparently a cover as he tries to sniff out the blackmailer's identity), but at least this all gets wrapped up in 83 minutes. All it needed was a different star and a competent director who isn't so in love with his own gags.

BONUS TRACKS

Noah Kahan's hit, "Stick Season," with 63 million views and counting:

From the climax of "Outcome," Kurt Vile (with John Prine) and "How Lucky":

Are You Experienced?

 Reflections on the 21st annual Experiments in Cinema festival of experimental film at the Guild Cinema in mid-April.

 

We caught three programs this year: a long-form documentary, a retrospective of the films of a San Francisco artist, and a typical mish-mash of short pieces.

We snuck out on a Friday afternoon to absorb the one-hour 2018 documentary "Washing Society" by Lynne Sachs and Lizzie Olesker. It spends time with New York City laundromat workers and also dives backward into the history of the trade. Often the purview of Asians and other people of color, and often women, the work itself involves an intimate interaction with the customers and their delicates. The filmmakers play with close-up visuals of lint, pulling clumps apart and studying the shapes. I would have preferred more of those experimental images. (At the screening, viewers were gifted with a tiny envelope that held a piece of lint.) One focus is on a mother-daughter team -- often captured ritually donning and doffing their smocks -- and the daughter stubbornly fought any pretensions the filmmakers might have about elevating the work to a noble profession. "It's just a job," she insisted. "There's nothing more to say about it." 

Friday night was devoted to Dominic Angerame, who was in attendance. Angerame tends to ruminate on places, in particular his home of San Francisco, including a 10-minute shuddering study of the Embarcadero Freeway, a piece which incorporated snippets of archival footage. He also presents a haunting homage to the shuttered San Francisco Art Institute after its closure in 2022. He studies nature around Joshua Tree and the Salton Sea in California's Imperial Valley. ... I was disappointed in an 8-minute study of a toxic copper mine, titled "Bigger than US, The Berkeley Pit, Butte Montana," one instance when a straightforward documentary would have been preferable to this artsier take. ... "Habana 2006" takes a bifurcated view of the Cuban capital -- the first half's travelogue images celebrate the revolution, while the second half wallows in the city's decay. ... My favorite of Angerame's was 2022's "Prometheus," a stunning, inky visual experiment in which the black screen is pierced by flashes of light. At first the opening image could be stars in the sky -- until you realize what those sparkles represent. Soon a flare of a flame on the left side of the screen allows you to barely make out the profile of a welder. The mesmerizing visuals are accompanied by Angerame's own plinking, urgent score.

 

The closing series of films was hit-and-miss. "Death in the Archive" by David Sherman returns to the San Francisco scene to pay homage to experimental filmmaker Dion Vigne, but it drags at 15 minutes and feels like too much inside baseball in paying tribute to the heroin addict who died in the 1970s. A couple of glorified music videos -- "Prefer Not to Say" and "Cleanup on Aisle Adorno" -- were more annoying than insightful, though the latter made good use of retro supermarket ad footage from the 1950s.  

The best of the final program was from Romanian director Laura Lancu. Her "Hollowgram," according to the notes, "conjures varicolored clusters of swirling images and sounds from places real and imagined as if looking through a flip book in a dream." Toward the end of its seven minutes it ruminates on nature, with images that remind us that we will soon be one with the earth again and that we will then, according to its final words, "taproot into silence." Haunting.

BONUS TRACKS

From the Cuba travelogue, "Patria Querida" by Los Guaracheros de Oriente:

 

 Our title track:

Now and Then: Girls in Peril

 

THE PRESIDENT'S CAKE (B+) - It is 1990s Iraq, and 9-year-old Lamia has been randomly chosen at her school for the honor of baking a cake in honor of President Saddam Hussein's nationwide birthday celebration. She and her grandmother are dirt-poor rural Iraqis, and a trip to the city for ingredients to carry out the compulsory task will turn into a wild adventure involving Lamia and a fellow precocious schoolmate.

 

Debut writer-director Hasan Hadi sketches a devastating portrait of a nation under the iron rule of a dictator and suffering shortages due to debilitating international sanctions. He creates a controlled chaos in which everyone scrambles for medical supplies or food stuffs that are in short supply, some folks more considerate than others. The beleaguered police department can barely keep up during this ominously festive time. 

Little Baneen Ahmad Nayyef holds it all together as Lamia, who must look after her ailing grandmother while bartering and scheming for precious eggs, flour and sugar, laser-focused on the task before her and reliant on the occasional kindness of strangers. She leads an amateur no-name cast that includes Sajad Mohamad Qasem as curly-topped Saeed, her classmate who gets bullied at school because his father is crippled. The pair make a dynamic duo, full of grit and pluck and blessed with a little luck.

Lamia tackles this challenge at all times with her pet rooster at her side (sometimes in a carrying sling), and you can't help but root for them. This is a sly celebration of the human spirit in the face of authoritarianism. The adults keep telling Lamia that things will work out and that God will provide in the end. But the girl knows that worshipful passivity alone won't get the job done.

OSAMA (2004) (A) - "The President's Cake" reminded us of one of the bleakest cinematic experiences ever -- this devastating film from two decades ago about an adolescent girl trying to pass as male in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in order to provide for her mother and grandmother. 

Debut writer-director Siddiq Barmak (who would go on to make only one other film) unspools an absolute horror story, showing no interest in trying to offer any sort of silver lining under the yoke of the theocratic dictatorship. If you need to be reminded of the hopelessness of oppression, this is your 83-minute poison pill.  

 

Wide-eyed star Marina Golbahari is captivating as the girl who will become known as Osama. Her father and grandfather have been killed in wars, and her mother has been laid off from her nursing job after a Taliban sweep of the local hospital. Osama gets work from a milk vendor who knew her father, and she manages pretty well to pass for a boy after her hair is shorn off (she ceremoniously plants a pigtail in a flower pot) and her father's clothes are modified to fit her. But there will be dread around the corner for Osama at every turn.

A local hustler, her age, knows her secret and threatens to expose her, but eventually he will defend her from the classmates who bully her and mock her for her poor tree-climbing skills. But that's nothing compared to the wrath of the Taliban that would rain down should she become exposed. That worst case scenario starts to play out when the religious lunatics round up all the boys in town for military training.

In the end, you can't imagine where this will end up, but suffice it to say that it is a fate worse than death for a 12-year-old girl, just another subjugated female reduced to the sum of her bodily functions based on the crude sharia dictates of rulers eager to return their society to the stone age. Try to look away. 

'Up' to the Task

 

Michael Apted guided the vaunted "Seven Up" documentary series through each life cycle for decades, until his death in early 2021. He had helmed the series through "63 Up" in 2019, and his death left the fate of "70 Up" in limbo.  

Now Britain's ITV has announced a successor, according to the Guardian. Documentary veteran Asif Kapadia ("Maradona," "Amy") has been anointed to carry out the "honor and privilege" of overseeing what is expected to be the final episode of the groundbreaking series, which has followed about a dozen Brits of different classes every seven years since they were 7 years old. 

 

The series began as a 40-minute special for Grenada TV -- for which Apted was  a researcher -- in 1964 with the mission statement of "Give me the boy until he is 7 and I will show you the man." There is nothing comparable to this life-spanning sociological study of a bunch of little Boomers. We have reviewed the first eight episodes here and here. 

The "Up" series was recently voted the most influential British TV show of the past 60 years, according to the Guardian in 2024.  

That '70s Drift: Blending in to the Decor

 

THE SECRET AGENT (A-minus) - You might be able to pick it apart critically, you might find it too long and confusing, but "The Secret Agent," from Brazil, is a masterpiece of mood, a seamless immersion into the South American authoritarian state in the 1970s. In that sense, it is irresistible. 

 

Wagner Moura brings Pablo Pascal movie-star looks and incredible warmth to the role of Armando, aka Marcelo, an underground agent working to undermine the military dictatorship that reigned for 21 years. He camps out with a hive of like-minded warriors, a group led by the elderly but spunky Dona Sebastiana (Tania Maria), who provides refuge to the dissidents at her compound. The network places Armando at the national ID center, where he has an opportunity to search for the records of his late mother, who died when he was a boy. He also has a little boy of his own, Fernando, who lives with the parents of Armando's dead wife.

There is much gloom surrounding our hero, as well as a lot of mundane oppression, with the tone set in the first scene when he is questioned and searched menacingly but lazily by a corrupt cop before being allowed to head off on his way. During the whole scene, a week-old dead body lies ignored nearby under a piece of cardboard and a rock. Violence has become routine a decade into the dictatorship's rule. 

In flashbacks, we learn that Armando made an enemy of the CEO of a utility company who had taken over the university where Armando teaches. This business thug, Ghirotti (Gregorio Graziosi) puts a hit out on Armando, dispatching a pair of hapless goons to rub him out. This cat-and-mouse game feels like merely a subplot to the grander saga of Armando's journey through the country's underground. Grim comic relief comes in the form of a shady police chief, Euclides (Roberio Diogenes) and his two dim-witted sons who are called in to investigate the discovery of a severed leg found in the belly of a shark. 

Where did the shark come from? We are in Recife, the hometown of filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho, who knits together some of his best previous work into a confident, fully realized creation, a fictional drama steeped in authenticity. He sets some scenes in the back rooms and projection booth of a classic movie theater, following up on his documentary "Pictures of Ghosts."  It is a period reverie with a stoic lead, like "Aquarius." Following some hits and misses, "The Secret Agent" finally feels like a coming of age. 

Filho will definitely test your patience across 2 hours and 40 minutes. He re-animates the bitten-off leg for a bit of magical fantasy, imagining it going on a rampage and terrorizing gay men cruising in a public park. (Apparently based on an actual Brazilian urban legend.) Much of the action takes place during Carnival, with newspaper accounts keeping track of the festival's death count in the seaside town, with implicit and explicit nods to "Jaws," which has a popular run at the local theater.

The bold filmmaker is almost daring the viewer to keep up with his pinballing plot. He even jumps to the present day to observe two young women -- including a compelling Laura Lufesi -- as they comb through the archives of the regime and the resistance. No rabbit hole is too dark for Filho to explore. 

To tie it all together, the sets and the costumes are impeccably of the '70s. This is a flawless re-creation of that era -- on a par with Walter Salles' companion drama "I'm Still Here" (too recent of a release for Filho to have cribbed from). I got lost in the sights and sounds. At times I was a bit adrift. I'm not sure I put all the pieces together, but I'm eager to watch it again to see what I might have missed. For some reason, the nostalgia of authoritarianism and bubble-top phone booths hits home these days.

BONUS TRACK

The soundtrack mixes traditional Brazilian tunes with '70s pop songs (both Brazilian and of the American variety, including Donna Summer and Chicago). Here is the chippy instrumental "Harpa dos Ares (Ar)" by Ze Ramalho and Lula Cortes:

Jarmusch in Review: Free Solo

  

BROKEN FLOWERS (2005) (A) - Ever since seeing the opening scene of "Broken Flowers," I've always fantasized about being dumped by Julie Delpy. (She doesn't have to date me; just dramatically break up with me, preferably using a heaping helping of French.)

 

That's what happens to Bill Murray's rich aging playboy, whose younger girlfriend, Sherry (Delpy), walks out on him, frustrated with his glum demeanor and refusal to commit. Along with "Dead Man," this is among Jim Jarmusch's most dour assessments of the human condition, trekking along with Murray's character as he cycles through his past by visiting long-ago exes, always with a fresh bouquet on offer, on the chance that he might have a son out there somewhere.

Bill Murray barely cracks a smile throughout, though a deadpan humor hums along the surface, mainly via the relationship between Murray's Don Johnston (a name often confused with the famous actor, and a play on Don Juan) and his neighbor Winston, a traditional family man from Jamaica. (Flashes of classic Murray rascality leak out when Don banters with Winston's precocious little girl.) It is Winston (Jeffrey Wright), an amateur sleuth, who plots the logistics for Don's road odyssey, which is prompted by an anonymous pink letter purporting to be from an ex who claims to have had his child 19 years earlier.

Don is set in his middle age -- he made a ton of money in computers -- but his sterile bachelor life is depressing, especially compared with Winston and his bustling brood. Murray is matched by a powerful cast of women portraying his exes. There is Sharon Stone as Laura, a still frisky professional closet organizer, whose teen daughter, Lolita (!) (Alexis Dziena), parades around naked when she's not there. (The look on Don's face when this happens is priceless.) Frances Conroy (HBO's "Six Feet Under") is an icy realtor with a douchebag husband, a long way from her hippie-chick days. Jessica Lange plays Carmen, an animal psychologist with little patience for Don, who is bum-rushed by Carmen's possessive receptionist (a sharp Chloe Sevigny). And the cleanup hitter is Tilda Swinton, almost unrecognizable in dark hair and heavy mascara, as Penny, whose reaction to Don is the most volatile. (The others mostly flatter him as a pesky rogue.)

Jarmusch, as he likes to do, speckles the film with coincidences, especially effective in a case like this where we're trying to solve a mystery. (Is Penny's pink typewriter a key clue? Hard to tell, because pink is prevalent throughout, which is no surprise.) The director has a field day hiding a bunch of Easter eggs, which pile up at the end, when Don runs across two young men whose presence only deepens the mystery. In the final shot, Don literally stands at a crossroads, Jarmusch's camera whirling around him in a dizzying swoop, Murray's visage placid until the end. 

Don's final stop on the circuit before he returns home is at the grave of a fifth ex, and it is that experience which seems to shake him the most. Was she The One? Like with everything else here, it is tough to tell. Jarmusch unspools one big conundrum, and it is up to the viewer to put the puzzle together in their own way. That is the gift of "Broken Flowers."

GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI (2000) (B) - This one hit better 26 years ago, but now its casual violence and earnest eastern philosophizing feel dated. That's a shame, because Jarmusch and his hand-picked star, Forest Whitaker, really click throughout. 

 

Whitaker plays a Samurai-style mob assassin, nameless to his mafia benefactor, communicating only through homing pigeons that "Ghost Dog" communes with on the rooftop of his urban apartment. Ghost Dog fancies Rashomon and studies the spiritual guidance of the Hagakure to guide him in the ancient ways of the warrior. He is like a zen James Bond, fashioning his own silencers and wielding a code-breaking device that opens security gates unlocks car doors and ignitions. (After starting the cars, he always pops in the same CD, featuring the music of RZA from Wu-Tang Clan, who scored the film.)

After Ghost Dog's most recent hit on a made man, the local mob boss (a welcome Henry Silva) orders the assassin to then be rubbed out. That sets off a battle of one against many, a classic Samurai chess match. The gangster story, shot around New Jersey, feels authentic, in the unflattering manner of '90s touchstones like "Goodfellas" or "The Sopranos," with their often-bumbling foot soldiers. Jarmusch recruits talented character actors -- such as John Tormey and Cliff Gorman -- to flesh out the crew. 

Tormey's Louie is Ghost Dog's contact, and the two have developed a bond ever since Louie saved the young man's life during a random act of street violence. The honor code between the two is tested, as Louie is reluctant to double-cross his ward but he also has sworn an oath to his mob family. Who will be left standing after the ensuing outburst of violence?

Ghost Dog is a man of few words, but his humanity is brought out by a French-speaking friend who sells ice cream, Raymond (Isaach de Bankole), and a well-read little girl he meets at a park and shares books with. There certainly was much more to be explored here.

Instead, Jarmusch settles for a rote mob revenge story, with a neo-noir nod to "Le Samourai." The relentless gore distracts from the enlightened ideas that remain undercooked when the dignified ending arrives.

BONUS TRACKS

As usual for Jarmusch, the "Broken Flowers" soundtrack is eclectic and fascinating. It includes tracks from the Brian Jonestown Massacre and from Ethiopian jazz master Mulatu Astatke. And, over the closing credits, Holly Golightly joins the Greenhornes for the trippy "There Is an End":

 

"Broken Flowers" also digs deep for the 1968 rocksteady cut "Ride Yu Donkey" by Jamaica's the Tennors:

 

And a sampling of RZA's music for "Ghost Dog":

 

Here is our latest attempt to rank the films of Jim Jarmusch, from most to least favorite:

• Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
• Dead Man (1995)
• Broken Flowers (2005)
• Down by Law (1986)
• The Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)
• Night on Earth (1991)
• Mystery Train (1989)
• Mother Father Sister Brother (2025)
• Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (2000) 
• The Limits of Control (2009)
• Paterson (2016)
• Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
• Permanent Vacation (student film, 1980)
• Gimme Danger (2017) 

Not seen: "The Dead Don't Die" (2019)

New to the Queue

 Is it war in here or am I crazy? ...

 

A coming-of-age film out of Macedonia about a teen who defies his strict father to be a DJ, the debut release "DJ Ahmet."

A documentary chronicling the takeover of Rijeka near the Italy-Croatian border by a fascist poet, "Fiume o Morte." 

Time to check in on Steven Soderbergh ("Logan Lucky"); his latest is about an art forger who bonds with her targeted elderly artist, "The Christophers."

From the director of "Jethica," a tale of a bride-to-be (Charli XCX) on a trip to Warsaw who runs into the ex she had a sizzling chemistry with, "Erupcja."

A documentary about Amy Goodman and the independent news program "Democracy Now," "Steal This Movie, Please!"

A comedy about a New Yorker sabotaging his airline-worker friend's budding relationship in order to preserve his plus-one flight perks, "The Travel Companion."

Tourist Traps

 

THE NAPA BOYS (C-minus) - There's nothing wrong, necessarily, with making a moronic movie. But it should be more than occasionally funny. And if you are going to go off the rails, find a better go-to gag than excessive bodily fluids.

 

 

 

The brainchild of its two stars -- check that: the idea of the two lead actors -- "Napa Boys" imagines a world in which a rag-tag group of "Scooby-Doo" wannabes enjoys a cult following as they traipse around wine country and help their pal Mitch compete for the top prize at a wine festial. Oh, and there's a mysterious Somellier whose amulet they have discovered. Or something like that.

Director Nick Corirossi is Jack Jr., the alpha male, and co-writer Armen Weitzman plays his buddy, Miles Jr., the ultimate beta cuck (his wife and daughter have died, LOL). They come off as an obnoxious, tone-deaf Greg Kinnear (Corirossi) and a mentally challenged Jason Schwartzman (Weitzman). I've never seen a deader crowd at a comedy; every 20 minutes or so you'd hear a chuckle in the sparsely attended cinema. A deadpan running gag has characters using the "Jr." after their names constantly, while others have descriptors instead of names -- such as Stifler's Brother (an amusing Jamar Malachi Neighbors) or the Mayor of Napa or the Milfonator (yuk-yuk). 

A few sad cameos from C-Listers raise the game of these D-Listers. That includes the micro-budget filmmaker's best friend, Ray Wise; comedian Natasha Leggero; the amusing Riki Lindhome; and Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, reprising their hoary roles as Jay and Silent Bob from Smith's own awkward comedies from years ago. This has been described, generously, as a cross between "Sideways" and "American Pie," with the latter running away with the contest in a landslide. It is supposedly some high-concept meta-joke (it masquerades as the fourth in a series of franchise films), but it mostly comes off as sophomoric. 

NEIGHBORHOODS AT A CROSSROADS: WELLS PARK (2020) (B) - Local documentarian Anthony DellaFlora continued his series of profiles of Albuquerque neighborhoods with look back at the history of Wells Park, which provides a unique mix in the heart of the city: residential, industrial and homeless services. 

This probably came at the nadir of the homeless inundation six years ago, a problem that has eased in recent years with the revival of the neighborhood's namesake park at Sixth and Mountain, where kids and dogs were running around and basketball players were sieging the hard court during this week's screening of the 46-minute film next door at the Johnny Tapia Community Center. Tapia gets his due in the documentary, the troubled boxer having cut his teeth in the working-class neighborhood in the 1970s and '80s.

Two couples -- Jessie and Fred Sais and Claudette and Leo Romero -- handle the bulk of the reminiscing, all of them at some point central to the formation of the Wells Park Neighborhood Association in the mid-1990s, a move credited with addressing the blight and decay that had been plaguing the area ever since the urban-renewal movement of the 1960s. That includes significant cleanup of the environmental hazards created by the sawmills and public utility.

DellaFlora makes expert use of archival photos and yellowed documents. He digs out interesting stories, including one from Jesse Herron, owner of what was once a rowdy brothel at the turn of the 20th century (called, believe it or not, the Swastika Saloon) and now is a quaint inn called the Painted Lady, which revives the old house of ill repute in spirit if not in practice. Local Ken Salazar recalls handling the solo evening shift at the family-owned gas station as a kid to give his dad a break. We get a solid overview of the Chicano rights movement led by Reis Tijerina (who ran for governor in 1968). It's a fine mix of memory-lane traipsing and analysis of the phases of a city neighborhood. (Available on YouTube.)

Certifiable

 

WHEN WE WENT MAD (B) - There is nostalgia to be mined from exploring the good ol' days of publishing, back when you could have a blast and make good money printing a magazine. That joy sits at the core of this ribald documentary about the beloved, subversive Mad magazine.

In the 1960s and '70s, the ribald magazine, touting an initial motto of "Humor in a jugular vein," had circulation above 1 million, peaking above 2 million in 1974. It catered to its Baby Boomer readership with a mixture of clever satire and puerile idiocy. It was fronted by its goofy mascot, gap-toothed Alfred E. Neuman. Its cartoons could set your parents' hair on fire. If you know it, you know it.

This coke-fueled documentary knows its timeline (a Mad historian, Grant Geissman, is a main talking head) and has a riot reminiscing with former editors, writers and artists, as well as a bevy of fanboys (they are all male, of course), including Weird Al Yankovic, Howie Mandel, Gilbert Gottfried, Brian Cranston, Quentin Tarantino, David Zucker and the requisite appearance by the always available Judd Apatow. 

Director Alan Bernstein walks through the magazine's origins as a 1950s comic book birthed from the stable of Educational Comics (EC), which was known for its line of pulp horror titles, as well as a connection to DC Comics and the Superman franchise. It wasn't until EC ditched all of its sleazy titles -- under pressure from Congress, which cracked down on the scourge of comic books -- and spun Mad off into a glossy magazine that things started turning up. Once Alfred E. Neuman came aboard, the rest was history.

The film looks fondly on Mad's founder, William Gaines, who took the business over from his father, and who is treated with the same reverence Harold Ross still gets at the New Yorker a century later. Gaines, who died more than 30 years ago, brought on Al Feldstein as editor for Mad's first 30 years. Feldstein and a bunch of other former colleagues savor reminiscing about the camaraderie at the publication and all the crazy hijinks they got away with. One alum sums up the experience as one of being "deeply embarrassed and fiercely proud."

All the greatest hits are here: the backpage fold-in gag; Spy vs. Spy; the razor-sharp ad parodies. Famed cartoonist Don Martin (the one whose characters had the floppy feet) gets barely a minute of screen time (perhaps punishment for having jumped shipped for Cracked in the late '80s). While the whole enterprise was generally silly, Mad's parent company took its free-speech rights seriously -- it defended the right to parody songs all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. The staff certainly enjoyed its success -- Gaines would take them on annual trips to exotic locales -- and Mad had mixed results with empire building, which included a board game, a cinematic bomb (1980's "Up the Academy") and a crude TV show ("Mad TV"). It all started to hit the skids by the '90s, fizzling out as an anachronism in the era of the internet and social media.

The film is rife with busy graphics and scatter-shot editing, and it often has the cheap feel of a VH-1 "I Love the '80s" special. It also was apparently just dumped online, streaming free on YouTube (though I enjoyed it with a crowd at the theater). But the celebrities are engaging, and the ex-staffers show a genuine affection for the work they accomplished. It was easier back then to have a gas doing what you loved if you hit on the right formula for success, no matter how embarrassing your printed product could be at times. 

JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND (2017) (B-minus) - There is something off-putting about this look behind the scenes at Jim Carrey portraying Andy Kaufman on the set of the 1999 film "Man on the Moon." And it's not just the reminder that we don't like biopics, especially ones involving contemporary subjects.

 

Talented documentarian Chris Smith ("Fyre," "The Yes Men," "Devo") is just too enamored with the central gimmick here:  "never before seen" on-set footage of Carrey immersing himself into not only the character of Andy Kaufman but also Kaufman's alter-ego, the obnoxious Tony Clifton. It's the tired trope of the method actor's immersion into a character to the detriment of his mental health and to the frustration of everyone around him. 

The best parts here involve an older and wiser (and sagely bearded) Carrey, nearly two decades after the filming of the biography, sitting for an extensive interview to not only look back on his wild celebrity during the 1990s but also to put into perspective the full arc of his career and his ensuing philosophy of life. That part is worth the price of admission. Carrey is thoughtful and contemplative, and he articulates his brand of Taoism through generously dispensed koans. 

The old footage from the set can be fascinating at first -- Carrey-as-Kaufman refuses to break character and rampages through the set like the provocateur he is portraying -- but it soon grows tiresome. Most of his co-stars, including a few pals from Kaufman's "Taxi" days, don't hide their eye-rolls at Carrey's obnoxious behaviour, and "Man in the Moon" director Milos Forman (the auteur behind classics like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") perpetually looks like he wants to wring his star's neck. The film is weighed down by the excessive footage of a young Carrey behaving like a 12-year-old jerk.

Smith also weaves in footage from other Carrey touchstones from the era, in a bid to sync with Carrey's magical thinking which suggests that some divine being was sending films and characters to him at just the right time in his life. That includes "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (director Michel Gondry apparently delighted in finding out that Carrey was miserable from a break-up just in time to begin planning the production) and, most obviously, "The Truman Show" (which Carrey not-so-humbly dubs a "prophecy"). It's all a bit far-fetched. (Hmm. What was the universe revealing to him when he signed up to talk with his butt in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective"?)

But Carrey grounds the film with his sober analysis in the present day of 2017. His pearls of wisdom -- "I don't need to be held together. I'm fine just floating through space like Andy" -- are comforting, and you cheer him on for growing beyond a Jerry Lewis-like career of variations on "Dumb & Dumber." If only the whole "Man in the Moon" kerfuffle wasn't such a cliched look back at wacky Hollywood antics.

New to the Queue

Apres le deluge ...

The latest from Christian Petzold ("Afire," "Transit," "Barbara") teams him with Paula Beer again for a story of a woman dealing with the aftermath of an accident, "Miroirs No. 3."

Francois Ozon takes on Albert Camus, with a black-and-white take on "The Stranger." 

Nadav Lapid ("The Kindergarten Teacher," "Synonyms") returns with a more madcap tale of a married couple getting decadent with the power elite, "Yes."

Romanian provocateur Radu Jude ("Aferim," "Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World") clocks in under two hours with his latest satire, "Kontinental '25."

Tell-Tale Heart

 

A POET (A-minus) - Whether you find this tale of a sad sack heartbreaking or not will depend on your tolerance for struggling artists with drinking problems. I found it bittersweet and quite moving.

 

Ubeimar Rios stars as Oscar, a not-so-lovable loser who lives with his ailing mom as he approaches middle age. He is a diehard poet, a self-proclaimed tortured artist whose demons are doused only by getting blackout drunk on the sidewalks of Medellin in Colombia (more than once we see him wake up in the morning on concrete and limp home). He fumbles the most basic adult tasks -- he's a lousy, broke father to his high-school-age daughter Daniela (Alisson Correa) -- and he is blinded by his devotion to the beloved poet Jose Asuncion Silva, who died at 30 by a self-inflicted gunshot to the heart. In a small gut-wrenching scene, we watch Oscar sitting on the edge of the bed, shirtless, and using a black marker to draw a heart in the middle of his chest. He is quick to sob.

In a word, Oscar is miserable -- until he reluctantly takes a job teaching and latches on to a student who shows a lot of promise as a poet. Yurlady (Rebeca Andrade) needs a confidence boost, and she is distracted by an overstuffed household of siblings and relatives. Writer-director Simon Mesa Soto revels in the chaos among the busy brood, with little to no judgment of their working-poor lifestyle. Upon taking Yurlady under his wing, Oscar gets sober, seizing on the opportunity to replace his stalled career with the hopes of the next generation to break through.

Of course, this is not destined to go smoothly. Oscar is not the best candidate for long-term sobriety. When he chaperones Yurlady and her classmates to an adult literary event and the kids misbehave, Oscar's self-control begins to unravel. 

Soto walks a tightrope throughout between humor and pathos. He does not gloss over the debilitating heartache that Oscar carries with him at all times, but he finds the day-to-day humor in the lowly adventures of a bumbling sad sack. Rios, with a stricken homeliness of Allen Ginsberg, shuffles from scene to scene. He alternates between petulant family squabbles to passionate polemics about the classic poets to incoherent babbling about his long-stalled publishing career. When he first starts teaching, he is sloppy drunk in front of the students. While it is disturbing, it is also successfully played for uneasy laughs, as the students take it in stride. Meantime, his effort at reconciling with his teenage daughter is more laughable than funny; he obviously has a form of PTSD that links her birth to the drying up of his writing abilities. But he's trying.

I can say that I laughed, I squirmed. There are no easy answers offered to Oscar's plight or to the problems of the underclass in Medellin. But the film is full of heart. Do I have to draw a picture for you? 

BONUS TRACK

A lovely interlude from "A Poet," Los Zafiros with "La Luna en tu Mirada":

On the Lam

 

NIKA AND MADISON (B) - Every generation gets the "Thelma and Louise" it deserves. Here, two indigenous young women hit the road after one of them violently rejects the sexual aggression  of a police officer while off the Canadian reservation. 

 

Star Slade brings star power to the screen as Madison a flailing college student who meets up with old pal Nika (Ellyn Jade) on a visit back home. Nika is gruff and plain-spoken and rebuffs Madison's pleas to go out on the town. When Madison gets into a bar fight -- and then a tussle with the handsy cop -- Nika comes to the rescue. Meantime, the tribal president (Gail Maurice) defies the investigators and enforces the tribe's jurisdictional authority over the local police.

Amanda Brugel and Shawn Doyle flash a fantastic chemistry as the TV-style trash-talking detectives. Doyle's brusque Det. Warhurst has little patience for the niceties of diplomatic relations, and Brugel imbues her Det. Timmins with a jagged sarcasm that hints at sympathies for the young women of color. 

Slade lights up the screen with big eyes and an appealing smile, but she also digs deep for the ennui Madison is experiencing on the mainstream academic track. Nika has a hard-shell protecting a bruised interior; she describes herself as having "lost my momentum." But you know there is a not-so-cryptic reason for why she has shut down emotionally. The only true misstep: a "Breakfast Club" moment when the stylish, urbane Madison dolls up the tomboyish Nika for a night out in the big city.

Otherwise, this pair of dueling duos chug down parallel tracks as filmmaker Eva Thomas (co-writing with Michael McGowan) steers clear of plot potholes and brings this familiar but authentic tale to a satisfying finish in less than 90 minutes. This is thoughtful, quiet but effective storytelling.

SIRAT (B-minus) - The first half of this apocalyptic road movie has a powerful hum to it, peeling away layers from a carnival cast of characters wandering the Moroccan desert as the start of World War III apparently plays out off-screen in the background. 

Sergi Lopez stars as Luis, a portly normie infiltrating the desert rave scene searching for his missing daughter. He has ill-advisedly brought his young son with him (and their dog), which bogs him down as he tries to keep pace with a troupe of oddballs leading a three-vehicle caravan to the next festival site where they might track down Luis' daughter. The off-the-grid group (compared by one viewer to a Jodorosky cast) is led by the visually arresting punk Jade (Jade Oukid) and includes the androgynous Steff (Stefania Gadda), as well as a man with one leg and another missing his right hand.  

 

Filmmaker Oliver Laxe (co-writing with Santiago Fillol) is too enamored of the blaring, pulsating dance music that opens the film and provides trippy interludes for the nomads; he struggles to weave it smoothly into the narrative. Luis's SUV often can't keep up on the off-road path traversed by the group's steampunk trucks, but Jade & Co. refuse to abandon the poor shlub. 

However, the wheels come off of this cross between "Mad Max" and "The Road" in the final third, as Laxe begins to pummel the audience with unspeakably violent acts that pick off characters one at a time. As the caravan becomes trapped in a minefield (a metaphor for a filmmaker derailed from his plot), and the detonations start, "Sirat" becomes an endurance contest. (And with every blast, I couldn't help being reminded of SCTV's Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurock.) What starts out with dystopian promise devolves into Laxe's game of Whac-a-Mole with his characters, fumbling a promising opportunity.

28 YEARS LATER (C) - I don't remember much about "28 Days Later" from 2002, but back then Danny Boyle was in his prime and his narrative skills were unmatched. With his recent sequel "28 Years Later," the next generation deals with the aftermath of the viral outbreak that spawned a rampage of the undead. A gazillion zombie movies later, there is nothing to be wrung from such a tired tale. And Boyle's brand of boyhood magical realism has lost its charm. 

The British pop-auteur ("Millions," "Slumdog Millionaire," "Sunshine") re-teams with Alex Garland ("Ex Machina") from the original film, but very little works here as they unspool a drab, uninspired tale of a boy, Spike (Alfie Williams), venturing out on a vision quest from the walled-off safe zone that is England, across a land bridge to the European continent to hunt zombies with a bow-and-arrow. Would you believe that on his various missions he will narrowly escape death repeatedly so that he can eventually bring his mysteriously ailing mother (Jodie Comer) to the danger zone to seek a cure from a mad survivalist doctor? 

That doctor is played, improbably and to the hilt, by Ralph Fiennes, slathered in iodine (best to ward off any virus) and juggling a detente with the wild population. (He's no Col. Kurtz, and this is no "Apocalypse Now.") By that final third of the film, you probably will be exhausted by Boyle's cliched visual effects -- awe-inducing prismatic skies, amateurish camera tricks where the image freezes upon the impact of the arrow and rotates 90 degrees before resuming motion. The narrative is a string of idiot plots lazily stitched together. Whereas "Billions" or "Slumdog Millionaire" could make boyhood adventures seem enchanting, Spike's adventures here just seem silly and strained.

Maybe we're jaded in the modern era. But whatever charm or suspense that we experienced nearly a quarter century ago has evaporated with this unnecessary, limp sequel.  

BONUS TRACK

It's no "Lust for Life" from "Trainspotting," but Boyle gets good mileage out of "Lowly" by Young Fathers, which sets the table early on for "28 Years Later":

Time Out of Mind

 

NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE (A-minus) - Matt Johnson has a genius' knack for making smart, fun films. He has the look of a sloppy vaudevillian, the mind of Groucho Marx, and the director's eye of Hal Ashby.

 

I don't know much about Nirvanna the band, or Nirvanna the show, but this has been a long-running project between Johnson (above left) and collaborator Jay McCarrol who spent 2007 to 2009 creating a web series that chronicled fictional versions of themselves striving to play the Rivoli theater in Toronto. They incorporate footage from the original series (which they brought to television in 2017 and 2018) to create this clever slapstick time-travel romp that spans the past 18 years. 

The hook here is that the pair -- who remain down on their luck in the present day and still undiscovered -- develop a scheme to pose as time travelers from 2008 by rigging an RV to mimic the car from "Back to the Future" (whose footage is borrowed here in the name of satire). When the time-travel machine actually works (thanks to a plot device involving spilled Orbitz, a passing-fad drink from the 1990s), it is an opportunity, if all goes according to plan, to rewrite history and book that gig at the Rivoli in 2008 -- and ensure fame. Of course, all does not go according to plan. While in 2008, an unexpected rift between the two present-day pals (tiptoeing around their 2008 selves) triggers a butterfly-effect glitch in time/space, leading to an altered present day in which Jay went on to become famous and Matt hangs with a bunch of nerds in a Jay McCarrol tribute band.

The film starts with an elaborate stunt in which the pair plan to visit the deck of the CN Tower and parachute into Toronto's Sky Dome baseball stadium. It's not clear how much of this is staged, how much is real, or if doubles were used -- but the mockumentary effect is brilliant. The tower will play into a grand finale involving a crazed scheme to use a lightning strike to fuel the time machine. It's all quite complicated but enormously delightful. It all pretty much makes sense in its own controlled universe.

Like in Johnson's debut film "The Dirties," there is an "Office"-like meta touch of an unseen crew filming all of the antics, both in the present day and back in 2008. Johnson still gets a lot of mileage out of subtle glances at the camera, often trying to mask a deep-seated panic that he is determined to overcome. And like "The Dirties," this is a heartfelt buddy movie, a touching paean to enduring friendship. (The germ of an idea for the original web series started when the pair were high school besties.)

Matt is clearly the instigator of most of the mayhem. At times, Matt and Jay's interactions on the streets and in the businesses of Toronto seem like actual footage, with real people and folded into the narrative. Their TV show was known to break the fourth wall, and this melange of factual, fiction and metafictional somehow gels as a cohesive movie that absolutely nails the ending.

None of this happens without Johnson and his ability to synthesize disparate elements into a movie that somehow comes off as lame-brained and brilliant at the same time. (See also his retro take on a government film crew making a film that fabricates the 1969 moon landing, "Operation Avalanche.") Most recently, Johnson went back in time to score with "BlackBerry," which fictionalized the creation of the original PDA and precursor to Apple's iPhone.

So far, as a writer, director and performer, he can do no wrong. His joy of filmmaking pours off the screen, and this DIY inside joke is as entertaining as 100 minutes can get. 

New to the Queue

 Is the planet getting warmer or is just me?

A documentary finding humor in a cancer diagnosis, "Andre Is an Idiot."

A silly romp through wine country, "The Napa Boys."

An artsy documentary about life in Naples in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, "Pompei: Life Below the Clouds."

Speaking of clouds, a profile of a cameraman who specializes in unique skydiving stunts, "Space Cowboy."

Now and Then: Tom Waits for Jarmusch

 

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER (B+) - There is something rather comforting in a Jim Jarmusch film. The leisurely pace. The assured direction. The sparse, off-kilter dialogue. The loops of echoing themes. And his respect for his audience's intelligence.

Here he unspools three stories about parents and children, in three disparate settings capturing the awkwardness of family relations. The cinematic connective tissue involves random repeated threads -- skateboarders, wristwatches, family photos, overhead shots of tables full of food and drink, toasts, color coordination of outfits (in the red family), horoscopes, car trips and sly variations on the British colloquialism "Bob's your uncle." The other common theme: Usually parents are depicted as out of touch and pitied by the younger generation; here, Jarmusch offers a Boomer's wink suggesting that his generation was and is the wiser, more well-adjusted and hippest of them all.

 

Adam Driver accepts the torch from Tom Waits as Jarmusch's off-kilter anti-hero, as they star together as father and son in the first short, with Mayim Bialik as Waits' daughter. The two offspring set the table for the whole movie with their disjointed and arm's-length conversation during the drive on the way up to their father's isolated lake house. It is clear early on that the father is exploiting his kids' generous nature and not letting on that he might be living a better life than his messy house suggests.

Waits is perfectly odd as the mumbling, fumbling father who just doesn't connect with his spectrum-y adult children, whether he is running down a list of drugs he's not taking or wielding an ax for no good reason. Driver, who starred in the director's "Paterson," can underplay a role with the best of them; I can't imagine anyone else in this specific role. And Bialik is the ultimate get-along sister/daughter. The actors have wonderful chemistry playing three relatives that have none. You almost wish it were its own standalone short film.

The third episode jumps a generation to a pair of 20-something twins visiting Paris to clear out the apartment of their parents, who have died in a plane crash. Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) have a playful banter and a fundamental connection, which is a refreshing contrast to the stilted relations on display in the first two episodes. Again, the lives of the parents -- excavated through photos, fake IDs and documents -- suggest a much more interesting narrative than the mundane plot we are watching, a clever sleight of hand.

 

Moore and Sabbat display the ease and dexterity of veteran actors, and it is fun to explore the side streets and interiors of Paris with this laid-back pair. They also are the most intellectually curious of all the film's characters. And we get a final subtle generational twist for the finale. 

The middle entry is the weakest. Charlotte Rampling portrays a best-selling novelist who must endure a traditional mother-daughter high tea with her two dysfunctional daughters. Cate Blanchett plays a straight-up nerd, and Vicky Krieps is the stereotypical aging punk-rock chick (at least Jarmusch's version of one). They live in Dublin, of all places, walking on eggshells around each other at the mom's fancy home. 

You can't ask for three more skilled actors, but they struggle to connect; their disparate accents don't help. There is no heft to the narrative, besides the disappointment a high-powered parent can barely conceal in her under-achieving children. Maybe the filmmaker just doesn't have an ear for this type of female interaction. It's fine but dwarfed by the impeccably curated tales that bookend it.

DOWN BY LAW (1986) (A-minus) - Jarmusch is at his '80s quirkiest, blessed with three unique actors who bond in this absurdist prison tale set in the unforgiving swamplands of Louisiana. 

John Lurie returns to the fold from "Stranger Than Paradise" to portray Jack, a somewhat dimwitted pimp who gets set up in an embarrassing police sting. Tom Waits, whose music career was humming along, is Zack, a hipster-doofus deejay who gets suckered into being a bagman, with disastrous results. They are eventually joined in prison by Roberto, a happy-go-lucky Italian who speaks fractured English and is played with broad comic joy by Roberto Benigni, in his American film debut (and his first of three films with the director). 

 

Benigni seems to embody all three Marx Brothers simultaneously as he steals the show from his sublimely deadpan co-stars. He constantly mixes up Zack and Jack (understandably), and he crafts charming fractured phrases from his notebook of English idioms. ("I am a good egg. ... We are a good egg.") Waits, especially, provides a deadpan backboard for the giddy offerings from the strange man they call Bob.

Time passes slowly but pleasantly in the jail cell. When they eventually make their way into the backwoods as fugitives, Jarmusch and cinematographer Robert Mueller let their lazy camera glide along the swamps with the stumbling escapees. Jarmusch's plot employs a satisfying switch at the end, alighting upon a lovely Italian restaurateur in the middle of nowhere (Nicoletta Braschi), who helps flip the hipster script.  

The filmmaker avoids the sophomore slump and sets the table for a rolling out of his patient, outre character studies and zen thought experiments that would play out over a four-decade career. 

BONUS TRACKS

Jarmusch shuns music in favor of an eerie stillness for most of "Father Mother Sister Brother," but then he picks a perfect daytime car ride in Paris to drop a needle on "Spooky" by Dusty Springfield:

 

 

Here is our latest attempt to rank the films of Jim Jarmusch, from most to least favorite:

• Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
• Dead Man (1995)
• Broken Flowers (2005)
• Down by Law (1986)
• The Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)
• Night on Earth (1991)
• Mystery Train (1989)
• Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) 
• Mother Father Sister Brother (2025)
• The Limits of Control (2009)
• Paterson (2016)
• Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
• Permanent Vacation (student film, 1980)
• Gimme Danger (2017) 

Not seen: "The Dead Don't Die" (2019)