Scenes From a Marriage

 

HOW TO DIVORCE DURING THE WAR (B+) - Dry as toast, this story of a Lithuanian couple going through a divorce manages to dig into the crevices of a sclerotic marriage, refusing to take either side while finding deadpan humor in love and war.

 

Marija (Zygimante Elena Jakstaite) is a high-ranking editor at a company that produces viral videos, but she is dead inside, no longer in love with her husband, Vytas (Marius Repsys), whose filmmaking career has foundered while he performs menial domestic duties all day, looking after their adolescent daughter. Marija is frustrated with the traditional role reversal, and she longs to live a more exciting life. (Turns out, she has a secret on the side that reveals how desperate she is for fresh affection and a more lustful life.)

She announces her intentions to seek a divorce and split up the household, but the next day Russia invades Ukraine, sending shockwaves throughout Eastern Europe. The breakup happens -- Vytas schleps home to his parents, whose minds are warped by Russian propaganda TV that beams in through their satellite dish -- but things get complicated. Urged on by the daughter, Marija agrees to take in a Ukrainian woman and her two teenage sons. Marija also is under pressure to quit her job to protest the company's close relationship with Russian interests.

Writer-director Andrius Blazevicius refuses to sugarcoat or over-dramatize any of these events. Marija and Vytas feel like two very real 30-somethings flailing through the early onset of a midlife crisis. The Russian family turns out to be a set of rather ungrateful slobs, testing the patience of Marija, who now has to worry about money herself, with her career in flux. Meantime, Vytas finds his voice while volunteering at a refugee food bank and rekindles his creative spark.

Blazevicius uses almost no incidental music, and he refuses to let any scene devolve into histrionics. This is just how life goes sometime, our own private crises playing out while global chaos swirls in the background. Marija and Vytas are quite relatable characters -- and young Amelija Adomaityte provides key balance as the daughter, Dovile, who begins to act out at school (more complications to best this family). The couple's conversations are thought-out and feel lived-in. The droll humor lands just about every time. The ending feels earned, and it's a kick to join this couple for their journey, wherever they end up, together or apart.

GENTLE MONSTER (B-minus) - There is not much meat on the bones of this story about a couple coping with allegations of child pornography against the husband, as authorities look into whether the couple's young son also was a victim. 

As we have been taught, evil can be banal. But it need not be boring. And that's the sin here by writer-director Marie Kreutzer, who perfectly nailed the female psyche with her last feature, 2022's "Corsage." Blessed again with a powerful lead -- here, Lea Seydoux -- Kreutzer noodles for nearly two hours, knowing well that the ultimate outcome is predictable. And Seydoux is overly subdued throughout; physically, she looks plump and frumpy. 

 

Seydoux plays Lucy Weiss, a renowned French pianist whose signature is her elaborate deconstructions of popular songs, like the Cure's "Boys Don't Cry" and George Michael's "Freedom." She decides that she and her TV filmmaker husband, Philip (Laurence Rupp), need to unplug a bit by moving from Munich to the Bavarian countryside with their adolescent son. It is there that the authorities come knocking on the door to seize Philip's equipment and hard drives. 

Kreutzer creates a parallel plot construction by taking a peek into the home life of the main police investigator, Elsa (Jella Haase), who dementia-addled father has been constantly trying to grope the live-in nurse. Meantime, Lucy broods a lot, keeps a close eye on her son, and seeks counsel from her mother, played by the grande dame of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve, who can still communicate volumes with an arch of her eyebrow. (The talents of both women are too often wasted here.) Philip's parents also like to meddle in Lucy's marriage, and it's a conversational slip from them that knocks the scales from Lucy's eyes.

Kreutzer has some interesting ideas but no clear road map. How does a family cope with unproved allegations like this? It's not always in the form of screaming matches, ultimatums, and flung dishes. The problem here is that the momentum never builds; there is perhaps an intentional provocation, daring us to look away and taunting us with the dearth of drama. The problem is, a lot of viewers just won't make it to the second half, especially when it comes to streaming on Netflix next month and the remote control is within arm's reach. "How to Divorce During the War" makes the mundane fascinating, digging into the desires and motivations of its characters; "Gentle Monster" struggles to scratch the surface.

BONUS TRACKS

Among the songs that Lucy reinterprets is the R&B oldie "Would I Lie to You" by Charles and Eddie, which is almost annoyingly on point:

 

Also on her song list is "A Groovy Kind of Love," a hit in 1966 for the Mindbenders:

Post-war Madness

 A pair from the Santa Fe International Film Festival:

 

FATHERLAND (A-minus) - Sandra Huller glumly balances melancholy and black humor in the latest black-and-white character study from Pawel Pawlikowski, who has done these period pieces well, with "Ida" and "Cold War." 

 

File this under: You can't go home again. A grim-faced Hanns Zischler plays celebrated author Thomas Mann (Death in Venice), who returns from American exile to visit his native Germany -- both East and West -- 16 years after he fled Hitler's takeover and four years after the Nazis' defeat. Mann feels little else but disdain for his former compatriots, especially those trying to pretend that they were not fascist sympathizers or collaborators. He has particularly harsh words for the fawning sons of the composer Wagner.

But this is Huller's movie. The opening scene features a phone conversation between her character, Mann's daughter Erika, and her brother, Klaus (August Diehl), who is holed up in France, wallowing in nihilism and opiate abuse. Both offspring were writers in their own right, Klaus lashing out at the Nazi regime in Mephisto. Their interaction pulses with raw sibling emotion, and that connection will carry through the entire film, right up until the perfect ending.

Pawlikoski, needing only about 75 minutes before the final credits roll, runs Erika and her weary father initially through West Germany, full of phonies and snobs, before heading behind the descending Iron Curtain (full of soldiers and grifters) to convey the Soviet influence in Weimar and beyond. (Early on, the dichotomy is characterized as Stalin vs. Mickey Mouse.) Despite the depressing theme, a subtle, cutting humor permeates the interactions among father-daughter and their various hosts and well-wishers. An uneasy Jazz Age atmosphere abounds, as if the entire country is trying to erase the recent past and reconstitute the pre-Hitler mood. 

But the Mann family -- and Pawlikowski -- are not in the mood to be forgiving or patient. They have disgust for the ugliness that took hold in Germany in the 1930s. Memories are too fresh and emotions  raw. The director, writing here with Henk Hendloegten ("Good Bye Lenin"), skips efficiently through Mann's literary itinerary, sometimes shooting in a quasi-documentary format, including a jangly press conference with Dylanesque vibes. He packs a lot into those riveting 75 minutes.

THE LIBERATION (B) - Give me Carrie Coon and a cult -- especially an all-female cult ... ruled by a Mean Girl -- and I'll give you two hours. 

 

Coon carries a film like few others can. Here she is Rita, a frazzled 40-something wife and mother of two college-age daughters who burns out on her banking job and falls for the curated camaraderie of a cult led by an attractive, charismatic young woman, Ricki (Lily James), who has assembled a sisterhood around the philosophy of "clarity, honesty, forgiveness." It's the early '80s, and cults are having a moment in the extended hangover from the hippie 1960s. 

Rita is plagued by the past -- she still takes care of her ailing father, who, along with her, survived the Holocaust; they are riven with guilt over the deaths in the camps of Rita's mother and three sisters. Ricki's pack of women offers Rita an escape from those ghosts, as well as the empty nest she is facing with her cipher of a husband, Reuban (Tracy Letts), who is both confounded and outraged by Rita's escape from her boring existence.

Rita's daughters come to the cult's compound to rescue their mother, who now goes by Naia and is skin and bones due to the penurious nutritional philosophy of the cult. This spry saga quickly settles into a comfortable movie-of-the week pace reminiscent of Reagan-era productions (whether that is intentional or not). Cliches creep in. We will get a resident of the camp irrationally denied medical care who must be rushed to the hospital. The allure of the cult never fully reveals itself. The plot turns predictable, and short-cuts are taken.

Still, there is a juicy appeal among the three main leads. Coon's transformation from chubby-cheeked working mom to frail captive (a Reverse De Niro) is compelling, quietly echoing images from the Holocaust itself. James ("Baby Driver"), now in her late 30s, exudes a soft-spoken menace as the manipulative Ricki, fully going toe-to-toe with Coons. Letts, a go-to character actor, is equal parts concerned and flustered as the old-school spouse who can't believe his wife is anything but content. The weak spots are the daughters. Odessa Young is a cipher as the older Jo. Bella Ramsey (HBO's "The Last of Us") is the weakest link, emoting too often with her big eyes and straining her acting chops with hysterical outbursts that hit false notes.

Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv ("Skin," "Strangers," "Golda") knows how to spin a period piece (this is based on a true story) and allow his actors to stretch their limbs. You might feel like you've seen much of this before, but the execution here might leave you a tad rattled. 

BONUS TRACKS

From a key moment in "Fatherland," Bach's Wohl mir, dass Ich Jesum habe, cantata 147 ("Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"):

 

And the Mills Brothers capture the World War II era -- or the queasy hopefulness that preceded the outbreak -- with "Tiger Rag":

Doc Watch: Inner Peace

 A pair streaming on PBS:

REMAKE (B) - Career documentarian Ross McElwee treads some of the same ground as in his 2012 self-examination "Photographic Memory," producing a sequel that deals with the death of his son from a drug overdose. Sadly, it sags under the weight of 112 minutes.

 

Fourteen years ago, McElwee focused on the arc of his career and his life, contrasting it with that of his young-adult son. That son, Adrian, would eventually descend into substance abuse while flailing away searching for his own voice as a budding filmmaker. McElwee revisits some of the same footage from "Photographic Memory," and he repeats it internally within "Remake," which will test the patience of viewers, some of whom will bail out early anyway. Adrian was a curious, precocious kid, but he loses his way shortly into adulthood, and nothing can help him regain his grip. He also has become a less interesting character.

McElwee, in his 70s, has found love in the past decade, with a younger woman from Korea, also a filmmaker. But McElwee hammers away here at the lost opportunity that Adrian represented, repeating variations on "What could have been done?" and "If I curate footage of your life, can I keep you alive somehow?" It's not that it's tedious, but it certainly is niche. The viewer needs a tolerance for sifting through the detritus of one man's life -- yet again.

McElwee's other main character is a friend, vivacious in her youth but now descending into dementia, her own photographic memories jumbled or slipping away. She had long chastised her friend for living his life through the lens of a camera. She competes for the final word, in a late interview before her death, ridiculing McElwee for putting so much stock into such an ugly little machine. Was she right? Hard to say. McElwee does deserve credit for splaying his motives and emotions so publicly without making his grief seem manipulative or self-serving.

The film is an opportunity, at least, to study how one man reconciles the choices he has made throughout his life.

MARY OLIVER: SAVED BY THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD (B-minus) - In the opening scenes of this documentary about poet Mary Oliver, she explains that she overcame an abusive childhood by burying the experience and that she eventually learned the secret to a good life: Learn how to love and be loved. There is not much more to convey beyond reading aloud some of her poems. 

Thus, there is not really enough to warrant a full-length film. Instead, go read her poems, maybe track down a couple of her interviews, and you'll be set.

 

I learned of Mary Oliver's poetry well after she had won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1984. I remember in the early 2000s a yoga instructor, who had named herself Supriti, reading Oliver's spare poetry at the end of class, while we were in repose during savasana. Oliver was a devotee of Walt Whitman, and her writings from nature reminded me of the elegant simplicity of Emily Dickinson (if Dickinson could have been cajoled to leave her room and frolic in the woods). Her most famous line: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Director Sasha Waters ("Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable") struggles to illustrate the words of Oliver. The film is riddled with distracting random nature scenes. There are a lot of shots of flowers opening in time-lapse, waves crashing over rocky shores, a curious number of foxes; often the frame is artificially scuffed with arty red lens flares. A recording of Oliver describing child sexual abuse at the hands of her father is illustrated with archival shots of figure skaters.

Poets, biographers and academics are joined by a few scattered celebrities, like comedian Stephen Colbert, singer Lucy Dacus, and Oliver's longtime Provincetown neighbor John Waters, the filmmaker. They are all big fans, but do they really open any doors to understanding Oliver's art more than we already do? I don't think so. It reminded me of another near-miss, "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold."

Oliver liked to smoke, bop around town and write. At some point she found a home in New England and a partner to share her life with. It seemed like a quite satisfying life in the end. But it doesn't make for a compelling visual story. What's on the page suffices.

New to the Queue

 Headed for a fall ... or autumn, if you prefer ...

 

The son of William Greaves curates the father's footage from a legendary party of luminaries in 1972, "Once Upon a Time in Harlem."

A view of the attacks on Gaza from the rooftops of Tel Aviv, "Naza."

Because of its epic length, we'll wait for streaming to check out the latest from Alex Gibney ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," "We Steal Secrets," "Going Clear"), the four-hour profile "Musk."

Ava Duvernay is following up her documentary about the 13th Amendment by proceeding in numerical order, "14th."

Pawel Pawlikowski ("Ida," "Cold War") imagines writer Thomas Mann returning to postwar Germany 16 years after fleeing the Nazis, "Fatherland."

And a reminder about the overdue release of the documentary "Free Leonard Peltier," which we reviewed a year ago after screening it at the Santa Fe Film Festival.

Now & Then: In and Out of Fashion

 

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (2006) (C+) - This popular title is more of a cultural touchstone than anything with an authentic cinematic footprint, 20 years on. It is difficult to watch it now (especially for the first time) as anything other than a collection of indelible one-liners and career-defining performances.

 

Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt became stars, Meryl Streep conducted a master class in acting, and Stanley Tucci snarked with the smoldering sneer of a runway model. Never mind that the plot is rickety and the movie itself is an unappetizing mix of romantic comedy, social satire and screwball farce. It buys into both patriarchal stereotypes (no matter how plucky Hathaway's Andy Sachs may be) and mindless worship of the world of celebrities and fashion.

It all feels like an era we could never go back to, as well as a contributing factor to the AI/social-media jungle we are suffocating in. It epically fails the Bechdel Test, even if the test applied not only to men but also to clothes (which it should). Streep plays a supreme asshole of a fashion editor (the barely fictional Runway magazine) with the zeal of a cartoon villain, treating everyone in her sight, including the ever-loyal Nigel (Tucci), like battered stray animals. We are supposed to find Miranda's Shakespearean cruelty charming.

Hathaway's narrative arc is intended for us to root for Andy -- a Northwestern grad and aspiring journalist -- as she immediately sells her soul and devotes her talens to being Miranda's slavering assistant. She is mocked not only for her TJ Maxx wardrobe, but also for having bushy eyebrows and being overweight (even though she is, you know, Anne Hathaway). But, like in a Disney fairytale, Nigel kits her out in jaw-dropping fashions, and Andy instantly transforms into a power player and infallible assistant; there is nothing she can't handle as she slowly earns Miranda's grudging respect. Suddenly she has eclipsed Blunt's Emily as Miranda's most-trusted right-hand woman.

Along the way, she will break up with her puppy-dog of a boyfriend (the equally pretty Adrian Grenier) and sleep with a roguish writer (Simon Baker) before her inevitable (and telegraphed) come-to-Jesus moment that challenges her ethical standards and true devotion to journalism. Andy is caught somewhere in the ether between "Sex and the City" and "Girls." Writers Aline Brosh McKenna and Lauren Weisberger capture the patter of newspaper people as well as fashionistas, dropping in cagey one-liners, mostly for Hathaway and Tucci, though Blunt holds her own at times. Director David Frankel leans on sweeping views of Manhattan and Paris, and he never met a needle drop (Madonna's "Vogue" and other obvious choices) or a celebrity cameo (Heidi Klum, Donatella Versace) that he didn't like. 

This has the breeziness of a trashy beach novel and a naivete that feels appropriate for the Bush era. There are glimpses of legitimate storytelling -- such as when Miranda drops her guard and allows Andy to see her suffer personally as her marriage hits the rocks. But those are mere glimpses of honest storytelling in this scrapbook of a movie.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 (C-minus) - Now that we've established that the world has changed dramatically from 2006, it's abundantly clear we didn't need a sequel, especially one that barely rises above an '80s episode of "Dynasty." 

 

All the principals are back, noticeably older, with Stanley Tucci slipping into an odd Paul Shaffer vocal pattern, his one-liners now forced and flat. Anne Hathaway just can't find the right tone for Andy, wiser now after the demise of her independent journalism outfit and forced to return to Runway, initially to perform damage control for a pesky little problem involving the magazine and story subject employing foreign sweatshop labor.

The ostensible hook here is about the de-evolution of journalism into cheap click-bait, which threatens the future of the magazine. Miranda's job is less authoritarian these days, though she is in line for a promotion to the parent company, run by Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) and his unserious son Jay (B.J. Novak), who looks like he is up to no good. Meantime, Emily has moved on to a big fashion house, and she takes up with a simpleton of a tech billionaire, Benji Barnes (a tone-deaf Justin Theroux), who is in line to take over the parent company and save the magazine from ravenous bean-counters and a staff replaced by AI.

Twists and turns ensue, but the vibe really never rises above the level of soap opera.  Director Frankel returns after an uneventful intervening career, and he doesn't have much to offer beyond more montages set to dance-club hits and swooning shots of Manhattan and, this time, Milan. He devotedly conducts fan service with call-backs to the original, one more tired than the next. (The eyebrows!) Andy, who gets an editor title and an office, is saddled with a bland new boyfriend and a cliched Radar O'Reilly-like assistant, neither of whom can move the needle here. Frankel stuffs in even more celebrity cameos (Jon Batiste, Tina Brown). Nothing coheres.

Like the first film, everyone continues to worship at the altar of fashion, with an added dash of lip-service to the grand question of the precarity of journalism. A serious polemic this is not. Rather, it creaks with worshipful adoration of the original, with everyone just going through the motions and collecting that paycheck. 

 

You can see a glimpse of what might have been during a charming coda, in which Andy and Emily seek to make peace and settle back into their familiar snippy banter. It becomes clear that those two are the keys to the overall arc of the story. It's not Andy battling Miranda or Nigel parenting Andy; instead it is a pair of 40-something women who have been chewed up and spit out by the fashion-industrial complex, but remain survivors who no longer have the energy to snipe at each other. Hathaway (less doe-eyed now) and Blunt (with her features sharpened by age) extract a few ounces of emotion as they toe the line between rivalry and camaraderie.

If you find yourself inclined to bail on this mess, at least skip to that final scene. It doesn't rescue the sequel, but it somehow redeems the original movie and its core mission. After nearly two hours of missteps and tepid retread scenes, the hint of an honest film peeks out at its audience, albeit too little too late.  

Star Power

 

POWER BALLAD (B+) - John Carney's run of solid music-themed films continues. The writer-director who splashed with "Once" in 2007 is now two decades into a career defined by strong characterizations and heartfelt underdog stories.

 

Here he is blessed with Paul Rudd, admirably slumming as a foundering wedding-band singer in Ireland (don't ask) whose song is stolen by a former boy-band poseur and turned into a mega-hit. It's a thoughtful exploration of the vagaries that decide the difference between journeyman and superstar status.

Rudd plays a middle-aged shlub, the conveniently named Rick Power, who happens into a late night of one-on-one jamming with superstar Danny Wilson (a serviceable Nick Jonas), who is under pressure to come up with a hit single and snap a losing streak. He later helps himself to the core of Rick's "How to Write a Song," which he adds a bridge to and produces a smash that revives his career. The rest of the film finds Rick trying to convince the world, but mainly his wife and daughter, that he actually wrote the song -- if only he could find definitive proof in his cluttered music archives.

Carney sold this shtick two years ago when he wove another fairytale, "Flora & Son," about a mom who takes online guitar lessons and bonds with her hip-hop-loving son in the process. That movie, and 2016's "Sing Street," build on Carney's belief in the healing powers of pop music, especially earnest, yearning ballads. The beauty of "Power Ballad" is that a lot of it tracks as plausible and believable. Rudd has that knack of embodying the Everyman spirit (as Eve Hewson did as Flora), and he gives it all -- including singing some classic pop songs (presumably with a big assist from AutoTune). He is a working-class guy fighting not just to lay claim to a potential fortune he is owed, but also to stand up for the craftsmen everywhere who believe in their creative talents.

The central scene in the movie is between Rick and Danny during their alcohol-fueled noodling workshop, and you can appreciate Carney's dogged attention to authenticity regarding the songwriting process. (He wrote the songs for Rick's character in collaboration with Gary Clark, whose claim to fame is the song "Mary's Prayer.") He also gets the vibe right during the wedding scenes, where guests revel in the painfully familiar hooks of the classic-pop era -- which can wear on a musical artist craving authenticity and even a little novelty. And he also nails the fragile camaraderie of local Irish session players riding the coattails of the oddball Yankee who fronts their part-time gigs. There's even a touching callback to "Once," with perfectly calibrated bookending scenes of Rick interacting with a street busker.

"Power Ballad" is funny at times, touching at times, and solidly written to carry you through Rick's narrative arc. Rudd pulls off the role of obscure rock purist, rocking a shaggy Lindsey Buckingham hairstyle and showing command of a guitar and a vocal turn. He gets an assist from solid cast of character actors, including Peter McDonald ("The Batman" and who co-wrote this script) as a guitarist willing to serve as the ultimate wing-man. Carney knows how to whittle this down to a tidy 98 minutes in the most entertaining of ways.

YOU HAD TO BE THERE (B-minus) - This good-natured documentary -- about the notable cast of the Toronto production of the quirky musical "Godspell" in 1972 -- overstays its welcome, even though the amiable stars, some of whom went on to fame with "Saturday Night Live" and "Second City Television," are at their charming best.

The film stumbles out of the gate by overplaying its hand and comparing the original stage cast to a powerhouse lineup akin to the storied 1927 New York Yankees. Granted, Martin Short and Eugene Levy have had solid careers, but neither they nor their co-stars qualify as legendary performers or A-list celebrities. Don't get me wrong, I've recently been rewatching the debut season of "SCTV" on Netflix, and I love Short, Levy, Andrea Martin, and Dave Thomas (as The Beaver), and their 1972 co-star Gilda Radner certainly is an all-timer, but don't tell me that their young, eager troupe rivaled the Beatles on the "Ed Sullivan Show," even if you throw in character actor Victor Garber (TV's "Alias") and bandleader Paul Shaffer ("SNL," "Letterman"). 

 

All that aside, there is a great deal of charm in this very Canadian film production, notably from good-guy Short, whose own home recordings as a teen and his surreptitious taping of one night's performance of "Godspell" serve as the archival foundation for the rollicking narrative. Journeyman director Nick Davis shows little creativity in cycling through his affable talking heads, and he relies too heavily on amateurish animated re-enactments, which seem intentionally drawn in a crude manner meant to evoke the cheesy cartoons of the era, such as "Josie & the Pussycats" and "Scooby-Doo." He also includes random celebrities to gush about the cast, even though they have no real connection to Toronto in 1972; I was scratching my head over the appearances of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Janeane Garafolo, Mike Myers (at least he's a local) and a couple of recent B-listers from the "SNL" cast (Heidi Gardner, James Austin Johnson), which must have been some sort of sop to Canadian godfather Lorne Michaels (who does not appear). 

The actual former cast members (except for the late Radner, of course) still exude god-given comedy chops, including the more obscure members like Jayne Eastwood, a funny woman who has a good run in movies and television. The film crashes around the 80-minute mark though -- when it should be wrapping up but goes on for 20 more minutes. We get a story out of left field from one of the women in the original cast (Avril Chown), who reveals for the first time that, after getting her big break in television after "Godspell," was repeatedly sexually assaulted while a repertory member of the Saturday morning "Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show." Then there is an extended coda involving a reunion of the surviving cast members at one of those parties where they act like they don't hate or envy any of the others; reminisce incessantly; and sadly re-create their old show tunes. It's cute but unnecessary.

If you have no clue about most of the cast members listed above -- Andrea Martin, who starred in the "Big Fat Greek Wedding" franchise, is brilliant but not exactly a household name -- then this is probably not for you. If you have a soft spot for character actors like Victor Garber (the only Toronto cast member to make the cut for the 1973 movie adaptation) and are not by now tired of the ubiquitous Short (who just got the Netflix treatment) and Levy, then you probably will appreciate this valentine to a quaint era in entertainment. These folks weren't the Murderer's Row of comedy; rather, they are the plucky underdogs, the scrappy Pittsburgh Pirates seeking to upset the '27 Yankees.

BONUS TRACKS

The set-list of cover songs for Rudd and the boys goes beyond obvious choices like "Celebration" and is occasionally quite inspired, such as Stevie Wonder's "I Wish," which is marking its 50th anniversary this year. It opens with that indelible walking synth-bass line:

 

One interlude in "Power Ballad" is scored to the Ink Spots' "The Best Things in Life Are Free":

In the End Days, You Can't Take It With You

 

Jim Bakker died this week at age 86. He was the disgraced televangelist whose 1990s prison conversion didn't last long, and so he lived out his days hawking survivalist gear for what he perceived to be the coming apocalypse, grifting to the end.

The Charlotte Observer, which helped expose his lavish lifestyle and con game with wife Tammy Faye Bakker, finally got a chance to write his obit and dance on his grave. Rest in prosperity, you weasel.

We confessed all of our Bakker-related sins in 2021 when we reviewed the wonderful biopic of the creepy couple, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye." Now is a good time to revisit Michael Showalter's drama starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield, who "nails the smarm and massive insecurities -- not to mention the whiny speech patterns -- of Jim Bakker."

Here is how I'll remember Bakker, broken and sobbing while exiting his lawyer's office and surrendering to U.S. Marshals.

Driven by Desire

 

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) (B) - David Lean's epic has not worn well over these past six decades in its depiction of British military officer T.E. Lawrence's exploits leading Arab regiments battling for independence toward the end of World War I. Like most films of its era, it suffers from colonial white-savior ideations, personified by the gorgeous blue-eyed Peter O'Toole, in his breakout role.

 

The Arab people's were revolting against Turkish rule during the war, and Lawrence took up their cause, despite the machinations of Britain and France in drawing up plans to carve up the Middle East into protectorates. O'Toole's Lawrence is depicted as brave and sensitive to the Arab cause, though he develops a bloodlust that threatens his sanity and propriety, a condition rivaling that of Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now."

I can't imagine anyone other than film-history buffs actually enduring this 3-hour 47-minute saga in one sitting; I did it in three parts. "Lawrence of Arabia" feels like it's not just from another era but also another world. O'Toole is merely average as the suave adventurer. Omar Sharif, plucked from Egypt's acting world, brings some heft here as Sherif Ali, the adviser to King Feisal, who is the figurehead behind the Arab rebellion. Ali and Lawrence have a contentious relationship, but much of Sharif's job in this movie is to gaze longingly at the fair-haired pretty-boy star. (Rarely is a pomaded hair out of place on O'Toole's head throughout the movie, even after the heat of battle.)

As viewed now, the film is not much more than a homoerotic escapade, captured magnificently (and before there was CGI) by David Lean ("The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Doctor Zhivago"), who was doing battle with sand, the elements and camels in the Jordanian desert. I always wanted to see this on the big screen, and I'm sure I missed a lot by viewing it on DVD, but I'm also glad I wasn't trapped in a theater for four hours. I was also grateful for the occasional rescue by subtitles, as both the British and Arabic accents are laid on thick throughout. 

The story can get convoluted, and Lean struggles to imbue the proceedings with enough action and suspense to justify the epic running time. The cast is hit-and-miss. Alec Guinness is about as authentic playing King Feisal in the desert as he is as a Jedi master out in space. Jose Ferrer, Claude Rains and Anthony Quinn are all rather flat in supporting roles. 

I'll take the blame for waiting so long to finally sit for a screening of a movie that was released the week I was born. Lesson learned. Don't let eras pass you by, and if you do, don't try to recapture a historical moment. "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." 

BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER (2000) (B-minus) - A ridiculous cartoon of a comedy is made palatable by a fine cast, led by a young Natasha Lyonne as an observant Christian cheerleader who is forced to go to a conversion-therapy camp for gay teens.

"Broad" doesn't cover the tone of the movie, and cartoonish might sound too dismissive, but this is definitely lightweight storytelling, which ironically leans on gay-friendly exaggerations to satirize horrible fundamentalist homophobes. It is shot in bright neon colors (mostly pink and blue to enforce normative gender roles) and presents its characters in stark two-dimensional stereotypes.

 

Lyonne, following up "Slums of Beverly Hills" and "American Pie," is still pudgy-cheeked and bright-eyed, the perfect vehicle for writer-director Jamie Babbit, who would go on to a solid career directing TV shows. Lyonne's Megan, so pious that she doesn't clock her own sapphic fantasies, is joined by fellow lesbians resisting the indoctrination, including roles for Melanie Lynskey (still rocking her New Zealand accent) and Clea DuVall (HBO's "Veep"), who provide a solid foundation for salvaging a decent story out of the silliness.

Casting Cathy Moriarty as the uptight fascist director of the therapy camp is the only real misstep here; Moriarty simply is not very funny, and her lines mostly fall flat. RuPaul is on hand to play an "ex-gay" man who runs the recruits through their paces, unconvincingly. The cast also includes Bud Cort ("Harold and Maude") and Mink Stole as Megan's stuffy parents; Richard Moll and Wesley Mann as an old gay couple who live near the camp and provide refuge to those trying to escape; and a cameo by Julie Delpy as Lipstick Lesbian, who tempts Megan in the town bar.

At this point in her career, Lyonne had not developed the swagger and rough edges she has now, but she still is a fun actor to build a throwaway film around. It's interesting that as a kid she appeared on "Pee-wee's Playhouse," because the movie has the aesthetic of an Afterschool Special as conceived by Paul Reubens. Still, Lyonne, Lynskey and DuVall yank this out of the straight-to-video dumpster, and Babbit (with screenwriter Brian Peterson) manage to wring some actual emotion at times, as the captive teens rebel against the attempted brainwashing and seek to find their true selves. I'm being generous here, but I laughed a lot and didn't mind the simplistic presentation of a situation that, a quarter century later, feels a bit anachronistic. I'm not above dumb fun.

BONUS TRACKS

The "Cheerleader" soundtrack buoys the film, especially right out of the gate with Go Sailor's "Ray of Sunshine," which reminds me of classic Primitives:

 

Let's double up on Go Sailor and spin another one, "Together Forever in Love":

 

Someone had a crush on Marilyn Munster. Maybe April March, with "Chick Habit":

 

For the closing credits, Dressy Bessy croons "If You Should Try to Kiss Her":

Let the Drummer Have Some

 

On the past two Tuesdays, I went downtown to see music, and each time the band relied on a drum machine to set the rhythms. In the case of the first band, it was both drum and bass that were programmed by computer. 

I'm not morally opposed to the concept of backing tracks -- Scott H. Biram did the same thing a few months ago when he performed as a "one-man" band -- or recorded rhythm sections. But it is odd and feels like an ominous trend. You think of the drummer as the engine of a live performance, and it's disconcerting to look around for, you know, Animal behind the kit, only to see a modest laptop flashing its lights and machine-gunning beats like a souped-up metronome.  

The first band I saw was Japan's Melt-Banana, now ensconced as a duo -- singer Yasuko "Yako" Onuki and guitarist Ichiro Agata -- emitting a burst of sound and fury for an hour. It is unrelenting noise rock. We last saw them at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe in 2022 and described their technique, involving a handheld MIDI controller, Yako's urgent wailing and Agata's ragged guitar screeches. (We also saw them in Albuquerque way back in 2013.)

Someone recorded last month's show at the Launchpad. Here it is:

 

And here is Melt-Banana from an Atlanta show in 1996, in their original form, when they were relatively new to the scene and still a quartet of instrument-playing Japanese kids. I had seen them, probably about a year earlier, at Lounge Ax in Chicago, and they were a blast live, all of them just bashing away.

 

For balance, I checked out a newer band popular with the kids. Every generation gets the Joy Division it deserves, and for 20-somethings, one of those is French Police. They are two guitarists and a bass player shrouded by back-lighting; they have little personality, and one of them mumbles indecipherable lyrics into the microphone. They play ethereal, jangly post-punk electronica-flavored pop, driven by a propulsive drum machine.

With little knowledge of their catalogue, I could not tell their songs apart at their hourlong live show at Sister Bar. But the youngsters could, and they were going wild for this trio. French Police struck me as a sort of New Age New Order, with all the angst bled from music and the vocals merely an afterthought. It is kind of on the Yacht Rock spectrum.

Here is the band's 20-minute AudioTree performance recorded four years ago in Chicago, the band's base. See if you can distinguish between tracks.

BONUS TRACK

Our title track, courtesy of Firehose and drummer George Hurley:

New to the Queue

 Every new day is a new day ...

  

The big-screen debut from the quirky HBO documentarian John Wilson, "The History of Concrete."

Cristian Mungiu ("Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days," "Graduation") has the dynamic duo of Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan to carry a culture-clash drama, "Fjord."

Michael Showalter ("The Big Sick," "Hello, My Name Is Doris") re-teams with Anne Hathaway ("The Idea of You") for a story about a renowned writer who hires a ghost writer (Dakota Johnson) under suspicious circumstances, "Verity."

From Mexico, a comedy of errors during a quasi-fictional story about an interview with a cellist, "Everything Else Is Noise."

Who had Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu teaming up with Tom Cruise (for a black comedy) on their 2026 bingo card? We'll check out "Digger."

Sian Clifford (the sister in TV's "Fleabag") stars in a mockumentary about a daft aristocrat, "Lady." 

Legal Ease

 

COYOTE V. ACME (B-minus) - In the annals of New Yorker humor, Ian Frazier's comic essay "Coyote v. Acme" is still one of the funniest ever published. It takes the form of an opening statement to the court from Wile E. Coyote's attorney in a products-liability suit against Acme Corp. "for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering caused as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company." Among the injuries were those stemming from allegedly faulty spring-powered shoes and a "sequence of collisions" that left the plaintiff with "a rare and painful condition which caused Mr. Coyote to expand upward and contract downward alternately as he walked, and to emit an off-key accordionlike wheezing with every step," creating "a major impediment to Mr. Coyote's pursuit of a normal social life." 

 

Decades later, a bunch of rascals, including "Guardians of the Galaxy" ringer James Gunn and screenwriter Sammy Burch ("May December," "Late Fame"), have expanded the story into a full-length movie -- part live action, part animation, like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" -- that chronicles the legal odyssey of Wile E. Coyote and his Albuquerque attorney Kevin Avery (Will Forte) as they do battle against the evil Acme corporation, represented by Buddy Crane (John Cena). Avery is intent on blowing the lid off of a far-reaching conspiracy, even if it bankrupts his law practice.

It is all as silly and reductive as you'd expect, though it does have a certain sophistication to it (and a fondness for Albuquerque, where it was shot), and the Warner Bros. cachet allows for cameos from a cavalcade of Looney Tunes legends, like Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird and Foghorn Leghorn (the Acme CEO, it turns out), all voiced by Mel Blanc's successor, Eric Bauza. Forte is a serviceable vehicle for the role of attorney, but the "Saturday Night Live" veteran is no leading man on the big screen. Bugs Bunny himself shows up for a much-appreciated cameo. The script is rife with callbacks and in-jokes.

The one-liners and puns can be fun, though too many have the subtlety of a plunging anvil. The plot chugs along, and Gunn, Burch and a third writer know their way around a narrative arc. It is a classic underdog story, a tale of good vs. evil, even heart-warming at times. Forte gets an assist from Paige Avery as his eager-beaver niece with a legal education and Martha Kelly (TV's "Baskets") as a legal assistant. Cena, though, is painfully not funny; it's not a fatal flaw.

The film itself represents an underdog saga (Warner Bros. canned it a few years ago for the tax write-off before Ketchup Entertainment resurrected it), and it is enjoying a good run in theaters. It is 103 minutes of lightweight entertainment that went down easy at a $7 screening during a summer matinee.

CHOP & STEELE (2023) (B+) - Childhood friends Joe Picket and Nick Prueher have the natural comedic rapport of lifelong buddies, and their history of pranks (mostly at the expense of local TV morning shows) gets an airing in this documentary that highlights their legal battle with station owners who couldn't take a joke.

 

Pickett and Prueher are more widely known for their extraordinary collection of vintage VHS tapes full of cheesy video clips that form the basis for their "Found Footage Festival," which they regularly tour to arthouse cinemas around the country. Early in their career, they realized how easy it is to prank gullible local television news crews who are desperate for content and not so diligent in vetting their subjects. (Morning hosts also are loath to pull the plug on even the most incompetent of home demonstrations.) 

The pair recruited a friend to pose as a yo-yo champion who turned out to be comically inept at manipulating the child's toy. They soon hit on the idea of presenting themselves as "strong-men," when they obviously were mere ordinary goofballs. Their goofy made-up exercises are as funny as they are stupid, especially when the routines pass unchecked by the TV hosts. The bit culminates in an appearance on "America's Got Talent," where the duo hatch a plot to take the bit up a notch on national television. (Props to Howie Mandel for showing up hear and dishing respect to the amateurish provocateurs.) Members of the Yes Men, who are more well known fellow travelers, also weigh in with their own hat-tips, as do veteran comedy insurgents David Cross and Bobcat Goldthwait.

Directors Berndt Mader and Ben Steinbauer, with writer Alex MacKenzie, spend several years with the duo, through their COVID estrangement, and develop a well-rounded profile of a couple of ordinary guys driven by a burning ambition, a true devotion to their long-running shtick. A key hook in the film chronicles the lawsuit brought by one TV station's parent company against Pickett and Prueher, with an amusing focus on clips from their depositions, in which they match wits with overly serious opposing lawyers. The production team also delves into the holy grail of found footage -- a 1980s industrial training film for McDonald's workers, the unintentionally hilarious video that first inspired the impressionable young men.

Throughout, there is an appealing appreciation for the skewed comedy stylings of a couple of rather ordinary guys. It helps to have Pickett's wife, Albertino Rizzo, as a control element in this experiment, providing perspective and insight into both men, and why she still puts up with the one she married. (When one of his ideas is picked up by the TV series "The Office," Pickett declines an offer to join the writing staff, because he's just not into the show.) It's a feel-good movie that provides a healthy dose of escapism at a welcome time.

BONUS TRACKS

Over the credits of "Coyote v. Acme" the Clash tearin' up Sonny Curtis' "I Fought the Law":

Purgatory

 

HONEYJOON (A-minus) - A vacation with your mom can be a challenge; when it's the first anniversary of your father's death, that's a steeper hill to climb. 

The feature debut of NYU grad Lillian T. Mehrel is a pristine, darkly comic character study of a randy daughter and her cynical grieving mother as they go to a spa retreat (a facility that caters to honeymooners) in the Azores with the goal of spreading the father's ashes on an island he had visited long ago and loved as a young man. Mehrel's script is understated and thoroughly amusing, while wringing true emotion from the situation she created.

Ayden Mayeri is appealing as June, the daughter, who chafes at her mother's nostalgia not just for her dead husband, but for the old era in Iran, her homeland, before the religious jihadists took over. June challenges her mother by flaunting her body at the hedonistic resort and flirting with the help. Amira Casar is moving as Lela, who has had the hopes and dreams knocked out of her, but who nonetheless has more than a little appeal to the young men that circle mother and daughter. She also has perfect comedic timing.

The genius here is in Mehrel's placement of mother-and-daughter into a fish-out-of-water milieu and watching how they react. She knows just how to pace the story, and she wisely gets in and out in 75 minutes.  She loops in several themes, some more subtle than the others. A print of Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" hangs behind the concierge desk, and you associate it with June (and her flowing hair), perhaps seeing an opportunity for rebirth, or at least a reset. (And great casting of Antonio Maria as the deadpan concierge, always finding ways to gouge the women financially whenever they make a special request.) Mayeri calls to mind comedians like Jenny Slate, fueled in part by a sarcastic streak.

A minor blossoming love story provides a jolt of energy, but June's boy-crazy antics do not overshadow the dynamics between mother and daughter and their mission to pay homage to the dominant man in their lives. Instead, we get a heartfelt two-handed treatise on grief and coping.

FILIPIÑANA (B-minus) - This narrative slog takes an oddly fashionable, even glamorous, approach to the exploitation of workers in the Philippines, failing to build suspense amid the kindling of bone-dry comic set pieces. The lush golf course where it takes place is lovely to look at, and in the end the story comes across as thoughtful, but first-time filmmaker Raphael Manuel is too obsessed with aesthetics to bother crafting a compelling plot.

The film focuses on Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a 17-year-old golf-course "tee girl," whose main job is to place golf balls on the tee, machine-like, at the driving range for the golfers, many of whom are Filipino elites and Chinese visitors. Not only does this save the men from having to bend over and tee up the balls, but it places the young women in a subservient seated position facing them. Manuel shoots from behind the men's lower halves, so we see the females framed by the men's legs; if they were to look up, they'd see the golfer's crotch. Isabel is assigned to the country club's director, the revered Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman), who, she is warned, is not the great guy he is made out to be. 

 

Another storyline follows Clara (Carmen Castellanos), who shoots with her uncle, who wants to lure her back to the Philippines from her stint in New York, hoping to stem or reverse the Asian nation's brain drain. Clara is not comfortable having her every whim served by the female caddies and others. Her stilted manner is difficult to read.

Manuel is partial to static shots and painfully lethargic scenes, perhaps influenced by Taiwan's Tsai Ming-Laing or other classic slow-burners. He elaborately stages every frame for maximum aesthetic value, favoring long shots in which the action takes place off-center or in the background. He choreographs some routines -- the synchronized swings of golfers at the driving range, the pas de deux of the cleaning staff, the welcoming performance of musicians and dancers, the prancing of the massive sprinklers -- as if he is conducting a musical, with the whimsy of Jacques Tati.

What he does not have is a compelling story. The MacGuffin here is that Isabel is assigned the task of returning a golf club to Dr. Palanca after he left it behind, and that task turns into an odyssey that takes Isabel through some of the ritzy country club's more off-limits areas. First, it makes little sense that she would be assigned such a task; how difficult would it be to ping the director and let him know his errant five-iron is at the front desk? Second, why must Isabel take a serpentine Family Circus route just to drop off an item? 

If you can get past those distractions, there is a bit of dread that builds as Isabel carries out her mission. But it's not much. While she is meandering all over, there is a side story involving a little girl who has run off and gone missing, though no one is going out of their way to hunt her down or even show concern. This is the main theme of "Filipiñana": The rich have all of their whims catered to, no matter the cost or resources required, while the rest of us are elbowed aside to fight over the remaining scraps. 

It would be a more powerful message if it were not styled in such artifice. Manuel fetishizes his tee girls and caddies, wrapping them in fashionable outfits -- white knee socks and short pale-blue stewardess dresses for the former, pink frocks with matching rice-paddy hats for the latter. Don't get me wrong -- the visuals can be intoxicating at times, the balletic moves a feast for the eyes. But the stakes can be confusing and the pacing is turgid. (The 100 minutes passed by so slowly and the dialogue was so intermittent that my mind would stray or my eyelids would droop, and I'd miss a line of dialogue here and there.) There is a tonal disconnect at play here, and I'm not sure Manuel intended to get in the way of his own story.

BONUS TRACKS

The trailers:

 

Both films had interesting soundtracks. I could not track down the music from "Honeyjoon," scored by Retail Space. "Filipiñana" reached back for some retro and traditional tracks, including this instrumental, "Always in My Heart" by Los Indios Tabajaras:

Soundtrack of Your Life: Fall in to the Gap

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

 

Wow, it's been more than 20 years since Bright Eyes released "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning," a brilliant album that was perhaps his most Dylanesque, Emmylou Harris and all.

On Saturday, after a quick round of door-knocking in the morning, it was off to the gym, but first to the Gap, coupon in hand, hoping to score a deal on some jeans. As I walked through an alley-way to the main part of the outdoor mall in Uptown, I could hear the loud music that plays from speakers all around the stores and parking lot. 

I was greeted by Conor Oberst's "We Are Nowhere and It's Now," a sluggish waltz that captures the antsy ennui with which he greeted the millennium. (Why 2K?) Oberst, a wunderkind when he founded Bright Eyes, was as morose as they come then, with a facility for turning a phrase. Here is the centerpiece of "We Are Nowhere":

I got no plans and too much time
I feel too restless to unwind
I'm always lost in thought
As I walk a block to my favorite neon sign

 Here is the song:

Oberst would struggle with alcohol addiction. It's not a surprise when an artist with a tortured soul and gloomy outlook succumbs to substance abuse. The song drops a big hint about that: "She says these bars are filled with things that kill / By now you probably should have learned." Harris is there to back him up and pat him on the back, not quite assuring Oberst, but at least keeping him company for a while.

I bought three pairs of jeans for $100 and had a bounce in my step the rest of the day.

Date: September 19, 2026, noon

Place: Winrock outdoor mall, Uptown Albuquerque, N.M.

Song:  "We Are Nowhere and It's Now"

Artist: Bright Eyes

Irony Matrix: 4.75 out of 10 

Best of Ever, Vol. 14: Small World

 

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (A) - With Wes Anderson, it's all about the world-building and the balance between whimsy and true emotion. It all comes together with his tongue-in-cheek tale of an over-the-hill Jacques Cousteau-type deep-sea explorer whose personal life is crumbling as fast as his career is. It is Anderson's most complete and satisfying feature film, even if other movies have more memorable individual moments.

 

Bathed in bathos, the dull-edged comedy, mainly from Bill Murray's title hero, knits this epic saga together and shuts out any mawkish possibilities. There is a heavy dose of nostalgia, setting the template for Anderson's eventual headlong dive back in time in subsequent movies, to his fictitious apple-cheeked lost world of formalities, gadgets and quirky designs. We start to see the fussiness here in Team Zissou's powder blue uniforms (usually short pants) accented with red knit caps and a weapon strapped around the thigh. We also get random wonders, like the spectacle of bizarre little creatures scurrying about the beach and glowing in the dark after sunset. 

This is an airtight world, where Anderson is God to all the characters and serves as the hand that creates everything in this oddly curated universe. Zissou -- nervous on the eve of debuting his latest oceanography documentary in the wake of the death of a close member of his crew -- mopes around with a richly drawn cast of characters: Owen Wilson as the young man who might be his son; Cate Blanchett as a pregnant reporter embedded with the crew who might be angling to serve up a hit piece on Zissou; Willem Dafoe as German first mate Klaus, who is loyal to a fault and craves the boss' approval; Anjelica Huston as Zissou's estranged wife, who takes up with his pompous, well-funded rival, played to the hilt by Jeff Goldblum, who often threatens to steal the film from Murray. The crew's mission is to seek vengeance on the "jaguar shark" that killed Zissou's pal. First, they must battle dwindling resources and international pirates.

Murray's Zissou is acutely aware of the anachronism he has become, with quasi-suicidal tendencies that tend to jeopardize the crew through irrational, reckless decisions. He knows he won't succeed in seducing the reporter, but his ego insists on going through the motions, in quaint bid for chivalry. He doesn't deserve to get his wife back (or to continue depleting her financial resources), but he tugs at her heartstrings with his patented puppy-dog eyes anyway. Late in the film he sums up his lingering funk by acknowledging, "I know I haven't been my best this past decade." (His dolor is fueled by drink and pot.)

It all builds to a series of reckonings -- Zissou with his supposed offspring, with the ocean predator, and with his movie audience and critics -- all of which adds layers of depth compared with Anderson's preceding movie, the brilliant family romp "The Royal Tenenbaums." He evokes what is probably the greatest mixed comic-dramatic performance of Murray's career, and he interlaces multiple relationships and storylines. Toss in musical interludes based on Portuguese versions of David Bowie songs, and you have a sui generis big-screen adventure, a sentimental swashbuckler that is secure in its pristine time capsule.

BOTTLE ROCKET (A-minus) - Oh, those baby-faced Wilson boys. Owen Wilson co-wrote Wes Anderson's offbeat debut feature, and Luke Wilson takes the lead as the pretty face of a rag-tag wanna-be gangster trio, derailing their antics by falling in love with a hotel maid while on the lam.

This started as a flimsy short film that was adopted and nurtured by James L. Brooks ("Terms of Endearment"), who had seen it at Sundance and agreed to finance it. It has only a few of the cinematic touchstones that Anderson would become known for, but its loose-limbed deadpan humor carries a rather thin plot.

 

Owen Wilson is the bossy, uptight Dignan, who springs his pal Anthony (Luke Wilson) from a psychiatric unit (though it was a voluntary stint) to abet in a series of petty heists so that Dignan can prove himself to his former boss of a landscaping crew. Robert Musgrave is on hand as Robert Mapplethorpe, the deadpan getaway driver and conscience of the gang. 

The love story between Anthony and Inez (a charming Lumi Cavazos) is rather corny, but both actors sell it in the end. James Caan shows up as the big boss, conveying the sense that his mere presence is doing the no-name filmmaker a big favor. He could have tried a little harder and played it less broadly. Owen Wilson is the glue that holds it all together. The banter among the main trio has an offbeat tempo to it, but it coheres in the end.

The film was a dud at the time, but it was a quick hop, skip and a jump for Anderson, working every few years, to his breakthrough "Rushmore" and then "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Life Aquatic." It was just a hint of what was to come.

BONUS TRACKS

Clips of Seu Jorge covering Bowie tunes during "Life Aquatic":

 

One of the classic needle-drops in cinema, Bowie himself with "Queen Bitch" over the closing credits:

 

Viva Las Vegas

 

EPIC: ELVIS PRESLEY IN CONCERT (B-minus) - For me, 90 percent of the appeal of Elvis Presley comes from the Sun Studio sessions and his 1968 TV comeback special. A year after that TV special -- in which a group jam in the round reanimated many of those '50s standards -- Presley decamped to Las Vegas for six weeks of shows at the International Hotel, in what would become a five-year run. He not only went to Vegas, he Went Vegas, pioneering a brand of shlock entertainment that would stain his legacy before his death eight years later at 42.

This documentary from Baz Luhrmann (don't get us started on the "Moulin Rouge" monster) follows his subject to Las Vegas for rehearsals and the launch of the stage show that would define the final third of Presley's career, spent bumming around the country with bloated performances while his health and talent slowly deteriorated. He eventually became a joke in a jumpsuit. But before that drug-fueled slide, he was the toast of the town when he established a two-shows-a-night residency as the 1960s slouched toward an end.

Before heading to Sin City in summer of '69, Presley re-tuned his chops by recording the album "From Elvis in Memphis," which kick-started the hit machine ("In the Ghetto" and the single from that session, "Suspicious Minds") and sparked him creatively after a decade filming cheap movies, spitting out three per year. (In an interview clip, Presley can be heard complaining about the interchangeable scripts and the hackwork of the plots.) 

The most impressive part of Luhrmann's movie is the behind-the-scenes peek at the rehearsal process that preceded the Vegas residency. Presley left many of his regulars back in Memphis and assembled a powerful backing band, including lead guitarist James Burton, along with two sets of backup singers and a blaring horn section. It is a tight, muscular group that memorized at least 150 songs and could vamp with their star whenever he prattled on, called an audible or demanded a restart and change in tempo. The selection of tunes is a snapshot of the American songbook at a moment in time -- from Burt Bacharach to Hank Snow (there's a definite southern twang to the set list), from the Beatles to Ray Charles, from rockabilly to gospel, from his early recordings to the day's hits like "Bridge Over Troubled Water." An unexpected highlight is a spirited version of his early hit "A Big Hunk o' Love," which bursts with energy and joy, buoyed by instrumental solos and hand-claps. It's those flashes of brilliance -- Presley was an electrifying live entertainer at times -- that keep "EPIC" afloat.

But Luhrmann -- a kitschy performer himself as a flashy, vapid filmmaker -- is definitely stretching the soup here. In his defense, he doesn't really have the material and technology to work with that Peter Jackson had when reimagining the Beatles' "Let It Be" into an hours-long epic a few years ago. Luhrmann pads his 96-minute film with the first ten minutes of rote Elvis history that offers nothing new, and the centerpiece concert starts at the 20-minute mark after 10 minutes chronicling the rehearsals and logistics. He constantly interrupts the central 1969 Vegas performance with archival interviews that hopscotch eras (some in the '70s when Presley started packing on the pounds). He gives us montages of Elvis kissing swooning fans, of toddler Lisa Marie, of Colonel Parker (to the tune of "Devil in Disguise"). We watch an older Elvis complain that he has never performed abroad, but it ignores the reality of Parker's legal troubles that stymied any talk of a world tour. (I was reminded by the Dolly Parton obituaries that Parker and Presley also insisted on sharing in the rights to any song Elvis recorded -- sometimes as high as 50 percent -- which prevented him from recording "I Will Always Love You" after Parton told them to buzz off. A smart move, in hindsight.)

At times, Presley flashes the charisma that made him a global icon. In 1969, he still had the physique and the blazing eyes and a rapport with a crowd. His personality jumps off the screen during the clips of the playful rehearsals. But the die is cast here, with the ridiculous bejeweled jumpsuit, complete with a cartoonish collar that rivals the headgear of Sister Bertrille. (It was disheartening to learn that the costume was designed by the same man who, just a year earlier, had slathered him in sultry black leather for the comeback special.) Presley often half-asses his '50s chart-toppers (already injecting nonsense lyrics into "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"). He perfects that side-saddle karate stance that would inspire a thousand mutton-chopped Elvis impersonators. After the show he schmoozes with the Vegas regulars who ate up his shtick, including Sammy Davis Jr.

This is Elvis Presley, warts and all. For diehard fans, there's not much to keep them coming back. Newbies might wonder what all the fuss was about. Like his feature film "Elvis" from 2022, this is more about Baz Luhrmann's ego and excesses than the King of Rock's legacy.

BONUS TRACKS

A good flavor of a performance from that era (1970) is big-band-style version of "I Can't Stop Loving You," previously made popular by Ray Charles:

 

One of our favorites is used to accompany footage of adoring female fans, "Wearin' That Loved On Look"

 

The gospel-inflected "Power of My Love":

 

Another highlight, moves and all, "Believe Me":