Auteur, Auteur

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BONUS TRACK

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

  

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

 

Doc Watch: That's Entertainment

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life Is Short: Women on the Verge

 

We pulled the plug on two movies in a row -- the droll indie wank "Bunnylovr" and the annoying quasi-horror momcore pulp "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You." Both were aimless, apparent attempts to explore the psychology of a woman grasping for direction.

In each movie, very little happens, plotwise. We get a series of events in the life of the protagonists, but they lead nowhere. Similar events repeat day in and day out, and the men in the films tend to be creepy or abrasive. Each film spun its wheels for at least 44 minutes, without a satisfying plot development in sight. I bailed on each movie, coincidentally, right at the point of animal abuse.

"Bunnylovr" is probably the least sexy or interesting movie you can make about a cam girl. Katarina Zhu writes, directs and stars as Rebecca (her online name is the slinkier Teddi), who has a boring day job that she's bad at, and she makes money on the side performing online for creeps, though in the first 50 minutes, she flashed no forbidden flesh the whole time.

Instead, she holds lucrative private audiences with a well-off creep who sends her a live rabbit in the mail. Rather than run in the opposite direction at that disturbing provocation, she forsakes her other clients for face-to-face sessions with this dullard, who has an unsettling demeanor, to say the least. By the time he convinces her to pose lasciviously with the cute little bunny, this whole thing is going nowhere fast.

Meantime, Rebecca is straining to keep up a relationship with her estranged father (a charming Perry Yung), who is a chain-smoking card sharp with a pretty obvious health problem that I'm sure devolves into pathos in the final reel. The major crime here is that the story is flat-out boring. I can accept that it's not titillating (though why make the character an exhibitionist in the first place?), but I can't forgive a turgid script and a placid performance. Someone needed to step in and either direct Zhu or replace her.

Also stuck on one note -- and a pretty screachy one at that -- is Mary Bronstein's horror slog "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" (no, there's no point to that title). Poor Rose Byrne is trapped in Movie World, stuck at 11, amped up for no reason other than her writer-director wants to drag her through extreme acting exercises. Byrne is a talented actress (and comic actor), but here she's at the opposite end, craft-wise, from, say, Gena Rowlands in "A Woman Under the Influence."

 

Byrne's blandly named Linda is on her last nerve -- her daughter has a profound eating disorder (which requires a feeding tube), her husband is away a lot, and her roof has caved in from a plumbing debacle (which doesn't make sense logistically). Linda is mentally fried from the very first scene -- hectored by her needy child, whose face we don't see, so the girl's whining is especially annoying. Mother and daughter slum it at a low-rent motel while repairs are made, and it's clear that Linda is out of control, leaving her child (unnamed) alone often and falling into bad habits with recreational drugs and alcohol. The humiliations repeat in cycles, and even when Linda gets a break from her own kid, she has a therapy patient who is going through her own post-partum struggles. (Glimmers of life can be found in underused denizens of the hotel -- the front desk clerk played by Ivy Wolk ("Outcome") and a hip resident played by A$AP Rocky.)

This is supposed to be some profound treatise about the rigors of motherhood -- but how sympathetic a character is Linda, when she has the means to hire a nurse to help tend to the child and a crew of workers to repair the house, both of which would take the load off of her ... and thus let the air out of the artifice underpinning this pretentious genre exercise. Throw in Conan O'Brien wearing glasses and acting all serious, and you have quite a mess on your hands. 

Title: Bunnylovr

Running Time: 86 MIN

Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  50 MIN

Portion Watched: 58%

My Age at Time of Viewing: 63 YRS, 5 MOS.

Average Male American Lifespan: 76.5 YRS.

Watched/Did Instead: Went home and went to bed.

Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 7-1

 

 

Title: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Running Time: 113 MIN

Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  44 MIN

Portion Watched: 39%

My Age at Time of Viewing: 63 YRS, 5 MOS.

Average Male American Lifespan: 76.5 YRS.

Watched/Did Instead: Started writing this review and then went off to read.

Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 14-1

 

BONUS TRACK 

Be grateful for small favors: At the 11-minute mark of "If I Had Legs," Rose Byrne's character is seen listening to classic Guided by Voices, the "Bee Thousand" track "Hot Freaks":

 

Con Artists

 

THE CHRISTOPHERS (B+) - Octogenarian Ian McKellan absolutely devours a sumptuous script as a grumpy old artist defending his legacy against his scheming children and the art forger they hire to embellish his hidden archives.

IMDb offers a concise plot summary: "The children of a once famous artist hire a forger to complete some unfinished, long ago abandoned canvases so they'll have an inheritance when he dies." Veteran screenwriter Ed Solomon ("Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," "Men in Black") dishes up a sunny noir that is lighthearted (even silly, at times) but grounded in the genuine emotions of artists defending their work. 

 

Michaela Coel ("Mother Mary," TV's "Chewing Gum") goes toe-to-toe with McKellan the rascally thespian in a clever pas de deux between two powerful personalities. It is not a mystery going in that Coel's Lori Butler divulges the ruse to McKellan's Julian Sklar fairly early on in the proceedings. But that does not derail the intrigue.

Lori seems to have a motive for undermining Julian -- late in his career he was a nasty judge on a reality-TV art-contest program -- and she has the knowledge and skills to pull off the caper, whether he tries to stop her or not. Coel is a cool customer, gradually shedding layers of her character as she goes. She offsets the heat coming from McKellan, who unleashes reams of dialogue as he walks the line between temperamental genius and washed-up jerk. When he challenges her skills and asks her why she is so presumptuous as to think she could mimic his paintings, she replies blankly, "I guess that's where the art of it comes in."

The weak spot comes from Julian's bumbling offspring, played by James Corden and Jessica Gunning as silly, petulant adults. You can also spot the seams at times in the script, and if you think too hard you might challenge some of its implausibilities. But the momentum of the film elbows all that aside, with one goal in mind: entertaining you. McKellan, especially, lavishes the opportunity to splay his character's id all over the screen. (One of several amusing traits of Julian's: He makes pocket money by recording Cameo messages for anyone who will hire him to do so; he is a geezer with just enough computer skills to be reckless.)

Director Steven Soderbergh lends his prodigious skills to keeping things taut and rollicking while wrapping it up in 100 locomotive minutes. This is old-fashioned story-telling, brought to you by a pair of heavyweight actors who know just how to bob and weave around each other.

NOTICE TO QUIT (B+) - Andy Singer is having a helluva day. It follows a helluva few months. He's a real estate broker in New York City who is about to get evicted from his apartment, and his daughter is about to move with her mother to Florida. It all comes to a head in this charming day-in-the-life of a man verging on a nervous breakdown.

 

This debut feature from writer-director Simon Hacker harks back to the New York films of the 1970s, as he chronicles the spiraling travails of his hapless hero on a muggy summer day. Andy is played by Michael Zegen (the husband in TV's "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel") as a scam artist who strips the appliances from the empty apartments he shows, which is not nearly enough money to cover his back rent, since he hasn't closed a deal in months and is broke.

Andy's 10-year-old daughter, Anna (Kasey Bella Suarez), lands in his lap that morning, and she will accompany her estranged dad on his odyssey through the streets and apartment buildings of New York, anxiously observing his spiral toward a rock bottom. She just wants to go to the zoo, but he is perpetually harried as he desperately tries to get any warm body to sign on the bottom line for one of the dumps he has on offer.

As Andy criss-crosses the city, you might develop a deep appreciation for Hacker's eye for locations. A producer on John Wilson's "How To" HBO series, he has an affinity for New York's sweaty underbelly, where an AC window unit is considered the gold standard of urban living. Several times Andy (with and without Anna) races through the streets. We get aerial shots looking down from walk-up units. It's less about the city's skyline than its unforgiving streets.

In addition to Andy's unraveling real estate career (he's also a has-been model/actor, often recognized for a toothpaste ad, with featured posters that have been defaced around town), there is the threat from the heavies who muscle him for appliances they can pilfer. That group is led by the boorish Jed, played with jabroni ferver by filmmaker Michael Angelo Cavino ("The Climb," "Splitsville"). We also get an extended cameo from comedian Robert Klein, who is in fine form as Andy's artist father who is reluctant to help bail out his flailing son.

Little Suarez keeps up well with Zegen as the doe-eyed daughter who is practical enough to recognize her father's failings, but emotionally vulnerable enough to try again to forge a connection with her dad, even if he has no custody rights and cannot fight her mother's move to Florida. It's debatable whether their final bonding moment late in the film earns the sentimental payoff Hacker is going for, but the characters do feel authentic by the end. 

There were times I seriously questioned the timeline and logistics of rushing all over Manhattan in one hectic day, but again, the film scores enough points across 90 minutes that it's easy to fall under its spell. (It's like a white-collar version of "Bunny," if that helps.) I was sold. (Streaming on Mubi.)

BONUS TRACK

The ubiquitous Jack Antonoff contributes a few songs to the "Notice to Quit" soundtrack, including a track from his band Bleachers, "Strange Behavior":

New to the Queue

 The sun has its own particular slant this time of year ...

Our guy John Magaro ("Past Lives," "Not Fade Away") stars as a father who takes his kids on a cross-country trip after a family tragedy, "Omaha."

Tony Leung ("In the Mood for Love") stars in a contemplative drama about our relationship with plants, "Silent Friend."

A pulpy debut feature about two sisters exacting family revenge, "Is God Is."

Perhaps we should give another shot to the provocateur Boots Riley ("Sorry to Bother You") and his latest swipe at capitalism's bourgoisie, "I Love Boosters."

To Whom It May Concern

 

REBEL WITH A CLAUSE (A-minus) - This DIY labor of love is an irresistible testament to a woman who has devoted her life to the parsing of language and grammar and to bringing that knowledge and passion to the masses. 

 

Ellen Jovin travels the country -- with the goal of hitting every state -- and sets up her Grammar Table, inviting conversations about dangling participles and Oxford commas, or whatever is on the minds of the folks who amble by.  She is armed with reference books, including a dictionary and the Chicago Manual of Style, as she taps into the hidden grammatical pet peeves of ordinary citizens. (Her own 2022 book of the same title was a best-seller.)

Jovin's husband, Brandt Johnson, is listed as director, producer, cinematographer and editor -- essentially a one man crew. He also appears on camera at times, including during a few dash-cam scenes as the engaging couple banters along the highways. (They also banter in person, as they have been accompanying the film around the country.) Johnson has a sharp eye for clever establishing shots that lighten the mood. This was filmed over the course of more than six years (it was almost derailed by COVID), but it boils down to a seamless and delightful 86 minutes.

The secret here is in the couple's patience (they shot over 400 hours of footage) in capturing interesting bystanders who approach the Grammar Table. One after another is funny, charming, witty and/or emotionally giving. Jovin herself has a magnetic personality and a winning laugh. She is a liberal descriptivist who likes to shatter lazy linguistic myths and slay shibboleths. She is like a priest forgiving the sins of those who are trapped in the lessons of their stuff fifth-grade teacher. Bopping from topic to topic, the film has a high probability of touching on at least one of most people's personal bugbears. (Jovin's detour into pronunciations in particular gets her fans riled up.)

Jovin seems to genuinely believe in face-to-face interactions as the salvation of our society and culture. She seeks connections at her various stops, and some visitors are genuinely moved to have been solicited for their opinions on professorial topics. She finds fellowship at a conference of copy editors, creating a true nerd energy field.

The film strains a tad toward the end with an emphasis on Kumbaya moments, grasping for deep meaning in the big picture. A serendipitous meeting at the end is quite moving. But in the end, it's the joy -- and occasional silliness -- of the whole enterprise that wins you over. 

BONUS TRACK

The trailer:

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.