Won't You Be My Number Two?

 

At some point, as I sat watching Joe Jackson -- he was perched on a stool behind a modest electronic keyboard, alone on stage -- I marveled at the fact that there really was no one else who would want to go see a show like this with me. I literally could not give away my extra ticket. After I got over the initial wisp of depression, I felt liberated. I think Jackson also feels free to do whatever he wants.

Jackson was a big deal in the post-punk new-wave era, but he paid a stiff price for his adventurous eclecticism. His name barely registers with people anymore. I essentially gave up on him 40 years ago, after his histrionic take on classic cool jazz, "Body and Soul," which (beyond a few bangers) now feels awfully dated. 

Jackson came to Santa Fe to play the historic Lensic Theater, hawking his latest shtick -- the music of an imagined British music-hall rascal he named Max Champion. Jackson recently wrote and recorded some faux rags in the style of the early 1900s, and he presented them with a nine-piece oompah band to a mildly appreciative audience. 

But first, he came out solo and hopscotched backward in time through his pop catalogue. He started with "Dave," a clever Beatlesque jaunt from 2019:

It was a joy to watch Jackson perform. He really is a musical genius in some ways, and his songwriting is both sophisticated and bubble-gum. He knows a hook. And his keyboard work is wizardry. Songs came alive in his hands, even without a band. For me, Joe Jackson without bassist Graham Maby is like Townshend without Daltrey or Garfunkel without Simon. But Jackson did justice to some of his best songs; instead of Maby's bass, we settled for Jackson's left hand.

By the fourth song his reverse timeline already was at 1984's "Body and Soul," with the infectious "You Can't Get What You Want," and then two from "Night and Day," including the near-perfect "Steppin' Out." He finished with "Different for Girls" and an especially spirited "On the Radio" (which left him a tad winded at 7,000 feet above sea level). He then played a faithful version of one of his childhood favorites, the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset," as a segue-way into the early 20th century (apparently Ray Davies was a music-hall aficionado too).

The 8-song skip through his catalog was fun but it served as a reminder of so many great songs skipped over. Maybe he knows that even if he had the energy to perform with a full band and tear through "I'm the Man" or "Sunday Papers" he wouldn't attract many more fans. (As it was, the Lensic was sold out, including my unclaimed second ticket.) So why not swap out your tailored suit for a ringmaster's jacket and bring out a bunch of young ringers to romp through cheeky retro songs like "What a Racket!" and "The Bishop and the Actress."

As I suspected, he had an ace up his sleeve to prevent a stampede to the exits during the second half of the show (there were a number of walkouts as the music-hall set dragged on). As he has in the past, he reimagined his signature hit "Is She Really Going Out With Him" in that music-hall style (like the doo-wop versions he did back in the day), and it was charming as hell.

A few years ago, I recounted the story of how back in the day I amused by friends in a public spectacle by accusing Jackson of turning into the shlock-meister Marvin Hamlisch. This past weekend, in a twisted bout of nostalgia, I thought it would be fun to lean into that memory and give Joe Jackson a clean slate, see where we each are at in our lives.

By the time the familiar hits kicked in during that opening set, I settled into a pleasant bath of appreciation, an empty seat next to me providing extra elbow room. I had a fond regard for what those songs once meant and how they held up now. I appreciated that Jackson was comfortable at his little keyboard, dazzling us with his skills and dashing off mini-masterpieces. He hit the high notes on "Real Men." And then he switched gears and ironically wallowed in shlock for the second half of the show.

Maybe Joe Jackson has morphed into our generation's Marvin Hamlisch. But then, I've morphed into my dad at this point. I'm glad I went to the show, and I was probably better off alone. I've got great friends, but this was a lark I was destined to explore on my own. I hung out with Joe instead, and we're cool now.

BONUS TRACK

Our title track:

Tuesdays With Mortality

 

TUESDAY (D+) - What the actual ... ?

I'm tempted to give this a higher grade just for the ambitious home-run swing it takes at dramatic storytelling. But this bizarre tale of a dying girl being visited by death in the form of a macaw is so dumb and flatly executed that I have to withhold my desire to lash out in response.

Going in I figured, "Well, it stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, so it will at least be tolerable for nearly two hours." But I've never been so repelled by Louis-Dreyfus, whom I consider to be one of the best actors of our generation. She looks lost as the mother who is in denial about the impending death of her teenage daughter. She is physically and emotionally unappealing.

Lola Petticrew plays the dying 15-year-old -- named Tuesday for no apparent reason. (She's also British but her mom isn't, just because.) When death comes for her, she is able to barter some time with the busy macaw so that she can make final amends with her mother, Zora (Louis-Dreyfus), who is in denial about the imminent demise. Tuesday is wheelchair-bound and uses oxygen, but she otherwise looks surprisingly perky for someone who is on death's door. I'm not sure if that is an intentional misdirection for dramatic effect or simply an oversight on the part of writer-director Daina Oniunas-Pusic, who makes her feature debut here.

The first problem with "Tuesday" is that it is at least twice as long as it should be. It really feels like a short story, but it slogs on for 110 minutes. That wouldn't be so bad if "Tuesday" had an original take on coping with death. It doesn't. It offers bland koans. It is yet another film in which the kid is much more insightful and brave than the parent is; let's move past that stale trope. The film also gives us a Death character that is simply an overworked and overwrought bureaucrat pinging from gig to gig. It's interesting that Death here pauses -- mainly getting comfort from Tuesday who magically teaches death to cope with the cacophony of voices in his head. Like Ralph Kramden, all he has to do is count to 10 and his nerves are magically calmed. 

Even the visuals here are drab and uninspired. The movie opens with and later comes back to a shot of Earth as a blue marble, pulling back with clunky CGI tricks to become the eye of the bird in mid-flight, his head ringing with overlapping pleas for a visit that will provide merciful release. Death speaks in a muddled growl that's sometimes difficult to understand. 

Petticrew is just way too zen, almost joyously so, and Louis-Dreyfus is beyond morbid, and somehow the imminent death of a teenage girl feels low-stakes and anti-climactic. Zora's outrageous reaction to the bird is bizarre and carried out in a crazy Tiger Mom metaphor. The narrative knits together a series of vignettes that don't always cohere. This is quite an attempt to tell a unique story. And it is out there. But in the end, it's a drab and oddly antiseptic film that is more annoying than moving in any real way.

Tall Tales

 

A SIMPLE FAVOR (2018) (B) - Don't overthink this one. Just let Paul Feig ("The Heat," "Spy") do his pop-pulp thing with a juicy whodunit and a couple of stars who commit to the bit. This comic thriller feels like it's in everyone's wheelhouse, even if it's not the most cogent film to come along.

Anna Kendrick stars as Stephanie, a dweeby lifestyle mommy vlogger who gets mixed up with a sly and devious fellow mom, Emily (Blake Lively), who grooms Stephanie for some sort of plot she is cooking up. They establish a pecking order of alpha (Emily) and nerd (Stephanie), as if they were back in high school. Emily eventually asks for that one simple favor -- requesting that Stephanie pick up Emily's son after school. But then Emily disappears without a word.

As days go by, Stephanie quickly falls for Emily's drab hunky husband, Sean (Henry Golding), in such an improbable plot twist a viewer might bail out at that point. But feel free to roll your eyes and stick with it. Stephanie will eventually go on a hunt through Emily's past -- another silly diversion that provides the next exit ramp. This unsatisfying detour -- cooked up by writers Jessica Sharzer and Darcey Bell -- traffics in horror tropes and makes the final third drag. Throw in a soundtrack inexplicably filled with French pop tunes, and this whole production is a bit of a head-scratcher.

But Kendrick is a powerful lead here, and she plays off Lively's domineering character especially well. Lively, with her striking looks, savors her juicy bad-girl role so much that she practically drools through her scenes. This film shouldn't work, but it was clever enough that I couldn't turn it off.

MOVIEPASS, MOVIECRASH (B+) - An early entry for 2024's "Fyre" Award -- a term we'll use for documentaries about entertaining tech-bro hedge-fund stock-run scams that sound too good to be true -- is this HBO-Max romp about the MoviePass craze of the late teens, in which the company thought it could offer unlimited theater passes for only $9.99 per month and somehow not go out of business.

This is confident, workmanlike filmmaking from Muta'Ali ("Cassius X: Becoming Ali"), who does a great job of constructing the narrative and separating out his good guys from the bad guys. When looking for an explanation for the inexplicable, it comes down to Capitalism 101: Greed is good (for some). Of course, there was no way that MoviePass could survive very long by allowing people to see a movie a day each month for barely the cost of one movie. 

The company's founder, Stacey Spikes, and his main ally on the board, Hamet Watt, were following the drug dealer's business model -- get people hooked and then start raising the price. But the board brought in a couple of veteran venture capitalists who voraciously pumped the stock price with exponential growth of the customer base (at that unsustainable bargain-basement rate). That would be Mitch Lowe, a former Netflix vulture, and Ted Farnsworth, a cunning stock manipulator, both of whom refused to yield on the monthly fee, insisting that they could make up the revenue elsewhere, through marketing deals with cinema operator and through the sale of users' data. Essential color is added by another key board member -- who enabled the tragic situation -- and a MoviePass user (who revels in the glory days of essentially free unlimited movies).

As you'd expect (or perhaps remember), the new guys burned through millions and took over the company from Spikes and Watt. It just so happens that the founding guys are black and the interlopers were old-boy white guys, so Muta'Ali's film has a built-in plot conflict to exploit. He unpeels the layers of the story like a pro, and the narrative is fascinating from beginning to end.

BONUS TRACK

From the closing credits of "Favor," No Small Children with the "Munsters" romp "Laisse Tomber Les Filles":

Cartoon Corner

 Finally catching up withe films of Don Hertzfeldt, courtesy of the Guild Cinema.

ME (A-minus) - The latest from animation provocateur Don Hertzfeldt is a throbbing meditation on humanity, capitalism and technology. It is described as "a 22-minute musical odyssey about trauma, technology, and the retreat of humanity into itself." 

It's a dizzying assault on the senses, in a good way. Devoid of dialogue, it has a pounding score, which ranges from jazz to operatic aria to techno. The images touch on police brutality in a totalitarian apocalyptic society. It simply is too much to take in and be able to cogently assess.

It will take another viewing, but Hertzfeldt doesn't make it easy. There is not even a trailer online. He is retro in the best ways. In a stylistic leap from the crude black-and-white forms of his earlier work, "Me" flashes brilliant flourishes. Hertzfeldt loops scenes of technological dangers back upon each other. It peaks with an aria that soars visually. It's a wonder to absorb.

IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY (2012) (B+) - This is actually a mashup of three shorts. Hertzfeldt goes old school to create a multiple-screen effect to capture is crude stick-figure drawings to chronicle the ordinary life of a man named Bill.

Hertzfeldt narrates in a measured but urgent voice, apparently from inside Bill's mind, which fuels the idea that Bill is an unreliable narrator because of mental illness brought about by trauma. It reminded me of something I read recently about how the mind can shut down in the elderly as a way to stave off rational thoughts of our physical decline. 

Bill suffers from some serious maladies, but he learns to appreciate the beauty of the world around him. He lives more in the moment. And he may have found the secret to eternal life. It throbs with the passion of a filmmaker perfecting his career's defining opus.

BONUS TRACK

The melancholy closer for "Me," Jelly Roll Morton with "Sweet Jazz Music":

New to the Queue

 Tapping a foot, waiting for something to end ...

Our gal Rachel Sennott ("Shiva Baby," "Bottoms") is back with a tale of a depressed standup comic, "I Used to Be Funny."

A diary, a collage, a Gen X story about career choices -- whatever it is, we're interested in "Flipside."

Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars in a fantastical debut feature about a mom coping with the impending death of her young daughter, "Tuesday."

We'll give Kit Zauhar ("Actual People") another chance; for her sophomore effort, she follows a couple spending an awkward weekend with a creepy Airbnb host, "This Closeness."

Battling the Man

 

TERRESTRIAL VERSES (A-minus) - This collection of simple vignettes has a quiet power as Iranians do battle with an entrenched system that leaves ordinary folks vulnerable to the religious zealots running Tehran. And power is the key word: every person depicted in each scene has to endure the humility of being less powerful than the person they are dealing with.

Filmmakers Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari execute a simple concept: They set up the camera from the point of view of the unseen clerk or apparatchik and train it on the character who needs something and must submit to generally degrading treatment in order to accomplish a task. Long takes create a sense of dread as the scenes play out. A man wants to register his son's name as David and is rebuffed; a teenage girl is grilled by the school dean for associating with a boy on a motorcycle; a man applying for a driver's license is forced to gradually strip off his clothes to reveal his tattoos; a young woman with short hair is being questioned as a suspect in a traffic incident caught on video while she was working as a rideshare driver; a female job applicant is creeped on by a predatory old man interviewing her; and, in a meta moment, a filmmaker meets with a censor and succumbs to the censor's relentless suggestions of edits to the script.

In one of the most moving pieces, a child is the center of attention, and you cringe watching what happens to her.  A woman wrangles off-camera with a sales clerk while the woman's daughter is on camera, and we watch the girl go from dancing gaily in a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt to being gradually swathed in layers of hijab and draped cloaks -- and being drained of joy in the process.

The simplicity of the visuals and the straightforward polemic about power dynamics in a theocracy make for riveting cinema at times. It borrows more than a little from Asghar Farhadi's similar stories of bureaucratic frustrations in Iran, such as "A Separation." Each vignette clocks in just under 10 minutes, and the entire exercise comes in at 77 minutes. The film ends with an urgent heavy-metal song over the closing credits, which serves as a slap in the face to all viewers -- whether living under theocratic rule or headed toward one -- a shocking reminder that follows all of those quiet, mundane interactions. Can you empathize before it's too late?

EVIL DOES NOT EXIST (Incomplete) - I gave it a half hour. There was absolutely no plot or story during the entire first quarter of this film ostensibly about a rural Japanese town fearing the invasion of a corporate development for a "glamping" site. I saw a guy chop wood and smoke a cigarette for five minutes. I saw two men ladle water from a brook and carry the plastic jugs to their vehicle (at least a five-minute scene). Those were after the first five minutes of the movie spent on one slow-motion tracking shot with the camera pointed skyward, peering through tall, bare trees.

There was a mention of a company planning to build a site geared to yuppies who prefer glamor with their camp outings. Eventually there was a community meeting. That meeting started with the introduction of two young people who in turn introduced a film for the residents, a film that started with a slow establishing shot -- and that was the last straw.

This apparently is supposed to be a slow-burn eco-horror story. I'll take everyone's word for it. This is our second attempt to watch a film from Ryusuke Hamaguchi. The first was "Drive My Car," a three-hour trudge. We made it through two hours of that one before bailing and promising to track down the final hour another time; we never did. In "Evil," Hamaguchi simply engages in lazy visual storytelling. He spends the first half hour trying to convey the joys and critical aspects of nature all around the villagers -- their trees, their water, their wasabi plants. Most filmmakers would be able to convey that with a few shorthand shots, in about 10 minutes, before finally introducing the meat of the plot. Hamaguchi can't be bothered. This is simply flat storytelling. Life is short. Get on with it.

BONUS TRACK

The trailer for "Terrestrial Verses":

Lost in Romania

 The long and the short of it from Radu Jude:

DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (B+) - This sprawling, raunchy, rollicking black comedy, ostensibly about hyper-commercialization, captures the zeitgeist of our crude, unraveling modern culture. Writer-director Radu Jude ("Aferim") takes our ad-addled Tik-Tok gurglings and shoves them back down our throats.

 

Ilinca Manolache stars as Angela, a harried, overworked production assistant supporting a multinational company's making of a self-serving workplace-safety film. She spends most of her time driving, often alone, captured in a claustrophobic side shot from the passenger seat of her car. She is addicted to bubble gum -- popping bubbles like a schoolgirl -- and recording herself spewing raunchy misogynist rants, employing a cheap video filter that transforms her into "Bobito," a bald bro with a monobrow and patchy facial hair.

Angela is perpetually jaded and a model of practicality as she pinballs around Budapest and beyond to attend the shoots of victims of workplace accidents who are manipulated into portraying their stories in just the right way to satisfy the expectations of the filmmakers (and shift blame from the employers). The film climaxes -- if a half hour hunk toward the end of a 2-hour 43-minute movie can be called that -- with a degrading scene of an industrial worker, surrounded by his family, forced to repeat and tweak his horrific tale over and over outside the scene of his accident, even as rain spatters them and the sun eventually starts to set. 

This might be Jude's self-loathing spilling out; he seems to be revealing the slimy truths of the filmmaking process in general and the unreliability of all narrators and witnesses. Angela's brute of an alter-ego represents the two ways of coping with the blurry crudeness of the modern, tech-tonic world. At times she'll wander just a few feet away from a shoot and we'll hear her wildly inappropriate MAGA-tinged rants while ordinary folks are trying to conduct business. Like many fame-seekers and online influencers she ironically has no app filter for her id.

Jude is a provocateur, an Eastern European Godard, smacking us across the face with a hand mirror. He splices in manipulated clips from an actual older film (Lucian Bratu’s 1981 drama "Angela merge mai departe"), about a cabdriver, also named Angela, who brings to mind Angie Dickinson's "Police Woman" -- all for no readily discernible reason. 

Break this into two pieces in order to ingest the nearly three hours of egested fulminations. Manolache can be riveting, with her streetwise manic energy. Stay for Nina Hoss ("Transit," "Barbara") as the floating head in Zoom videos, the Big Sister from abroad directing the peons carrying out the project. This is a fine rebound for Jude, whose more recent effort, "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn," aired similar grievances about our online doom but in a much less acerbic and assured manner than he pulls off here.

BONUS TRACK

THE POTEMKINISTS (2022) (B-minus) - Jude knocked out this 18-minute short during COVID, a glib riff on Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin," reduced here to a conversation about erecting a statue to memorialize Romania's role in the battle of Russian mariners. As the New Yorker critic Richard Brody summarizes, "a voluble sculptor (Alexandru Dabija) reveals to a cultural bureaucrat (Cristina Draghici) the historical truth behind the fictional elements of Sergei Eisenstein’s classic ... namely, that the real-life battleship’s rebellious sailors didn’t return to tsarist Russia but, rather, demanded and received asylum in Romania."  

Brody sees a "sharp and sardonic discussion" that "touches on Romania’s sufferings under Soviet rule, Russia’s latter-day aggression, and the contentious politics of official commemoration." I saw a lot of clips from "Battleship Potemkin" distracting me from the meandering dialogue. Snippets of the conversation were engaging, especially the glib parts, but I wouldn't say this is must-see cinema.

BONUS TRACK

In his short, Jude takes a jab at our present-day horrors by quoting a poem from 100 years ago, "Century," the third in a troika of poems by Osip Mandelstam, from 1922:

You brute of a century, who could look
into the centers of your eyes
and with their blood glue back
two centuries to a severed spine?