Radio Friendly

 

35,000 WATTS: THE STORY OF COLLEGE RADIO (B+) - One of my more reliable memories is of my first week of college, at the University of Illinois-Chicago, in September 1981, and learning that the radio station was being shuttered. I had considered pursuing a radio gig at WUIC someday. That dream died quickly. I ended up in print journalism. 

 

Like many people of my vintage, coming into adulthood in the 1980s, I was a fan of college radio. Another vivid memory jumps ahead a little over a decade. I'm driving to work at the Chicago Sun-Times, listening to the shaky signal from WNUR, Northwestern University's station at 89.3 FM, which sometimes seeped through from up north, surviving the skyscrapers. I'm hearing music that feels primeval, as if it were being transmitted while I was vibing in my mother's womb. I pull into the covered parking garage and find a spot, praying that the signal won't fade. I need to make it to the station break to find out the name of the artist. The signal cuts in and out and fades and swells. The DJ comes on. He identifies that block of music as being from the mysterious indie band Guided by Voices. The rest is history.

"35,000 Watts" (I add the comma gratis) is a valentine to the history of college radio, mostly its heyday back then. It was made by Michael Millard, who worked at KTXT at Texas Tech in Lubbock in the early '90s. He gathers some of his former colleagues, along with a bunch of alums from WUOG, in Athens, Ga. (U of G), which was ground zero for the defining modern era, the emergence of R.E.M., along with Pylon, Let's Active, Love Tractor and others circa 1981. (The B-52s had emerged from there a few years earlier.) 

Like those and other college stations, Millard's documentary is low-budget and seat-of-the-pants. He cobbles together archival photos and snippets of songs that transport you back to the pre-internet dark ages, when you could curate your own music only by making cassette mixes and had to rely instead on dope-smoking 19-year-olds to hip you up to the now sounds. At that time, indie meant independent and alternative was truly the alternative. 

 

Millard's DIY ethic fits the subject here. He gathers a decent collection of talking heads in addition to the DJ alums, including Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, and two R.E.M.-adjacent characters, Mitch Easter (their early producer and the frontman of Let's Active) and the band's lawyer/manager Bertis Downs. (The cassette of R.E.M.'s "Radio Free Europe" is widely considered to be Ground Zero of modern college radio as we know it.)

The true stars are the former DJs, from a smattering of stations scattered across the country, including one diehard veteran still toiling away at KSPC (Claremont Colleges in California). The alums have some specific memories -- the smell of vinyl in the station's library, legendary stories of the infamous ratty couch that saw far too much activity. 

Millard takes a detour to provide added context -- the origins of college radio going back into mid-20th century, including its role in covering sports. But it's that heyday which holds the most charm. Needles drop on the Pixies (repped here by Joey Santiago), Violent Femmes, Bratmobile, the rise of rap. It's a heady mix. We could go on and on ...

BONUS TRACKS

R.E.M. contemporaries Love Tractor could jangle with the best of them. Here is their self-titled 1982 album, kicked off by "Buy Me a Million Dollars":

 

Big-hair alert! It's Mitch Easter leading Let's Active, with Sara Romweber on drums, on their hit "Every Word Means No":

 

"35,000 Watts" celebrates the diversity of college radio and name checks this early rap entry, Sugarhill Gang's take on the surf standby "Apache (Jump On It)": 

"Radio Free Europe":

In the Gloamin'

 

DROWNING DRY (B+) - This Lithuanian slow burn gnaws at you as it quietly examines two adult sisters and their romantic relationships in the shadow of an unfolding tragedy.

At the beginning of the film, Ernesta (Gelmine Glemzaite) tends to her husband, Lukas (Paulius Markevicius), after his victory in an ultimate-fighting cage match.  The couple then meet up with Ernesta's sister, Juste (Agne Kaktaite), and her husband for a trip to a lakehouse to relax, with each couple toting a child. One of the children will disappear under the water, and the rest of the movie surrounds the attempts to rescue Juste's daughter and get her medical care, and the aftermath. 

Writer-director Laurynas Bareisa ("Pilgrims") takes his time settling in with the characters, casually observing their banter and habits. He jumbles the timeline, jumping back and forth from a police investigation, and sometimes re-airing the same scene twice, with subtle differences the second time. One of those twists involves Ernesta and Juste doing a choreographed dance to a song that seems to go back to their childhood, and the only difference between the scenes is that the song is different the second time while the dance is the same. 

Glemzaite is compelling as the alpha sister, and Kaktaite feels like the conscience of this somber story. (The husbands are not nearly as interesting. The film's original title translates as "Sisters.") Bareisa seems to be suggesting that our memories can be a little unreliable -- or is he shifting perspective from one character to another? -- and that the mundane tasks of a weekend holiday can rival life-changing trauma. Invariably, Bareisa returns us to the lake house, itself indelibly altered as are the characters whose lives are overturned by the series of events they've endured. Just enough narrative adds up in the end for this to be slyly satisfying.

OH, CANADA (D+) - It's anybody's guess what Paul Schrader is going for here. He tells a jumbled story of a revered leftist documentary filmmaker, hours from dying, sitting for an interview with his former film students, trying to recall -- or intentionally misrepresenting -- his past as a failed husband and father and Vietnam-era draft dodger. Is he setting the record straight or setting fire to it?

Richard Gere is the only thing worth watching as arrogant Leo Fife, who welcomes director Malcolm (Michael Imperioli, bland) and producer Diane (Victoria Hill) into the home he has made with his wife, Emma (a dull Uma Thurman), who was another of Malcolm and Diane's classmates. Leo insists that Emma be present for the interview, not just for emotional support but also so that he can reconcile his past in front of her. I wish I could say what exactly that reckoning is, but I can't, because the flashbacks create quite a muddle.

It doesn't help that the young Leo is played in the late 1960s by Jacob Elordi ("Elvis") who is exceptionally tall and who looks and sounds nothing like Gere. But maybe that's Schrader's way of showcasing his unreliable narrator? Sometimes Gere as old Leo subs in during the flashbacks, perhaps again as a way to show how badly Leo's brain is misfiring in his final moments. And Thurman shows up in an early scene as a completely different character. Someone make it all make sense.

Gere sinks his teeth into this deathbed confession. You see flashes of Leo's suave old ways when he flirts a bit with the slinky production assistant Sloan (Penelope Mitchell) while his voiceover worries whether she can smell his soiled underclothes or prescription ointments as she bends toward him to mic him up.

Leo's backstory, however, is just not that interesting. He had fabricated his experiences in the media for decades, including a made-up jaunt to communist Cuba, apparently.  It turns out that he rejected a corporate job in Virginia with his father-in-law in favor of a teaching job in Vermont, which was a quick step to Canada once he was in danger of being drafted -- though even that comes with a fibbed twist.

Maybe this is more meta than meta, and it's an example of Schrader -- the legendary muse to Martin Scorsese and others before directing his own films ("First Reformed") -- losing his own grip on filmmaking. Schrader, who here is interpreting a novel from Russell Banks, stifles his cast and can't tell a compelling story to save his life.  

BONUS TRACK

The first song that the sisters dance to in "Drowning Dry" is Lighthouse Family with "High":

 

And the second time, it's Jessica Shy with "Sokam Letai":

Imagining Things

 A trio of duds from debut filmmakers ...

DEATH OF A UNICORN (D+) - Very little makes sense -- even in a world of unicorns -- in this unfunny and needlessly gory black comedy about a nerdy lawyer and his daughter whose car strikes a mythical creature on the way to a dying rich client's mansion. 

Debut writer-director Alex Scharfman has way too many creative but dumb ideas about how a unicorn (and its unicorn army) can wreak havoc and exact revenge. This is part "Ghostbusters" and part "Alien," with no discernible payoff in either comedy or horror. 

You might be lured in by the cast. Don't be. Paul Rudd is a dud as the bumbling Everyman. Jenna Ortega ("Wednesday") is asked to bug her eyes a lot and act frightened. She has one scene where a delightful side of her character comes out -- on the early drive before the accident -- but she is throttled the rest of the way. Richard Grant plays that insufferable twit he always plays. Tea Leoni ends a long screen drought but is drained of her appeal. Anthony Carrigan (HBO's "Barry") makes the most hay as the put-upon servant, flirting with breaking the fourth wall with his deadpan asides.

But none of this adds up. The plot is a familiar one -- the horn and the blood of the dead unicorn (or IS it dead??) have miraculous healing powers, so the government scientists descend immediately to not only try to cure Grant's character, but also to lay claim to world-changing potions that seem to be the inevitable byproduct of this serendipitous hit-and-run. 

But none of this is interesting. It's hectic beyond belief. The plot twists are ludicrous. Once unicorns start rampaging throughout the compound, you roll your eyes at the inventive ways Paul Rudd can somehow outrun these Jurassic wonders, time and time again. I was exhausted halfway through and hated myself for finishing it.

MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE (C) - This earnest but trite drama follows the journey of an Army veteran who avoids confronting her trauma by conjuring a fallen mate as a crutch and a comedic diversion from the horror of the friend's death. 

Another newcomer, Kyle Hausmann-Stokes (with two co-writers), pours his heart into this passion project informed by his own military service. But the result is too trite by half and saccharine enough to numb your teeth.

Natalie Morales (above, center) is always a comic wonder, but her shtick as Zoe, the wise-cracking dead vet who shadows Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green), crackles at first and then quickly grows stale. Zoe's presence is a giant symbol of Merit's refusal to confront her past and exorcise the demons from Afghanistan. That includes dodging her obligation to attend group-therapy sessions led by the wise and sympathetic Dr. Cole, portrayed in the millionth iteration by Morgan Freeman, criminally underused.

Meanwhile, Merit is stepping in for her too-busy mom and is looking in on her grandfather, Dale (Ed Harris), who lives by the lake but is showing signs of needing assisted living. Also an Army vet (Vietnam, still not played out, apparently), Dale is gruff and resistant, in part because he is played by Ed Harris, who lately specializes in that sort of thing.

I cheered for this to succeed. Martin-Green and Harris have some touching moments. But there is something way too corny about the overall production and its weepy worship of military service. You can spot dialogue -- major and minor -- coming a mile away in the paint-by-numbers script. A clever twist at the end is appreciated but not enough. I wanted it to work, but it's too much of a chore.

OPUS (D) - Movies don't get much more far-fetched than this goofy would-be thriller about a secluded legacy rock star who invites select media members to his vast compound to witness the unveiling of his self-proclaimed masterpiece. Strike one: John Malkovich plays the Bowie-style pop idol with not a lick of authenticity.

Strike two: The film wastes the vast talents of Ayo Edebiri ("Bottoms," "Theater Camp") who is reduced to mugging to the camera, either with a Woody Allen stammer or having to express shock over and over again as the weekend goes off the rails into cartoon horror. She's not the only one misused; there also is Murray Bartlett (HBO's first season of "The White Lotus"), who is just stripped of his typical appeal. And what is up with Tony Hale as a long-haired worshipper/enabler of Malkovich's Moretti? The star has surrounded himself with his own personal Manson Family, who will help Moretti turn the weekend into a torture chamber for his media guests.

Strike three: The script and execution are profoundly idiotic. First-time writer-director Mark Anthony Green must have thought he had something profound to say about idol-worship (the tagline is "There is no cult like celebrity"). And so we get to watch legacy journalists and online influencers alike get their comeuppance ... but just deserts for what, exactly? For making Moretti beloved and rich over the years? What exactly is Moretti's beef here? Is he just crazy? Did any of the guests in particular slight him in the past? 

Don't try to figure it out. By the time the violence kicks in, it is so out of left field and so granular in its tactics (a mild scalping, anyone?) that many will want to shut this off by the time the final-reel bloodbath escalates. That is, if you can make it past the idea of Malkovich as a bald rock god, croaking out tunes written by Nile Rodgers and someone who goes by The-Dream (don't forget the hyphen). 

Like the two previous efforts, this is an example of a newcomer regurgitating too many ideas on the screen at once. Let's see if any of these filmmakers settle down and eventually make a good movie. 

Oh, Pioneers

 

SUNDAY BEST (B) - "The Ed Sullivan Show," the Sunday night variety TV staple for more than two decades, is revisited mainly through the lens of race relations postwar and at the height of the Civil Rights movement. 

 

Sullivan was a sportswriter and columnist who often championed black athletes and entertainers. We watch as he fights to have Harry Belafonte -- suspected of having communist sympathies in the '50s -- appear on his show (and as Belafonte delivers a powerful performance). It was provocative at the time for Sullivan to be hands-on with his black guests, even kissing female performers, right there on CBS in front of his millions of viewers. 

Elvis Presley and the Beatles get their perfunctory moments, but they generally stand aside for the likes of James Brown, Pearl Bailey, the Supremes (above) and Gladys Knight & the Pips. The parade of performers is impressive. 

Director Sacha Jenkins -- whose previous subjects have included Rick James, Louis Armstrong, Wu-Tang Clan and the LA riots -- delves into Sullivan's personal life (living in a hotel, hobnobbing in New York as the "toast of the town") and digs through his early days in newspapers. (The movie is subtitled "The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan.") Jenkins leans on a gimmick that some might find annoying: He uses an AI-generated version of Sullivan's voice to narrate the film in the first person. It's a bit high-pitched, as you'd imagine a young Sullivan would sound like, but it is definitely obvious that the audio is not from archival recordings.

At 80 minutes, the Netflix release zips along, and the music clips are quite entertaining; if not deep cuts, at least they are not the obvious hits that we've seen over and over.  

OSCAR MICHEAUX: THE SUPERHERO OF BLACK FILMMAKING (2021) (B) - This jangled retrospective brings to light the career of Oscar Micheaux, the groundbreaking black filmmaker from the early days of the medium a century ago.

Writer-director Francesco Zippel, who specializes in profiling filmmakers, curates footage from the silent and talkie eras and gathers a bevy of talking heads to place Micheaux in the canon. That includes Chuck D from Public Enemy, Morgan Freeman, and disciples like John Singleton ("Boyz n the Hood"), Amma Asante ("Belle"), and Kevin Willmott (writer of "BlacKkKlansman"), all of whom provide a measured mix of insight and appreciation for the opened door. (A lot of them also wear or are surrounded by the color royal blue, which is either an obscure homage or just an aesthetic quirk of Zippel.) Learned analysts and historians (with the exception of one with not much to offer) provide key context about the wild-west days of early Hollywood.

It would be nice to have had fuller clips of the films of Micheaux, whose career spanned from 1919 ("Homesteader," based on his own novel) to 1948, a few years before he died in his late 60s. (Many of his reels are lost to history.) The film seems to gloss over his shortcomings -- he was a thieving train porter early on, and he apparently was quite the hustler in the movie business. But it provides a strong general overview of a trailblazer many of us have likely never heard of. 

BONUS TRACKS

Here are Ray Charles and Billy Preston from the Sullivan show in 1967 with "Double-O Soul":

 

And here is Bo Diddley jangling away with his eponymous earworm in 1955:

365 Days

 

Our favorite band, of recent vintage, Waxahatchee stopped by Santa Fe for an outdoor show with the western sunset as a backdrop. They were led by their heart and soul, the magnetic Katie Crutchfield. It had been 10 years since we saw her last in New Mexico. 

 

No one in the past 10 years has come close to her batting average, which is 1.000. I have never heard her record a bad song. She has six albums going back to 2012, the most recent last year's "Tigers Blood," which is still in heavy rotation.

Crutchfield, backed by a solid band, including Eliana Athayde on bass and harmonizing vocals, worked the stage like a superstar, like a Laurel Canyon Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. She had a stool off to the side, where she would croon without the burden of her acoustic guitar and could play to the balcony.

There might be no finer song than "Burns Out at Midnight." She out-Prines Prine:

 

About half her songs were from "Tigers Blood," and most of the rest were from "St. Cloud, from 2020 (set list). That included "Lilacs," the most second-phase Bob Dylan song you can imagine, and it's better than anything on "New Morning."

 

Crutchfield crooned two country ditties from her side project Plains, and she and opening act, Brennan Wedl, belted out a fine cover of Kathleen Edwards' "Six O'Clock News." Here is Edwards' original:

 

And, finally, our title track:

The Male Ego

 

MOUNTAINHEAD (C+) - These two films were so forgettable I almost forgot to review them. "Mountainhead" -- a play on Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead" -- is a pitch-black comedy about four billionaire tech bros who gather at an isolated mansion while the world seems to be falling apart, the mayhem sparked by disinformation fed by their artificial-intelligence schemes. 

 

These four old friends quickly descend into backstabbing over business opportunities, until it gets to the point where three of them literally try to kill the fourth, in bumbling comic style. This is the directing debut of writer Jesse Armstrong ("In the Loop," "Four Lions"), and the script is maddeningly faithful to tech-speak, as if an AI program tried to write David Mamet dialogue. 

Jason Schwartzman is fun, as always, as the host at his Utah getaway. Steve Carrell, as the older mentor, does that mopey sad-sack thing that is rarely funny. Cory Michael Smith ("Carol," "Saturday Night") is fine as the alpha male Ven, and Ramy Youseff struggles to define his role as the one whose AI could save the planet from Ven's rampage. The four men never create a believable buzz, and we're always aware that this is a fictional exercise in what-if. Schwartzman is amusing, as the least wealthy of the bunch (only two commas) desperately pushing his meditation app Slowzo.

There is something to be had here about four rich jerks being so arrogant that they don't care about the destruction of the planet, but you also get the sense that Armstrong and his team might be just as thoughtless in how they go about the task at hand. Nothing gels here, and the self-aware over-written dialogue just consumes this whole thing by the end.

MICKEY 17 (C) - For us, "Parasite," was an outlier in the film canon of Bong Joon-ho. He is now back to his pulpy excess ("Snowpiercer," "Okja"), with an extraplanetary story here that, like its cloned main character, is insufferably repetitive and dour.

I admit, I mentally bailed on "Mickey 17" at some point and let it play out as background noise, for the most part. This is a relentless slog about the latest iteration of a kamikaze/suicide Expendable clone, Mickey 17 (Robert Pattinson, looking miserable), who, through a glitch, has to deal with Mickey 18. (Each Mickey is supposed to die in the service of science before the next version is 3-D printed -- a cool special effect. And Multiples are verboten.) Meantime, the Mickeys will do battle with a pal from Earth (Steven Yeun) and fall for the lovely Nasha (Naomie Ackie), a security agent on the fictional icy planet of Niflheim. They also have to deal with the expedition leader, a smarmy politician named Marshall (a goofy Mark Ruffalo) and his unctuous wife (Toni Collette).

Just try to follow the convoluted plot, either by viewing the film or trudging through the Wikipedia entry. Pattinson always looks like he'd rather be somewhere (or someone) else. I was embarrassed for Ruffalo and his outlandish makeup. 

The storyline involving the native creatures battling the invading humans feels like a cheap video game. And would you believe there are the makings of a threesome involving both Mickeys? No one distinguishes themselves, especially Bong, who apparently gets to make any movie he wants, with final cut, even if it's a 137-minute intergalactic mess.