Library Cards

 

PARTY GIRL (1995) (B+) - Parker Posey has such appeal that I could watch her shelve books in a library, as she faithfully follows the Dewey Decimal system. And she proves that here.

Posey was a true indie darling in the mid-'90s, on the brink of a mainstream breakthrough (mainly in Christopher Guest's mockumentaries), when she took the lead role in this romp about a wild young adult turning to library work to settle down her life. Posey's line deliveries and physical presence -- as she flounces around in her trendy couture outfits -- are undeniably appealing. And this surprisingly clever film from writer-director Daisy von Scherler Mayer (in her feature debut) builds a story and characters to swirl around its star. 

 

Posey plays Mary, who ends up behind bars for hosting an illegal underground rave, and so she turns to her godmother, Judy (Sasha von Scherler, the filmmaker's mother), who gives her a job in Judy's library to rein in the wild young woman. It partly works. Mary at first is dismissive of the milieu, but she soon learns to appreciate the rigid functionality of the library system. But she still likes to party, pushing the career of DJ buddy Leo (Guillermo Diaz from TV's "Weeds" and "Scandal"), and fending off the advances of brutish bouncer Nigel (a young Liev Schreiber.  

Drawing her down to earth is a budding romance with falafel vendor Mustafa (Omar Townsend), a Lebanese immigrant who yearns to get back to a teaching career. Mary's frivolous ways have consequences on the moony Mustafa and others.

This is no lightweight tossed-off Clinton-era bubble-gum lark. Von Scherler Mayer shows serious chops with snappy one-liners. Smitten upon discovering "The Myth of Sisyphus," Mary intones earnestly, "I think I'm an existentialist. I do." (Leo's response to the story of Sisyphus' slog? "Draaag.") Judy constantly berates Mary as no better than Mary's mother who had "no common sense." Seeking to escape her spiraling situation, Mary seeks out "a nice, powerful, mind-altering substance -- preferably one that will make my unborn children grow gills."

"Party Girl" has spunk and spark. There is a depth to the depiction of Mary's existential crisis on the brink of her 24th birthday. And it launched three decades of Parker Posey delights. 

THE LIBRARIANS (C+) - There is something disturbingly lopsided about this earnest documentary that centers heroic librarians who have spent the decade battling right-wing censors seeking to ban books from school and public libraries. 

We get a boatload of cinematic melodrama as director Kim Snyder ("Welcome to Shelbyville") tracks the assault on libraries in the deep South unleashed by menacing politicians and and the Hitler-adjacent group of crackpots Moms for Liberty. We get very little actual analysis of the content that the right wants to censor, and there is no nuance about whether there is any substance beneath the shouting. Yes, the vast majority of complaints are baseless; but this film doesn't prove that.

The librarians come off as more than First Amendment heroes; they are deified as exalted martyrs, flawless in their convictions. Again, maybe that is mostly true; but why must every scene be so black and white? Snyder works hard to humanize the librarians, many of whom bravely put their careers on the line with their defiance. The Moms for Liberty are depicted as humorless scolds -- in particular one deranged mother who takes video at a library board meeting of one public speaker, who is the gay son she has banned from her household. She is unrepentantly nasty, bringing into sharp focus the brutality of the crusade against books like "Between the World and Me" and "The Color Purple." 

This is an unabashed polemic. But its extreme slant should make an objective viewer at least a little suspicious of its agenda. 

BONUS TRACKS

"Party Girl" has an extensive dance-club soundtrack. Here is L.U.P.O featuring Cathy with "Keep It Up":

 

Wolfgang Press deconstructs Randy Newman's "Mama Told Me Not to Come":

 

And a ska flavor to Dawn Penn's "You Don't Love Me":

New York Punks

 

BUNNY (B+) - The plot goes off the rails by the end, but at a compact 90 minutes this hectic day-in-the-life romp about apartment dwellers dealing with an unexpected dead body revels in its wild characters and is packed with laughs. 

Mo Stark plays the stringy-haired Bunny, a street hustler who is having a trying day. (The opening scene shows him sprinting through the city streets and then changing his clothes, so you know something has gone down.) Stark has the raw manic energy of Simon Rex in "Red Rocket," and he gives Bunny the patter of a recovering drug addict. The dead body that he's responsible for on the fifth-floor landing (it's a bad guy, so we don't feel bad) is ruining his birthday, cock-blocking the gift of a threesome his wife, Bobbie (Liza Colby), has arranged for him. The apartment building is crawling with crazy characters, including a Chinese woman who barely speaks English and a trio of young women planning their own party on the third floor. Bobbie's estranged father, Loren (Tony Drazen), has decided to drop in that day, and the residents get him high to alleviate the awkwardness of the father-daughter reunion.

 

The secret weapon here is Ben Jacobsen, who directed this rager, co-wrote it with Stark and one other, and steals the show as Dino, Bunny's best bud and fellow schemer. Sporting a platinum buzz-cut, he delivers some of the juiciest one-liners with a deadpan stoner delivery. This is Jacobsen's feature debut, and he shows a steady hand and a command of the urban chaos unspooling in the claustrophobic setting. The deep talent of the cast extends to a couple of New York's finest, two suitably incurious officers played wonderfully drolly by Ajay Naidu (Samir from "Office Space") and Liz Caribel Sierra.

As noted, the plot jumps the shark in the second half (another body turns up and gets stuffed into a suitcase), and plausibility is strained, but by then you are hooked, and the dash to the finish is clever enough and consistently funny. It's a crazy day in the big city, and the time flies by.

SMITHEREENS (1982) (B+) - Susan Seidelman ("Desperately Seeking Susan") splashed with this sharp character study of a runaway on New York's Lower East Side trying to scam her way through the waning punk scene of the day.

The low-budget DIY ethic has a meta tinge to it, as Seidelman's characters wink at the fact that by the early '80s, the punk/new-wave scene was dwindling in New York and migrating to Los Angeles. Susan Berman, with a mop of kinky hair, stars as Wren, a teenage escapee from New Jersey who is months behind on her rent while she stalks various bands in order to punch her ticket to the rock world (as a manager? a groupie?). She sports the style of the day, including a houndstooth vinyl miniskirt and matching checkered sunglasses that she swiped from a sap in the subway. She papers the neighborhood with fliers depicting her mimeographed image and the words "Who is this?"

 

Wren uses her wiles to try to seduce a pouty fading punk, Eric, played by Richard Hell of the real-life Heartbreakers and Voidoids. Pining for her is Paul (Brad Rijn), who has ventured from Montana in a beat-up van, which he lives in, in an empty lot, with a gaggle of prostitutes as his neighbors. Wren strings along the naive Paul (by this time she is evicted and needs a place to crash) while she pursues the philandering Eric, whom she sees as her ticket to the L.A. scene.  

Seidelman shoots guerrilla-style along the grimy streets of Manhattan, in grubby apartment units, and at the trendy Peppermint Lounge. She deftly captures the longing of a smart young woman eager to rush toward full womanhood.  The traditional love triangle gets a gruff '80s makeover, where no plot element succumbs to the traditional format. The cast is raw but effective. One sex worker (Katherine Riley) nearly steals the whole movie with the lethargic moves she puts on a reluctant Paul in the front seat of his van. The scene is an instant classic.

Will Wren hone her street smarts into a successful con game? Does she deserve to succeed? Seidelman, whose edge would dull by the end of the decade (see "She-Devil"), will keep you guessing till the end.

BONUS TRACKS

The Feelies provide the core of the "Smithereens" soundtrack with selections from their 1980 album "Crazy Rhythms." Here is "The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness":

 

The Feelies' "Loveless Love" mimics the jangled psyche of Wren:

 

"Bunny" sports an eclectic retro soundtrack, culminating in "Give Me Daughters" from Jonathan Fire Eater, a post-punk revivalist band from the '90s that morphed into the Walkmen:

 

The Stalkers' "In Your Street Today" has a throwback garage energy that syncs well with "Bunny's" frenzy:

 

"Bunny" kicks off with a '70s flashback to Garland Jeffreys' FM anthem "Wild in the Streets":

The Altman Universe: Odd Woman Out

We figured it was time that we revisit the works of Robert Altman, something we somehow haven't done in the past 13 years. This is the start of an occasional series.

3 WOMEN (1977) (B+) - Two women -- Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall -- are at the peak of their quirkiness in this character study with a sci-fi psychological twist on sisterhood and motherhood. 

With a nod to Ingmar Bergman's "Persona," Robert Altman plays with the concept of shifting identities as he follows Spacek's naive Pinky as she joins the crew of a rehab spa in the California desert and latches on to a co-worker, Millie (Duvall), a self-absorbed and delusional motor mouth living a pathetic life. Pinky moves in with Millie at an apartment complex populated by young hipsters who mock Millie behind her back. The apartments are run by alcoholic former stunt double Edgar (Robert Fortier) and his mysterious pregnant artist wife Willie (Janice Rule).

 

Spacek is wide-eyed and creepy, as Pinky starts to "Single White Female" Millie, eventually seeking to take over Millie's outgoing personality. Duvall is off the wall as the clueless goofball prone to empty boasts. It might be her most memorable character and performance; she dives deep into Millie such that at times you get the sense that Altman just followed her wherever she went, without regard to the rest of the cast or the dictates of the script. Pinky is the only person clueless enough to take Millie seriously, despite the constant verbal abuse that Millie heaps on Pinky.

With a wink that might have informed David Lynch in future endeavors (like "Mulholland Drive"), Altman's second half toys with the timeline and shifts the perspectives of the characters. Millie's cheap affair with the boorish Edgar will scramble the stakes, culminating in a feminist outburst that unites the three women and rearranges their personas one more time. 

The harsh desert landscape and the echoes of an outdated Hollywood make for a haunting backdrop. And while the two stars talk past each other more than they interact, their bizarre bond propels the narrative, greased with the dry black humor that endures until the final visual punchline. 

A WEDDING (1978) (B+) - An ensemble cast of character actors slowly unwraps Altman's day-in-the-life chronicle that revolves around a snake-bit wedding and reception populated by bourgeois elitists, screw-ups and horny guests. What starts out slowly builds momentum, with the random gags and fleeting one-liners that add up to a satisfying whole.

 

Altman juggles perhaps his biggest cast of all and knits together a dizzying array of mini-plots. The nouveau riche  bride, Muffin (Amy Stryker), wears braces, and the old-money groom, Dino (Desi Arnaz Jr.), may have impregnated her sister, Buffy (Mia Farrow), though Buffy has been so popular with the boys that the source of the fetus is anybody's guest. The mother of the bride, Tulip (Carol Burnett), is getting hit on by the groom's uncle (Pat McCormick). And the matriarch of the groom's family (screen legend Lillian Gish) has passed away peacefully upstairs in her bed, though not everyone who visits her notices. There is a drunken doctor (Howard Duff), a harried wedding planner (Geraldine Chaplin), an overwhelmed lead security officer (John Considine, who shares screenwriting credits), a bumbling bishop (John Cromwell) and a coterie of pals from the military school Dino hails from (including Craig Richard Nelson). 

Illicit affairs occur in every corner of the mansion. A painting of the topless bride will be ceremoniously unveiled. When the bride and groom's exes show up, they each greet their old flames openly with passionate kisses. Burnett and McCormick provide the main comic relief as they fumble through the first stages of a potential affair. The quality of the cast is deep. Paul Dooley is the father of the bride, who is a little too close with daughter Buffy, the mostly mute maid of honor. Nina Van Pallant is radiant as the unhappy mother of the groom with a melancholy backstory. Dina Merrill exudes old-school class as her bossy sister. "Mork & Mindy's" Pam Dawber provides spunk as Dino's ex. A raft of young actors from the Chicago theater scene (mostly Steppenwolf and Second City) score roles as barely recognizable extras, including Joan Allen, George Wendt, Dennis Franz, Danny Breen, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.

Some will find this meandering and underwhelming. It didn't click for me until the second hour. It's almost brilliant in its scattershot understatement. (Similar to how Roger Ebert appreciated the "insane logic" of Altman's "MASH.") Only Altman at the time could attract this level of disparate talent. He seems to be bursting with small ideas and having fun watching his players run around with them. 

BONUS TRACK

Let's take a shot at ranking from memory the Robert Altman films we've seen and watch how the list evolves as we re-view them and add more. (Boldface indicates recently added or re-viewed.)

  1.  Nashville

  2.  McCabe & Mrs. Miller

  3.  MASH

  4.  The Long Goodbye

  5.  The Player

  6.  Short Cuts 

  7.  3 Women

  8.  A Wedding

  9.  California Split 

 10. A Prairie Home Companion

 11. Gosford Park

Doc Watch: The Unraveling

 

BREAKDOWN: 1975 (B+) - As advertised, this Netflix documentary breaks down the year of 1975, mostly (but not exclusively) through the movies released during perhaps the greatest year of American film. To the strains of Donna Summer's disco purrs, we're told in the opening (by narrator Jodie Foster of "Taxi Driver") that America was experiencing a nervous breakdown, and it sure felt as if, as Gerald Ford put it, we were locked in a "long national nightmare" even after we drove Nixon out of office.

To quote Al Pacino's bank robber in "Dog Day Afternoon," as he negotiated with police after robbing a bank to fund an operation for his transsexual partner: "I'm dyin' here!"  Both unemployment and inflation hovered at 9 percent. America had just lost a war. We were a hot mess.

Morgan Neville ("20 Feet From Stardom," "Won't You Be My Neighbor") knows how to craft a compelling narrative, and here he immerses us in the good, the bad and the ugly from the depths of one of the grimmest decades in recent memory. (The 2020s sure are making a case to compete against that time a half century ago.) He has a lot of material to work with in 1975:  poor Gerald Ford cleaning up after the disgraced Nixon, trying to "whip inflation now"; the end of the Vietnam War; school busing; the  Church Committee unmasking the tyrannical sins of the federal government; the oil crisis; the feminism wars; the specter of Ronald Reagan (seen in a clip on the "Tonight Show" with his buddy Johnny Carson); the creeps from Est. America was faking patriotism and community for its upcoming Bicentennial. No wonder there was nostalgia for the '50s -- "Happy Days" challenged the present-day dolor of "All in the Family" on TV. A bolder future, too, could be glimpsed: Microsoft was founded in an Albuquerque garage in 1975.

Check out these titles of esteemed releases that year: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Nashville," "Shampoo," "Jaws," "Dog Day Afternoon," "Night Moves," "Smile," "Three Days of the Condor," "Mahogany," "Hester Street," "Barry Lyndon." December 1974 releases carrying over in theaters included "The Godfather: Part II" and "Young Frankenstein." Neville likes to make broader points through film clips. He twins the fall of Saigon with the scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" of the knight in defiant denial as his limbs get hacked off one by one. He pits the progressive Betty Ford against the robotic nostalgist Nancy Reagan via clips from "The Stepford Wives."  

There were the pulpy dystopian films: "Towering Inferno". "Rollerball," John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13." (Coming in early 1976 would be "Taxi Driver" and "Bad News Bears.") Airier fare still had a bit of an edge: "The Sunshine Boys," "Cooley High" (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs is a talking head), "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Tommy," "Love and Death." "Emmanuelle 2." Neville ties in TV clips, too, including the dark comedy "MASH" and the debut of "Saturday Night Live," represented here with the iconic word association sketch between Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor.

Observers include Albert Brooks (who made short films in the debut season of "SNL"), critic Frank Rich, comedian Patton Oswalt, Variety's Peter Bart, Joan Tewkesbury (who wrote "Nashville"), critic Wesley Morris, author Rick Perlstein, and Naomi Fry. Oswalt captures it all perfectly when he re-imagines selling his date on a night out at a movie featuring Jack Nicholson as a statutory rapist in an insane asylum. We get fascinating clips that revive the ugliness of the era, such as the 1975 Academy Awards show, where old-timers Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and John Wayne defended the Old Boys Club vs. the American New Wave, represented by Dustin Hoffman.

Dial back the clock a half century if you dare. At least some of us can boast that we survived the shit-show.

SONG SUNG BLUE (2008) (B) - This documentary from 20 years ago is much darker than the recent fictional version (with the same title) of the story of Lightning and Thunder, the real-life couple whose Neil Diamond tribute act suffered from real-life setbacks.

Things are depressingly real for Mike Sardina and his wife, Claire, mostly in the health challenges they faced during the period of the documentary, from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Greg Kohs (who got a screenwriting credit on Craig Brewer's highly entertaining holiday release) gets extensive intimate home-movie access to the Sardina's and their working-class home life.  

Sardina died in 2006 at age 55. and he and Claire battled obesity (his solution was to resume smoking to lose weight), in addition to her loss of a leg in a freak car crash on their front lawn. The true footage is much grimmer than the feel-good feature film, as you'd expect. Things go sideways by the 20-minute mark and the couple never really recovers (despite Mike dismissing their schneid as a mere "bump in the road"). The Midwest accents are authentic, but so is the dour day-to-day slog, the domestic tension of a blended family. "The Brady Bunch" this is not. Then there is Claire washing her stump in the tiny bathroom sink. Kate Hudson doesn't have quite the chops to pull off something that haunting.

Sardina gives monologues for the camera and parades around in his underwear, like Hugh Jackman does jovially, but his character arc does not fit the Hollywood model of a hero's journey toward redemption. It is painful to watch the pair perform to empty dingy clubs, or to a smattering of curious onlookers at the Wisconsin state fair. At the hour mark, Mike has a major heart attack, and the slow slide to his demise is baked in.

So, go ahead, chase your dreams. Enjoy them before the nightmares overwhelm them.

BONUS TRACKS 

Three representative songs from 1975, starting with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Breakdown"

 

Heart, "Crazy on You": 

And the biggest-selling single of 1975: Captain & Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together" (penned by Neil Sedaka, another '50s nostalgia act):

 

And here is Lightning and Thunder onstage with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, having fun with Diamond's "Forever in Bluejeans":  

New to the Queue

 Fixing a hole where the rain came in ...

Our guy Matt Johnson ("Operation Avalanche," "BlackBerry") is back with another Canadian romp, "Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie."

A relationship comedy from Canadian Sook-Yin Lee, "Paying for It."

An Iraqi girl is chosen to bake a treat for Saddam Hussein in the debut feature "The President's Cake."

From Colombia, a tragi-comedy about a washed-up loser, "A Poet."

A documentary about the hit-making keyboard whiz, "Billy Preston: That's the Way God Planned It."

Holy Crap!* And Don't Call Me Shirley

 

It was with trepidation that I returned to the "Naked Gun" universe, which I first wallowed in when the Leslie Nielsen TV spoof "Police Squad" had an improbable, silly run of a mere six episodes on ABC in 1982.

 

The comedy was beyond sophomoric but the silly wordplay had a charm coming out of the mouth of Nielsen, who until then had been a journeyman serious actor. This was the brainchild of the Zucker brothers (Jerry and David) and Jim Abrahams, who started the mayhem with 1980s "Airplane!" (the source of our headline reference). Typical dialogue, after a female is apprehended, has the police captain ordering two officers to "take her away and book 'er." Then Nielsen's Frank Drebin introduces himself to the pair of officers: "Sgt. Takeraway. [Shakes hands.] Sgt. Booker." And scene. 

That's hilarious when you are a teenager with few defenses. Nielsen took the franchise to the big screen in three movies that suffered from debilitating diminishing returns. I'm pretty sure I saw only the first one -- "Nice beaver!" -- but had bailed out by the third, which was more than 30 years ago.

 

For no apparent reason, Andy Samberg's Lonely Island pal, Akiva Schaffer, and two co-writers dusted off the franchise and thought they could replicate it. Now starring Liam Neeson, as Frank Drebin Jr., the childish toilet humor falls flat on the screen. It is painful to watch. Hmm. Have I matured? Is this a shtick that just can't be replicated without Abrahams and the Zuckers? (Was it never funny? Nah, can't be.) There's actually an attempted joke in which a character confuses the word "manslaughter" with "man's laughter" -- whoa, Nelly, what a yuk! I got over that pun by fifth grade.

The execution is jaw-droppingly bad. It's not just the juvenile script that flops. Neeson is a dud playing against type as a would-be comedian. He is surrounded by painfully unfunny folks, like Pamela Anderson (standing in for Priscilla Presley and her stuffed beaver), Danny Houston and Paul Walter Hauser. Only Weird Al Yankovic manages a few laughs in an extended cameo (and the final word after the credits.) 

But every scene is a slog, and you can hear the jokes plummeting to the floor and landing like wet bags of sand. Or like turkeys dropped from a helicopter. There are 12 producers credited, including Seth MacFarlane, which might explain some of this mess. As well as the obsession with fart jokes and exploding diarrhea. Would you believe they trot out the ol' gag about scrolling through hours of lapel-camera video showing Drebin engaging in a parade of embarrassing activities? And they beat gags deep into the ground. Cops like coffee? Let's try 26 sight-gags about Drebin carrying or being handed a coffee cup. One visual involves Drebin being spied on as he hangs out with Anderson's femme fatale, and the first image is amusing -- but then the scene goes on for a full minute, repeating the same joke. Say what you will about Abraham-Zucker, but at least they had studied their Marx Brothers.

The violence is cartoonish but disturbing nonetheless; Drebin Jr. rips a man's arms off and then beats him with them. Har-dee-har. The plot is thin, even for something this ridiculous. I could go on, but ugh. It was pointless to bring this franchise back; it's just as pointless for me to go on.

GRADE for "The Naked Gun": D

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.