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.