PASSING (A-minus) - Actress Rebecca Hall pens a script and sits behind the camera to direct a period piece about the reconnection of two former high school friends, both black, one of whom passes as white in segregated 1920s America. Hall conjures up a specific world brought to life by a pair of powerhouses: Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson, who expertly explore depths of emotion while juggling dialogue that has a subtle air of the era's bebop jazz to it.
Thompson is Irene, married to a doctor, Brian (Andre Holland), and raising two boys in a middle-class milieu in Harlem. Negga ("Loving") is Clare, a free spirit married to a virulently racist white man (Alexander Skarsgard). Moving back to New York, Clare infiltrates Irene's family, connecting with the husband, playing auntie to the boys, even shooting the breeze with the maid/cook. Clare also makes the social scene with Irene, Brian and Hugh (Bill Camp), a noted writer and bon vivant who is skeptical of Clare. We get hints of what these two women were like together as teenagers but never get a true grip on the depth of that earlier connection.
Hall, working from a 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, captures the subtleties of a fraught female friendship, and she adds layers of nuance to the character interactions throughout, especially Clare's ease with Irene's husband and friends, which introduces an element of jealousy but not in an obvious way. The dialogue -- especially as it sometimes sneakily overlaps -- is both sharp and lovely, even poetic in the manner of Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, though much more stripped down. (As one character intones: "We're all of us passing for something or other.") Meantime, the visuals in the black-and-white cinematography have a washed-out haze to them, as if reproduced from the women's clouded memories. Spare tinkly, jangly piano interludes add to a sense of hallucinatory dread.
Thompson, especially, excels in close-ups, as the fulcrum in this warren of relationships. Irene is melancholy, spending her afternoons napping the day away and rousting herself to perform for everyone in her life, including a charity that she devotes her time to (to the detriment of the passion in her marriage). Negga is wide-eyed and masked to the world, rarely giving a hint to the emotional toll of tamping down her identity and roots. Clare is reveling in the rediscovery of her heritage (from soul food to the company of handsome black men) but she teeters on the tightrope she is dancing along.
This is a satisfying mix of grit and mood and the quiet longing of two women reaching toward and away from the worlds that have been created for them and which both comfort and entrap them. Hall, of mixed race herself, seems to have an innate feel for this internal struggle of not only racial identity but also the role of women a century ago.
HIVE (B) - This is a touching feminist cri de coeur but a bit of a by-the-numbers character profile set in the wake of the horrors of Kosovo in the 1990s. Writer-director Blerta Basholli, in her feature debut, chronicles the daily struggles of Fahrije (Yllka Gashi), who battles old-world misogyny while she awaits definitive word on the fate of her husband, suspected of being one of the many men and boys of Albanian dissent slaughtered or disappeared under Serb occupation. (It is based on a true story.)
Desperate to fend for her two teenage kids and her handicapped father-in-law, Fahrije gets entrepreneurial and begins manufacturing ajvar, a roasted-red-pepper relish. She encourages other women to defy the patriarchy that forbids women working and join her project. The appeal here is in the can-do spirit and the grit Fahrije shows in overcoming the odds.
The problem here is that Basholli occasionally traffics in simple stereotypes of the old men and fails, eventually, to rise much above the conventions of the standard underdog tale. Gashi, with a bit of a masculine air and look about her, is an interesting choice for this story, and she does a good job of inhabiting Fahrije as she fends off the slings and arrows, all while hanging in limbo between mourning her husband and holding out hope for his improbable return. The depictions of the life of the working poor are compelling, even if you have a hunch about how the twin narratives here will turn out.
BONUS TRACK
"Passing" sounds as good as it looks. And the closing credits are haunted by the lazy bluesy strains of "The Last Tears of a Deceased" by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, an Ethiopian nun born in 1923:
AZOR (B+) - It's everything that's left unsaid that makes this period piece inscrutable but mysterious and satisfying. Swiss private banker Yvan de Wiel (Fabrizio Rangione) travels to Buenos Aires in late 1980, at the height of the repressive military regime, to clean up after his business partner, Rene Keys, who, like many dissidents at the time, has gone missing. Yvan has his elegant wife, Ines (Stephanie Cleau), with him as part of his sophisticated presentation as he navigates a country-club world of rogue strongmen looking to move their dirty money around.
The pace of this 100-minute drama is gorgeously slow; it unfolds like a casual vacation outfit. Yvan seems to be in over his head, with his old-fashioned sophistication and slight features, which are no match for the macho men of Argentina. Rangione has a hang-dog look, like a chagrined poker player, and his wife, a statuesque femme fatale who can disable a man with an exhale of cigarette smoke, prods him with a few strategically placed passive-aggressive putdowns meant to rally his manhood. Cleau and Rangione are a post-Peron Nick and Nora.
It helps to not try to understand all of the politics of the day or to follow every single character or name that gets dropped throughout the story. First-time director Andreas Fontana (writing with a veteran, Mariano Llinas) apparently intends to keep us a bit confused and off-kilter, perhaps to heighten the tension and mirror Yvan's own flailing through a treacherous world of shady figures. Yvan tries to solve the mystery of "Lazaro," a possible clue to Keys' whereabouts.
Meantime, he shmoozes and spars with an interesting cast of characters: a sophisticated older woman with roots in Europe (played by the poet Carmen Iriondo); a melancholy horseman whose politically active daughter has been disappeared; a bully who can barely give him the time of day; and most menacing of all, a monsignor (a smoldering Pablo Torre Nilson) who makes mob bosses look like Arby's managers. Eventually Yvan will take a Kurtzian excursion into a veritable heart of darkness, which will test his Swiss manners and willingness to play the treacherous global game of Follow the Money.
CARANCHO (2011) (B+) - This brutal, pulpy love story is an unrelenting examination of the shady practice of ambulance-chasing and insurance fraud. It's a bloody, bruising game that has ensnared Sosa (Ricardo Darin) after he loses his law license, and the goal here is to go straight, if he can escape the gravitational pull of the mafia-like operation.
On one of his gambits, Sosa meets Lujan (Martina Gusman), a cute doctor who rides the ambulance as an on-call responder, and he is smitten. With her own issues (she shoots up drugs to get through her double shifts), she will make Sosa work to win her over, especially after she finds out the racket he is wrapped up in. Sosa gets beat up a lot, and between those drubbings and the staged accidents (sometimes with codeine injections beforehand to steel the "victim") there is a lot of blood, broken bones and stitches.
Director Pablo Trapero shoots this in cinema verite documentary style, bathing the visuals in grit and grime. Darin is an appealing actor who has been invaluable in movies like "Nine Queens," "The Secret in Their Eyes," as well as more recent turns in "Wild Tales" and "Everybody Knows." He carries this movie like an old-school noir PI, and he pairs well with Gusman as the recalcitrant, beleaguered medical professional trying to keep it all together.
Three longtime collaborators helped Trapero hone the screenplay, which is spare and affecting. They could have pared about 15 of the 107 minutes (I could have used fewer shots of Lujan jabbing a needle into the top of her bruised foot). As it becomes clear that Sosa will be incredibly lucky to escape the vortex he is in, the screenwriters build this to a shocking crescendo. They have a clever echo double ending up their sleeve, and it's perfectly rendered.
BONUS TRACK
From a tender scene in "Carancho," Javier Solis with "Nuestro Juramento":
The latest two films from Radu Jude, who gave us 2016's "Aferim" and was assistant director on the groundbreaking 2006 Romanian film "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu":
UPPERCASE PRINT (B+) - Mugur Calinescu was a teenager who in 1981 sprinkled pro-Western messages around his hometown, drawing the interest of the secret police. Director Radu Jude takes a droll stage play based on surveillance transcripts from police files to tell the boy's story, flavoring it with historical patriotic videos from the Ceausescu era that would last another decade before the fall of communism.
Actors playing Mugur and his family, friends and interrogators stand on bare sets, address the camera stiffly and speak in monotone as if to emphasize the bland matter-of-fact reporting they are reciting verbatim from the Securitate files. There's a woodenness akin to a '60s episode of "Dragnet." It is the theatrical version of signaling to us the banality of evil.
To put this all in perspective, Jude knits this narrative together with vintage clips, including many songs extolling the virtues of Romania's socialist paradise and the kindly paternalism of Ceausescu's iron-fisted rule. Mugur's graffiti was mostly inspired by reports he heard on Radio Free Europe, mainly the workers' Solidarity movement in Poland. As the story unfolds, Mugur's predicament slowly grows more dire, as even his own parents (split by divorce) are afraid to be on his side. A coda reveals a tragic aftermath, and Jude's timeline stops short of the overthrow of Ceausescu or any belated recognition of Mugur as a hero. It's enough for Jude to unsettle us with the threats of fascism and the horrors of a life without free speech.
BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN (C+) - It's not clear what Jude is going for here, besides taking a short film and padding it out to feature length. This is the story of a school teacher Emi (Katia Pascariu), the unfortunate victim of having her amateur home porn session leak out to the community, putting her job in jeopardy.
The story is told in four parts. First, we get a few minutes of the actual graphic porn -- full-on banging, no censorship. Then we get about a half hour of Emi walking around Bucharest and occasionally talking on the phone, mostly with her partner as they try to get their story straight and squeeze the video back into its PornHub lockbox. It's as if Jude is conducting a sociological study of life and architecture in the 21st century. Then there a dramatic detour -- about another half hour of Jude waxing philosophical and cynical over Romania's communist past and humanity's nihilistic present. He does it through a series of word definitions that betray the writer-director's horrified view of Our Dumb Century.
Finally, in the last half hour, we get to the meat of the matter, so to speak. Emi sits before parents and colleagues) to face the music and make the case for saving her job. The group includes prudes and conspiracy theorists. One off-camera voice at the meeting, a sort of one-man Greek chorus, injects crude comments and an occasional Woody Woodpecker cackle, for some reason. Emi makes good points, as do a couple of others. Jude cops out by offering multiple endings. But that is in keeping with his odd approach to the subject -- throwing at you pure porn, documentary-style camera prying, dialectical diatribes, and finally that reckoning. It's all a mish-mash, and if you don't walk out during that meandering first half hour, you might kick yourself for staying.
THE WEDDING CRASHERS (2005) (A) - When you laugh so hard you nearly fall off the couch -- and you're alone when it happens -- you're watching comedy gold. So it was and continues to be with the pairing of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as they practice the art of crashing weddings and living their frivolous but dress-formal lives.
Vaughn is at the top of his game here, with his rapid-fire banter and his uncanny balloon-animal skills. Wilson bounces off of him with elastic improv skills. His hangdog emotional bully complements Vaughn's glib conman. The hero's journey here involves the challenge of not breaking the quite elaborate rules of the game, most notably, don't ever fall in love with a bridesmaid or a guest. Of course, that is exactly what befalls our shallow pals, and they are gifted not only with a fine supporting cast but with a sizzling script by journeymen writers Steve Faber and Bob Fisher.
Rachel McAdams and Isla Fisher are dynamic as the love interests, and their family is populated by the likes of Christopher Walken and Jane Seymour (as the women's blue-blood parents) and Bradley Cooper as McAdams' rich asshole fiance. There's also the requisite socially inappropriate grandmother and weird brother (see also, "Annie Hall," circling back to Walken). Plus there's an assist from an uncredited comic cameo as the godfather of wedding crashers (who has since moved on to crashing funerals). Director David Dobkin gets out the way and lets Vaughn and Wilson lead the charge.
The gags fly nonstop. My favorite moment -- representative of the moral ambiguity that cradles the entire film -- comes when Wilson has a quiet moment with Seymour, who is trying to cougar her daughter's pursuer. She asks Wilson to inspect and prod her refurbished breasts, and rather than decline or dive in, Wilson tells her: "This is borderline inappropriate." That is precise writing and character work.
We can overanalyze this one, but it's best to just to buckle up, enjoy the rollercoaster ride and try not to fall off the sofa.
BEST IN SHOW (2000) (A) - This is the height of the mockumentary movement, led by Christopher Guest, who starred in "This Is Spinal Tap" in the '80s and then took over the genre as director in the '90s, leading to this spoof of dog shows boasting a comedy all-star cast. Revisiting it 21 years later, the jokes still land, and the assemblage of actors is like a dream come true.
The improv all-stars are a who's who of snark: Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara, as the Flecks, he with two left feet and she with a prodigious sexual history; Parker Posey and Michael Hamilton as OCD dog parents (who met at Starbucks -- competing Starbucks locations across the street from each other); Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins as a fussy, sarcastic couple; Jane Lynch as an alpha female, with an eye for Jennifer Coolidge's delightful ditz married to a codger; cameos from Bob Balaban, Larry Miller and Ed Begley Jr.; and the anchor, Fred Willard as the id-driven TV commentator. Then, out in left field, is Guest himself as homespun Harlan Pepper, famously serenading his homely bloodhound by naming nuts. The characters, of course, tend to resemble their animals, either physically or emotionally.
Guest juggles these various story lines until they all come together for the big competition, the annual dog show. Guest and Levy pack the script with inspired ideas and hilarious one-liners, assisted by some free-form work by the unparalleled cast. There are too many memorable one-liners to begin going down the rabbit hole, and they need the absurd context that Guest provides. It's a grand howl.
Has Edgar Wright gone off the deep end? We loved 2017's "Baby Driver" so much that we went to the theater to see it twice. We rhapsodized about its "dazzle of visual and aural delights." It was a challenge to the senses, but it was never an all-out assault on the senses, which we experienced watching "Last Night in Soho," a blistering attack of images and sounds with barely a narrative to justify its experience.
An hour into this obnoxious screamer about a Woman in Peril, we leaned over to a friend to gauge her opinion, and she was willing to hang in there. Before the 90-minute mark -- when the horror tropes really kicked in -- we both were ready to leave. As Wright likes to do, he bombards the soundtrack with period songs, in this case from the late '60s, the time traveled to by Eloise Turner (Thomasin McKenzie from "Leave No Trace"), an aspiring fashion designer experiencing London for the first time. During her time travel after she falls asleep each night, she lands in 1967 Soho and sees the mirrored reflection of a big-eyed blonde (Anya Taylor-Joy) and then sort of trades places with her, learning vicariously of the horrors of "Sandy" being forced into prostitution.
Wright has become a master of quick-cut jump scares and dazzling visual tricks involving the mirrored images of the two different actresses. And in once scene, Handsome Guy (Matt Smith) twirls them on the dance floor as their likenesses keep alternating with each swing on the beat. But those devices grow old quite quickly. And soon this settles into yet another literal assault on a young woman desperate to survive. Eloise has a family history of mental illness, with suicide claiming her mother, whose image appears to Eloise in, yep, mirrors. As the routine gets repeated every night during her sleep, Eloise gets further drawn into the degradation, including being hounded by zombie ghosts of Sandy's former sex clients. I started to shut down halfway through, because the story was going nowhere (I later learned there's a twist at the end; ho-hum) and the visual and aural onslaught was unbearable amid all the horror trash. I didn't even make it to the best line in the film (it's in the trailer): When Eloise confronts Creepy Old Guy (Terence Stamp) by saying she knows what he's done, he replies, "I've done a lot of things. You're gonna have to be more specific, luv."
Wright earlier this year over-indulged in a documentary about a cult band, and it seems that he is now editor-proof. Alas, everyone needs an editor, especially when a bloke's having a wank like this. Let's hope he recalibrates soon.
Title: LAST NIGHT IN SOHO
Running Time: 116 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 85 MIN (I was ready to go after an hour)
Portion Watched: 73%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 59 YRS, 1 MO.
Average Male American Lifespan: 78.8 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Went home, did a crossword puzzle and fell asleep.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 8-1
BONUS TRACKS
One highlight of the engaging soundtrack is "You're My World," as belted out by Cilla Black, with the Hitchcockian opening chirps a nice touch:
And Taylor-Joy gets her Julee Cruise on with a wispy version of Petula Clark's "Downtown":
BRING YOUR OWN BRIGADE (A-minus) - This urgent documentary takes its time (two hours) to lay out the horror of wildfires (mostly the California variety), the causes behind them, and the solutions to the problem. British director Lucy Walker ("Waste Land," about landfills) brings a fresh cultural perspective from across the pond to cut through the patented American can't-do spirit to addressing the problem.
Going beyond just the hokey rebuilding focus on the 2018 Camp Fire in "Rebuilding Paradise" (below), Walker digs deep with some smart experts and even a few cagey residents in both Paradise in northern California and Malibu in Southern California (noting the red-blue/rich-poor contrast between the two areas). She spends nearly the first half hour on harrowing footage from recent fires, setting the table in the first third of the documentary. She then segues into the causes, with many talking heads citing more factors than merely the warming of the planet. Forest management is explained quite well. Nothing is presented as simplistic or black-and-white.
Walker also chooses a few interesting characters to thread through her narrative. One, who takes care of his dying 90-year-old mother, is a no-nonsense guy whose Paradise home was spared and who opens up that home to a bunch of families who were left out in the cold. A couple of other gruff residents acknowledge the dangers of living in the mountains. The victims are presented in ways that are sympathetic but not overly sentimental.
Walker has an ace up her sleeve, as she follows the Paradise town council and fire officials as they put together a comprehensive slate of suggested solutions. This being small-town America, stay for the climactic scene in which the town leaders vote on the proposals. Walker, who also narrates, has a knack for pacing, and unravels this story like a compelling two-part episode of "Law & Order." This is smart polemical filmmaking.
REBUILDING PARADISE (B-minus) - This highly stylized Hollywood disaster porn has the slick residue of Ron Howard's corny production values as he valorizes the victims of the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., of November 2018. No doubt these folks went through a lot, losing their worldly possessions and dealing with the deaths of their neighbors, friends and loved ones; but this celebration of the American spirit offers little insight into the aftermath of the fire that killed 85 people.
The film follows some rather uninspiring characters, including a wise-cracking cop (who comes across as a poor man's Ryan Reynolds); an elderly man in recovery determined to rebuild his house; and a school superintendent trying to herd cats and who eventually loses her husband in a way unrelated to the fire. Nobody in particular stands out. The cop's marriage eventually fails, though that probably had little to do with Mother Nature's devastation. And kudos to the PG&E representative willing to take his lumps in front of an angry crowd of locals aghast at the failings of the utility company.
Howard opens the film with a 10-minute horror montage, featuring some truly frightening footage that you've probably already seen on newscasts or YouTube. That introduction is expertly edited and paced, but it sets the viewer's expectations awfully high, and the cheesy storytelling that follows can't match the initial emotion.
THE BEATLES: GET BACK (B+) - Let's go back, circa 1977. It's a ballroom in the Palmer House in downtown Chicago. The lights dim. A film projector clatters, and the crowd buzzes as images come to life from 1969 -- the Beatles recording tracks for their final album. It's Second Wave Beatlemania, so different klatches of women still scream when their favorite Beatle appears on the screen. Eventually, Paul McCartney is at the piano, looking up toward the camera with heavy-lidded puppy-dog eyes, as the squeals wash across the ballroom: "When I find myself in times of trouble ..."
That was the annual Beatlefest gathering, which, in addition to panel discussions and a massive flea market that featured memorabilia and bootleg albums, showed films all day -- e.g., the ur-music-video for "Strawberry Fields," John Lennon vamping in the studio while recording his "Rock 'n' Roll" oldies album, and, in the days before home video, "Let It Be," Michael Lindsay-Hogg's gloomy 1970 capstone to a no longer fabulous pop era.
Now comes "Get Back," in which Peter Jackson takes those January 1969 "Let It Be" sessions, which had yielded that
run-of-the-mill 80-minute documentary, and blows it up to nearly eight
hours (in three parts) for a vanity streaming site. It as if Jackson -- perhaps fulfilling a long-held fantasy to have released the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy all at once -- tells the king of documentary tedium, Frederick Wiseman, "Hold my beer." It's also a quirky parallel to obsessive producer Phil Spector, who at the time commandeered the session's recordings and smothered them in shmaltz for the album release.
The result is a tedious but fascinating time capsule that endeavors to rewrite the history of the final year of the Fab Four. While the original documentary was a dour affair starring four seemingly miserable musicians getting on each others' nerves, Jackson's mix is more illuminating and provides a wider perspective. First off, there is more frivolity than bickering among the men, whose personal bonds, while frayed, still run deep and even loving. Paul and John often glance at each other, offering a hint of the teenage boys in their gazes, even if their professional competition gets the better of them at times. They all call Ringo Rich or Richie. They reminisce about India the year before (Jackson illustrates this with shots from their home movies). Paul still refers to the others as "lads." Yoko Ono is not the only girlfriend present; Linda Eastman (McCartney), ironically camera-shy, and her 6-year-old daughter hang out a lot; and even Pattie Boyd and Maureen Starkey have cameos.
There is a fascination to engage in here and a joy to share in as you get to observe the workings of the quartet, who were merely in their late 20s but dog tired of this whole Beatles thing. The idea was to Get Back to their roots -- craft (or resurrect) some simple songs that they could play at a quasi-impromptu concert before their first proper live audience since 1966. The band we see consists of bored, tired, grumpy, and creatively challenged men who care about each other but who each have one foot out the door. But they still get plenty of kicks playing as a group -- just listen to the rollicking rooftop version of John and Paul's boyhood composition "One After 909" for Exhibit A.
The biggest nit to pick with Jackson's project is that it is mostly one big cheat, at least in Part 1, which is the weakest of the three. He has more than twice as much audio recordings than he has video footage, and rarely do the two sync up properly. So he often has sound that doesn't match an image. To get around that, Jackson strains with obvious editing techniques to have the speaker off camera or merely run audio over the wrong video but approximate the lip movements, a gimmick that often brings to mind badly dubbed foreign films of the era.
Jackson performed a similar vanity exercise when he restored and colorized World War I footage and dubbed in audio for 2018's "They Shall Not Grow Old." While that documentary had an old-world kitchiness to it, "Get Back" -- considering the mind-boggling length and more modern sensibility of the gorgeously restored footage -- just seems monotonous and indulgent during that first episode. So that's annoying. But then again, you might not mind, because you're in the studio with the Beatles. There's George, petulant at the slights his songs receive and at Paul telling him how to play guitar; Ringo seemingly stoned and amiable; Paul brimming with brilliant song ideas but nagging his mates like a schoolmarm; and arrogant, silly John, often lazily strolling in late, with only a couple of songs to offer besides the oldies he likes to jam to.
And then there's the music. It seems now, a half century later, that songs like "Let It Be" and "Get Back" have always existed, but this documentary reminds us that they and other classics sprouted as germs of ideas from the minds of these guys and then got workshopped over weeks. The former, referred to in utero as "Mother Mary," is Paul's comfort food when he noodles at the piano, perhaps aware that he has a canonical song at his fingertips; the latter results from true Lennon-McCartney collaboration, as Jojo Jackson from Arizona becomes Jojo from Tucson, Arizona, John assuring Paul that they have the geography correct.
The albums "Let It Be" and "Abbey Road" (recorded and released in reverse order) are remembered as Paul taking over the band while the others were mostly checked out. But that's quite an exaggeration. Sure, Lennon didn't show up with many songs, but one of them was "Don't Let Me Down," one of the all-time great rock 'n' roll numbers ever but which was tossed off merely as a single B-side and filler on an odds-and-sods compilation album in early 1970. He's also essential to "I've Got a Feeling," not to mention his lead-guitar contributions.
Like Paul, George Harrison has song ideas coming to him daily. He shows up to the studio with a new late-night inspiration each day -- "I, Me, Mine," "For You Blue," "Old Brown Shoe" -- and we see him tinkering with "Something," his epic for "Abbey Road." Plus he's got "All Things Must Pass" and other eventual solo works in his back pocket. He tells a sympathetic John at one point that he's got enough songs for the next 10 Beatles albums if his allotment of two per disc holds into the foreseeable future. (He'll put out a triple album instead in late 1970, his masterpiece.) Even Ringo bops in one morning with the first few lines of "Octopus' Garden," and it's captivating to watch George take the time to instruct him on how to get past the first verse by climbing octaves and turn it into a successful song.
And then there's the critical contribution of Billy Preston. Episode 1 ends with George quitting the band. Episode 2 starts with the others trying to get him back -- eventually succeeding by agreeing to drop the idea of the live TV show later in January and instead focusing on recording the album (and letting the film footage maybe be a documentary someday). One scene typifies the men at this critical juncture while George was off pouting in his mansion -- sitting in a circle, John tosses out endless clever wordplay (such as brushing aside the harm of masturbation: "You don't go blind but only short-sighted") while Paul rolls his eyes and Ringo dozes in his chair. When George does return, keyboardist Preston -- who knew the boys from Hamburg when he toured with Little Richard -- randomly stops by one day. When he sits down at an electric piano and starts fiddling around with notes, he truly becomes the fifth Beatle, the solution to the problem of how a band that is accustomed to repeated overdubs records a live-to-track album. Imagine "Get Back" and "Don't Let Me Down" without Preston's indelible solos. (The single is credited to The Beatles With Billy Preston," a unique honor.)
It is at this point that the documentary finally takes off. The lads are in their element, studio rats jamming and harmonizing and bouncing ideas off each other. They've got their groove back. We hear snippets of songs that will eventually be classics. Engineer Glyn Johns -- sometimes rocking a shaggy white goat-skin coat -- persists in keeping the band on task, desperate to capture at least a few final takes of songs instead of "flogging them to death." He puts the mics and amps in the right place and runs tape; George Martin flits around soothing egos ("I'll fix it, lads"); and Mal Evans makes sure tea is served on time. (Or something stronger -- a drunken, late-night version of "Let It Be" closes out Episode 2.)
What eventually congeals in Episode 3 -- as the original director and some of his nutty ideas (flying with fans to Libya for a show at a ruined coliseum) fade into the background -- is the combination of goofing around and songsmithing that we now know will result in a batch of songs ensconced in the pantheon. As George struggles with the lyrics to "Something," John schools him in word association -- "Just sing 'Attracts me like a cauliflower,' until something comes to you." George, spitballing with "Old Brown Shoe," asks Preston, "What this chord, Billy?" John and Paul, bored with rehearsing "Two of Us," take to goofing off with the vocals during these run-throughs -- performing them in German accents, through gritted teeth like ventriloquists, and a la Dylan. By Episode 3, I fast-forwarded through a couple of the umpteenth versions of "Get Back" and others, not wanting them ruined before the capstone live performance.
Paul -- with full beard, as if to distinguish him as the adult who has taken over for manager Brian Epstein -- longs for there to be something more than just another album release. (Meantime, the others, behind his back, plot their move to Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein, a notable asshole. As Ringo puts it, "a con man who's on our side for a change.") Eventually the leading prospect for their first live concert in two-and-a-half years is the fabled session on the roof of the Apple Corps headquarters. Finally, the four men sit down and announce that they, and no one else, will make this decision. George is the only one who doesn't want to go up on the roof (he refers to it as "the chimney"), but he is out-voted. At long last, Lindsay-Hogg will have his movie ending.
Many of us might be numb to the spectacle of the Beatles disrupting lunchtime on Savile Row to debut a few new numbers. We take the event for granted, like we do with paintings of the old masters. But -- maybe it's partly the emotional exhale of surviving the first seven hours -- it's a fresh thrill to see the Beatles ascend to the roof, strap on their instruments and let loose -- finally -- with these songs. There they are in red slicker, business casual, brown fur coat, and lime pants, tossed back into Hamburg improv mode.
My girlfriend happened to wander in the room as the rooftop session started, and she had never seen it before. She was thrilled. How cool is this! Jackson splits the screen, "Woodstock"-like, to give proper perspective to the scene below -- the audience unaware that they were a part of history, the two baby-faced bobbies harrumphing about the noise and lack of protocol. (Props to Debbie at Apple's front desk for deftly stalling and feigning helplessness.) When the cops finally emerge on the rooftop, Paul looks back, smiles mischievously, and lets out a big whoop. He is back in his element. He and John exhibit the joy of school boys as they romp through their school days hit "One After 909."
It's amazing that any fresh entertainment could be wrung from this 53-year-old lark. Jackson pulls off a true feat of reinvention. He recaptures the urgency of seeing it for the first time. It's a great ending.
Still burning off adrenaline, the boys, with galpals in tow, crowd into the playback room of the studio to review the raw live recording. Like us, they are visibly impressed. They grin and chatter. Jackson dives in for a close-up as we see Ringo's hand reach out to clasp the hands of Paul and Linda. There is true warmth and intimacy in this cramped space. Love is all you need.
BONUS TRACKS
Energized by news reports of a wave of anti-immigration in Britain at the time, the band considered making more of a political statement with the lyrics of "Get Back" and then jammed out a song called "Commonwealth" (with a good example of John's ability to crack up Paul):
McCartney has a blast with a vaudevillian knockoff, "Greasepaint on Your Face":
It is canon that we take our time compiling each year's Best-of list, as titles trickle in from their exclusive December openings in the big cities. Here, to keep you in suspense, are the 2021 releases that are in the running so far for best film, having earned a B+ or better this year:
C'MON C'MON (D+) - C'mon, indeed. Or more like, come onnnn.
Memo to filmmakers (and reporters and novelists and other storytellers): Children, with rare exceptions, are not interesting. Mike Mills thought otherwise. He was woefully mistaken.
There is precious and then there is the failed experiment in preciousness that is "C'mon C'mon," the story of an obnoxious 9-year-old boy and a logistical quirk that gets treated like the most traumatic experience ever for him, his mother and his uncle. The histrionics here involve the following "crisis." Viv (Gaby Hoffmann) has to leave LA to go baby-sit her estranged or ex-husband who is having a bipolar episode in Oakland, and so she agrees to let her brother Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) baby-sit little precocious mop-haired Jesse (Woody Norman). Luckily these middle-class mopes have the resources to do all this; Johnny takes Jesse on the road to assist with his NPR-like team that goes around interviewing children, beseeching them to enlighten us with their wisdom. One example, asked of kids born after Katrina even happened, is something along the lines of "What causes flooding inside of you?" (Most kids (I hope) would contort their face and respond, "What the fuck are you talking about?") This is a fictitious world in wish no child is ever bad and adults care deeply about their psyches and moods.
Everything here is a misstep. There is barely a story to speak of: Kid hangs out with uncle for a while, they bicker and do kissy-face stuff, and phone his mom a lot to make sure everyone is, you know, okay. There is barely a script. Much of the dialogue seems workshopped or ad-libbed by the three principal actors and often consists to cloying play-acting along the lines of "You are."/"No you are."/"No you are!" Some actual interesting screenwriting comes courtesy of long excerpts from writings that Mills cribs from the likes of photographer Kirsten Johnson and the book "The Wizard of Oz." And then there are the interviews with the kids. It's not clear if these are real kids giving real answers or if they are just awkward untrained actors reading lines; regardless, Phoenix is no Art Linkletter. It's not even a Bill Cosby Jell-O commercial.
Mills shoots in black and white; he probably would have used sepia tones if the studio would have allowed it. He lucks upon the pairing of Hoffmann and Phoenix and then has them talk on the phone or text for almost the whole movie. We get not one but two scenes of Johnny losing track of Jesse in New York City for less than a minute, followed by the requisite "You scared me; don't do that" which leads to another round of a variation on "You are."/"No, you are."/"No, you are!" Ad nauseam.
Jesse behaves like a spoiled brat, but we're supposed to think he is some misunderstood wunderkind with such deep feelings that we couldn't possibly understand the pure hell of a child who wears cutesy pajamas, uses a toothbrush that plays music, and likes to pretend that he's an orphan. (Because, you know, mommy and daddy have Major Issues and split up.) The one time Johnny does raise his voice to the golden boy Johnny is so torn up he has to confess his cardinal sin to Viv. Lots of processing of feelings all around this one.
None of this is as clever as Mills thought it up in his head (or remembers it from his amber-encrusted childhood, if that's the case). Mills had a great run with films like "Thumbsucker," "Beginners" and "20th Century Women" (a truly insightful paean to motherhood). I'd hate to think that his spouse, Miranda July ("Kajillionaire"), has dragged him into the twee zone. "C'mon C'mon" is supposed to be some ode to motherhood and childhood. Save it for your family gatherings.
BONUS TRACK
A bad movie deserves a mockable needle-drop on our title track:
The soundtrack is all over the place. It has arty mood music from Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National and then punky retro tracks like "The Ostrich" by Lou Reeds early band the Primitives:
And we get a fish-out-of-water random sampling of "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" by Irma Thomas:
The latest from Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights," "Magnolia," "Punch-Drunk Love" and not much since), our annual Christmas Day Mainstream movie choice, "Licorice Pizza."
We'll take a chance on Maggie Gyllenhaal's writing/directing debut, in part because of the presence of Jesse Buckley ("Wild Rose"), "The Lost Daughter."
A documentary about Zimbabwe's 2018 presidential race, its first democratic election in decades, "President."
Joel Coen directs Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in "The Tragedy of Macbeth."
An avant-garde contemplation of the end of mankind, "Last and First Men."
Apichatpong Weerasethakul ("Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives") recruits Tilda Swinton (who also narrates "Last and First Men") for another meandering musing on the fragility of humanity, "Memoria."
A CHOICE OF WEAPONS: INSPIRED BY GORDON PARKS (B) - This earnest examination of the career of pioneering photograph and filmmaker Gordon Parks is a victim of its structure. The "Inspired" part refers to the modern visual artists and documentarians who were influenced by the man who became Life magazine's first black photographer and who directed "Shaft," kicking off the '70s blaxploitation movement. Too often, though, this documentary is fawning and over-reverential.
The talking heads here are often solid but over-exposed. Go-to commentators like Spike Lee (rhymes with "hyperbole"), Ava Duvernay, Jelani Cobb -- we see them frequently, and their insights here are intermittent. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sitting in a tiny chair, knees scrunched, is distracting.
What's better are the stories of working photographers who truly have been inspired by Parks, who got his start in the 1940s with the Farm Security Administration, following in the immediate footsteps of legends Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, who famously chronicled rural America during the Depression. Latoya Ruby Frazier, especially, embodies the Parks method of devoting great swaths of time with subjects, absorbing their stories behind the resulting images. The modern photographers' own stories can be captivating, as are the lingering shots of Parks' indelible photographs from the postwar era.
LISTENING TO KENNY G (B) - A problem with a documentary about smooth-jazz saxophonist Kenny G -- even one purporting to explore both sides of the fan ledger -- is that you have to listen to the music of Kenny G. And if you think his songs are tough to listen to, you should hear him race through scales. Ack!
The talented Penny Lane ("Hail Satan?", "Nuts!") walks a fine line here between indulging Mr. Gorelick and siccing a bunch of high-brow music critics on him (one calls the innocuous genre a "weapon of consent"), and she plummets into the less-interesting gulf in between. Kenny G is highly aware of the image-polishing opportunity before him, and at times it is refreshing to hear him essentially cop to the fact that he has no higher purpose other than writing catchy licks and practicing faithfully every day (and playing golf). But his claim that he, a white man, has never before thought about the racial implications of his career rings hollow when Lane cuts to a clip of him performing in a stadium along with a video of Louis Armstrong. Purists might perish at the sight. He also resurrects Stan Getz to pour syrup on that fellow saxophonist's syrupy bossa novas (while electronically modernizing Getz's recordings).
Despite the limitations of the subject matter -- and the disconnect between Lane's celebration and subversion of Kenny G -- the man himself can garner grudging admiration for his work ethic and his knack for writing hooks that sell millions of records. (His songs also provide the soundtrack for malls and doctors' offices, and his song "Going Home" has become an end-of-the-day anthem throughout China.) He seems like a good guy, even if he comes off as almost as annoying as his mind-numbing music. (Richard Brody of the New Yorker does a really good deep dive into this film here.)
MR. SATURDAY NIGHT (B-minus) - HBO's documentary series brings us this oddly detached look at Robert Stigwood, the Australian/British producer who made the Bee Gees splash big-time in the 1970s disco era. Stigwood himself isn't always the focus of this slapped-together production that spends an inordinate amount of time on the disco phenomenon.
None of the talking heads appear on camera, which probably was a cheap way to observe COVID protocols rather than some sort of editorial decision. Thus, we get a lot of static file photos of the '60s and '70s players, relying on Photoshop animation tricks and lending an air of detachment to the proceedings. There's not much more to the story than Stigwood's abiding faith in the hit-making potential of the Bee Gees around 1975, after a few years in the wilderness for the trio before Stigwood hooked them up with Arif Mardin and jump-started their career. Much of this was covered last year in HBO's much better documentary about the Bee Gees.
One interesting segment examines Stigwood's link to John Travolta, who was seen at the time as a passing TV fad of a teen idol. But Stigwood chose Travolta as the vehicle for "Saturday Night Fever," and was wise enough to sign Travolta to a three-picture deal. ("Grease," another movie/soundtrack megahit, followed.) It was also fascinating to learn that the New York magazine article that the "Saturday Night Fever" screenplay was based on featured fictitious characters. These tidbits are enough to hold your attention for 90 minutes, but this movie certainly doesn't do justice to Stigwood, who ended up incredibly rich and knee-deep in yachts the rest of his life.
BELUSHI (C+) - It's hard to imagine anyone under 50 either caring enough to explore the career of original "Saturday Night" cast member John Belushi and then taking the time to sit for this unenlightening biography. I can save those 50 and over some time too: Belushi was a funny, talented guy with a big drug problem (one that matched his ego and insecurities) who succumbed to a classic '70s OD in the early '80s after failing to put together a decent film career.
For some reason, the collection of "SNL" clips are too chopped up to cohere and give a true sense of why Belushi was such a revered comedian in his day. Even his National Lampoon stint in the early '70s comes off here as little more than frequent weird impressions of R&B singer Joe Cocker. Belushi had a magnetic personality and boundless energy, but this documentary struggles to convey those talents.
Director R.J. Cutler does do an admirable job of capturing the phenomenon that was the Blues Brothers, acknowledging Belushi's bona fides and reveling in the exciting band of ringers that backed Jake and Elwood Blues. Otherwise, Cutler may just be a victim of the passage of time (nearly four decades) and the limitations of trying to bring a funny but flawed comedian back to life.
NINE DAYS (A) - This glum but utterly enlightened story follows sullen Will , a onetime earthbound human who now, in his afterlife, vets purgatorial souls hoping to get chosen to life a full human existence and then follows their lives on old-fashioned TV screens and videotapes. When one of the people he once chose and has been monitoring commits suicide, Will, over nine days, interviews about a half dozen souls competing to take the new spot opened up by Amanda.
Will (Winston Duke) has a special connection to Amanda, because, as a child, she name-checked him as her imaginary friend. Will also had a troubled time on Earth, so he can commiserate. He is unshakeable in his task at hand -- picking one lucky candidate for life's sweepstakes and telling the others that their time has ended. Like with a game show, though, the losers get a parting gift -- after spending a few days watching the 24 or so lives unfold on Will's TV screens, they can pick one life-event that he'll re-create for them, so they can get just a sip of what they'll miss out on. The wishes are as simple as walking on a beach or riding a bike.
It sounds like a complicated set-up, but part of the brilliance here -- borrowed from other thought experiments, such as Shane Carruth's "Primer" and "Upstream Color" -- is the commitment to an idea and following it through to a logical conclusion. Newcomer Edson Oda (writer and director) creates a cramped world set mostly in Will's apartment. His characters are fully formed, including Will's sidekick (neither boss nor assistant) Kyo (Benedict Wong) and last-minute entrant Emma (Zazie Beetz, sporting what can only be called an afro'd Ed Grimley hairstyle), who establishes a strong connection to Will and is the only one who gets to observe the inner workings of his operation. Tony Hale (TV's "Veep" and "Arrested Development") plays a sort of sad clown whose bid seems hopeless.
The brilliance here lies in Oda's incredible command of the story and his attention to detail (Will's operation, all old-school analog, involves a lot of paper forms and filing cabinets along with the videotapes). The dialogue is succinct and crisp. Will's back story unfolds meticulously over the tight two-hour run time. His final scene with Emma is one for the ages, a cap to a powerful, restrained performance by Duke ("Us," "Black Panther"), who carries this movie on his broad but sagging shoulders. It would be difficult to not be moved by this special team effort.
FULLY REALIZED HUMANS (B) - More of an acting exercise than a movie, this endearing relationship romp borrows the best and the worst of Joe Swanberg in his Mumblecore heyday. Jess Weixler (TV's "The Good Wife") and Joshua Leonard ("Humpday") play Jackie and Elliot, a couple who are a month away from the birth of their first child and realizing that time is short to suddenly become well-rounded people worthy of the title "parent." They seek to correct the mistakes of her dad (a prescription-drug addict) and his parents (abusive dad, co-dependent mom) by stretching their perceptions of themselves.
This plays out in unexpected ways. First, Jackie cows Elliot into accepting the idea that they both would benefit from her strapping one on and pegging her husband. Things unravel from there, as Elliot delves into his old emotional scars emanating from his father's homophobic belligerence.
Your appreciation of this mostly ad-libbed adventure -- at turns funny and touching -- will depend on your patience for post-Mumblecore sloppiness and indulgence. Juilliard-trained Weixler -- who genuinely looks eight months pregnant (she did have a daughter in 2019) -- is an endearing performer, and she and Leonard click as a couple, each generous with the other as improv performers (with key support from a couple of cameos by Janicza Bravo of "Zola" and Erica Chidi Cohen). But this one feels like a bit of a throwaway until the final reel, when Jackie and Elliot confront their three parents, and then the film sizzles with sharp dialogue. Credit to the the three older actors -- Beth Grant, Tom Bower and Michael Chieffo -- for grabbing this thing by the collar, with some sharp lessons for our entitled millennials, and rescuing the film in the end.
NORTH BY CURRENT (B+) - Yet another moody tone-poem of a documentary, here we follow Angelo Madsen Minax as he chronicles a few years with his Mormon family in the wake of the tragic death of his sister's daughter, which may or may not have been the result of household abuse. It is a way for Minax, born as a girl named Angela, to reconcile his own identity as a son, sibling and storyteller.
Minax creates an experimental visual and sound collage that sweeps you up in the swirl of family history in rural, often snowy Michigan. Critically, this personal essay never forgets to draw the viewer into a compelling narrative. He uses a disembodied child's voice (his own?) as a sort of conscience or spirit-animal guide while flashing through images as if his brain were firing across synapses. This is a style that calls to mind such sociological and historical experiments as "Truth or Consequences," "Malni," "Dawson City: Frozen Time" and "Stories We Tell."
Minax's grieving sister responds to the death of her daughter by having a new child every year for three years running. Meantime, she is in denial about her drug addiction and what's really going on with her partner, who was a suspect in the 2013 death of the child. Circling around this are Minax's fundamentalist parents, still struggling with his gender identity. As the filmmaker searches for truths and acceptance, it's hard not to be moved by this PBS "POV" offering.
BONUS TRACKS
"Nine Days" has a lovely soundtrack, centered on the recurring violin piece that Amanda plays at a concert, a heart-breaking collection of melodies by Antonio Pinto. Here is a sample:
"North by Current" is boosted by music from Julien Baker, including "Sprained Ankle":
The "North by Current" soundtrack also features the Waterboys' anthemic "This is the Sea":
... and Michael Beauchamp's jangly romp "Gamble-Drink All My Money":
KING RICHARD (B+) - This one comes as a pleasant surprise, along the lines of 2017's "Battle of the Sexes," buoyed by fine performances to tell the story of Richard Williams, the father of tennis phenoms Venus and Serena, as they burst on the scene in the 1990s. Special credit goes to rookie screenwriter Zach Baylin for penning a smart, nuanced script that pays attention to small details and subtle interpersonal interactions to ground this is in reality.
Do know that it can be a challenge to get through the first 20 minutes. You have to accept Will Smith with a New Orleans accent and a few short-hand, caricatured depictions of Compton contrasted with the world of white privilege. But once it gets its bearings, "King Richard" wins you over by sheer determination. The girls who portray the sisters -- Saniyya Sidney as Venus and Demi Singleton as Serena -- are impeccable in their characterizations, and it truly looks like they know how to play tennis. Apparently they took intensive lessons, and it appears that there is limited use of doubles or CGI tricks to make the tennis action completely believable. That makes a difference.
With a feel-good attitude akin to 1989's inner-city underdog parable "Lean on Me," this origin story of the Williams sisters slowly gains momentum under the sure hand of director Reinaldo Marcus Green ("Monsters and Men"). Smith's Richard Williams is pushy and positive minded -- he mapped out tennis stardom for his daughters before they were born -- and the film shows him, if not warts and all, at least blemishes and all.
After an early stumble of caricaturing all the white parents on the juniors circuit as immoral child abusers and their kids as petulant cheaters, the movie introduces the girls' first tennis coach, Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn), as an even-handed task master. Williams eventually steers the girls -- along with their mother, Oracene (Aunjanue Ellis) and three sisters from Oracene's previous marriage -- to the prestigious tennis camp in Florida run by Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal), who also is portrayed with nuance -- a man with the girls needs foremost in mind while also looking out for his end of the business deal.
You know this will end well (with Venus making her pro-circuit debut on the brink of breaking the bank), but the fun is watching Richard Williams, a task master himself when it came to pushing all of his girls to not only survive the ghetto but thrive as their best selves, work his folksy hustle and engage in backseat coaching, day in and day out. Nothing will knock him off his mission. The only person who can match him is Oracene, especially in a pivotal scene in which she calls him on some of his excesses and reminds him that she, too, has sacrificed for these future superstars. This is an old-fashioned feel-good movie that avoids any Hallmark cliches. An ace all-around.
DUNE (C) - I'll never be a fan of sci-fi or fantasy, so don't go by me here. Hardcore adherents of Frank Herbert's classic '60s novel will appreciate the dedicated fan service, and casual viewers will likely fall for the sappy soap-opera style enhanced by Timothee Chalamet's long eyelashes and by cool helicopters that mimic dragonflies.
Otherwise, director Dennis Villeneuve, who has gone from indie noodling ("Incendies") to big-screen bloat ("Arrival," "Blade Runner 2049"), shows a sufficient command of the screen and the screenplay as he navigates a complicated story. He leans on muted colors as well as muted dialogue -- there was so much whispering that, watching at home, I turned on the subtitles, which also helped keep track of all the made-up words in this make-believe world. The most laryngitic of the lot is Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica. She is the consort of Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and mother of young heir Paul Atreides (Chalamet), who takes over for his father and the mission to the inhospitable sandy planet Arrakis, which harbors the valuable mineral known as spice. Leto and Paul are being set up by the evil house of Harkennen, led by Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgard).
The story that unfolds (over two and a half plodding hours) is yet another variation on a theme that has played out countless times onscreen. Herbert may gotten in early with his novel, but George Lucas got to Hollywood first, and little of this latest film expands on a tired genre. There is never a doubt that Paul will overcome whatever obstacles befall his hero's journey. Early in the film he is trained by Leto's venerable henchmen, including Gurney Halleck (the naming of people and things is randomly silly throughout), played by an off-tune Josh Brolin, and the bear of a man Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), the subject of Paul's boy-crush. Paul has visions of the future -- rather bland ones -- which invariably come around to the rapturous sight of an Arrakis Fremen warrior played by the lithe model Zendaya, who is mostly around as an attractive representation of good vs. evil and to tease part two, coming in 2023.
This might play better in Imax, but Villeneuve's visuals are often dim and unimaginative. A lot of sand blows around but the characters/actors are often immune to the annoyances usually faced by your average beachgoer; it's all just a neat CGI trick. And 8,000 years into the future, fashions haven't evolved much beyond those in "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century." Chalamet lacks the gravitas to carry a movie like this on his slim shoulders. And the supporting cast is scattershot. What we end up with is just another table-setter for a sci-fi/fantasy series of big-budget exercises in big-screen bloat.
