An Offer I Long Refused

 We could spend a semester exploring two of the all-time great films "The Godfather" and "The Godfather: Part II" (we give a slight edge to the sequel) on the 50th anniversary of its release. (It debuted in New York on March 14, 1972 and went wide a week later.) But plenty has been written and will be written yet about the classic saga. Instead, let's finally relent and give the much-derided third installment its long-awaited due. Enough time has passed now that there's little danger of tarnishing the originals.

THE GODFATHER: PART III (1990) (C) - Cue the mandolins. Bleat out the lament. This long-delayed (not necessarily -awaited) sequel to the twin towers of '70s cinema is a major face-plant for Francis Ford Coppola and his star, a weary Al Pacino as a physically weakened (if ungodly rich) Michael Corleone. 

Let's be clear: None of this is Sofia Coppola's fault. She actually is quite OK, subbing for the actresses who dropped out of the role of Mary, Michael's daughter. She endured great grief as the director's daughter thrust into a pivotal role, but a decade later Scarlett Johannson would borrow that awkward affect and become a star (in part due to Sofia Coppola's switch to directing, including great movies like "Lost in Translation"). No, the problem is with a script that is both convoluted and simplistic, and with the downgrading of the cast to the B-list.

Throughout its nearly three-hour run, "G3" plays like a run-of-the-mill soap opera. It has the cheap feel of a knock-off sequel abandoned by those who made the original a hit. It's like "Smokey and the Bandit Part 3," without Burt Reynolds and Sally Field (or the original creator) but focusing mainly on the sheriff. 

Here, the main characters who are brought back are Pacino's Michael, his ex-wife Kay (Diane Keaton) and his sister Connie (Talia Shire), who for some reason lives with him in a mansion now that he is back in New York after concluding the mob family's run in Las Vegas, finally -- finally -- pursuing his vow to go legit. It is 1979, and Michael now wants to go into business with the Pope. (The storyline tracks with a Vatican bank scandal of that era.) But the plot here is rather convoluted. Needless to say, the Corleone family has hundreds of millions of dollars to throw around and/or launder.

The first 20 minutes or so involve an elaborate party thrown by the Catholic Church in Michael's honor, recognizing him for his charitable work. This is supposed to mirror the original film and its extended opening scene surrounding Connie's big Italian wedding (and its contrast with business being conducted behind closed doors); but here, things are morose and awkward, and it's an unflattering comparison to the 1972 original. But we are introduced to Vincent Mancini, an illegitimate son of Michael's brother, Sonny, who, it is obvious from the start, will be Michael's heir to the Corleone throne.

Andy Garcia plays Vincent, and he comes off like a high school thespian doing an Al Pacino imitation. His big rival is Joey Zasa, a preening kingpin played by Joe Mantegna, coming out of David Mamet's left field to throw off the cadence of Coppola's operatic display of drama. Vincent has a fling with a journalist played by Bridget Fonda, who sticks out like bowl of potato salad and whose pointless character disappears without explanation before the halfway mark of this 162-minute marathon. (But first she must get naked and terrorized to advance the plot.) Vincent also toys with the emotions of his cousin, Mary, who falls head over heels for him.

Not to get overly nostalgic about the original cast (which was deep and uniquely talented), but this whole production plays out like a dish of cold baked ziti. Pacino, mesmerizing in the first two films, had already crossed the rubicon with cartoonish roles in "Scarface" and "Dick Tracy," and he was on the eve of all-out cheese with all that "Scent of a Woman" hoo-ha. He had turned into an actor who either yelled or whispered, and here he mostly whispers. He does ham it up in a Shakespearean manner at times, especially when, forever haunted by his decision to order the death of brother Fredo, he suffers some sort of diabetic stroke, during which he blurts out hysterical confessions. Huh?

Keaton and Shire get thankless roles, which was par for the course throughout the macho Corleone saga, and Shire just doesn't have the chops to play the tough ol' matriarch. Watching Garcia made me wonder whether he ever was better than merely average. Robert Duvall refused to come back as consigliere Tom Hagen, so we end up with George Hamilton. No, really. John Savage is wasted as Hagen's son, who is now a priest, installed by the Corleones as their in at the Vatican. Eli Wallach sleepwalks through his role as a fading don.

Coppola tops off this ridiculousness with an over-the-top hit scene straight out of the Michael Bay playbook. It involves a helicopter attack. No, really. (There also is an attempted assassination by cannoli. Mm-hmm.) A climactic scene at the opera in Venice is drained of tension and is another pale imitation -- of the christening scene in the original. 

A perfect example of the watered-down nature of the film comes when Coppola feels compelled to duplicate the scene in the original in which Sonny speaks out of turn at a meeting with a rival, prompting Vito to chastise him: "Never tell anyone outside the family what you are thinking again." Here it's Michael, after having shared his thoughts with an outsider, chastising Vincent, "Never let anyone know what you are thinking." It just makes no sense without the nuance. And neither does the idea or execution of "The Godfather: Part III."

Noir Chronicles: Fly by Night

 

THE NAKED KISS (1964) (B) - Samuel Fuller ("Pickup on South Street," "The Big Red One") nearly careers off the rails with this neo-noir about a prostitute trying to go straight in Small Town, USA. TV veteran Constance Towers is riveting in the lead role of Kelly, whom we first meet in the crazed opening scene beating up the pimp who stole from her and shaved her head.

 

When she lands in "Leave It to Beaver" pleasantville, she meets a detective who samples her wares but then sends her across the river to a whorehouse. (His description when he first sees her walking off a bus: "That's enough to make a bulldog bust his chain.") Kelly declines the opportunity to work with nasty madame Candy, though, and instead returns to the town to work in a hospital for handicapped children. Fuller then busts out in several directions, teasing us about when and how Kelly's past will come back to bite her. (It will involve a rich dreamboat who eventually reveals a dark secret.)

Fuller's script, straight out of the gate, wants to repeatedly poke us in the nose. Journeyman Anthony Eisley struggles to imbue his hard-ass detective with the necessary grit, and the tough-guy lines he spouts tend to land with a clunk. Veteran Virginia Grey has a lot more vinegar on the tongue as Candy. Sore about getting knocked around by Kelly, Candy has zero sympathy for the call girl trying to go straight, uttering the memorable line "Nobody shoves dirty money in my mouth!"

This is "Peyton Place" on steroids, and it's hard to take your eyes off of Towers, even when she is enduring recurring psychedelic serenades from her sad-eyed wards (the creepy dirge "The Little Boy and the Old Man"). Towers sells this without fear.

THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948) (B-minus) - This is the debut from Nicholas Ray ("Rebel Without a Cause") and it's a grim, sluggish tale of an outlaw on the run. Uninspiring Farley Granger is the handsome escaped con who teams up with a sidekick's plain-jane daughter (Cathy O'Donnell) to try to keep one step ahead of the good guys while dodging the former gang trying to lure him back for another score.

The older veterans -- including Howard Da Silva and Jay C. Flippen -- envy young Bowie, who has managed to save his proceeds from a bank job and seeks an off-ramp to the simple straight life. The story can get convoluted, and Granger has neither the bad-boy allure of a Robert Mitchum nor much za-za with O'Donnell, who is allowed to grow a little more glamorous with each scene, evolving from farm girl to would-be ingenue.

Ian Wolfe injects some much-needed black humor as a minister who not only will marry a couple for $20 but also knows a guy who can help folks lam it to Mexico. ("Rings for sale or rent.") Byron Foulger (who boasted 489 acting credits on IMDb) provides a little screwball comedy as an overeager landlord. And don't miss Will Lee -- Mr. Hooper from "Sesame Street" -- as the jeweler.

That's Entertainment

 

LIVE AT MISTER KELLY'S (B+) - Back to Chicago and back in time for this fond remembrance of the famed Rush Street nightclub that hosted some of the biggest singers and comedians of the postwar era. (This is also a long-overdue return to the Santa Fe Film Festival for us, the only one we caught this year; time was, we would catch 4 or 5 titles per day during the festival's heyday in the Aughts.)

Journeyman Ted Bogosian works with David Marienthal, the son of one of the brothers who ran Mister Kelly's and sister club London House, to conduct a deep dive into the archives of not just the two venues but also the history of comedy and jazz in Chicago between 1953 and 1975. Experts in music, comedy and photography (our friend Richard Cahan) add critical context to the era and convey what made the clubs special in the Second City. 

The film is packed with talking heads -- from the famous to the not-so-famous -- who look back fondly on their days performing at Mister Kelly's. Barbra Streisand (by audio only) talks about her getting her big break there in 1963. We also see Lainie Kazan (who was performing the night one of the two notorious fires broke out), Bob Newhart, Herbie Hancock, Robert Klein, Ramsey Lewis, the comedy team of Tim Reid and Tom Dreeson, Shecky Greene (still alive!), local folkster Bonnie Koloc, and interviews with a trio of entertainers no longer with us: Dick Gregory, Fred Willard and Mort Sahl. Grumpy David Mamet even shows up, for some reason.

 

Bogosian and his crew really do their homework on this one, and they pay fine tribute to Oscar and George Marienthal, who worked hard to bring top talent to the clubs, which served as the host to a good share of live albums, by the likes of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Flip Wilson, Woody Allen and Freddie Prinze. It can be a kick to watch such a parade of stars in the clips do their shtick and then reminisce about a special place. Points off, though, for hiring the ubiquitous Bill Kurtis to narrate. His over-the-top diction is a distraction, though he does disappear for a good chunk of the middle of the film. 

This gets the job done in less than an hour and a half and should lift the spirits of anyone with even a vague memory of the '60s. Note: The venue eventually would be converted to another city institution, Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse.

JUST DON'T THINK I'LL SCREAM (2019) (B) - Almost too overwhelming to truly comprehend in one sitting, this documentary is a visual diary created by French filmmaker and musician Frank Beauvais as he chronicles a challenging year in his life. Reeling from the death of his father and the terrorist attack at a Paris club in late 2015, Beauvais seeks exile in the small-town strangeness of the Alsace-Lorraine region, an apt no-man's-land on the German border, as he proudly dons the cloak of the outsider.

The filmmaker, who also just ended a relationship, is suffering from writer's block, and he engages in a sort of post-terror lockdown that presages the COVID crisis.  "My Stockholm syndrome," he calls it, "like bailing out a boat." He is also weighed down by his massive tranche of stuff -- books, CDs and DVDs -- which he liquidates via the internet. 

To further pass the time and keep from going off the deep end psychologically, he engages in a massive binge of four to five movies a day, every day. He refers to it as "film bulimia." Beauvais takes those movies -- which fall broadly across genres and eras -- and chops them up, using specific scenes to illustrate his running narration about the psychic trauma he is trying to work through.

And therein lies one of the main problems with the movie. The images change and flash every few seconds, with no let-up, as Beauvais drones on in French, requiring subtitles, which are hard to keep up with while you are racing along with the pictures. The filmmaker probably would consider this heresy, but it would have helped a lot to have had the voice-over dubbed in English, which would have saved viewers the stress of trying to keep up.

Despite this challenge, Beauvais' observations and working-man's philosophy can be fascinating to watch and experience. His use of images is clever, utilizing deep cuts from a lot of films you've likely never heard of. In some ways, this shares a kinship with John Wilson's gonzo semi-autobiographical HBO show that wanders New York City and seeks answers to some big questions about existence. It's a neat experiment, but it can be quite a stress test, too.

BONUS TRACKS

Our title track:

And from the end credits of "Just Don't Think I'll Scream," Bonnie Prince Billy with "I See a Darkness":

And Sarah Vaughan, live at Mister Kelly's in 1957 with "How High the Moon":

Significant Others

 Two films involving animals and one with regular old humans:

PIG (B) - The latest Nicolas Cage freakout is a touching but often ludicrous tale of a societal dropout on a mission to find his stolen pig. So at least the title is truth in advertising.

Debut writer-director Michael Sarnoski (co-writing with Vanessa Block) has a way of upending expectations -- but only sometimes for the better. Viewers who saw the trailer might be expecting a knockoff of a Liam Neeson revenge flick, but they will either be disappointed or pleasantly surprised. Instead this is more of a plodding odyssey. 

The new voice can be a bit refreshing, but this grimy drama alternates between being painfully predictable (Cage's lines, especially) and wildly inscrutable. A scene straight out of "Fight Club" is wholly unnecessary to the plot, and it comes at the 20-minute mark, providing an off-ramp to viewers who, just, you know, can't even. 

Cage is engaging as Rob, a mountain man in rural Oregon who uses his faithful pig to help dig up truffles that he sells each Thursday to a bro-buyer for a high-end restaurant. But ne'er-do-wells grab the pig and clang Rob in the skull with a cast-iron frying pan. Between that and the inexplicable fisticuffs, Rob will proceed through his old stomping grounds of Portland with a bloodied face, assisted by the bro-buyer, Amir (Alex Wolff). 

The only other cast member to stand out is Adam Arkin, who almost literally sinks his teeth into the role of Amir's more successful and cutthroat father, who might have some key information about the whereabouts of this pig, which is prized by Rob not so much for his hunting skills but his companionship -- because, of course, Rob (this being movieland) is still mourning after the death of his true love, an event that apparently sent him from great acclaim into this Unabomber tailspin.

Sarnoski definitely has an eye and ear for storytelling. This mix of cliche and misdirection is worth sticking around for, even if you might hate yourself a little afterward.

DOG (B-minus) - Speaking of cliches, movies don't get more '60s Disney than a soul-tugging road movie featuring two wounded veterans -- one human (in the sculpted form of Channing Tatum as an Army Ranger) and the other animal (three pups sharing the role of a K-9 hero).

If you watch this and can't predict every plot turn and the story's path right up to its ending, then congratulations on experiencing your first movie. Don't worry, they're not all like this; at least not in the 21st century. Tatum does his moody aw-shucks routine as the ruggedly named Jackson Briggs, who teams up with a dead cohort's canine partner, Lulu, who might as well have been named MacGuffin.

Briggs wants back in action despite his traumatic brain injury, so he makes a deal with his captain:  Briggs will drive the dog to the buddy's funeral, and the captain will make a phone call clearing Briggs for active duty. Fire up the rundown SUV and point it south toward Nogales.

The screenwriters -- Reid Carolin (from "Magic Mike," who also co-directs with Tatum) and newcomer Brett Rodriguez -- have been to script-writing school, and they know that the hero's journey must involve obstacles. First, Lulu is ferocious, and is a destructive travel companion. Second, Briggs needs to make some pit stops, mainly to exorcise his demons. For example, this being a damaged war vet, there needs to be an estranged wife and daughter who happen to live along the way. He also bonds with another vet, Noah (when did Ethan Suplee get so swole?), who adopted Lulu's brother and can offer brotherly guidance to Briggs.

Despite this being quite sappy (and obsequious to the military and its macho fraternity), it does have its moments, and Tatum and the dog can be charming and entertaining together. (And cameos by Jane Adams and Bill Burr (as a disgruntled vet whose now a grunt of a cop) hit the spot.) It really is a lot like a '60s Disney movie. I was surprised to see so many kids in the audience at the screening. Yes, it's a movie about a dog, but it can get dark as hell at times.

UNCLE FRANK (B-minus) - Alan Ball, a long ways from "American Beauty" and TV's "Six Feet Under," dials up this TV movie-of-the-week nostalgia exercise about a young woman in the 1970s getting to know her closeted gay uncle who has been traumatized by his narrow-minded southern family. A few heartfelt performances lift this above the mawkishness that Ball threatened to trap them into.

Sophia Lillis ("It") is always nuanced and engaging as the niece, Beth, and Paul Bettany just barely succeeds in walking a tightrope across misery and moping as Frank, who agrees to take a road trip with Beth from his enlightened existence in New York City back to his backward hometown for the funeral of his brutish father (Stephen Root, stuck in the thankless role of a crude bigot). Peter Macdissi brings humor and heart to the role of Frank's longtime partner.

Ball's overall story is just barely convincing, and he undercuts it with clunky dialogue. He gives Frank a tragic backstory, and you can picture ball slathering Vaseline all over the lens for the flashbacks to Frank's harrowing teenage experience. It's quite a mess at times, but there is a pulse here, and the three leads give it their all to make it passable.

On the Water Front

 

AQUARELA (2019) (B) - This is not much more than a visual think-piece, but this homage to 71 percent of the planet conveys the beauty and power of water in all its forms. Viktor Kossakovsky, as he did more recently with "Gunda," works in a virtually wordless environment, featuring only incidental dialogue and letting the grandeur of his images tell the story. 

If it could be said to have any sort of narrative progression, it is that the movie seems to move south, from the Arctic down toward the equator. We see men toiling in the frigid climes somewhere in Russia, retrieving vehicles that have fallen through the winter ice. We visit the streets of Miami ravaged by Hurricane Irma. And in a mirror image of the glacial cliffs featured in the beginning of the film, Kossakovsky gazes upon the epic waterfalls along the coast of Venezuela. 

Is this a polemic about climate change? Maybe. Or perhaps it is just an excuse to convey the majesty of the oceans and seas, from the loud cracking of ice floes to the rage of storm squalls. You can see a horse swim and likely the biggest wave -- a wall of water -- you have ever seen. It's all both calming and intimidating and at times fascinating to watch.

HARPOON (B-minus) - This seafaring menage a trois is a bloody, gory mess, both literally and figuratively. It's just a little too cute and cartoonish for its own good, though the story of two men and a woman stranded at sea has some juicy repartee and compelling plot twists.

Emily Tyra is the glue holding this together as Sasha, the woman caught between her smart-ass boyfriend, Richard (Christopher Gray), and his gloomy best pal, Jonah (Munro Chambers), who is suspected of sleeping with Sasha by Richard. Thus the opening scene, in which Richard storms into Jonah's apartment and slugs him. This triggers a call for payback, since Sasha (not so convincingly) insists that the accusation is false. 

The trio heads off on Richard's boat for a day trip, but recriminations and double-crosses soon arise, and when the boat's motor dies in the middle of nowhere, this turns into a contest for survival, with no food or water in sight. When Jonah gets one of Chekhov's harpoons shot through his hand, he becomes the weak link and the most likely candidate to be cannibalized. 

Yes, this one gets pretty dark, though it never loses its playfulness. Writer-director Rob Grant is comfortable surfing along horror tropes, and he has no fear of crafting an ending in which each character gets a unique comeuppance that just barely makes this worth your 83 minutes.

BONUS TRACK

The "Aquarela" trailer:

Bourgeois Blues

 Filling a gap and catching up with Luis Bunuel late in his career, as we complete quite the Francophilic run in the past week:

 

THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972) (B-minus) - In which a group of middle-class French folks try and fail repeatedly to enjoy a meal together. Or, in which a sub-group of them have weird dreams and tell the others about them.

Don Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey) is an ambassador from the fictional nation of Miranda trying to socialize with the others. He occasionally is confronted by a pretty member of a domestic terrorist group, and he lusts after a friend's wife. Absurd events disturb their gatherings, whether its a law-enforcement raid or merely that their hosts have gone out back to shag and failed to alert the help to serve the dinner.

This is as droll as you can imagine. Some of it hits as knowing satire, but much of it plays like Monty Python without the wit. Maybe more "Love, American Style," know that I think of it. Either way, finally catching up with Bunuel is the equivalent of doing one's due diligence, completing the homework necessary to speak with any authority on the subject of French cinema.

THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977) (B-minus)  - In which a middle-aged widower creeps on the 18-year-old help, launching an elaborate cat-and-mouse game from Luis Bunuel that is not so much surrealistic as it is tedious. Not only is this from a much earlier era of gender politics, but it's an offering from a onetime wunderkind in the twilight of his 50-year career. So, yeah, it's dated.

Sophisticated Mathieu (Fernando Rey, again) gets crushy on a chambermaid, Conchita, who, for absolutely no reason is played by two actresses alternating in the role (Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina). The narrative is told in flashback after we see Mathiew board a train, dump a bucket of water on a young woman, and then settle in to tell the tale to his fellow passengers. 

Mathieu is also hounded by terrorist types, and at some point it appears that Conchita might be conspiring with them against Mathieu. Things tend to go in circles over the course of 103 minutes, and there really is no satisfactory resolution. This absurdist nugget is a curiosity at this point.

BONUS TRACK

Our title track, from Leadbelly:

Sex Education

 Teens from two different worlds, connected only by a common language:

LINGUI (THE SACRED BONDS) (B+) - From Chad, this luxurious drama features a mother navigating a strict religious patriarchal society to help her teenage daughter get a safe abortion. This is another leisurely paced character study from writer-director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, who scored in 2010 with "A Screaming Man."

He is blessed her with a fresh pair of newcomers, Achouackh Abakar Souleymane as the iron-willed mother, Amina, and Rihane Khalil Alio as the moody 15-year-old Maria. Amina was quite young when she had Maria, and she is determined to not doom her daughter to a life of lost opportunities. Maria can be quite irascible, and she is constantly telling her mom not to touch her, as if the pregnancy has traumatized the young girl and turned her into a leper.

Haroun has a sharp visual flair, comfortable flaunting colors in bright open spaces as well as building intrigue in the dim shadows of forbidden lairs. Amina struggles to earn a living, stripping the steel from vehicle tires to fashion rustic cookers, while getting both harangued by the local Imam for being single and hit on by a neighbor seeking to exploit her vulnerability.

Amina and Maria set out on a journey through the underground medical system. But this is less of a cold procedural than it is a warm tribute to mother-daughter relations and a paean to individual freedom to pursue a full life.

SLUT IN A GOOD WAY (2019) (B+) - From Quebec, this lightweight comedy dabbles in the sexual politics of teens, albeit in a rosy-cheeked aw-shucks manner. TV actress Sophie Lorain settles in behind the camera to direct a script by Catherine Leger (they previously teamed on a film called "The Little Queen") to follow three teenage girls who bring their own unique take on entering the world of relationships.

The film centers around perky Charlotte (Margueritte Bouchard), who finds out her boyfriend is gay but is sexually adventurous enough to want to explore her own needs and desires.  She and pals Megane (Romane Denis) and Aube (Rose Adam) take jobs at a mega toy store because it's full of cute guys their age, the perfect laboratory for experimenting with the opposite sex. However, Charlotte dives into the deep end, having sex with nearly all the guys over the course of the first month, earning her an instant reputation from the staff, male and female. Aube, tall and shy, is at the other end of the spectrum, pining for one boy in particular.  Meantime, Megane is a leftist revolutionary in training; when told told that her strident politics is a turn-off to men, she spins it as merely her own system of natural selection.

Lorain and Leger immediately set a tone of light banter and blunt talk about sex, opening the movie with a scene set in an adult toy store. The dialogue is witty among the friends. The boys can be two-dimensional and interchangeable at times, but that might be the point. While the script, on average, deploys a smart, modern sensibility, it always seems headed toward a quaint John Hughes denouement, especially considering that the one boy at the store Charlotte hasn't slept seems like the perfect mate. 

It is refreshing to watch a young woman like Charlotte shrug off criticism as she seeks natural pleasure.  She does get nagged a lot and told that guys are an important part of her identity. Bouchard at times gives off a Jan Brady vibe, a budding beauty fending off criticism and self-doubt. In the end, this is fun and entertaining without getting trapped in those teen-romp tropes.

Libertines, Fraternity, Equality

 Digging deep into our queue for titles that have lurked for many years, we travel to France in the 1980s to explore the sexuality of young women.

LOULOU (1980) (B+) - You have to pause and think in order to remember a time when Isabelle Huppert wasn't a seasoned veteran with that face like a mask and when Girard Depardieu wasn't morbidly obese. But here they are, a handsome couple, 40+ years ago in the casual partner-swapping milieu of post-punk France.

Huppert plays Nelly, a bored wife of a bland husband (whom she also works for), who leaves one day to romp around with bad boy Loulou, who, like Depardieu, is a real lulu. He's not into much more than having sex with Nelly, but she's pretty cool with that arrangement. He's also an unemployed deadbeat who coasts along on her largesse. They are friendly with the woman he dumped for Nelly.

This being the end of the '70s, there is a brutish aspect to this class study by journeyman Maurice Pialat, who co-writes with Arlette Langmann. The hulking Depardieu doesn't do much more than brood and grunt. The waifish Huppert, in her mid-20s, is slinky and sensual while communicating volumes with her facial expressions, a true standout amid a so-so cast. In 1980 she was developing her stoicism but not the rough shell and taut mask that would define her in later years. She is a wonder to watch, and the film at times can be a fascinating sociological study.

36 FILLETTE (1988) (B+) - Ah, the reliable French coming-of-age story. This one gets more grit than sun splashes, courtesy of Catherine Breillat, the enfant terrible who often trafficked in sexual shock and awe ("Romance," "Fat Girl," though not much since). Here, Breillat throws a 14-year-old girl to the wolves, and it's a lot less creepy and a lot more insightful than you might have expected.

This is the story of Lili (Delphine Zentout), a frustrated, disagreeable adolescent who whines her way into an outing with her 17-year-old brother for a night on the town during the family's camping vacation. Lili meets up with Maurice (Etienne Chicot), an aging would-be playboy, who only half-heartedly makes a play for the underage girl. 

Lili toys with Maurice, eager to lose her virginity but too smart to make a mistake with a miserable cad. She brightens during a detour meeting a famous French actor, seizing the opportunity to have an intellectual conversation and explore her creative side. Zentout (about 17 when the film was made) is charismatic enough to carry the movie and make this story engrossing instead of gross. She knows how to narrow her eyes, even if she is still only a femme fatale in training. 

This is based on Breillat's novel, and you get the sense that this is personal for her. What are we to make of a teenager who has all the physical tools of a sensual woman and who toys with unleashing her sexual prowess but would so much rather be recognized and heard and understood. Lili is caught in a tug-of-war of societal expectations. She has desires, but not necessarily the kind you might expect.

Doc Watch: Against All Odds

A MOST BEAUTIFUL THING (B+) - This moving documentary is full of heart and positivity as it revisits alums of Chicago high schools all-black rowing team from the late '90s and reunites them in the present day. This succeeds on the personality and relatability of its cast of men who survived the city's dangerous West Side and lived to tell the tale.

Director Mary Mazzio ("I Am Jane Doe") doesn't overreach but instead lets the men tell their story. She doesn't lean on any one of them in particular, but each develops a personality over the course of an hour and a half. Almost all of them tell tales of abuse, drug-addicted mothers or serious brushes with the law in the 20-year interim since their improbable emergence in the mostly white sport of rowing.

Mazzio, with writing help from Robert Fitzgerald and Alec Sokolow, has Common as narrator and a stable of producers that includes some NBA royalty and the Winklevoss twins from Facebook infamy. Visually, she is blessed with a slice of bucolic beauty on Chicago's West Side, with the iconic skyline as a backdrop.

The first half of the film is the strongest, because it focuses on the origin story. Things deflate a bit in the second half as the film turns into a reunion story wherein the men resume training for another go in the boat. While this feels like a forced premise, it pays off in the end, because we really get to know the men better, in spite of the gimmick. It all builds to an emotional ending featuring a round-robin reading of Maya Angelou's "And Still I Rise."

WHAT WE LEFT UNFINISHED (C+) - This is an obscure take on an obscure subject. Five lost/unfinished films from the communist era of Afghanistan between 1978 to 1991 get their day in the sun. Mariam Ghani curates the footage and puts it in perspective with the present-day help of some of the filmmakers and actors.

Ghani adds a bit of historical perspective of the time between the monarchy and the Taliban -- including the 10-year Soviet occupation -- but how can you fully convey the convoluted political structure of Afghanistan at the time? The old filmmaking seems impossibly crude, though the effort is somewhat impressive, considering the obstacles that were faced and the lack of a cinematic foundation. It is difficult to get excited about the lost films of Afghanistan's checkered past.

A few tidbits stand out. One filmmaker explains how live ammunition was used on the set of his film because blanks simply were not available; they simply relied on the skills of the marksmen to miss their target while looking like they hit it. No reports of accidental deaths are reported.

RIP, Peter Bogdanovich

 In memory of the director (and psychiatrist to the psychiatrist on "The Sopranos"), who died last month at 82, we catch up with two of his films.

WHAT'S UP, DOC? (1972) (B+) - We travel back nearly 50 years to catch up with a farce that itself turns back time by about 40 years to the golden era of screwball comedies. Insulated from criticism over the movie's broad humor and silly gags, Bogdanovich has a lot of fun, mostly riding the charisma of his star, Barbra Streisand. Unfortunately, he also is saddled with Ryan O'Neal who has no ear for the goofy nerd he is supposed to play against type.

This is the director's follow-up to his breakthrough, "The Last Picture Show," and "What's Up, Doc," so bright and delirious, can't be further afield from that previous downer. Bogdanovich was in the middle of a fantastic three-picture run, culminating the following year in "Paper Moon," which would meld elements of "Last Picture" and "Doc."

The plot here is not much more sophisticated than an episode of "Get Smart." Four identical-looking pieces of luggage in the hands of four people get scrambled up in a hunt for top-secret documents and precious jewels. Streisand shows up as Judy in a meet-cute with Howard, O'Neal's dorky music anthropologist who is on a trip to San Francisco with his hen-pecking fiance, Eunice, played by Madeline Kahn in her feature debut. 

Streisand, in just her fifth film, bursts forth with a glow and confidence that carries the production via her feline physicality and her energetic line readings, often borrowing from broad Borscht Belt deliveries. She is tan and mischievous and fearless. O'Neal, however, is adrift, desperately trying but failing to wring true comedic juice out his flat character. Turns out, it takes a lot of talent to play a straight man, and O'Neal is merely a dud. 

But there are plenty of supporting characters who rise to the occasion and take up Bognanovich's challenge to let the silliness ring out in this goofy game of musical bags. Kenneth Mars ("The Producers") is giddy as Howard's academic rival; Austin Pendleton mugs cleverly as the holder of a coveted research grant; John Hillerman shines in a cameo as a hotel manager; and Liam Dunn is giddy as a harried judge trying to sort everything out in the end.

THEY ALL LAUGHED (1981) (D+/incomplete) - It is difficult to figure out the point of this film 30 minutes in, besides Bogdanovich's burning need to announce to the world that he -- and the male avatars he creates for his movies -- are not nerds but in fact are irresistible to young beautiful women. So there, critics!

It's not the passage of years that makes this movie seem like an anachronism. You get the sense that it was curdled before it first hit the screen. We gave it the ol' college try, lasting about an hour, waiting in vain for any of this to make sense. For some reason (it was never clear to me), Ben Gazzara and John Ritter are private eyes (glorified stalkers) each following a married woman that they presumably eventually (not quite in the first hour) will fall head over heels in love with -- Ritter literally, as he was known to do, at a roller disco, in pursuit of Dorothy Stratten (the tragic Playmate girlfriend of Bogdanovich's who would be brutally killed by her ex before the movie was released). 

Not only is Stratten propped up as a goddess to be ogled, but we also get a curly-haired middle-aged Audrey Hepburn, who doesn't speak until the second half of the film, and yet another slice of cheesecake, Patti Hansen, as a wise-cracking cabbie named Sam -- a character you would only find in a bad movie -- before she high-tailed it out of Hollywood to marry Keith Richards and breed more models. 

Gazzara's character is irresistible to every woman he passes (in this alternate universe), and Ritter dons Bognanovich's signature eyeglass frames in case it wouldn't be clear to the viewer than he is the writer-director's stand-in (and thus irresistible to not only Stratten but others). Colleen Camp plays a country singer (the soundtrack is a cacophony of the Frank Sinatra style and the Johnny Cash school, and all of it sticks out like a sore thumb), and her portrayal is an insufferable slog of line-readings. It's the kind of movie where her character uses Ritter's character's name (Charles) in literally every sentence she utters to him, in some sort of homage to those old screwball comedies -- or perhaps just a result of Bogdanovich's sloppiness that no one was bold enough to point out or correct. It was at that point I gave up.

BONUS TRACK

See also our review of "Paper Moon," here.

New to the Queue

 ... lost in a reverie of ennui ...

From Belgium, a harrowing tale of a little brother and sister navigating the pitfalls of school life, the debut feature, "Playground."

Steven Soderbergh is back with a dark techno-thriller involving a Siri-type device, "Kimi."

A quirky, surreal exploration of dreams, "Strawberry Mansion."

A droll spoof of those '70s Mystery Movies of the Week, "Inspector Ike."

Dammit, we keep falling for that trailer for Channing Tatum's film about a war veteran and a service animal, "Dog."

Claire Denis is back with Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon for a triangulated melodrama, "Fire."

The Immigrant Experience

 A pair of entries from Steve McQueen's series of "Small Axe" films, focusing on the experiences of West Indian immigrants in England from the 1960s to the '80s.

LOVERS ROCK (A-minus) - A reverie about one night in the lives of young party-goers, this qualifies as a true slice of life, or even just a vivid memory from the 1970s. Steve McQueen gets his fingernails dirty re-creating a neighborhood house party, from the cooking of the food and the setting up of the turntables and amps to the arrival of the crowd stomping and swaying to the songs we now call dusties.

We experience this through the eyes of Amarah-Jae St. Aubin as Martha, who has a meet-cute with Franklyn (Michael Ward) that leads to the inevitable slow-dance and the threat of staying out till dawn. (For whatever reason, Martha had to sneak out of her house.) Circulating around them are a vague cast of characters who are either spinning music, tearing up the dance floor or making their move on the opposite sex. 

With this and "Red, White and Blue," I had to use subtitles to keep up with the patois of the West Indian immigrants, and even then some of the jargon went over my head. But that's not really a flaw. This film, barely longer than an hour, is about mood and style. The swirl of sensations culminates in the middle of the film when the crowd grinds of an obscure R&B classic "Silly Games," singing along with fervor as the recording eventually cuts out but the singing continues a cappella for minutes, until we can hear shoes scraping on the wood floor, as if no one wants the song or the night to ever end. You could say the same about the movie itself.

RED, WHITE AND BLUE (B) - McQueen didn't interest us with "Hunger" in 2008, and we walked out of his brutal "12 Years a Slave," but, as indicated above, he has found a groove and a distinct voice mining the fertile period of his youth. Here he is blessed with John Boyega ("Star Wars") as Leroy Logan, a young immigrant in London who vows to respond to police mistreatment of his people by becoming a cop himself. This comes as an outrage to his father, Ken (a stern Steve Toussaint), who recently got an undue roughing up from the men in blue (and who is pursuing the matter in court). 

Leroy excels at the academy, but once on the beat, he and an East Asian rookie experience racist taunts and cold shoulders from the overwhelmingly white crew, while also drawing sneers from those in the immigrant community who consider the men sell-outs to the system. Leroy, determined to plant the seed of change (while also providing for his wife and baby), perseveres, and McQueen strips the stories to simple essentials, as if producing an "Afterschool Special."

Leroy is practical, whereas his father is hard-headed and prideful. Will the son engender a generational shift that will change British society? We don't have enough time here for such a sweeping dramatic wringing out of history. Instead, we get an earnest portrayal of one man trying to make a difference. This one is a little flat, but it's effective.

BONUS TRACKS

"Lovers Rock" seethes with deep cuts from someone's R&B and dub collections. A central scene involves "Silly Games" by Janet Kay:

And then there is the mesmerizing "More Warning" from King Tubby & the Aggrovators:

Doc Watch: Domestic Warfare

 

ATTICA (B+) - The first three-quarters of this two-hour documentary -- about the September 1971 inmate uprising at the infamous prison in upstate New York -- might lull you into thinking that this is a fairly rose-colored nostalgia trip. Don't be fooled. Whether intentional or not, the film can lure you into letting your guard down. If you do so, you might not be prepared for the horrific resolution to the conflict.

Don't go googling the event. Watch these two hours and let it unfold. The talented Stanley Nelson --  with some solid work under his belt, including 2015's "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution"; a 2006 documentary about the Jim Jones cult; and recent pieces on the Tulsa race riots and the crack cocaine epidemic -- pairs with newcomer Traci Curry to create time capsule of unrest in the prison-industrial complex of Nixon's America.

The filmmakers assemble some of the men who survived the crisis, along with family members of inmates and guards who died when authorities finally stormed the prison to end the standoff. Like with his "Black Panthers" retrospective, Nelson refuses to sugarcoat events or glorify the prisoners as heroes standing up to the Man. 

There certainly are some villains here. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, heard in telephone recordings sucking up to President Nixon during the standoff, uses the crisis to burnish his law-and-order bona fides and takes a hard-line stance, refusing to give an inch to the rioters. The prisoners who survived are clear-eyed about the protest against inhumane conditions at the time. Extensive file footage from inside the prison shows inmates celebrating this sliver of freedom and power, even if they knew at the time that it probably would not end well. We get extensive footage of the ambassadors, like attorney William Kuntsler, who tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement (a release of hostage guards and immunity for the death of one guard who died early on), and TV reporter John Johnson, who was on the front lines for most of those four days of tense developments.

And then comes the bloodbath. The filmmakers are not shy about showing dead bodies or the humiliation of the survivors who were forced to crawl naked through filth back to their cells. It is shocking but necessary. In some ways we've come a long way since those times, but in other ways, law enforcement's brutal crackdown on a group of men, mostly black and Puerto Rican, feels eerily familiar more than 50 years later. The first half of this film could have been streamlined, but the storytelling overall remains powerful.

BONUS TRACKS

Speaking of the rancor of generational and racial divides from 50+ years ago, HBO is providing a home for a trove of raw footage from turbulent Chicago in the late 1960s.  The short films come courtesy of the Chicago Film Archives. Most of the films deal with the riots at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention, including a stunning reminder of how brutal the Chicago police pounded on demonstrators.

The first short film I sampled, 8 minutes long, was "Cicero March." Like the others, there is no narration, just crude footage shot with handheld cameras picking up scraps of dialogue and ambient noise. It is a snippet of a civil rights march cutting through the notoriously racist near-west suburb of Cicero, just a stone's throw from where I grew up (and where I started my journalism career in 1986).  

The Democratic Convention series includes the 11-minute "Law and Order vs. Dissent," which features news conferences by Mayor Daley (barely able to read a simple statement) and the spokesman for the Police Department, who comes out of the blocks with a chip on his shoulder, apparently convinced that his hard-ass demeanor and his demeaning of "communists" and "revolutionaries" will be eaten up across America's heartland. By contrast, "A Right to Dissent" gives us 9 minutes of mostly David Dellinger and Rennie Davis meeting the fairly hostile press from the left side.  "Social Confrontation" (11 minutes) includes some classic footage from the floor of the convention, such as Abraham Ribicoff's denunciation of Mayor Daley's "gestapo" tactics.

"Black Moderates and Black Militants" is a 9-minute conversation between a Chicago Black Panther leader and a middle-age teacher, as Bobby Rush (only this year stepping down as a Congressman from the South Side after 30 years) mostly lurks in the background. It's not the polemics that hit home so much as the earnest effort on both sides to have a dialogue, which now seems downright quaint.

Some of all of the above makes up the 75-minute "American Revolution 2," melding the stories of the Black Panthers and the Yippies into one narrative.  You can close out the decade (December 1969) with the powerful full-length documentary "The Murder of Fred Hampton."

Noir Chronicles: Survival of the Fittest

 

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (B) - Joel Coen (taking a break from brother Ethan) plays with shadows and light in his spare, faithful rendition of the Shakespeare tragedy, coasting a bit on the backs of his impressive stars, Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the lord and lady of Dunsinane. There is plenty of gloom and drudgery in Coen's black-and-white depiction that looks like could have aired on "Playhouse 90" in 1958.

Screeching birds and an eerie hag open the proceedings heavy with premonition. Coen has a few cool camera tricks up his sleeves, especially war-hero's Macbeth's initial meeting with a witch who splits into three images. Washington still brings a modern everyman sensibility to 400-year role, and McDormand avidly chews her lines as the scheming wife. Stephen Root pops up in a cameo as the frantic Porter, and while I barely understood a word he spewed, his appearance was a hoot. 

This doesn't have the zip or narrative discipline of Joss Whedon's tart "Much Ado About Nothing" from 2012 (shot in a snappier black-and-white). But it gets the job done and might even leave you a bit jangled by the end.

EDGE OF THE CITY (1957) (A-minus) - This debut big-screen feature from Martin Ritt ("Hud," "Norma Rae") has a jangly, jazzy feel to it, as he juggles three fine lead performances in a tale of racial animosity and brotherhood. Sidney Poitier is loose-limbed and charming as Tommy, a loading-dock foreman who befriends a troubled newcomer on the run from the law. John Cassavetes, giving off a strong Travolta vibe, plays Axel Nordmann, the outlaw who is under the thumb of the mobbed up foreman who got him the stevedore job, racist Charlie, played with blue-collar swagger by Jack Warden.

It's refreshing to see Poitier's character exude confidence and flaunt a loving nuclear family as he seeks genuine friendship with Axel, who is shy around women, flinty at work, and emotionally impaired. The two actors have an improv ease with each other. Tommy encourages Axel to open up, which only make Axel more vulnerable when the inevitable reckoning comes. That reckoning involves a racially motivated violent act by Charlie, and Axel will be put to the test, required to choose between his loyalty to a friend and self-preservation, namely avoiding 20 years in a federal penitentiary.

Ruby Dee is critical as Tommy's loving but frustrated wife. In less than 90 minutes, Ritt, showing an eye and ear for the cadences of working-class life, builds a potboiler to a series of compelling crescendos that can leave a viewer drained by the final tragic images.

ROOM AT THE TOP (1959) (B+) - This smart, moody love triangle stars Laurence Harvey as an ambitious small-town transplant looking to work his way to the top but tripping over an entanglement with two different women. Harvey's Joe Lampton is quite the lecherous wolf who feels right at home in the corporate world's sexist culture. He joins a theater troupe in order to pursue Susan (Heather Sears), the daughter of a captain of industry, but he falls hard instead for Alice, an older married woman played with a perpetual smolder by Simone Signoret. 

Bold for its day, the film by journeyman director Jack Clayton explores such issues as adultery, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and class distinctions. Glum Joe struggles to overcome his bumpkin roots and the fact that his parents were killed in a bombing during World War II; he wallows in anguish when he revisits the rubble. Signoret and her modern look jolt this production above the cliches of its day and make the film seem less dated. A key scene of one of the breakups between Joe and Alice takes a petty disagreement and blows it out of proportion in a thoughtful, believable manner that will be familiar to any couple of any era.

At times this feels like a beta-test version of "The Graduate," and it continually manages to rise above conventions. With Harvey and Signoret carrying the load, this one never feels like it is overstaying its welcome in a nearly two-hour run.

BONUS TRACK

The corny trailer for "Edge of the City":

Doc Watch: A Way With Words

 

THE ONE AND ONLY DICK GREGORY (B) - The family of the stand-up comic, civil rights activist and healthy-living guru backs this loving overview of the life of Dick Gregory. The archival footage is fascinating, as we watch him break big in Chicago in the late 1950s and early '60s. Gregory is an engaging figure, with a stand-up style that influenced Dave Chappelle, who appears here as a talking head alongside other modern comics like Chris Rock, Wanda Sykes and Kevin Hart.

The film is thorough in its chronicle of Gregory's awakening of conscious around 1963 and The Rev. Martin Luther King's March on Washington. Gregory was patently outspoken (his first autobiography, from 1964 was titled with a racial epithet), and he used fasting as a method of drawing attention to causes. He was a noted vegan who sought to improve Americans' diet to fend off obesity and diabetes. (Alas, he didn't succeed.)

Andre Gaines, debuting as a writer-director, does a workmanlike job juggling the video archives with current interviews, including Gregory's wife and a few of his kids, plus the widow of Medgar Evers, Myrlie. The visuals, at least in the first 15 minutes, can be dizzying and distracting, with needless razzle-dazzle added to the old black-and-white footage. While not a hagiography, it is rather protective of its subject, and while some of Gregory's faults are mentioned, you might get the feeling that a few things are glossed over. Still, this is a valuable biography that does justice to a truly driven performer and activist, never forgetting to remind us how funny Gregory was.

BLACK WAX (1983) (B) - This documentary from blues archivist Robert Mugge spends time with self-proclaimed "bluesologist" Gil Scott-Heron, whose jazzy compositions presaged rap. This is a choppy visit with the musician, alternating between his performances and musings in concert with a separate traipse through Washington, D.C., neighborhoods, with Scott-Heron offering philosophical musings in opposition to the Reaganism of the day.

The music in concert has a heavily jazz tilt. Highlights include "Waiting for the Axe to Fall" and "Johannesburg." Scott-Heron traipses through a cheesy museum of American history, having fun mocking poorly constructed replicas of presidents like Nixon and Ford. He was a key political voice for urban America, and many of his takes would not seem out of place in our current climate, which is a sad commentary. Here, the music and the monologues have a simple power to them, with Scott-Heron sharp and insightful, before drugs would drag down his career and his life.

BONUS TRACK

Gil Scott-Heron with "B Movie," his diatribe about Ronald Ray Gun: