Soundtrack of Your Life: Where Are We, Again?

An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.

Date: September 17,2022, 10 a.m.

Place: Marriott Hotel in Uptown Albuquerque

Song:  "We Are Nowhere and It's Now"

Artist: Bright Eyes (with Emmylou Harris)

Irony Matrix: 4.1 out of 10

Comment: Hanging out with the nurses, technicians and support staff on a Saturday morning at their annual delegate convention. Not necessarily the go-to spot for grumpy nihilism, wondering out of the gate why someone would drink wine until they're blind. It's our boy Conor Oberst, with his head full of pesticide, the sobbing in his voice leavened by the maternal matter-of-factness of Emmylou Harris' controlled trills, she the stern yellow bird. We didn't stick around in the lobby long enough to sample the rest of this playlist, but god help the day-drinkers who survived this mid-morning kidney punch in a cold shower. We're wide awake, it's morning!

BONUS TRACK

A moving live version of Oberst's "Landlocked Blues" at the 1:08:46 mark:

Retrospective: Wilder, With Lemmon

 A pair of post-peak Billy Wilder pictures:

AVANTI (1972) (A-minus) - Working at a leisurely European summer pace, Billy Wilder riffs for more than two hours, luxuriating not only in the beauty of the island of Ischia but in the banter and natural chemistry between his two stars, Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills, who may have herein invented the modern meet-cute.

Wilder and longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond dampen and space out their usual zingers to dial things down from screwball (see below) to meditative. They unleash the story of a businessman, Wendell Armbruster Jr. (Lemmon), who travels to the small island off the Neapolitan coast to collect the remains of his father, the family company's CEO who died in a car crash during his summer vacation. On the same boat from the mainland is an Englishwoman, Pamela Piggott (Mills), who, coincidentally, is headed to the same luxury hotel to arrange for the return of the body of her mother, who also died in a car crash.

Turns out, his father and her mother had been having an abiding affair and would meet each summer for a month. They had been the toast of the town, beloved by all. Wearing a black armband, the hotel manager, Carlo Carlucci (a fabulous Clive Revill), tends to Wendell's every need and indulgence, as if the son were the father reincarnated. The valet Bruno (Gianfranco Barra) is also quite solicitous, although he has ulterior motives, as he connives to return to America after having gotten kicked out on his first try at immigration.

All of this is elegantly rendered. You will recognize an early template for Wes Anderson (especially "The Grand Budapest Hotel") and Mike White's recent "The White Lotus" -- with their whimsy and banter and fussiness -- but also a profound humanism that echoes the best of Krzysztof Kieslowski's mellow morality plays. It's as if Billy Wilder, in the twilight of his career, has grown downright wistful. He revels in the '70s contrast between hyperactive Americans and the lazy European locals.

Lemmon and Mills are perfectly pitched and matched as the brash rich American and the proper, humble Brit. She has a complex about her weight (barely noticeable to modern audiences), though it's her sweetness that wins him over. They re-create their parents' dinner routine and sunrise swim, and she brings flowers to the morgue when they go identify the bodies. The extended scene at the morgue is a microcosm of all the film's delights. That includes the bureaucrat who stops by to execute the paperwork with the efficiency of a surgeon and the flair of a magician. 

Wendell, as the boorish clod perpetually in a hurry to get back for a funeral in just a few days, is frustrated at every turn, often by someone's extended lunch break. He's the Ugly American at sea in another less accommodating culture. (A running gag has him grimacing every time he sips some muddy coffee.) The plot includes an extortion attempt by the family that owns the vineyard that the car crashed through, causing damages. Wilder is in full command of the remaining plot twists until he has teed up the perfect ending. His stars have charm to burn. And their story, in the end, is quite moving.

IRMA LA DOUCE (1963) (B-minus) - There's screwball and then there's just plain silly. This anachronistic farce from the pre-Beatlemania era is a bizarre throwback to the early days of Hollywood. Billy Wilder re-teams Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine (subbing in after Marilyn Monroe died) from "The Apartment" three years earlier. And while they still have a magical chemistry, this off-key Parisian romp is too nonsensical and too long to survive as any sort of classic.

It also comes with an old-fashioned idiot plot: Lemmon is Nestor, a by-the-book young officer who fails to grasp the art of looking the other way when it comes to gambling and prostitution, and after he predictably loses his job he falls for MacLaine's stylish streetwalker Irma. He then concocts a scheme to keep Irma off the streets by concocting an elaborate disguise as a wealthy Englishman who pays her to be his exclusive consort. Of course, she doesn't recognize him, and wacky hijinks ensue. (Lemmon is a hoot at times as a stereotypical Limey twit.)

Lou Jacobi as a bar owner called Moustache is the ringer here, facilitating Nestor's ruse. (And he is the keeper of the running gag, ending long conversations jags with "But that's another story.") Everything gets jumbled and a little too confusing. Things drag on for nearly two and a half hours. Lemmon and MacLaine are entrancing, as always, but this one dies in a ditch between nostalgia and silliness, between Ziegfeld and the Zucker brothers.

BONUS TRACK

The music from "Avanti" is lovely, with a theme song that calls to mind "You Belong to Me" ("See the pyramids across the isle ..."):

R.I.P., Jean-Luc Godard

 

The titan of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, died this week at 91. Variety and the New York Times have obits. He was a true iconoclast, to the very end.

We have scanned his catalog, old and new, in the past decade. Here are a few examples:

• "Masculin Feminin" from 1966. Our conclusion: "Merely above-average Godard from his '60s peak era."
• "Film Socialisme," a more recent offering from 2013. "The reds and blues, like a digitally enhanced, high-def version of some of Godard's '60s classic shots, are stunning, at times mesmerizing. Beyond that, I'm not old or intellectual enough to appreciate whatever the French master is going for here, if he has a point at all."
• "Contempt" from 1963. "Godard frolics with those patented blues and reds, and he revels in the sartorial choices of his unhappy couple. His confident camera captures movie sets and majestic natural beauty."
• "Goodbye to Language," his penultimate film (2014). "God bless Godard. I haven't completely understood a movie of his in decades. But I'm still drawn to his technicolor diatribes. Here we have another script slathered with philosophical -- or pseudo-philosophical -- mutterings while splashed with mind-altering neon primary colors." 

We'll revisit more titles in the coming months. For now, in memoriam, we turn, finally, to his last work:

THE IMAGE BOOK (2018) (C+) - The crowning visual and philosophical achievement of a cinematic pioneer? Or the bitter ramblings of an old man slipping away from a fractured world that has passed him by and disappointed him? This ambitious collage of images is a supreme challenge to comprehend, but I'm sure there are some out there whose devotion to it will be rewarded.

Godard's evolution was toward dense, disorienting, inscrutable polemics, splashing around in dizzying montages. Here, title cards repeat, and blackouts come fast and furiously. He alternates between bleaching the images and over-saturating them with color. Subtitles drop off randomly, so some dialogue is missed. Godard is daring you to comprehend his "story" or simply doesn't care if you follow the hopscotch of his thoughts.

Themes of war and violence (results of capitalism?) permeate. Many figures are seen crawling, trapped in subjugation. Glimpses of trains suggest freedom and opportunity. (The New Wavers were fans of John Ford and the American West, after all.) The final third is devoted to the Arab world (from mythical flying carpets to the horrors of ISIS); at one point Godard does a deep dive into the minutiae of the plot of an obscure novel. His sympathies lie with these people, dismissed (in his mind) by Hollywood that uses Arab culture as "primarily scenery and landscapes." (His sympathies were clear in 1960, when he explored the Algerian occupation with "Le Petit Soldat," banned by France at the time.)

Still, relentlessly, the images flash by, incessantly. The aspect ratio jitters frequently. Thoughts drift or are cut off. The clips -- old movies, newsreel footage -- rarely ring a bell. Repeated viewings or scholarly study might chip away at the meaning. Maybe Godard is toying with us. Maybe he was just playing at a whole nother level.

But what does it matter? Do my words here even have meaning? Here are two positive, thoughtful examinations of the movie: from Slant magazine, and from Roger Ebert's site, where Matt Zoller Seitz likens Godard to "an old and easily distracted uncle who keeps changing the subject" and sums up by lamenting, "I felt like I was watching the entire history of civilization, and one of its most important filmmakers, fragmenting and imploding on the screen."

BONUS TRACK

And a friend recommended this iconic scene from "Band of Outsiders," with Anna Karina and the boys:

I Want to See the Bright Lights

 How about a double feature staring Kentucker Audley, the mumbliest of what's left of Mumblecore?

STRAWBERRY MANSION (B-minus) - This absurdist sci-fi tale looks and feels cheap throughout, playing around with an interesting idea but not taking it very far. Kentucker Audley plays a federal agent named Preble whose job it is to carry out the mission of the government to audit people's dreams (all of which are now recorded and cluttered with advertisements) and calculate taxes on the contents of those dreams.

No-nonsense Preble, dressed like Joe Friday as a Mormon missionary, stumbles on the strawberry-colored house of an old woman mellifluously named Arabella Isadora (Penny Fuller, who played good-time Sally in "All the President's Men"). Bella never upgraded from videotapes, hundreds of which are scattered around her cluttered mansion. She invites Preble to stay in a guest room while he slogs through the backlog. The retrofitted contraption he uses to view the analog collection involves a device that looks like a giant medieval-knight's helmet that covers his head and rests on his shoulders, making him look like a 1950s robot. (It's a nod to the steampunk ethic of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil.")

Preble has his own recurring dreams, which mainly take place in a room the color of strawberry sherbet and which are menaced by ads. Bella shares with him a special helmet that she and her late husband had designed, a device that can disable the advertisements. (A plot twist will introduce Reed Birney ("Mass") as a link to the nefarious dream invaders who are profiting.)

Preble delves into Bella's recurring dreams, which involve her as a young woman. He not only enters the dreams as a hologram and observes, but he also begins to interact with the young version of Bella (an affecting Grace Glowicki). Visual lunacy ensues, as is common in dreams. But while the trippy visuals are fun, they too often bog down in outright silliness that take the story nowhere. We're not fans of CGI, but that would be preferable to the pantomime characters here romping around in big puppet heads. 

Audley cooked this up with Albert Birney (Reed's nephew), but their confection is only half-baked. It is not only part "Brazil" but also part "H.R. Pufnstuf" (and too much of the latter). After early promise, the story meanders and eventually fizzles.

CHRISTMAS, AGAIN (2015) (B) - Once again, not much happens here in this morose drama from journeyman Charles Poekel about a melancholy Christmas-tree salesman in Brooklyn. But Audley draws you in with his twisted angst, as the quaintly named Noel, who is mourning a recent failed relationship and perhaps getting involved with a troubled woman who crosses his path.

Poekel revels in the minutiae of the grind of a sidewalk tree salesman, from the rote recitation of types of pines to the lopping off of the bottom of the trunk after a sale to the sweeping up of needles. Noel lives in the trailer parked on the lot, with apparently not much of a life to speak of. 

One day he helps a young woman, Lydia (Hannah Gross), from being preyed upon by a homeless man while she is passed out drunk. He shepherds her to his trailer, where he is a gentleman. She will continue to pop up around the lot (as will a jealous boyfriend), but some viewers might be frustrated by what little happens to them (or anyone else). 

The colorful characters come and go (including not a few insufferable yuppies), and as Christmas Eve nears, Noel makes a few tenuous connections, culminating in some last-minute deliveries that jolt the movie out of its cramped confines (and out of Noel's cobwebbed brain). An appearance by Andrea Suarez Paz is a much-needed boost, as her character offers at least a glimpse of hope.

Poekel's visual palette is pure indie gloom. He is partial to angled close-ups and disorienting out-of-focus colored lights. This art-house workout is one big sullen mood (it's refreshingly non-festive), and Audley is the man to pull it off.

BONUS TRACK

Our title track, from Richard and Linda Thompson:

Marissa Nadler with "All Love Must Die," during a key scene in "Christmas, Again":

Doc Watch: Decepticon

 

MY OLD SCHOOL (A-minus) - What fun. With vigor and good humor, Jono McLeod looks back at his private school in Scotland in the early 1990s and does a deep dive into the bizarre con perpetrated by one of his former classmates. 

Do yourself a favor and read nothing about the background of the incident at Beardsen Academy involving "Brandon Lee," who shows up out of the blue, mid-semester, and takes the place by storm -- showing off his broad knowledge of subjects and landing the lead in the school musical, "South Pacific." But something about him is obviously off. It is apparent that he is running a scam, but the details that are unpacked here are what make this so entertaining.

McLeod himself perpetrates a bit of sleight of hand himself here.  It turns out that Brandon Lee would not appear on camera -- as quite a few of his old classmates do -- but would only lend his voice to an interview. To compensate, McLeod makes an inspired decision:  He hires actor Alan Cumming to sit at a school desk and lip-sync Lee's words. It's a clever meta touch, buoyed by Cumming's effortless charm. McLeod also hires an animation crew headed by Rory Lowe to create "Daria"-style old-school cartoon re-creations that are a delight. 

Both gimmicks work, improbably. They fit neatly into the loose, giddy production in which McLeod and his ex-classmates pick through the mystery of what happened. Some of them are still a bit baffled by exactly what went down and how, and to this day different versions of the urban legend persist. 

McLeod presents his classmates mostly in pairs, and that seems to loosen them up and show off their camaraderie. They are all in their 40s now and clearly still chucked to be revisiting this tale, which sells itself. They bring unique perspectives and personalities that help round out the proceedings. One classmate in particular gives Lee credit for being a true friend, even an inspiration. One teacher who played a pivotal role in the original events shows up, at times to take his lumps.

Period songs help revive those comparatively carefree days. (Be warned, you might end up humming "Macarena" for a few days.) News clips slowly take precedence as the film progresses, as the storytelling evolves from the incredible (mostly animated) to the real (via news reports). It is an assured method of wisely unspooling this fun story. 

Once the jig is up, the final half hour drags at times. Fifteen minutes shorter and this one might have been perfect.

BONUS TRACK

The movie's title track plays over the credits, sung by 60s sensation Lulu, who also voices a character. Here is Steely Dan's ever-catchy original:

New to the Queue

 ... caution to the wind ...

It might be fun to hit the IMAX for the curated footage of David Bowie in "Moonage Daydream."

A look back at the life of author Patricia Highsmith, based on diaries and notebooks (recently excerpted in the New Yorker), "Loving Highsmith."

A debut feature tracks nerds who live for comic books, "Funny Pages."

A documentary about a model village set up in 1967 to train police and National Guard personnel in ways to quell urban uprisings, "Riotsville, USA."

In her follow-up to "The Lure" (holy crap!), Agnieszka Smoczynska dramatizes the true story of sisters who will communicate only with each other, "The Silent Twins."

The Sorrow and the Pity

 Digging through the queue for more titles that have lingered there a long time.

YOU KILL ME (2007) (A-minus) - Credit, first and foremost, must go to writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely for their meticulous script about an alcoholic hitman who is sent from Buffalo to San Francisco to dry out while the Polish crew he has left behind in upstate New York faces extinction against the other ethnic gangs.

It is upon that foundation that Ben Kingsley kills it as down-on-his-luck Frank, buoyed by a brash younger woman, Laurel, brought to sarcastic life by Tea Leoni. They have a Tracy-Hepburn snap to their interactions. Then throw in a fine supporting cast -- Bill Pullman as a sleazy realtor who keeps an eye on Frank; Luke Wilson as Frank's AA sponsor; Philip Baker Hall as the beleaguered head of the Polish family; and good ol' Dennis Farina as the swaggering Irish mob boss. They all are in on the fun.

It's a delicious mix helmed by John Dahl, the onetime neo-noir darling ("Red Rock West," "The Last Seduction"), who paces this to near-perfection. Frank gets a temporary job at a mortuary, where he has his meet-cute with Lauren. He struggles with sobriety and she puts up with his shortcomings in a city where it's tough to find eligible straight men. 

The writers Markus and McFeely (one grew up in Buffalo, the other in the Bay Area) share the quirks of their hometowns and show off a subtle touch with sly one-liners. When Frank meets Wilson's Tom at the snack table at an AA meeting, Tom asks Frank if it's his first time, and Frank quips back, "No, I've had cookies before." When Frank, half-joking, asks Lauren a few days after their first date if she's pregnant, she replies, "Not unless you put something in my egg roll. And then put the egg roll in my--". The writing team would go on to a career in the Marvel universe, an unfortunate waste of banter.

Kingsley inhabits this pitiful hitman, who doesn't regret the assassinations he has executed, but merely the sloppy way he did them while drunk.  Leoni goes toe-to-toe with Sir Ben and holds her own. Pullman is a one-man Greek chorus, tossing off oblique observations in an off-kilter dem-bums patois. It all builds nicely to a denouement back in Buffalo, as it's inevitable that Frank will eventually return to try to save the gang. In the hands of Dahl (who would go on to slum mostly in the TV industry), this is sharp storytelling.

MY JOY (2010) (B-minus) - I'm not embarrassed to say that I paused this movie halfway through in order to look up the plot on Wikipedia so that I could figure out what the hell was going on. (I kept the page open to help guide me through to the film's landing.) It's a tough story to follow, with limited signposts; the main actor changes his look rather dramatically halfway through, and I honestly couldn't tell it was him.

This is ostensibly the story of a humble truck driver, Georgy (Viktor Nemets), who gets knocked off course and goes into a physical and mental tailspin. Early on, while hauling flour somewhere in Russia, he picks up an old man (Vladimir Golovin) who tells him a story, aided by flashbacks, of getting ripped off by a fellow soldier during the last days of World War II in Germany.  Both Germany (during WWII) and the old man (in the present) will eventually return to the story. Characters will have multiple connections. Georgy will get attacked and be struck dumb and be kept by a woman until she sells off his truck and abandons him. 

This tale from a dozen years ago sprouted from the mind of Sergei Loznitsa (who alternates between documentaries like "State Funeral" and features like "Donbass"). It is a harrowing tale of a man in a mundane spiral. If you don't mind the narrative and visual challenges, there is an appeal to both the drone and the jerkiness of the plot, the hypnotic effect of this serpentine two-hour journey. The best scenes are the bookends involving two military guards at a traffic checkpoint that seems to be in the middle of nowhere. Not much happens in the opening scene, and then everything happens when we return for the final scene. It all ends with a chilling, memorable fade to black.

BONUS TRACKS

"You Kill Me" has an eclectic soundtrack, heavy on the doo-wop oldies. Devotchka croons over the opening credits with "Vengo! Vengo!":

Geraint Watkins chirps through "My Happy Day":

Continental Divides,

 

SPIN ME ROUND (B+) - The poster for this comedic romp in Italy parodies that of a Harlequin Romance bodice-ripper. Thankfully it's more of a slyly funny romp with a great cast of comedians having a lot of fun with a silly story from Jeff Baena ("The Little Hours").

Alison Brie, always perfectly reliable, holds the center as Amber, a nerdy assistant manager of a chain restaurant in Bakersfield, Calif., who gets chosen to participate in the company's cooking seminar in Italy. The company she works for is an Olive Garden knockoff called Tuscan Grove, where the Carbonara sauce splooges from plastic bags onto yellow pasta. The digs in Italy do not look like the brochure (though it is surrounded by lovely towns for fun day trips near Florence), and the cooking school is run by eccentrics. 

Her classmates include neurotics, airheads and a fanboy of the company's CEO, hunky Nick (Alessandro Nivola, "The Many Saints of Newark"), who takes a liking to Amber, which confirms what her and a friend back home predicted -- that she was destined to fall in love. But there is a twist, of course. There is more to Nick than meets the eye. Nivola, so dull in that "Sopranos" prequel last year, is quite funny here.

That's impressive, considering the cast surrounding him. Among the other classmates, Molly Shannon is fine as an overdressed passive-aggressive scold; Zach Woods (HBO's "Silicon Valley") has delicious timing as Nick's biggest fan; Ben Sinclair is droll as the cat-herder for the group; Lil Rel Howery ("Get Out") is solid as usual as Amber's boss; Debby Ryan and Ayden Mayeri are delightful ditzes; Tim Heidecker is a pompous know-it-all (he fancies himself as an expert in "molecular gastronomy," apparently an actual thing); and Lauren Weedman is wonderfully weird as the teacher of the class. The cast is so strong that it is odd that two reliable favorites, Aubrey Plaza and Fred Armisen, are fairly forgettable in minor roles. 

A lot of the gags are delivered side-arm. A few take a beat or two to sink in. The characterizations are quirky but not showy. Near the end, someone points out the group's privilege -- a bunch of white people paid to luxuriate in Italy -- when Mayeri meekly pipes up: "I'm Persian." 

Baena has funny friends. "The Little Hours" was a hoot and a half, and this one is fun from beginning until its sloppy, goofy end.  

LE BONHEUR (1965) (B+) - What a shock of fresh air Agnes Varda and her jaundiced camera eye must have been in the middle of the masculine French New Wave. This brightly lit and colorful movie tells a dark tale, but it does it ever so effervescently. 

Varda spends a good part of the first half of the movie introducing us to the domestic bliss of Francois, a young carpenter who adores his wife, Therese (Clair Druout) and their two adorable toddlers. They are partial to picnics in the park, and they are surrounded by loving family and friends. But one day, matter-of-factly, Francois meets a postal clerk, Emilie (Marie-France Boyer), a perky blonde, like his wife. 

What follows is a very enlightened French love triangle, where Francois has the best of both worlds. His wife is oblivious (though she notes how happy he has seemed lately), and Emilie seems quite evolved and understanding. But then a dark event happens, though again, Varda presents it as a rather ho-hum life twist. Her unblinking ennui is trying to send a message about the frivolities and vagaries of existence and one goes with the flow. It's like a hollow-eyed horror film devoid of jump scares.

Her color palette shares a glimpse of Godard's primary colors. Palate cleansers between scenes include fades to yellow or orange, rather than black. The pacing is leisurely but never boring. Although this has the undertone of male fantasy, the attitude is decidedly feminist. A scene at a dance -- where Varda's camera swings back and forth from one side of the patio to the other, with a tree in between coming into sharp focus with each pendular sway before finding a pair on the other side -- is mesmerizing, surely a sequence that has been taught in film classes for decades. 

Doc Watch: ... Ever After

 

THE PRINCESS (B) - It's difficult to empathize with Britain's royal family, but this documentary is a powerful review of the media feeding frenzy that descended on Diana Spencer and never let up. It skips narration and just lets the raw footage tell the story in chronological order.

Ed Perkins, who offered up the head-scratcher "Tell Me Who I Am" a few years ago, is more in control here as a curator of video archives. He provides unvarnished video, unspooling it in chronological order. We are all presumed to know the backstory and the tragic end, so there is really no need for context or elucidation.

Perkins persistently points our attention toward the media gaggle that followed the every move of Diana and Prince Charles from the very start, when he plucked her from relative obscurity. (Their lack of chemistry is apparent all along.) In the glare here are not just the pestering paparazzi of the tabloids of the day, but every facet of the mainstream media, from all over the world, which just would not let Diana have a moment's peace. It was all quite the pre-internet phenomenon.

The portrait of her is fairly sympathetic (recall that she could shoot off quite the disarming side-glances), though it does not overlook her flaws and poor choices. In retrospect, her defiance of the House of Windsor seems rather bold, and she truly lent her time and influence to worthy causes. It is interesting to watch her blossom over time and come into her own as a person (and celebrity). Time and again, though, Perkins focuses on the scribes and photographers perpetually hounding Diana, right up until the moment she dies, a martyrdom that, 25 years ago this month, now seems quaint and anticlimactic.

BONUS TRACK

We usually avoid TV miniseries here, but allow us a quick mention of the trainwreck that is the six-part HBO documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, "The Last Movie Stars." Right there in the title, you can tell that this collaboration between actor Ethan Hawke and Newman's daughters is pretty much full of crap. This is a six-hour wank by hipster actors waxing rhapsodic -- mostly in low-grade Zoom videos -- about some mythical bygone era of fairytale stardom. In meta fashion, this project -- like the press that originally covered Newman and Woodward -- glorifies the couple and generally glances past their human flaws. 

Newman and Woodward -- she the actor's actor, he the pretty boy who became a star -- are interesting enough for your standard documentary treatment. They were together for about 50 years, raising his and their children. (One of the few interesting revelations is Woodward saying more than once that she might not have had kids if she'd had it to do all over again.) But the documentary spends remarkably little time exploring them as a couple; instead their separate movie clips dominate (though they did work together more than a dozen times over the years).

The main problem here is the presentation. Hawke is a fanboy of all of his guests, most of whom were recruited to read transcripts of interviews from a biographical project that Newman had long abandoned (and destroyed the audio tapes for). The participants seem randomly selected, and they seem to compete to see who can appear to be the most regular person. (Extra points to Sam Rockwell for his surely artfully coiffed bad-boy bed-head. Paging Nastassja Kinski.) They constantly pontificate regarding the Fine Art of Acting (theater people!) and lavish endless praise on Newman and Woodward, even when it's obvious that Newman is usually lagging in third or fourth place in many of his classic films. (Imagine "Cool Hand Luke" without George Kennedy.) George Clooney voices Newman as if he is doing so while cleaning out his closet; and one of Hawke's pals thought it would be a good idea to do a broad impersonation of Gore Vidal. 

Rabbit holes include excessive details about Woodward's childhood and countless minutes spent with Newman's ex-wife. (There is easily enough fat here to cut it at least in half.) Perhaps the most annoying aspect of the documentary is a tiny nitpick that I could not let go of. Hawke uses the trite visual of showing a cassette tape spinning while one of the actors is reading from the transcript, a visual crutch that has been done to death -- even though he makes abundantly clear from the start that Newman destroyed the actual tapes. It's such a glaring, labored contrivance.

This works occasionally if you make generous use of the fast-forward button or, as a friend did, use it like a background podcast while you clean the house.

Hey, It's a Living

 

EMILY THE CRIMINAL (A-minus) - Aubrey Plaza is fantastic as a frustrated millennial who gets frozen out of a standard career path and gets sucked into a credit-card scam for the easy money. It stands as a millennial crie de coeur against the twin capitalist evils of student-loan debt and the scarlet letter of having a record, both of which complicate the simple task of landing a decent job.

Newcomer John Patton Ford, writing and directing, winds a tight watch here, and it ticks away efficiently for 93 captivating minutes. Plaza's Emily is a believable character, paying the price for a domestic assault conviction and DWI, as she channels that deep-seated hostility into navigating the dangerous underworld here.

Plaza is assisted by Theo Rossi as Youcef, the ringleader (and obvious potential love interest) of the racket that promises hundreds and sometimes thousands to those willing to serve as dummy shoppers wielding stolen credit cards. Plaza and Rossi sizzle together on the screen while the tension builds throughout.

Youcef, while drawn to Emily as well as the idea of branching out on his own, is hemmed in by his business partner and cousin, Khalil (Jonathan Avidgori), who is wary of Emily's growing role in the operation. Emily, armed only with a taser, uses her wiles to survive, as she branches out on her own, despite the danger that it Khalil.

Ford intercuts Emily's criminal activity with the mundane tasks of her dead-end catering job. Her successful friend Liz (Megalyn Echikunwoke) teases her with a potential job prospect, but Emily doesn't have the patience to continue to be strung along by judgmental employers. Ford presents Emily as not so much desperate as practical and efficient. He doesn't preach about her predicament; he merely delineates one feasible path forward.

Plaza, who came up through comedy, uses her big eyes and icy stares to inject menace into this jangly drama. She is surrounded by an impressive cast, which also includes Gina Gershon as Liz's smarmy boss; Bernardo Badillo as Emily's catering co-worker; and Rif Hutton as their manager. It all adds up to invigorating summer entertainment.

LEON THE PROFESSIONAL (1994) (C+) - Imagine discovering the secret weapon that is a 12-year-old Natalie Portman and casting her as a ragamuffin apprentice to a hitman. It might have worked better nearly 30 years ago, during the heyday of pulp fiction, but these days, Luc Besson's beyond-stylish slow-burn thriller is too often a pointless bloodbath.

Portman, who can command a scene as well as anyone, is stuck with mopey, expressionless Jean Reno (a Frenchman of Andalusian Spanish origins playing an Italian) and a wildly tone-deaf Gary Oldman (as a sleazy DEA agent), who probably wishes the masters of this thing were destroyed and his unintentionally hilarious ham performance were lost to history. Oldman is ridiculous as a pill-popping fed with an evil posse backing up his own drug operation. 

The family of Mathilda (Portman) gets wiped out by Oldman's crew, and so Reno's hitman takes in his tween neighbor and (naturally) starts teaching her the hitman trade. We're supposed to just go with that. Reno's zenlike simpleton will eventually serve up his version of revenge, first making sure that Mathilda is set to inherit the earnings being kept by his boss, played with understated zeal by Danny Aiello, the only adult here who shows any restraint.

But this is Portman's movie, her debut, and she rocks a bad-ass attitude to go with her Ramona-the-Pest bob haircut. She is feisty and offers a range of emotions. She is the main reason to revisit this anachronistic crime chronicle. The same cannot be said for Besson's effort here, full of needless close-ups and visual tricks that probably seemed dated even back then.

A Simple Twist of Fate

 

FIRE OF LOVE (A-minus) - What a fascinating slice of history wrapped in a love story. This follows Katia and Maurice Krafft, a French couple who studied volcanoes with the zeal of storm-chasers, eventually to their doom about 30 years ago while in their 40s. 

A talented production team lovingly crafts and expertly paces the narrative that is captivating, even though we know from the beginning that the characters will die in the end.  Director Sara Dosa (who produced "The Edge of Democracy") curates footage shot by the Kraffts and helms a meticulous script from Shane Boris, Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput. It's an elegant tone poem elevated further by the monotone, ethereal narration of Miranda July. 

The Kraffts often tell their own story in these clips. (They made money from nature films and geology books.) Maurice has a particular, very European disdain for his fellow humans, and so early on this nerdy pair found their spirituality in the raw power of Earth. They make for a fascinating scientific duo, though there are times, later in the proceedings, when Katia gives off a vague hostage vibe. 

The images shot by the Kraffts are captivating on the big screen.  Lava flows along, huffing and snorting like some rough beast.  Meantime, the daring couple (especially Katia) walk astride these lava flows as casually as they would stroll along a lazy creek. 

It's an experience that can nudge you to the front of your seat. The main flaw is that the depiction of their death comes quick and is rendered in shorthand. But the storytelling all along is top-shelf.

QUEEN OF GLORY (A-minus) - Writer-director Nana Mensah splashes with an indie slice-of-life, starring as a young woman getting detoured from her career path when life happens. Mensah plays Sarah, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, and she is pursuing a Ph.D. at Columbia in New York City but has plans to, of all things, run off with her dumpy married co-worker to his new job in, of all places, Ohio.

But Sarah's mother dies unexpectedly, and Sarah must deal not only with her eccentric family but also with the Christian bookstore her mom left behind, which includes Pitt (a raw Meeko Gattuso), a tough-looking character with facial tattoos who is the main employee. This little bit of kismet rearranges Sarah's priorities and opens her world a bit beyond her ivory tower. 

Mensah, a TV actress (Netflix's "The Chair"), has a wry approach similar to Lena Dunham's film debut, "Tiny Furniture" -- a 20-something with ambition but lacking direction. She soaks up the scenery of New York, especially the bookstore's location in the Bronx. She celebrates Ghanaian culture mainly through the funeral rites. And she is subtle with her sharp one-liners.

This is both funny and heartwarming. Mensah commands the screen like a star, and her confidence as a writer and director makes this leap off the screen. It harks back to the heyday of Mumblecore but with a sophisticated sheen.

BONUS TRACKS

The trailer for "Fire of Love":

The trailer for "Queen of Glory" has a killer punch line:

Our title track:

New to the Queue

 ... new day rising ...

Jeff Baena ("The Little Hours") reunites Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza and Molly Shannon from his previous movie, and adds in other funny people, for another romp in Italy, "Spin Me Round."

Aubrey Plaza also anchors a thriller about the economic anxiety of a millennial with college debt who gets caught up in a petty crime scheme, "Emily the Criminal." 

A documentary about a wild man who ministers in a bar in Brooklyn through music, "The Reverend."

A comic drama about three Finnish high school girls eager to experience adulthood, "Girl Picture."

From the adventurous documentary filmmaker Ed Perkins ("Tell Me Who I Am"), a curation of footage of Diana Spencer, "The Princess."

Noir Chronicles: The Annual Festival

 Just in time to offer relief from the 100-degree days, the dark cool Guild Cinema just completed its annual 10-day festival of film noir. Here are our samples.

SABOTEUR (1942) (B+) - Robert Cummings, better known as a TV star of the '50s, gets by with a glib and suave presence in one half of the Alfred Hitchcock double feature, as Barry Kane, an innocent man on the lam across the United States during World War II. Cummings -- tall and handsome -- exudes a variation on what we know as that clean-cut Ryan Reynolds charm.

Hitchcock has a ball with this one. A trio of writers that includes Dorothy Parker stuffs the script with juicy dialogue and quick one-liners. The dialogue is overly peppered with patriotic references -- even a group of circus performers' informal poll as to whether to help Kane turns into a civics lesson, and the climax takes place atop the Statue of Liberty -- as if the team, required by a wartime Hollywood dictum, purposely lays the patriotism on think with a wink to the camera. It's a lot of fun.

Cummings is surrounded by memorable performances: Murray Alper as a hilarious chatterbox truck driver who gives the hitchhiker a lift; Otto Kruger hamming it up as the devious head of the racket; the familiar face Ian Wolfe as a little but menacing henchman; and especially Vaughan Glaser as an intuitive blind man who takes Kane in and senses his innocence. Kane's love interest is the model Patricia Martin (Priscilla Lane from "Arsenic and Old Lace"), whose billboards send Kane eerily spot-on messages while he makes his way east.

Cummings' Bob Hope road vibe gives this an airy quality, but the tension never wanes, and Hitchcock is a cool customer as he flashes his distinct visual style of telling a story. The final shot from atop the Statue of Liberty is a master class in suspense. 

Spotted: Good ol' Norman Lloyd as the end-of-movie villain, who would memorably portray Dr. Auchslander on TV's "St. Elsewhere" in the 1980s and who lived to the ripe old age of 106 before he died a year ago.

***

I CONFESS (1953) (B) - In the other Hitchcock offering, Montgomery Clift is strong again as a priest caught in a web of love and confession when he gets accused of murdering a local lawyer. This is Hitchcock's palate-cleanser before his memorable three-movie run in the mid-'50s of "Dial M for Murder," "Rear Window" and "To Catch a Thief."

Here, Clift's Father Mike Logan is framed by the rectory's caretaker Otto Keller (O.E. Hasse), who donned a priest's cossack while killing the lawyer. Keller confesses to Logan, who feels sworn to silence. But soon Logan is suspected by Inspector Larrue (Karl Malden) after he was seen outside the crime scene with lovely Ruth Grandfort (a passionate Dorothy Malone), whom he'd a fling with before he went off to war and later became a Catholic priest.

Hitchcock ravels and then unravels this like a soap opera, with Clift stoic throughout and Malone dialing up the swooning to 11. The suspense wavers at times, but strong performances, especially Malden's hard-nosed cop, sweep this along to a dramatic climax. The camerawork is compelling but nothing special here. Because this is based on a Canadian play, it is set in Quebec, which presents some needless confusion amid a melange of accents. Hitchcock had the story rewritten to remove some dark elements and sand away the edges for Hollywood consumption.

Spotted: Hitchcock, himself, of course, walking across a bridge in the opening scene establishing Quebec City.

***

THE BIG NIGHT (B) - A screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr. follows a mouse of a 17-year-old as he sets out to avenge the beating of his bar-owner father by a powerful sports columnist. John Drew Barrymore (John's son, Drew's father) plays George, a wimpy nerd who grows up overnight by putting on his father's sport coat and tossing a gun in his pocket before heading out to hunt down man-about-town Al Judge (Howard St. John).

It'll turn out that Judge has a connection to the woman that George's father had dated for years but recently dumped. George's big night is an odyssey that includes the eccentric bon vivant Lloyd Cooper (Philip Bourneuf) and two sympathetic sisters, who try to rein things in a bit. 

Joseph Losey ("The Concrete Jungle") dials up the melodrama, as Barrymore pretty much has only one speed, which is verklempt. It gets exhausting at times as this fresh-faced kid slums in bars and at a boxing match, sometimes on the verge of tears. If not for Bourneuf's humorous, tipsy turn, this one would be a miserable race to justice. The cop-out at the end is actually refreshing. 

Spotted: No one notable, though Howard Chamberlain, who plays the father's bartender and roommate, almost triggered a Richard Edson alert, bearing a solid resemblance to the "Stranger Than Paradise" favorite.

***

GILDA (1946) (B+) - Rita Hayworth, in all her glory, gets ensnared in a love triangle in Buenos Aires. Her open sexuality had to be downright shocking in postwar America. 

Here, she is a kept woman of a sugar daddy, Ballin Mundsen (George Mcready), who owns a casino and who has hired a grifting gambler Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford), as his house manager. Is it a coincidence that Johnny and Gilda have a past together? What could go wrong? Well, it doesn't help that Gilda -- in a win-win scheme that makes both men jealous and angry -- takes up with a different piece of arm-candy every night of the week.  

It's no surprise that Mundson is on the take (in bed with Germans!) and that his own scheme will come to a head. Meantime, Johnny and Gilda set the template for every wisecracking will-they-or-won't-they crime-fighting TV couple from the '80s and '90s. 

The dialogue has a great deal of zing, but the plot sometimes reels in circles. It takes too long to get the point, and the ending should have come about 15 minutes sooner. But just try to take your eyes off of Hayworth -- she actually fakes the start of a striptease at one point -- during the entire 110 minutes. 

Spotted: We were shut out on this one. But props to Bess Flowers, who seemed to make a career of playing a spectator or onlooker in most of her TV and movie credits (she was at the roulette table here); and the elegantly named Symona Boniface (also hanging by the roulette table), who once starred in a musical short titled "Ankles Away."

***

CRIME WAVE (1952) (B) - Sterling Hayden chomps on toothpicks and chews up page after page of script in this tale of a snarling detective trying to solve a fatal gas station robbery by putting the screws to some ex-cons who are trying to go straight but get caught up in the aftermath.

This is one of those classic verite L.A. movies that is street smart and smart-alecky. The cop talk is mostly trite, but Hayden is so committed that you can appreciate the mix of "Dragnet" and "Hill Street Blues." His Det. Sims is mainly focused on handsome Steve Lacey ("Oklahoma!"), whose devoted wife (a compelling Phyllis Kirk) has him on the straight and narrow.

But the gang that knocked off the service station and killed a cop once did time with Lacey, and they turn to him and a veterinarian, Otto Hessler (wonderful character actor Jay Novello), whose got a bottle instead of a woman to rein himself in.

Director Andre De Toth ("House of Wax") captures the grit of Los Angeles, from City Hall to the seedier parts of town. He brings a documentary feel to scenes like the police dispatch center and a getaway driver's route. He wraps this up in a tidy 73 minutes, and Nelson's steely performance of a man desperate to leave his past behind grounds the film, balancing out Hayden. And with L.A. front and center, the cheesy dialogue gets lost in the shuffle.

Spotted: A very young Charles Bronson, billed as Charles Buchinsky, as the gang's buff leather-jacket tough. He is truly menacing throughout.

***

BRIGHTON ROCK (1948) (B-minus) - Maybe American film noir just doesn't translate into proper Brit-speak. This adaptation of a Graham Greene novel has a weak lead and is unable to sustain tension throughout. So it lags during its 92 minutes.

Teenage Pinky Brown (Richard Attenborough) leads a lackadaisical gang who are not the most loyal men after Pinky knocks off a journalist and takes up with a waitress, Rose (a wonderful Carol Marsh), to help cover his tracks. It is difficult to care about what happens the rest of the way. My recollection of the details of the plot are fizzling almost as quickly as I can type. 

The side story here is Hermione Baddeley as entertainer Ida Arnold, who gets caught up in the intrigue and starts sleuthing around to try to resolve the murder mystery. Attempts at humor fall flat, and "intrigue" is a generous word here for the needlessly convoluted plot that unfolds in fits and starts. However, this movie has one of the all-time great endings, so it's worth the slog just for that.

Spotted: No luck espying a ringer in this field of Brits.  Baddeley would go on to play the replacement maid, Mrs. Naugatuck, on TV's "Maude" in the 1970s.

Apples and Oranges

 

APPLES (A) - This study of memory and alienation stands a cut above the Greek Weird Wave. The debut feature from Christos Nikou is perfectly paced and has heart to burn.

The film follows Aris (Aris Servetalis), who has an episode of disorientation on a bus and soon is treated as suffering from the latest pandemic: amnesia. There is no cure, but the government has set up a treatment program of re-immersion into society, helping people rebuild a new life, ostensibly until friends or family track down the sufferers. They are set up in an apartment and given cassette tapes and a Polaroid camera (it's an analog world) which guide them through a series of random activities designed to imbue them with fun and social interaction.

Aris seems like he'd be quite the sad sack even if it weren't for the amnesia. He does carry over, apparently, his love for apples. At some point, Aris has a random moment of recognition of his past, but he is spooked by it and literally runs from it. It's not clear (until the end) why he might be wary of starting to remember, if in fact that's what happened. Nikou un-nests this mystery slowly and sparingly, content to follow his hero on that series of mundane adventures.

Aris inevitably meets up with a fellow amnesiac as they both carry out the same lesson (going to see "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"), and a chaste connection develops. What happens next must be seen and savored. "Apples" has the droll humor and melancholy mien of last year's "Nine Days," the mix of dread and simple joys that derive from a term spent in limbo. It's a timely theme.

LOS CONDUCTOS (C+) - A filmmaker has to meet the viewer halfway. Good luck figuring out the timeline and the narrative of this dark (literally and figuratively), moody drama. I read the synopsis and even an online explanation of the film, and I still couldn't quite follow it.

Colombian writer-director Camilo Restrepo offers up a visual tone poem, along the lines of "Atlantis" from Ukraine, but he seems to be going out of his way to confuse us about what is happening in the present and what is happening in the past -- and even who is who. This is a start:

Pinky is on the run after freeing himself from the grip of a religious sect. He finds a place to squat, but misled by his own faith, he questions everything. As he tries to put back together the pieces of his life, violent memories return to haunt him, and ask for revenge.

In the opening scene, there's a guy who shoots someone in the gut, conks someone else on the head, and hops on a motorcycle; must be Pinky fleeing the barbaric cult. He has an apparent drug problem. Strike one. He slaves away in a T-shirt factory and sleeps on cardboard. At one point, a military marching band and clowns with balloons are apparently a veiled dramatization of whatever horrible act drove Pinky to escape. 

Restrepo favors dim lighting, extreme close-ups and long static takes, often of rote tasks. He jumbles past and present, complicating it with unmarked re-creations. Some of the visuals are merely throwaway gimmicks; others are poetic (a bonfire's dancing sparks). No words are uttered for the first 10 minutes (in a movie that is 70 minutes long with credits); and then for a while Pinky won't stop cryptically explaining his murky past (taught to "kill, steal, dominate"). He is obsessed with his beloved handgun (on which he has etched, in Spanish, "This is my life"). 

I feel bad for this damaged man struggling to survive. But I would be better able to empathize with yet another junkie if he didn't just talk in riddles and parables. Restrepo is a little too clever for his own good. A viewer shouldn't have to work this hard to appreciate the author's message.

BONUS TRACK

The "Apples" trailer:

Red Hook Dumber

 A dear friend from Brooklyn recommends this obscure '90s film with a great cast.

THE SEARCH FOR ONE-EYE JIMMY (1996) (B-minus) - You probably had to be there. This no-budget Brooklyn farce is what it would be like if Spike Lee were white and had flunked out of film school.

Made in 1993 and released in 1996 to near-universal indifference (box office haul: $71,000) this slapdash production boasts what is, in retrospect, an all-star cast of actors before they made it big. The lead, Hold McCallany (not an all-star) plays Les, a neighborhood guy who went to film school out west and returns to shoot a documentary about his old Red Hook haunts. He stumbles on a hook -- "One-Eye" Jimmy Hoyt has gone missing -- and drags a cameraman around to interview a series of eccentrics who make up Jimmy's family and friends.

The true all-star of the film is Michael Badalucco (TV's "The Practice") as Joe Head (he's got a big head, you see), who accompanies Les on the caper. Badalucco is deadpan and earnest while idiots run amok. Some of his jokes are wonderfully dry. He's proud to be living independently now because he moved out of his parents' home -- and into his grandparents' house, where his grandfather hits on Joe's dates. Late in the film he goes in to talk to a crush and tells a pal, "Don't tell Grandpa; I lose all my women to him." 

The rest of the cast involves a lineup of who's-who indie favorites, most of whom are slumming in underwritten roles. They include:

• Samuel L. Jackson as a mentally unstable Vietnam veteran.
• Steve Buscemi as the missing man's Budweiser-swilling brother.
• John Turturro in a Sammy Maudlin afro as a homophobic disco dancer who pretends the '70s never ended.
• Brother Nicholas Turturro as Junior, a flashy street character (he wears gold-rimmed "subscription" glasses) who can't stop stealing cars, usually the same one repeatedly.
• Sister Aida Turturro (completing the hat trick) as a shady fortune teller.
• Anne Meara as Jimmy's weepy mother, beset by a husband who responds to stress like this with chronic priapism.
• Jennifer Beals as Ellen, Joe Head's crush. She draws a sketch of Jimmy that looks nothing like the guy. But Ellen is touted for her skills because she teaches art at Riker's Island.
• Tony Sirico as a creepy loan shark (essentially an audition for the role of Paulie Walnuts on "The Sopranos").
• And, when the missing Jimmy finally shows up at the end of the movie, he is played by Sam Rockwell, in one of his earliest roles.

Most of these roles are the epitome of thankless. Most of the actors (aside from Badalucco) embrace the absurdity but seem adrift trying to find their motivation or substance in their dialogue. The film aspires to be wacky but comes off more scatterbrained, like an old "Bowery Boys" romp directed by Tom DiCillo. But, like Joe Head, it's not without a dull charm. The gags seem intentionally stupid, in the style of "Beavis and Butt-Head," right down to the silly climactic explanation for why Jimmy went missing. 

The movie leans on the quirks of its characters, and some of the gags seem out of date. Joe Head has a habit of stuffing chicken wings in his pocket. Steve Buscemi's character makes his money using a Polaroid camera to take pictures of people next to a cardboard cut-out of a professional wrestler. Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini chases Junior around the neighborhood to retrieve his car, over and over again, like the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote. Writer-Director Sam Henry Kass offers up what is almost certainly the worst car chase scene ever captured on film (hopefully intentionally so). 

Other bits land gently and obliquely. When the mother examines the artist's rendering of Jimmy, she asks Ellen to add more broken capillaries on Jimmy's nose. When an unseen car tosses a ransom note (wrapped around a brick) at the feet of a group of knuckleheads, the note is incomplete, and then a few seconds later another brick/note comes flying in, this one explaining the drop-off procedure for the money.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the movie, though, is the obvious lack of budget. (It was apparently $75,000. Did they spend it all on the talent?) The streets of Brooklyn are almost devoid of people besides the named characters. You'll find more extras in post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies. Only a few scenes here show other people or even cars. It's like a '40s movie shot on a cheap backlot. (After I wrote that, I read an interview with Kass, who said of the neighborhood back then before gentrification, "We shot there because it looked like the end of the world.")

Kass had a short career, which included writing an episode of "Seinfeld." He debuted with this colossal bomb and likely never recovered. He hasn't had a credit since 2010.  (Here's the interview from around that time.) If anything, he deserves to have this quirky little film develop a cult status. It could be the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" of meathead movies.