Doc Watch: Illicit Behavior

 

MONEY SHOT: THE PORNHUB STORY (B+) - Netflix brings a surprisingly thorough and balanced approach to the tension, in the world of online porn, between cracking down on victims and inhibiting honest sex workers. In a perky hour-and-a-half, director Suzanne Hillinger juggles a lot of facts and personalities and weaves them into a coherent and compelling narrative.

Pornhub is the Walmart of porn, and the main rub, so to speak, began when an advocacy group and a New York Times columnist convinced Mastercard and Visa to halt its dealings with the site. It forced Pornhub to jettison millions of unverified uploads (thus, presumably, eliminating a lot of illegal content), but that move also punished small-time verified users, who lost a valuable source of quick and easy income.

The film skillfully sways back and forth in its sympathies, with the sex workers probably getting most of the benefit of the doubt. But the crusaders against child pornography and sex trafficking (who have roots in prudish Christian activism) make a strong case too. In the middle is Noelle Perdue, a former Pornhub employee, who comes off as a wise insider and an expert able to juggle all the nuances here.

The other talking heads are knowledgeable, articulate and at times rather entertaining. What could have been a throwaway and sleazy presentation is instead a meaty examination of a topic that's much more intriguing than it looks.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF FENTANYL (B) - This PBS documentary about a safe-shoot-up clinic for drug addicts in Vancouver could use a little less fly-on-the-wall edginess and a little more context, but it nonetheless is effective at offering a sobering glimpse of a ragtag group of people trying to prevent overdoses and save lives.

Newcomer Colin Askey embeds with the crew of workers and volunteers -- many of them in recovery themselves -- at the Overdose Prevention Society, a storefront in the city's Eastside neighborhood, as they perform Job-like work tending to addicts looking for a fix. At any time an overdose can occur, and the team has Narcan at the ready.

We watch one man make strides with his sobriety, but the focus is on the manager, Ronnie, who wearily soldiers on after years in the urban trenches. The hirsute bear of a man is lovingly called Narcan Jesus, and he provides the film with an ending that is both hopeful and heartbreaking. 

But Askey does not deify anyone here. You realize that this is an uphill battle, a blip in the wave of fentanyl deaths sweeping across North America. These lives are fragile, and don't beat yourself up if a thought flashes through your mind about how and whether we go all out to rescue these lost souls.

No-man's land

 

SOUTH MOUNTAIN (2019) (B+) - This is a lyrical visual essay about a woman dealing with the dissolution of her marriage. It's not a tragedy, but rather a mere slice of life. Talia Balsam anchors a uniquely lived-in drama, full of authentic characters.

Lila (Balsam) lives an idyllic existence in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York with her writer husband Edgar (a solid Scott Cohen, Max from "Gilmore Girls") and their blended family. (She married him after his wife, her best friend, died.) Lila's pal Gigi (Andrus Nichols) is dealing with breast cancer, while their daughters fall in and out of friendship. Edgar's bad habit of infidelity hits a crescendo when his girlfriend gives birth, and Edgar finally moves out, triggering traumas of his past infidelities for Lila and her family.

Edgar's older daughter Sam (a sharp Macualee Cassaday) has a skeptical view of her parents' relationship, understandably. Sam's friend Jonah (Michael Oberholtzer) hangs around doing odd jobs and ends up in bed with Lila, who treats him as nothing more than cynical payback to her spouse, or merely a scratch to an itch. Naian Gonzalez Norvind is the secret weapon here as sharp-tongued Dara, the daughter of both Lila and Edgar.

Balsam has an even keel, and her wistful Lila grounds this deeply satisfying dramedy. She plays well against Cohen as her selfish husband, Nichols as her best friend, and especially Norvind's Dara. They are all surrounded by a wonderfully detailed set, centered around a summer house stuffed with a lifetime's worth of detritus. This comes from writer-director Hilary Braugher ("Stephanie Daley," "Innocence"), who has crafted a quiet, authentic chronicle of a familiar story of a middle-aged woman.

NO BEARS (C) - Jafar Panahi has made some brilliant films, but his latest is alternatively confusing and inert, a sloppy story about people limited by oppressive governments. It is honorable that Panahi traveled to the Iranian border to craft a meta-narrative about border politics; I wish it held together as a coherent narrative.

Panahi plays himself, a director who has gone close to the Iranian border with Turkey but who hides out in a remote rented house and directs the film-within-a-film remotely. The film he is making is about a couple -- based on a real couple he knows -- trying to cross from Turkey to Iran; meantime, Panahi gets caught up in some local intrigue in the Iranian village, as a young couple is planning to cross the border in the other direction.

It's an interesting set-up and a meta concept nested within a meta concept; if only Panahi had presented it that clearly and sensibly during his 106-minute odyssey. If it hadn't been so dull it might have been easier to engage with and follow. Furthermore, Panahi is just not a dynamic screen presence, and he is featured in nearly every scene.

Panahi, the man (as opposed to the actor), is a heroic filmmaker. He is a renegade fighting his government and willing to walk the walk, as he now sits in prison for his crimes of creating art. He brilliantly depicted his house arrest more than a decade ago in "This Is Not a Film," and he produced a much better meta experiment with "Jafar Panahi's Taxi." Not all of these experiments will pan out. Even great filmmakers can have an off year.

Don't Mention It

 

THE SILENT TWINS (A-minus) - Agnieszka Smoczynska has such an inventive, natural feel for filmmaking that her movies are a wonder to watch. She takes sophisticated ideas and presents them with flair but doesn't detract from the gravitas of the story she is telling. 

We discovered her with "The Lure," the "trippy fever dream, a nostalgic horror musical" about a pair of mermaids emerging from the sea to fulfill their dream of becoming cheesy lounge singers. Smoczynska gets a little more sober here with the true-life period piece about twin sisters who spend most of their life refusing to speak to anyone -- not their parents or their teachers or even psychologists. Cute boys are excepted. And, of course, they talk to each other, building a rich twin inner life.

Smoczynska takes a rich script by Andrea Seigel ("Laggies") and makes it come alive through the intimate interactions between her stars, narrative urgency, and rich fantasy sequence. Letitia Wright stars as June Gibbons, the sister who would channel her creativity into publishing a book, and Tamara Lawrence plays her sister Jennifer, who seems to be the more adventurous and troubled of the two. It is Jennifer who will have the confidence to seduce a jock at school and eventually lead the sisters toward a stupid crime of vandalism that would get them locked up in a psychiatric facility -- and separated, painfully, for the first time.

The film starts in the '70s when these daughters of Caribbean immigrants are little and struggling to fit into their working-class UK environment. (At that age, the sisters are played by Leah Mondesir-Simmons as June and Eva-Arianna Baxter as Jennifer. The casting is spot-on from childhood to young adulthood.) As little girls, their bedroom comes alive with their imaginative stories and artwork and their vivid conversations. They have a fondness for Marc Bolan and T.Rex. But as soon as there is a knock on the door, they fall silent. Out in public they do little more than bow their heads and exchange glances.

As young adults, their challenges only deepens, as they are expected to eventually connect with the rest of the world. Their confinement feels soul-crushing.

Wright and Lawrence never sag under the weight of their monumental roles. And Smoczynska finds a tricky balance between the somber dirge of the narrative and the playfulness of the sisters when they create stories or act out. Those looking for the standard fare of a harrowing biopic dealing with mental health should look elsewhere; rather than try to figure out the roots of the psychosis on display, the film merely offers a representation of what it was like at the time. Do yourself a favor and don't look up the real story of the Gibbons sisters online; instead, start with this fascinating deep dive into the twisted world of troubled twins.

BONUS TRACKS

In addition to period songs from the likes of T. Rex and the Clash, the soundtrack revels in nuggets from the early disco era. Here is one we never heard before, Helen Banks with "Starlight":

And then there is Hot Chocolate ("You Sexy Thing") with the Shaftian "Put Your Love in Me":

Creative Partners

 

TURN EVERY PAGE (A-minus) - This documentary about the half-century collaboration between LBJ biographer Robert Caro and editor Robert Gottlieb is a labor of love by Gottlieb's daughter, Lizzie. It is a fascinating, and very personal, study of two true titans of publishing.

Caro, a ferociously diligent investigative journalist, broke big in 1974 with "The Power Broker," a legendary tome about the man who created the modern New York City. Caro was paired on that project with Gottlieb, who would head up Knopf publishing and, later, the New Yorker magazine, and the two remained business partners forever. Each man is the personification of old-school dedication to the written word.

Caro learned from a news editor early on to leave no stone unturned when sifting through research documents, or, as the title reminds us, to "turn every page." His three-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson has morphed into a five-volume life mission, with the fifth installment still pending perilously, as both men were pushing 90 when the movie was being made. His books are about more than just the men who serve as his subjects, but also about the accumulation and effects of political power -- and thus they tell deeply American stories. 

Other writers and editors, both old and young, are on hand to attest to the brilliance of Caro's chronicles. They also have deep admiration for Gottlieb, who estimates that he has edited between 600 and 700 books in his career, including such foundational titles as "Catch-22" (he changed the number from 18) and authors like Toni Morrison. Bill Clinton is on hand to sing Gottlieb's praises and to admit that he feels like a "lost little boy" after Gottlieb, at 89, took a pass on editing Clinton's latest book. 

Both men are pre-eminent storytellers -- Caro, in particular, is riveting as he reveals how he finally got LBJ's brother to open up to him about the Johnsons' childhood -- and they have character and charisma to burn. Gottlieb drops witticisms effortlessly -- like his observation that it's much easier to be adorable than to be industrious. Talking heads -- including the New Yorker's famous comma queen, Mary Norris -- go beyond kindly bon mots to break down the nuts and bolts about the trades of writing and editing. (Norris and others offer a playful disquisition on the semicolon, for example.) 

Perhaps the secret weapon of this film is that it is a valentine to the classic era of storytelling. Caro hand-writes his first drafts before typing them out, using carbon paper as a backup. Gottlieb, an inveterate reader since childhood, plies his trade with a yellow pencil. Just watching the lost art of detailed reporting and editing play out on the screen can make certain viewers a little misty-eyed. A few little touches pay off.  We are treated to personal details like Caro's voluminous trove of carbon copies (stashed above his fridge) and Gottlieb's quirky collection of purses.

But even though this is a delectable story, it runs too long. Lizzie Gottlieb, like other recent documentarians (see the Kurt Vonnegut bio), insists on inserting herself into the story, from beginning, middle and end. (We don't need multiple shots of photos of her as a little girl with her parents; footage of her wedding; or scenes with her son walking through a bookstore with his grandfather.) This story could have been told in a tad over 90 minutes; as it is, it runs nearly two hours. Ironically, the filmmaker could have benefited from more editing.

SIRENS (B+) - This chronicle of a female death-metal band in Lebanon -- let the uniqueness of that sink in -- is a little too arty, but it does a fine job of exploring the personalities of and relationship between the band's guitarists, who share the spotlight and open themselves up to examination. It is a study of female sexuality, bonding and empowerment in a restrictive society.

Lilas (above, left) is big-haired and ballsy, pretty openly lesbian, and confident, whereas Shery (right) comes off as hesitant and a bit insecure. The women, firmly in their 20s, and their bandmates in Sleeping With Sirens appear to be earnest and dedicated to their music, even if there isn't much of an apparent fan base, illustrated by a sad performance in front of a smattering of fans on the D stage of a British music festival. 

Filmmaker Rita Baghdadi embeds herself in the lives of Lilas and Shery, and the intimacy pays off. We also are privy to rehearsals and songwriting sessions, where the music seems much more nuanced and thoughtful than the noise that gets spewed onstage. Baghdadi tries too hard, though, to put a high gloss on the cinematography and scene choices. Too often, situations appear to be staged, with the camera happening to be in just the right place, at just the right angle, to perfectly capture a given moment, sometimes in soft focus. 

But deep down this is a moving story of two women struggling for their art. It helps that the subjects -- Lilas, in particular, especially when she decides to trim that mop of hair of hers -- are relatable and admirable.

Split Decision: 'Tar,' Part 2

 

 In this experiment, we paused a movie roughly midway through and reviewed it just from that perspective. (It was so bad that we were confident it wouldn't get better, or good enough to earn a recommendation.)  Here is that first review. We have now watched the rest of the movie and review it further, to see if anything has changed.

TAR (C) - So we made it to the end and bumped the grade up half a notch. It's still a failed spectacle. 

We paused at an interesting moment, around the 95-minute mark (with still another hour-plus to go), because "Tar" is certainly a very different film in its last hour. (And it needn't have spent a full hour and a half creaking along with a weak set-up.) As chickens start to come home to roost for the rapacious Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett), director Todd Field turns this into a low-rent horror film, with her grotesque gothic Berlin apartment building standing in for the Dakota Building in "Rosemary's Baby."

Whereas in the first half, Tar had insomnia, the final hour is full of her waking from disturbing dreams. She loses her grip on reality at times, including a bizarre sequence where she wanders into the basement of a dilapidated apartment complex and runs off frightened, leading to a nasty fall. (This essay, which includes a lot of spoilers, goes even further and makes the case that maybe most of the final hour takes place in Tar's head. I wouldn't go that far, but the author makes some good points.)

In the spirit of Part 1 of this review, let us pause to relate some more annoyances, in bullet form:

• Tar is often called "maestra" to her face, as if this were a bad episode of "Seinfeld."
• It seems like we get the same shot of a sleepless Tar, in bed with eyes open, nearly a half-dozen times.
• Would it surprise you to learn that this pampered diva comes from humble roots? Ben Affleck and Matt Damon would have a lighter touch than Field shows with his clunky reveal.
• Like a bad episode of "The Good Wife," a lawsuit apparently gets filed (unclear if Tar is a defendant) and a deposition gets immediately scheduled, which never happens so quickly in the real world. 

Richard Brody, my nemesis from the New Yorker (we don't agree on movies very often), nails a lot of the problems with "Tar," which he deems a regressive film, considering it mocking, sneering and derisive. In his review, he notes how director Field tries to have it both ways -- the famed conductor is accused of misdeeds, but Field presents the film from her point of view and keeps the details so vague that we will be tempted to give her the benefit of the doubt. We agree that the film is "utterly unilluminating" about her work as a conductor and composer. He chastises Field for daring to equate -- or, at the very least, hint at an equivalence between -- the so-called cancellation of Tar with the de-Nazification of Germany after World War II. (This involves a bizarre and unnecessary conversation she has with yet another old white man.)

Brody concludes: "The careful ambiguities of 'Tar' offer a sort of plausible deniability to its relentlessly conservative button-pushing, and its aesthetic is no less regressive, conservative, and narrow."

In the final hour of the film, we finally get some action (thus the bump in grade), but too much of the plot development feels rushed, especially coming after an hour and a half of plodding table-setting. Field continues to offer excuses for his misbehaving star, including letting her fabricate a physical attack in order to engender sympathy for this predator.

In our 2022 year-end review, we lamented the over-indulgence of mid-career auteurs, and this is a prime example of a pampered filmmaker given every opportunity to just run rampant with flabby storytelling. It does, though, have a pretty good ending.

Split Decision: 'Tar,' Part 1

 In this experiment, we are pausing a movie roughly midway through so that we can review it just from that perspective. (It's so bad that we are confident it won't get better, or good enough to earn a recommendation.) We will then watch the rest of the movie and review it further, to see if anything has changed.

TAR (C-minus) - How can a movie annoy thee? Let me count the ways. "Tar" is the award-hungry mature art film that is such a spotlight for Cate Blanchett that you truly ache for her every time her tightly wound conductor twitches and tics or belts out pinpoint-perfect diatribe after diatribe. Oh, the Hollywood trope of the tortured artist. R.I.P., Kirk Douglas.

This film, by the occasional would-be auteur Todd Field ("In the Bedroom," "Little Children"), is perpetually maddening right out of the gate, when we are expected to (maybe?) be able to read a blurry text on a shaky cell phone. I took notes on the parade of irritations:

• The film starts out with an extended string of credits (in small type), minutes long, like you'd see at the end of a modern film. 
• The opening scene is about 8 minutes of a long interview with Lydia Tar (Blanchett) by real New Yorker columnist Adam Gopnik that goes on and on, basically a way to recite her biography for the viewer and to tell us immediately that she is so full of herself that it's leaking out of her pores. We see her assistant in the wings doing that thing where a person mouths along to what is being said onstage because she wrote it.
• Her assistant -- who apparently is a well-regarded conductor in her own right but acts like a lowly servant -- is played at full mope by poor misused Noemie Merlant ("Portrait of a Lady on Fire," a movie that knows how to treat an artist).
• At the 17-minute mark I noted "nothing has happened so far."
• Then there's another interview with Tar.
• She is constantly name-dropping (because she is hyper-intellectual, vain and apparently insecure, you see), names like Max Bruch. (Who? Yeah, I turned it into a sober drinking game. Every time Tar mentioned a name I hooted out "Who?") Tar, of course, pronounces Bruch's name absolutely perfectly -- because she's perfect -- just like she pronounces Bach as "Bahhh," swallowing the C.
  
• At the 25-minute mark I noted "nothing has happened so far." There is no hint of a plot for at least the full hour.
• Did I mention that this thing is going to run 2 hours and 37 minutes? Strap in.
• So far, there has also been virtually no music (this is a movie about a conductor, mind you), except from some foreign-language vocals over those tedious credits). Wait, a few bars of something trickle in briefly at the 32-minute mark.
  
• "Marin Alsop."Who?! (NOT a fan of the movie, either.)
  
• No one talks the way Lydia Tar does. She comes across as someone speed-reading a script, which is actually what Blanchett is doing. She never hesitates or stammers or comes up with anything other than le mot juste.
  
• In fact, Tar, at least three times, criticizes another person as being "robotic." Ah, but you see, that might be a light case of projection ... because, in fact ... she's the robot!! Screenwriting 101, my friends.
  
• One full hour in, we finally see her actually being a conductor. At least we see Blanchett mimicking the moves of a conductor based on her exhaustive research into even the tiniest of flourishes of a real conductor.
• But there is very little conducting done in the movie, especially when compared with the amount of time she spends at lunches with old men.
  
• There are several languages spoken casually here (but of course, our brilliant heroine is polylingual), but all of a sudden, during an exchange in German, there are no subtitles anymore. Oh, well, I guess most of us won't know what was just said. Must not be crucial to the plot -- or whatever plot we assume will eventually pop up.
• There is a lot of mumbling and whispering and speed-talking, making some of the dialogue unintelligible. We rewound and rewatched one line three times and could barely make a word of it. We went back one more times and engaged the subtitles. The assistant, being comforted by Tar, is sniffling (and whispering) about a lost love, and a million guesses would have never cracked the code. The assistant says, "I can't stop thinking about our trip up the Ucayali." Who? Where?! (Bzzt! It's a river in Peru.)
• 70 minutes in, the plot begins. It has something to do with Tar -- an apparent womanizing lesbian -- having had been mean to a former student, driving the poor woman (we never see her face, of course) to desperation. Meantime, she seems to be grooming a new cellist, right under the nose of Tar's partner who sits a few chairs over with the violins.
• This is also one of those movies where characters -- even super-geniuses -- think they can just empty out their Sent email folder and no one will ever discover the nastygrams they fired off to destroy that former student's career. (I bet someone will find them! We'll just have to wait and see.)
  

So, Lydia Tar is a tightly wound genius who flashes a fairly dark mean streak occasionally, though she comes off as more autistic than diabolical. She dresses down an overly sensitive student of color in the class she teaches for refusing to dig Bach because the composer was a personally repulsive old white guy. Take that, Gen Z! Tar also goes onto the playground of her daughter's school to confront the daughter's bully. What a stone-cold meanie!

This emotionally retarded elitist in fitted suits is unpleasant to be around.  Blanchett is trying way too hard here. (No one else is really worth mentioning , because the star sucks the oxygen out of every scene she's in.) I wouldn't have stuck around nearly as long as I did with the film if (a) my partner wasn't somehow enjoying the movie, despite my exasperated critical hysterics throughout (talk about annoying), or (b) I hadn't come up with this little gimmick of having a go at the first half of a bad film before watching the rest of it. It made what would have been a Life Is Short plug pull somewhat bearable.

This supposedly has a decent ending. Stay tuned for Part 2.

Soundtrack of Your Life: R.I.P., Wayne Shorter

 

This is an odd one. I am not a jazz fan at all. It too often sounds noodly and pretentious. Aside from a little Mingus here, a little Miles there, I just never got into it.

Last Saturday, we ventured to the Northeast Heights in search of a burger. We settled on a place that we had known as a burger joint in Nob Hill and of all nights the venue featured a jazz band from the University of New Mexico, showcasing some graduates of the neighborhood high school. The place doesn't serve burgers anymore, so I didn't get a burger and had to sit through jazz. But the non-burgers were tasty, the kids were pretty good, and they played a fine version of "Blue Moon," the sentimental favorite, so it wasn't a bust.

I did try, back during my formative years, to explore my feelings toward another style of music besides the pop and rock I grew up with. I had a lot of alone time during high school, so I had a chance to explore a bit. That's how I discovered Willie Nelson and the various forms of country -- such as outlaw and Hank Williams -- and why I'm a fan to this day.

When it came to jazz, my attempt featured the group Weather Report, circa 1980. This was back in the olden days when WXRT in Chicago (now owned by a conglomerate) was more experimental when crafting its playlist and would still throw in a jazz piece here and there. One of those was "Birdland" by Weather Report, featuring Wayne Shorter (below, right) on soprano and tenor saxophones. The first time I heard the boppy little number I was hooked. 

It was around the same time that the lite-jazz vocal group Manhattan Transfer was getting Grammy notice, and they scored airplay with a lyric-version of "Birdland," originally an instrumental written in 1977 by Joe Zawinul (below, left), the keyboardist in Weather Report. So it wasn't an obscure song at the time.

I splurged on a vinyl copy of Weather Report's "8:30," a double album recorded in Santa Monica and released in August 1979. I'm certain that it was junior year (perhaps the loneliest of the four high school years) that I dove into that album. I swooned to "Birdland," over and over, of course, but I scratched my head at most of the rest, including a skronky deconstruction of Bob Hope's theme song "Thanks for the Memory." Something about the combination of experimental jazz and old man Hope just gave me the willies.

But I never got over the swingin' suavity of "Birdland." I can hear the jazz purists scoff. It's cutesy and repetitive. The New York Times obit doesn't mention it. My clinging to it is probably the equivalent of someone claiming to be a rock 'n' roll fan by citing Chuck Berry and "My Ding-a-Ling." That's OK. 

I never followed Weather Report much, and there are probably no more than 10 CDs in my "jazz collection." (I've taken multiple runs at Coltrane and failed every time.) But I always perked up when I ran across the names of Zawinul and Shorter. Wayne Shorter died this week at age 89. When I think of him, I think of those seven minutes of "Birdland." It's still impossible for me not to whistle along -- and to think of the jazz aficionado I could have been. 

BONUS TRACK

One more knife-stick to the gut of the jazz world, and a whole nother separate essay about the indelible memory I have of discovering this album in my best friend's basement freshman year -- Shorter did the tenor-sax solo for Steely Dan's "Aja":

 

Purgatory

 A pair streaming on the Fandor site:

JETHICA (A-minus) - A clever, simple story is buoyed by a stellar ensemble cast to explore the ideas of obsessive relationships, hauntings and atonement. On the surface, it tells the story of Jessica, who is fleeing a stalker and ends up back near her hometown outside Santa Fe, N.M., where she runs into an old friend. It turns out Jessica's stalker is more of a ghost, and her friend is dealing with her own apparition. 

If that sounds contrived, it's not. Neither is it yet another cookie-cutter horror film, thank goodness. No, it's a smart, thoughtful, concise (72-minute), ruminative buddy film and quasi road movie. Jessica (Ashley Denise Robinson) has a situation on her hands as she drives through the Southwest, and she agrees to pull over and crash with Elena (Callie Hernandez), who is lying low in her grandmother's trailer out in the middle of nowhere. They don't seem to have been close friends back in school, but they bond over their respective predicaments.

Meanwhile, Jessica's "stalker," Kevin (an inspired Will Madden) besieges the trailer with his paeans of devotion to the object of his obsession, pardon his slight lisp, Jethica. The movie trailer lets slip what's really going on here; suffice it to say that Elena has learned a few tricks on how to deal with those trapped between worlds. What's interesting is that Elena and Jessica are themselves trapped in their own netherworlds. They are living off the grid, on the run, paying penance for their perceived sins.

All of this plays out efficiently on a micro-budget with a script attributed to director Pete Ohs and his four principal actors (including Andy Faulkner as Benny), suggesting a lot of improv and a healthy amount of quirk. While Kevin's rants are off the charts, the other dialogue, especially between the women, feels spare and lived-in. Robinson has a way of conveying a lot of meaning merely with subtle looks. Hernandez -- a charismatic cross between Parker Posey and Selma Blair, with a droll Allison Williams delivery -- is the key go-between among the other three. Madden makes his madness almost lovable, and Faulkner wraps things up with a slam dunk of a final scene. 

You can try to write this off as a knock-off Mumblecore spook session, but it's better than you might expect, a director and his quartet of actors bringing their A game. (Note: Some New Mexicans might be distracted at the end of the movie. It purports to take place entirely near Santa Fe, an hour north of Albuquerque, but the final scene, based on a prominent road sign, takes place near Socorro, which is an hour south of Albuquerque.) 

L'ICEBERG (2007) (C) - From Belgium comes this trifle from what seems like a long-ago era. It's a chronically quirky story of a woman who spends the night locked in a restaurant cooler who then becomes obsessed with making a pilgrimage to the polar region to commune with icebergs. 

Because her husband and children, back in their soulless suburb, didn't even miss her while she was gone overnight, Fiona (Fiona Gordon), struck with existential angst, flees on a journey of self-discovery. She eventually meets a deaf-mute sailor (what luck!) who will guide her on the final leg of her mission. 

Three people, including the movie's husband and wife, wrote and directed this broad farce. Gordon is a wild physical comedian -- a bit Lucy, a bit Olive Oyl -- and Dominique Abel is droll as the husband. The film has a whiff of "Amelie's" whimsy, with choreographed set-pieces. However, the slapstick is more Mr. Bean than Marx Brothers.

Beyond the spectacle of the cartoon-like proceedings, the story is just too listless to maintain even a thin 84-minute running time. It's just a little too silly to matter.

Cinema Verite

 

SEARCHING FOR MR. RUGOFF (2021) (B+) - Donald Rugoff is the subject of this deep dive into the heady days of the American new wave of the 1960s and '70s, tracking the machinations of the film distributor and theater owner who became a legend in New York's film world.

By all accounts a real prick of a boss, Rugoff was a dogged progenitor of the independent film scene, opening cinemas that would set the template for the art houses that would proliferate in the '70s, known for their mix of indie releases, foreign films and revivals (and splashy events, like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"). Director Ira Deutchman -- in his first foray behind the camera but a longtime player in marketing and distribution himself (Cinecom, Fine Line Features) -- sifts through newspaper clips and tracks down key players in Rugoff's story.

We hear from a host of Rugoff's former employees (to a person recalling an unpleasant man who expected them to be workaholics like he was), a former wife (who eventually gave up playing second fiddle to the movie industry), and some of the filmmakers who owed a debt to the man, such as Costa-Gavras ("Z"), Robert Downey Sr. ("Putney Swope") and Lena Wertmueller ("The Seduction of Mimi"), in one of her final interviews.

Beyond Rugoff's personality and accomplishments, Deutchman reanimates a golden era of film-going. Rugoff was a showman; he built lavishly designed theaters and lobbies, and he was an imaginative marketer -- as responsible as anyone for the success of Monty Python's "Holy Grail," in part by dressing up local actors in knight's costumes and having them gambol about Manhattan, for example. Not content with mere movie posters, Rugoff hired an artist to create elaborate window dioramas for new releases at his main theater.

Deutchman, as documentarians like to do these days, injects himself into the story (he was one of the former employees), but he makes it work, and his playfulness with the narrative makes for captivating viewing. Take a trip back to a great era of American filmmaking.

DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY (1968) (A) - We revisited this foundational outsider film, a micro-budget experiment from journeyman Jim McBride about an obsessive filmmaker who documents his life falling apart during one summer week in New York. As we put it after discovering it in 2006:

It's perhaps the first-ever mockumentary, about a guy dealing with a breakup. It was shot in summer 1967 in New York, and 98 percent of it is legit -- the sounds and the images of the city are not made up. The film is a jarring immersion in that place and time. More real than real, it seems.

David (L.M. Kit Carson) -- in a persona that would eventually be familiar to modern influencers and vloggers, albeit in condensed iPhone/internet form -- lugs a 16mm Eclair film camera, Lavalier microphone and reel-to-reel recording deck with him wherever he goes, capturing not just Manhattan in a particular moment of time, but also the minutiae of his life through confessional diary entries spoken directly into the camera. His antics include hounding his model girlfriend, Penny (Eileen Dietz), at all hours of the day and night; when he secretly films her sleeping in the nude, she finally flees him for good. Depressed, he films his TV habit during one evening, and we get a hyper-speed montage of fleeting images from an actual night of network TV: "Batman," "Star Trek" and shows by Dean Martin and Joey Bishop, commercials and all.

McBride scripts a few monologues for side characters, including Sandra (Louise Levine), a sexed-up potty-mouth who playfully harangues David from her car while paused in traffic. Another character, in Godardian fashion, offers meta-commentary on the impossibility of pointing a camera at something or someone and expecting to capture true reality; the presence of the camera alters reality as soon as the 24-frames-per-second start rolling.

"David Holzman's Diary" created quite a stir when it traversed the festival circuit during the summer of love. It isn't revealed until the end credits that it's a work of fiction, and the crowd reportedly booed in San Francisco at the deception. McBride and Carson started out just goofing around with the equipment and turned a germ of an idea into a feature. McBride borrows not just from the French New Wave but also the groundbreaking documentary techniques of the Maysles brothers and D.A. Pennebaker. It truly is fascinating to be immersed in a specific moment and place in time -- AM radio provides a vague running commentary throughout, and we hear news reports out of Vietnam and snippets of Top 40 songs.

Carson is an engaging figure. (He didn't have much of an acting career, but he would go on to write "Breathless" and "Paris, Texas" in the '80s.) David is flustered by the turn of events -- just as he starts documenting his life it begins unraveling, leaving him bereft by the time the powerful ending rolls around. This is not just a mesmerizing time capsule, but also a clever, moving character study. 

Herstory

 

WOMEN TALKING (C+) - Well, it is right there in the title. Truth in advertising. This is a movie about women talking. Whether it seems tedious to you will depend on your point of view and your tolerance for showy performances.

Sarah Polley offers a stagey and over-acted drama about abused women debating whether to leave their Amish-like religious cult. And boy, do they debate it. While all the evil men are away (improbably), some of the women meet in a hay loft to argue over whether they should stay (and possibly rebel against the men) or escape (and possibly doom their souls to hell).

The film is based on a Miriam Toews novel, which itself is launched from a true story of a Mennonite colony in Bolivia in the 1950s. It feels odd to place this in what seems like a North American setting in the year 2010; while it might be understandable for women to feel trapped and without options 60-plus years ago in the middle of South America, that feels more like an implausible conceit in modern times. 

That's a shaky foundation for a bleak drama, and the performances of the women never fit well together. Rooney Mara is the surprise powerhouse here (like in "Carol"), hitting just the right tone as the pregnant Ona, with a crush on the man who watches over the women and takes notes of their deliberations, August (Ben Whishaw), whose job it is to teach the schoolboys. Jessie Buckley (much better in "The Lost Daughter" and "Wild Rose") bursts with promise, but she can't seem to find a consistent voice as Mariche, who lives with a particularly abusive husband. The short straw, though, goes to Claire Foy as angry Salome, who wants to stay and fight; Foy comes off as strident, as if she is on stage playing to the cheap seats. Frances McDormand offers little more than an uninteresting cameo.

Nothing comes together here. It all feels like jagged ideas tossed together into a sluggish narrative. Much of the "action" takes place in that hay loft, giving this a claustrophobic air. Whishaw's August cries a bunch of times, and you wonder why Mara's Ona would fall for such a sap, even if he is the opposite of the unseen brutes. In the final reel, Polley rushes toward a Cecile B. DeMille ending that feels undeserved. Besides, it's 2010; even if they choose to leave, how far will they get in their horse-drawn wagon, trailing a bunch of kids, and with no money. Do we care? It's clearly fiction.

PAMELA: A LOVE STORY (B) - The bombshell Pamela Anderson gets a sympathetic portrayal in a rote documentary that nonetheless reveals layers of Anderson that you might not expect. She comes off as thoughtful and introspective -- would you believe she has kept a diary most of her life? 

Director Ryan White, who has also profiled tennis champ Serena Williams and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, hangs with Anderson during COVID days, when she has let her guard down and retreated to her ancestral home in British Columbia. (Yet another fun fact: she's Canadian!) Now in her 50s, she often appears here without makeup and in baggy clothes, suggesting that she has finally been freed from whatever obsessive diet that gave her a famously waspy figure. 

Anderson reflects on the good, the bad and the ugly of her life, most notably the whirlwind romance with rock drummer Tommy Lee. (That was only one of six of her marriages; the most recent one comes and goes during the course of filming.) She still comes off as willfully naive about the whole sex-tape scandal. But she gets to make the case that she at least has some acting chops to go with her sex appeal, including a recent run on Broadway in "Chicago."

While the career highlights help structure the narrative, it's the small personal moments that make the movie. She might have played a bunch of bubbleheads on the screen, but she actually is rather meditative, even a bit philosophical, in her day-to-day life. Let's wish her luck on that path to tranquility. 

BONUS TRACK

To drive home its tone-deaf nature, "Women Talking" heavily features the old Monkees hit, "Daydream Believer." Here is the version by the songwriter, John Stewart:

New to the Queue

 February is the bluest month, but it's a light blue, like a sky blue ...

We just can't quit the guy, especially when it's his big swan song, "Magic Mike's Last Dance."

Matt Johnson makes good movies ("The Dirties," "Operation Avalanche"), so we're stoked for his comic retelling of the rise and fall of a onetime tech darling, "Blackberry."

A documentary about an obscure power-pop band from Chicago in the 1990s, "Out of Time: The Material Issue Story."

Another band from the heartland that you might never heard of, but who have one of the great compilations CDs, "We Were Famous, You Don't Remember: The Embarrassment." 

From Finland, a journey of love, "The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic."

Holy Crap!* Fine Young Cannibals

 

BONES AND ALL (D) - Luca Guadagnino has been in a downward spiral for years now, and let's hope he has finally hit rock bottom. The man who once brought us "I Am Love" and "A Bigger Splash" -- two of the finest films of the 21st century -- has been wallowing in self-indulgent melodrama for years now.

His fascination with Timothee Chalamet -- the pouty, pretty star of the lumbering "Call Me By Your Name" -- has led him down a disastrous road. And here we have a road movie -- at least a weak attempt at one -- that is also a mess from start to finish. Hey, how about an earnest drama about two young adults coming to terms with their shared affliction -- cannibalism. 

The drama that unfolds is, too often, downright laughable -- as in accidentally funny and just weird overall. The gore -- the chomping of flesh -- is rampant. It is simply unpleasant to sit through.

Chalamet co-stars as moody Lee, a 130-pound bad-ass, who is drawn to 18-year-old Maren (Taylor Russell), who has newly set out on her own and is discovering her full powers as a cannibal. She recently learned -- from a creepy old stranger (Mark Rylance in "Cape Fear" De Niro territory) with a stereotypical southern accent -- that "eaters" can smell each other, and thus sustain some sort of noble underground railroad of freaks who crave human flesh. These outcasts literally sniff the air, as if they are floating cartoon animals hot on the scent of a freshly baked pie.

Chalamet mumbles a lot and clenches his jaw to show that he's conveying emotions. He seems to be channeling Nicolas Cage's over-the-top character in "Valley Girl" -- but as if it were being parodied, like in "Walk Hard." Russell seems talented but completely adrift in an under-defined role. I felt bad for Russell having to interact with her co-stars. She had to cuddle up with Chalamet's bony physique, and the two have zero chemistry together.  And she not only endures leers and slurs from Rylance's character, but he also lies on top of her at one point, literally drooling. Why would anyone think to put a young actress through that? There certainly is little payoff to the scenes in this unfortunate movie.

I felt bad for Mark Rylance, too. There is no salvaging his spooky hick stalker. Rylance is considered, at least in his IMDb intro, "the greatest stage actor of his generation." (I'd never seen one of his movies before. Or his stage plays, for that matter.) Here he is reduced to a stereotypical menacing simpleton.

So, as far as the lead performances go -- whether it was their fault or not -- this film has three strikes against it. That doesn't even count the wretched writing, and just the overall cravenness of the idea in the first place.

"Bones and All" fails at every attempt at allegory it might have been trying to make:  addiction; otherness; coming out; the struggles of adolescence; child abuse; parental abandonment; stalking. Any serious analysis along those lines fails as a fool's errand. Maren seeks solace in a tape recording made by her father, and those snippets start out as a clever narrative device, but the drip-drip of these mundane musings become irritating by the second half of the film.

It all reaches a silly climax.  As Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's turgid soundtrack bleats on, Chalamet utters some final lines to his co-star that are as predictable as they are unintentionally funny. From beginning to end, this is an ill-advised dud.

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

Motley Crews

 

BROKER (B) - This is a low-key follow-up by Hirokazu Kore-eda to his impeccable shaggy dog story from 2018, "Shoplifters." Like that previous film, the writer-director cobbles together a makeshift family that lives just outside the law. This slow-paced effort provides diminishing returns.

Song Kang-ho ("Parasite") and Gang Dong-won play a mismatched pair -- the first, older, runs a laundry and the second is a former soccer star who grew up in an orphanage. They run a hustle in which they take babies left at a church's drop box and hawk them on the black market. 

The baby's mother in this case, So-young (Lee Ji-eun), comes back for the baby and finds the pair, joining them in finding a suitable couple for the baby boy. This road-trip gang is joined by a boy, a major soccer fan, who escapes the orphanage to join the adventure, in what is portrayed to outsiders as an extended family. The group is tagged by two police detectives, including Bae Doona, stealing the show as Soo-jin, a hardened cop, partial to stuffing her face during stakeouts as she patiently tracks her prey.

The film is sweet and smart, but it never quite takes off. It is more of a series of vignettes, both amusing and touching. The narrative is knitted together neatly, and the performances are all strong (even the boy, always clinging to that soccer ball is charming). Lee comes off as pretty and shrewd, showing just enough maternal instinct to insist on finding the right home for her newborn. But it's the stone-faced Bae who quietly grounds the film, determined not to let these brokers get away with their crime.

I LOVE YOU MAN (2009) (A) - Everything comes together here to create comic gold -- a fine idea, solid jokes and a deep, talented cast. Paul Rudd takes command as a bumbling mensch who is set to get married but has no pool of friends from which to put together a stable of groomsmen.

Rudd plays goofy Peter Klaven, an L.A. real estate agent who is looking for a big score by selling the home of Lou Ferrigno (playing himself), aka the original Incredible Hulk. Peter is in love with his fiancee, Zooey (Rashida Jones), who begins to fret that Peter doesn't have enough friends to fill out the wedding party. So Peter agrees to get fixed up on man-dates and even goes online to meet buddies. They range from a 90-year-old man (Murray Gershenz) to an age-appropriate guy who mistakes Peter's interest for romantic affection (Thomas Lennon). 

Peter eventually meets Sydney (Jason Segal), a free spirit who wanders into an open house at the Ferrigno place to sample the free food and trawl for divorced women. It's a fine meet-cute, and soon the two are bonding in Sydney's band cave, sharing their abject love for the band Rush. Peter's constant references to "slappin' [playing] the bass" is a wonderful running joke; in fact, Rudd is masterful at Peter's horrible attempts to do various  accents (any accent he does comes out sounding like a leprechaun) or to coin lame hipster phrases, often just ending up tongue-tied.

John Hamburg, whose writing credits include "Meet the Parents" and "Zoolander" and who directed "Along Came Polly," wrote the script with journeyman Larry Levin. The writing is smart at every turn, silly but believable.

The cast here has so much talent that some strong players barely get screen time or lines to utter. Jaime Pressly and Sarah Burns are sharp as Zooey's best pals. Pressly, especially, riffs well with her brute of a husband, played by Jon Favreau. They have an acidic banter that inevitably tees up hot makeup sex. Nick Kroll and Aziz Ansari are barely there as Peter's fencing buddies. J.K. Simmons and Jane Curtin are Peter's parents, and Andy Samberg is Peter's brother, a gay fitness instructor who specializes in straight guys. Carla Gallo and Catherine Reitman barely squeeze in a few lines as Zooey's other friends. We get a glimpse of Matt Walsh in the role of "inpatient golfer."

This all revolves around Rudd and Segal and their giddy new friendship. Hamburg straddles the line between parody and heartfelt storytelling, and he crafts a low-key comedy classic.

Dionne and Burt

In a bittersweet coincidence, we watched a documentary about Dionne Warwick, which featured songwriter Burt Bacharach, who died yesterday at 94. I don't want to overshadow her story, but it felt appropriate, after having started writing the review, to twin the two, whose careers might have been unimaginable if not for each other.

DIONNE WARWICK: DON'T MAKE ME OVER (B) - This is quite the hagiography, but then, the legendary singer deserves a flattering tribute, and it's not like she has skeletons in her closet, unless you want to ding her for shilling for a psychic hotline, or the rock star sins of drug possession and tax manipulations (and Twitter silliness).

Warwick, with the gospel training she shared with her cousin Whitney Houston, had a dynamic voice and range, and that's the biggest asset of this film, which takes the time to let most of her big hits play out rather than chopping them up into snippets. Starting in 1962, when she was 21, she was teamed with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, the team that would pen many of her hits in the 1960s. Warwick, in turn, would put those men on the map. (As the New York Times writes today, "Bacharach realized he had found the rare vocalist with the technical prowess to negotiate his rangy, fiercely difficult melodies, with their tricky time signatures and extended asymmetrical phrases." In other words, the woman could sing.)

Warwick, still spry and playful in her early 80s, is an engaging subject, and journeyman directors David Heilbroner and Dave Wooley don't overthink things here. They get out of the way of Warwick's talents and personality. They load up on talking heads, including Bacharach but also "That's What Friends Are For" pals Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and Elton John, plus superfan Bill Clinton, Quincy Jones, Cissy Houston, Berry Gordy Jr. and Chuck Jackson (Bacharach's "Any Day Now"). We also hear from Snoop Dogg, who spins the story of Warwick, back in the era of gangsta rap, convening an early-morning summit at her mansion to lecture Dogg and his cohorts about their vulgar and misogynistic lyrics. Like other moments in the documentary, the tale feels sanitized and embellished -- Warwick as wise, kindly auntie -- but no harm, no foul.

We also have to sit through fawning comments from the ever-smug Clive Davis (who lured her to Arista records in the late '70s and helped revive her career) and treacly sentiments from Warwick's sons, one of whom is in the music business. So, it's all very cheery and uplifting, filtered through the gauze of nostalgia, and big deal, what do you want, a hit job that tears through her tax filings? No. What the world needs now, is love, sweet love -- it's the only thing that there's just too little of. For 90 minutes, just give me a C, a bouncy C.

BONUS TRACKS

Let's celebrate some of Warwick's greatest hits. First, my favorite from the Bacharach-David trove, "I Say a Little Prayer," with one of the greatest couplets ever written to kick off a song:

The film's title track, her breakthrough hit, "Don't Make Me Over":

And a third from Bacharach and David, "Anyone Who Had a Heart":

And then some later-career ear candy written and produced by Barry Gibb, "Heartbreaker":

 

While she had numerous hits, Warwick never had a solo number-one song on the main U.S. charts, but she did reach the top with "That's What Friends Are For" (with the super quartet) and one of my favorites, 1974's "Then Came You," with the Spinners:

OK, Boomer

 

IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING (B) - The 53-year-old band King Crimson has three drummers, all dwarfed by elaborate drumkits. That's just all you need to know about this snooty prog-rock enemble surrounding its lone remaining founding member, Robert Fripp. 

This documentary by Toby Amies offers an intimate, inside view of the band from a few years ago. Amies was apparently recruited by Fripp to be a friendly adversary on the other side of the camera, and we often hear Amies' voice as he interacts with the band members and road crew.

Fripp is universally described as insufferable. And he doesn't mind showing off many of these qualities on camera. He is obsessive about practicing his guitar, and he expects more than perfection from the musicians around him. He prefers to dress primly in tailored suits, and he speaks down to his audience, as if it's patently obvious that he has figured out everything about life and believes that he is never wrong. Yeah, he's that guy.

One can admire Fripp and his artistry, but you don't have to abide him. Fripp, for all I know, is technically brilliant. But King Crimson, as one fan lets on during an interview, is quite the acquired taste. The songs are tough to stomach. They are a mix of heavy metal, jazz noodling, high school poetry, horn skronks and show-off guitar licks. (A typical song is titled "Larks' Tongues in Aspic - Part IV." Dare we call some of this frippery?) To me, the music has always sounded like, to borrow Fripp's own pet phrase, a load of shite. 

But you don't have to love, or even like, King Crimson's jams to appreciate what's going on here. This is a story about an iron dictator who runs his band like an abusive husband or father. Several times during the film, band members pause and look over their shoulder while being interviewed, as if Big Brother might be listening in. In fact, Fripp, tooling around in the background of one shot, suddenly jumps into a conversation to show that he's been listening, and he proceeds to chastise both the questioner and the interviewee for both failing to steer the conversation precisely where he thinks it should have gone. Imagine the daily drudgery of trying to please this man. 

While we get whiffs of "This Is Spinal Tap" and the Metallica documentary "Some Kind of Monster" (a title that could have worked here, too), Amies, to his credit, isolates the band members and draws out some quality insights. The director has a habit of pushing them to go deeper than their initial answers, and the conversations grow deeper and more thoughtful, even philosophical.

The star of the movie is multi-instrumentalist Bill Rieflin, previously known as a drummer with the likes of Ministry and Pigface back in the day. Halfway through the film it is revealed that Rieflin has been battling cancer for years (he died in 2020), and his commentary is truly thoughtful and touching, at times. Why bother continuing to play in this band (especially for such a prick like Fripp) when he could be checking more things off his bucket list. The simple answer, he says, is because this is just what he does -- he's a musician. 

Former members chime in to lend perspective to the rollercoaster ride this band has endured under Fripp's fanaticism. All of them retain respect for the man, no matter how ugly their fallouts were decades ago. Two of them left after the first year of recording and touring. Guitarist-vocalist Adrian Belew -- who mistakenly thought he was an equal partner of Fripp's in the '80s and '90s -- talks about his hair falling out during that era, and he doesn't mince words about getting kicked out of the band, but he still speaks kindly about Fripp. It's as if he and the other victims -- perhaps with the help of years of therapy -- have made peace with their experiences, perhaps lucky to have escaped. Fripp is sort of like the scorpion in the old cautionary tale -- he is who he is, don't expect him to change, and tolerate his perfectionism for as long as you can.

Fripp does seem to have created a cohesive band of fine musicians -- he notes that this is the first iteration of the band not to have someone in it who actively hates him -- and there is no doubt that King Crimson makes a deep connection with its audience. On that level, he is an unqualified success, a visionary who was intent on succeeding at all costs. Or, as Walter Matthau's Willy Clark said of his former partner, Al Lewis, in "The Sunshine Boys": "As an act, nobody could touch him; as a human being, nobody wanted to touch him."

BONUS TRACK

No way we're linking to or embedding any King Crimson songs. Gen X did this sharp post-punk alt-prog better. Here's Steve Albini's Shellac, for example, with "A Minute":

 

Hell, let's do a second one, also off the album "At Action Park." This one is "Crow," live: