Pulp Fiction, Part 2: The Comeback Special

LOGAN LUCKY (B) - Stephen Soderbergh ends his premature retirement with a bang, a loose-limbed heist movie with an inspired ensemble cast of top-notch actors.

In a heist film that bookends with his mainstream work in the "Ocean's Eleven" series, Soderbergh slums with the rubes, ginning up a story of some West Virginia ne'er-do-wells who cross state lines to clean out a stadium's vault on the day of the biggest NASCAR race of the year. What could go wrong for them or for our fearless director?

For the most part, this is entertaining as hell, with a sterling cast. Channing Tatum stars as the ringleader, Jimmy Logan, conspiring with his siblings Clyde (Adam Driver) and Mellie (Riley Keough). Clyde is a monosyllabic war veteran who tends bar with a prosthetic left hand. Mellie is a hairdresser and the favorite aunt of Jimmy's cute daughter, Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie), a JonBenet Ramsey-type of pageant queen, stage-mom'd by Jimmy's ex, Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes). The women take a back seat to the men, including Daniel Craig as Joe Bang, a munitions expert who needs to be sprung from prison for a day in order to participate in the lark. Small roles can barely contain Dwight Yoakam as the prison warden and Hilary Swank as a Joe Friday-like FBI agent. (The less said about Seth MacFarlane as a cartoonish British (!) racecar driver the better.)

A crack crew, indeed, to execute a clever script by rookie screenwriter Rebecca Blunt, a narrative that only occasionally strains credulity, a decent percentage for a film like this. And Soderbergh sells it all with a swagger that stops short of showing off. He owes more than a little debt to the Coen brothers and their rural slapstick throwdowns.

The only nag here is the whiff of condescension that swirls around the entire production. These are Hollywood elites getting dirt under their fingernails portraying Appalachian-Americans with a wink and abandon. Isn't it just a bit insulting? (And people of color here tend to be human props in service to the story.)

Tatum (born in Alabama) and Keough (granddaughter of the King from Tupelo, Miss.) are the most credible at pulling off their characterizations. (They are also two actors in the zone lately.) Driver, as usual, is a beat off from the rest of the cast, and you don't know if Clyde's mental challenges come from birth or from the war. Yoakam is a hoot as the delusional warden who refuses to admit to the outside world that his prisoners are in full rebellion (a diversion to keep Clyde and Joe Bang from being noticed as AWOL). We also get just two tantalizing glimpses of a barely recognizable Katherine Waterston in short black hair as a potential love interest for Jimmy.

At a rotund two hours, this one could have been nipped and tucked by at least 15 minutes. A post-heist coda feels mismatched. But the script is smart, with its share of zingers, and it's hard not to get caught up in all the fun.

BONUS TRACK
SIDE EFFECTS* (2013) (A-minus) - Before his retirement from the big screen, Soderbergh bid farewell with this smoldering suspense film about a meek woman suffering from depression who kills her husband during a prescription-drug-induced stupor.

Soderbergh teams again with writer Scott Z. Burns (they scored with "Contagion" in 2010) to unspool a tight thriller that has Hitchcock bona fides and an '80s Brian De Palma sheen. Gripping from beginning to end, "Side Effects" boasts four actors bouncing off each other nicely. Rooney Mara (who would grow even more confident with "Carol") plays Emily, a sluggish housewife welcoming her insider-trader husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), home from prison. Their reunion does nothing to jerk her out of her chronic depression.

She seeks help from psychiatrist Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), who is in the pocket of Big Pharma and eventually pushes on Emily a new drug, Ablixa. One of the side-effects is sleepwalking, and one day Emily awakes to a blood-soaked apartment and a dead husband. Did she kill him?

That's just the start of the twists and turns. It soon turns into a game of one-upmanship that draws in Emily's previous shrink, Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones). The cat-and-mouse antics among Emily and the two doctors makes for delicious, old-fashioned fun. You can never be sure which way this one is going, and Soderbergh unravels things expertly.


* - We saw this movie upon its release but it fell through the cracks and never was reviewed. We right that wrong today.

RIP, Grant Hart

The drummer for the legendary Minneapolis hardcore band Husker Du lived a rough life, dogged by addiction, and he died earlier today of cancer at age 56.  Variety and Rolling Stone have surprisingly detailed appreciations.

Hart was the poppier, quirky yin to Bob Mould's darker, brooding yang in the influential power trio. They and bassist Greg Norton would lead the SST brigade to a major label, Warner Bros., tossing out the great double-album "Warehouse: Songs and Stories" in 1987 and then abruptly breaking up when Mould and Hart couldn't stand each other anymore. They would never play together again as a band.

TRACK LISTING
Start at the top, with Hart's intense pop masterpiece "Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely" from "Candy Apple Grey":



From his solo career, the surf-inflected ear candy "Run Run Run to the Centre Pompidou":



From the same solo album, 1999's "Good News for Modern Man," comes this ominous wail, "In a Cold House":



Here, from a 2013 performance on KEXP in Seattle, is his solo version of the howling, haunting "You Are the Moon's Reflection." (Here is the full performance, with a lot of chatting.)  (Here is Bob Mould's KEXP appearance that same year.)



The studio version of the same song has a great organ riff throughout, a reminder that Hart was a keyboardist before taking over the drumkit for Husker Du by default:


  

Pulp Fiction, Part 1: Oh, Baby

BABY DRIVER (A-minus) - The rock star of summer films, this propulsive pulp fiction from Edgar Wright hums from beginning to end, a dazzle of visual and aural delights.

It wouldn't be half-wrong to call this tale of a baby-faced getaway driver a musical. Wright -- the mastermind behind zombie and alien spoofs "Shaun of the Dead" and "The World's End" and the cult classic "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" -- must have lived and breathed this script and the soundtrack for years, marinating his brain in it until he splashed this spectacle (seemingly effortlessly) onto the big screen. The percussive sounds of the movie -- the riffling of a packet of money, the chk-chk of an automatic weapon -- are frequently synced with the beat of the songs, culminating in a shootout and its rat-a-tat-tats that pulse along with the guitar and synthesizer bursts in "Hocus Pocus" by Focus.

Ansel Elgort (the dreamboat from "The Fault in Our Stars" and the "Divergent" series) shows some acting chops as Baby, the super-driver who lives with earbuds pumping rhythms into his brain to cover up the tinnitus in his ears, the result of a childhood auto accident that killed his quarreling parents. He works for Doc (Kevin Spacey), who shuffles various teams of criminals for his carefully planned heists. He also lives with a foster parent who is deaf and just heart-broken over Baby's indentured servitude that resulted from Baby's earlier attempt to rip off Doc. Now Baby is close to paying off that debt.

Baby falls for an old-timey waitress, Debora (Lily James, "Cinderella"), who has the wide face and imploring eyes of, well, a Disney princess. They not only meet-cute but they stay cute together amid all the ugliness and violence. They share their love of music, mined from their parents' record collections. And they dream of a "getaway," a romantic, nostalgic escape from Atlanta with no particular place to go. Baby is as wholesome as they come; there is no way he will let the bad guys take down Debora or the old man.

But he can't shake Doc, who coerces Baby into another job. This one involves the colorful trio of the menacing Bats (Jamie Foxx), the haggard coke-head hunk Buddy (Jon Hamm), and Buddy's luscious sexpot moll Darling (Eiza Gonzalez). They all mock Baby as some kind of handicapped idiot-savant but there's no denying his prolific skills behind the wheel.

This could have devolved into your typical parade of heists, but "Baby Driver" is so much more than that. And more than the sum of its parts. It is a heady mix of musical cues (many of them catchy R&B nuggets), flashes of color, choreographed traipses  (a simple errand for coffee becomes an homage to "Footloose"), parkour-inspired foot chases, jump cuts, and intricate wordplay. The brash storytelling is giddy fun, as Wright, now in his early '40s, exhibits a confidence that you see in movies by Danny Boyle, Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino.

Wright flirts with a masterpiece, but his exuberance trips him up a few times. Spacey is fine as a crime boss, but his staccato delivery gets wearying and borders on parody whenever he threatens Baby and his loved ones. The pulp climax strains credulity, including the tired trope of the Villain Who Won't Die. Even the opening scene, featuring Baby lip-syncing and slapping the side of his cherry red Subaru while he awaits the fleeing bank robbers, might make you worried out of the gate -- would a getaway driver really mindlessly draw that much attention to himself?

But any worries are tossed aside almost immediately, as the first chase careers along to a funky Jon Spencer workout ("Bellbottoms"). And the cast is all-in. Foxx just doesn't fuck around, and Hamm can still toss out a chilling wolf leer. They are complemented by a few cameos by the likes of Flea (bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers) as Eddie (formerly Eddie the Nose, now Eddie No-Nose); Paul Williams as a pimped-out weapons dealer; and Lanny Joon as JD who alters the HATE tattoo on his neck to read HAT -- with a lopsided heart replacing the E -- a pathetic sop to the job-interview process. ("How's that working out for you?" Baby asks him. "Who doesn't like hats," JD spits back.)

And did I mention the music? The soundtrack crackles and snaps, jolts and jumps. It's as if the music came first and Wright just tossed off a script to accompany it. Baby's love of music involves a hobby of creating electronic remixes of snippets of conversations that he records on a handheld analog cassette machine. One, labeled "MOM," is his most prized possession. (Mom was an aspiring singer.) Baby is addicted to his old iPods that he juggles in a rotation depending on his mood. Music kickstarts his brain. In a memorable scene, he hijacks a car but is paralyzed momentarily until he can scan the radio stations to find just the right getaway music. Cue "Radar Love" as the tires squeal.

Meanwhile, the visuals are dizzying. Cameras whirl and whirr, neon signs blaze at night, and primary colors tumble playfully in the background of a laundromat. It is all so intoxicating and propulsive. You want to jump into the screen and play along.

This is the new cool. Same as the old cool. An extended groove. It's the magic of movie-making.

BONUS TRACKS
The soundtrack is a killer mix of old-, older- and oldest-school. Just a few samples, starting with "Neat Neat Neat" by the Damned:



Carla Thomas with "Baby":



And El-P, Killer Mike and Big Boi with "Chase Me":

One-Liners: Underdogs

PATTI CAKES (B+) - This tale of a chubby New Jersey white girl who wants to be a rap star has a lot of heart and a good feel for the rhythms of working class lives.

You can quibble with the paint-by-numbers narrative arc and a few corny characterizations, but this labor of love from debut writer-director Geremy Jasper is smart, funny and touching, mostly in all the right places. TV actress Danielle Macdonald ("The East"), an Australian, nails the Jersey patois and attitude as Patti, the ringleader of a trio of misfits who long for human contact as much as they crave superstardom. She is joined by Siddharth Dhananjay as Jheri (the smooth T Pain wannabe) and Mamoudou Athie as the mystical anarchist Basterd, who creates sonic soundscapes in his shack in the park.

Patti, or Killer P (nee Patricia Dombrowski, or Dumbo to her fat-shaming detractors), must compete with her mother, a middle-aged hot mess trying to reclaim her glory as a young diva who almost broke big. Barb (Bridget Everett, one of the hilarious pals to Maria Bamford on Netflix's "Lady Dynamite) hooks up with a cop and fronts his blues band -- but her pipes are long destroyed by cigarettes and booze. And Barb does not approve of her daughter's dabblings in black culture.

The movie often seems on the brink of descending into a pity party, but the three young actors ooze confidence in their portrayal of a nerdy trio of musketeers who refuse to give up on their ambitions. Jasper scores a Springsteen track to lend cred to the production. And most important, the raps that Jasper pens for Patti are perfect -- clever but not too intricate such that a 20-something product of New Jersey's public schools couldn't knock them out with some effort.

When the inevitable rap battle kicks in at the climax, the outcome feels about right, even if the flourish at the end of Patti's performance is just a bit too precious. And the scenes with Patti's ailing grandmother, played by Cathy Moriarty ("Raging Bull"), occasionally teeter on the mawkish. But Jasper knows these characters inside and out, and he would never let them go forward without being true to their roots.

COLD IN JULY (C) - Too long, too confusing, too cluttered and too much of Texas noir porn, this one is more of a curiosity for performances by grizzled old cowboys Sam Shepard and Don Johnson.

This stem-winder has a long, dull setup that leads to a midpoint twist. Dane (Michael C. Hall from TV's "Dexter") shoots an intruder in his home, and he and his family are soon being stalked by the man's father (Shepard) -- or so it all seems. None of the characters are particularly compelling, and the detective story that ensues in the second half lacks true intrigue.

We're left with admiring those two old coots, Shepard (in one of his last roles) and Johnson, as big a hoot as he was in HBO's "Eastbound and Down." But even Johnson can't spit out all the clever Texasisms with a straight face consistently. "I need a drink," his character spits. "And I haven't even had my goddamned coffee yet."

Bloated at 109 minutes, "Cold in July" tries to get by on mood and crude. By the time the bloody climax hits, you'll wonder what all the fuss is about.

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (C-minus) - This is a great idea, and must have been a pretty good book, but the film version of this zombie romp with a twist sits flat on the screen and descends into tedium during a sloppy middle third.

Newcomer Sennia Nanua plays Melanie, a tween housed among other children who are afflicted with a zombie fungus but who still function fairly normally as long as they don't get a whiff of human, while being immune to attacks from other "hungries." Looking not unlike an old British boarding school, the remote military facility is also used as research conducted by Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close), who sacrifices the children one at a time as she zeroes in on a cure.

When it's Melanie's turn to be euthanized, kindly teacher Miss Justineau (Gemma Arterton) interrupts the experiment, causing a breach at the facility and an infiltration by zombies. Melanie and a handful of adults survive and hit the road like a post-apocalyptic A-Team. Once they are mobile, the film descends into a series of zombie movie cliches, including pointless violence, an odd twist involving fungus-laden spores, and a few idiot-plot devices.

Nanua is wonderful as the young girl who clings to her humanity and forms a real bond with Miss Justineau. But poor, poor Glenn Close is reduced to a screaming hysteric by the final reel, a sad turn of affairs for one of the great actresses of her generation.

Rarely does this rise above the level of a decent AMC TV serial. What veteran TV director Colm McCarthy does have is a riveting opening 20 minutes and a killer ending. What he doesn't have is a movie.

BONUS TRACK
The "Patti Cakes" trailer:


 

New to the Queue

Same old, same old ...

An elderly woman enjoys the company of a hologram version of her dead husband, who is as handsome as Jon Hamm, in "Marjorie Prime."

Eliza Hittman had a knockout debut with "It Felt Like Love," and she's back infiltrating the lives of teenagers in "Beach Rats."

A nearly three-hour chat-fest about a family reunion, from Romanian director Cristi Puiu (the landmark opus "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu"), the character study "Sieranevada."

Teen hormones rage as women are getting killed in a Brazilian city in a stylish debut thriller, "Kill Me Please."

The great Frederick Wiseman ("Boxing Gym") checks in with another three-hour stem-winder in the vein of "At Berkeley" and "In Jackson Heights," this one for book rats, "Ex Libris: New York Public Library."

An Argentine actor looking to disappear for a while finds himself adrift in New York City in Julia Solomonoff's "Nobody's Watching."
  

Life Is Short: Loudmouth

Life Is Short is an as-needed series documenting the films we just couldn't make it through. We like to refer to these movies as "Damsels in Distress." Previous entries can be found here. 

Title: WE WON'T GROW OLD TOGETHER
Running Time: 106 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  23MIN
Portion Watched: 22%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 54 YRS, 9 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 76.7 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Watched some classic Kubrick (watch this space)
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 100-1

The first few scenes of this 1972 French film by Maurice Pialat feature Jean (Jean Yanne) repeatedly belittling his young working-class girlfriend, Catherine (Marlene Jobert), her leaving him, but at the last minute returning to him. Jean also treats his wife, who has returned from a trip to Russia, like trash. This apparently is the entire plot of the film. Jean and Catherine are doomed. The blurb on the DVD jacket says that the film "is hard to look at but even harder to look away." (Time Out N.Y.)

Not really. It was really easy to turn off. After watching the boorish Jean go on yet another rant, making it clear to Catherine that she's a common bitch, I pulled the plug. There is little redeeming value here. Just the dregs of '70s French cinema.

Soundtrack of Your Life: Si-si!

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

Date: 31 August 2017, 9:50 p.m.
Place: Sister Bar, before the Growlers took the stage
Song:  "Je Suis un Rock Star"
Artist: Bill Wyman
Irony Matrix: 2.2 out of 10

Comment: Had this solo nugget from the Rolling Stones bassist on 45-rpm back in the day. The butchered French (or "Cockney French"), recited mechanically, over a crude electronic beat always was a guilty pleasure of young adulthood. It's just so obscure and unheralded. I've never gotten it out of my head.

BONUS TRACKS

Oh, yeah. The Growlers show. LA's lounge lizards just might be the ultimate millennial wedding band -- trippy and hippie but with a deep groove. Labels don't stick to them. Surf rock. Pscyh rock. They host an annual Beach Goth festival, so that's probably the default tag.

Lead singer Brooks Nielsen has an irresistible charm and a loquacious delivery. In his husky twang you can hear a polished Dylan; I also get a Lee Hazelwood vibe from his and the band's raggedy '70s-era gloom. He's like a prissy nerd doing Jim Morrison. He is a sneakily magnetic frontman. Here is the band's 2013 anthem, "Someday":

The boys -- four guitars, keyboards and drums to back Nielsen -- riffle through genres, including surf, ska, and a dab of reggae. They create ear worms with catchy lyrics, like "Love Test" and "Monotonia." As they churned toward the end of the set, the cohesive players turned Sister Bar into a dance club. Here is a good taste of their live set, from KEXP in Seattle in 2014. It culminates in the extended groove "Chinese Fountain":

Oh, and we caught the final song of opening act Broncho. This is "Class Historian":

 

Inadvertent Double Feature: Aubrey Plaza

A pair from the talented comic actress Aubrey Plaza, one surprisingly dark, the other rowdy as hell:

INGRID GOES WEST (B) - What starts out as a light-hearted romp poking fun at social media addicts turns dark in the third act, without necessarily landing on either side of the argument about millennials and their damn phones.

Aubrey Plaza is manic as the title gal who gets institutionalized for a while after going postal on her Instagram idol (for not inviting Ingrid to her wedding) and then reinvents herself in Los Angeles, setting her sights on a new victim, Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), a vapid photographer and solipsistic social media maven. Ingrid is funded by about $60,000 in cash from the estate of her mother, whose apparent slow, painful death has scarred Ingrid and left her as socially and emotionally bereft as a junkie.

This debut by millennial writer-director Matt Spicer never loses its jolt of energy, but it's a bit sloppy as it throws its shares of errant punches in trying to make a major statement about the way we live today. (It's as if the younger generation is having trouble focusing!) Despite its limitations, "Ingrid" is never less than entertaining and driven toward an inevitable messy ending.

Plaza -- every comedy bro's favorite platonic best pal, exemplified in 2009's "Funny People" -- dives into her role as fangirl-slash-stalker. She has way more verve than one screen can hold, and she handles physical comedy well, using more than just those big expressive eyes of hers. Olsen, the ultimate entitled white girl, slips into Taylor's skin neatly, without turning Taylor into more of a cartoon than she needs to be.

The secret weapon here is O'Shea Jackson, Ice Cube's son who played the rap star in his movie debut "Straight Outta Compton"). He is a natural, dynamic presence whose smile lights up a screen. He plays Dan, a Batman-obsessed wannabe screenwriter who, when he isn't selling drugs, manages the apartment complex where Ingrid holes up. The flirtations and frustrations between Dan and Ingrid are beyond charming, serving to balance out the savage snark permeating the rest of the film. That negative energy is best exemplified by Billy Magnussen as Taylor's menacing, cocaine-fueled brother, Nicky. Magnussen sweeps through the proceedings like white privilege on PCP, and the climactic showdown between Nicky and Ingrid catches poor, lovable Dan in the cross-fire. Feelings are hurt, lessons are learned, texts go unreturned. (Watch Ingrid's face fall when she sees the three dots indicating Dan is responding only to have the dots disappear.)

The final shot proves that Spicer has little hope for the future of the Kardashian generation, suggesting that there are no true happy endings but merely the enticing possibility of a reality-show sequel.

THE LITTLE HOURS (B+) - This Pythonesque romp never tries to be more than what it sets out to be: a ribald showcase for some very funny people riffing on grueling life in the 14th century.

Plaza, Alison Brie (TV's "Mad Men" and "Community"), and Kate Micucci ("Don't Think Twice") play a trio of randy nuns chafing under the soul-deadening oppression of an isolated convent. The story is inspired by The Decameron, Giovani Boccoccio's medieval-era series of stories set in the countryside outside Florence in the time of the black plague.

A brilliant cast has a rollicking time riffing on olden times in a carefree way not seen since "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." John C. Reilly is perfectly goofy and a bit rueful as Father Tommasso, the priest in charge of the convent, who, like prelates of that time, acts like more of a mobster than a man of the cloth -- dipping into the sacramental wine, telling lies, and bedding the head nun, Sister Marea (a subdued Molly Shannon). He is sweet and lovable, though, and he has no control of his flock.

Beautiful Allessandra (Brie) feels like a prisoner of her parents, who send money to the convent and deny her desires to be married off, essentially because they can't afford a dowry. (Paul Reiser has a blast in a cameo as her father, dashing her dreams in one simple conversation.) Plaza's Fernanda is a hellion, drawing Macucci's Ginerva into trouble on a daily basis. Brie finds a neat groove as the yearning maiden cross-stitching her life away. Plaza and Micucci have wonderfully expressive eyes -- the former mostly shooting daggers and the latter more broadly comic, along the lines of Marty Feldman in "Young Frankenstein."

Dave Franco offers up his typical clueless stoner persona as Massetto, the common serf who escapes from a nobleman after getting caught bedding the lord's wife and lands a new laborer gig at the convent -- from the frying pan into the fire. Nick Offerman is hilarious as Lord Bruno, a vulgar petit-bourgeois conspiracy theorist who harps on the decline of civilization like a Chicken Little Trump supporter, hyper-aware of ethnicities and obsessed with "Game of Thrones"-like regional political intrigue. In one of his funniest deadpan lines, he warns his kittenish wife (Lauren Weedman) that their lavish lifestyle (eating rabbit and lentils) might end any day with an invasion of pope-loving Guelphs; enjoy the "luxury" now, he intones, before they are reduced to "eating chicken, like a bunch of fucking Croatians."

The hunky Massetto is catnip to the horny maidens at the convent, who abuse him like a stable mule for their carnal pleasure. Franco ("21 Jump Street," "Neighbors") thrives in awkward situations, and here he is tortured, alternately, by threats of sheer medieval harm and by female lust, a flesh-and-blood version of the comedy/tragedy masks. Jemima Kirke (HBO's "Girls") shows up (off-key, as usual) to raise the stakes and lure the gals into bouts of drinking, lesbianism, drug use and sorcery.

The gals are bawdy as all get-out, but the silliness hits its peak when Fred Armisen shows up as Bishop Bartolomeo, who has seen his share of crude behavior but never the likes of the litany of sins he must sort out with this crew. Armisen is automatically funny, and here he is as much straight man among the surreal antics rather than the guy with the lampshade on his head.

Writer-director Jeff Baena ("Joshy," "I Heart Huckabees") creates a controlled chaos, a heady mix of the modern and medieval. (He even manages some genuinely tender moments at the end.) He gets in and out in 90 minutes, strategically spacing out the gut-busting one-liners. He juggles a big cast, parceling out the goodies judiciously so that the all-star players gel into a cohesive whole.
  

The Fun in Dysfunction

THE GLASS CASTLE (A-minus) - Best Hallmark Channel movie ever.

Destin Daniel Cretton follows up his previous gem, 2013's "Short Term 12," with another touching, deeply human tale of broken people. Brie Larson returns (more of a star now after "Room"), this time as Jeannette Walls, the fictionalized version of the author of the best-selling memoir, who grew up in, to put it mildly, a seriously dysfunctional, nomadic family.

Her father, Rex (Woody Harrelson), was a drunken blowhard who talked a big game about defying The Man (and building his little girl a fantastic glass castle) but who was little more than a criminally irresponsible dad. Her mother, Rose Mary (Naomi Watts, plain), was his enabler, seemingly delusional and likely mentally ill. (He enables her by resolutely touting her outsider art, which is, by any measure, merely amateurish.) They moved the kids from shack to shack, always one step ahead of the creditors, the utilities or victims of Rex's various hustles. Rex's violent method of teaching Jeannette to swim (or sink) is yet another form of child abuse.

Jeannette and her brother and sisters also suffered at the hands of Rex's mother, just as Rex almost certainly did as a child in West Virginia, to a degree only gruffly hinted at (and elegantly half-revealed). Young Jeannette (two fine little actresses, Ella Anderson and Chandler Head) was the victim of her parents' negligence, setting her clothes on fire while cooking her own hot dogs on a cheap stove while standing on a chair. She is left scarred on her torso, almost certainly exacerbated by her father's insistence on stealing her from the hospital prematurely so as to save on medical costs.

As an adult, Jeannette shuns her parents and settles into an alternative universe -- engaged to a yuppie financial adviser, David (Max Greenfield from "Hello, My Name Is Doris," the only weak link in the cast). That's the worst nightmare for her parents, who are now squatting and dumpster-diving in Manhattan. Jeannette hones her skills as a writer for New York magazine and tries to blot out those childhood memories.

All of this could have gotten embarrassingly sticky sweet in the wrong hands. But Cretton has a special touch. We rewatched "Short Term 12" after viewing "Glass Castle," and the two films share a genuinely humanistic DNA. Part of that is Larson, alternately steely and vulnerable, speaking volumes through her doe eyes. Cretton also reins in Harrelson away from his hammy "Hunger Games"/'The Messenger" tendencies, while providing an umbilical cord for Watts to explore the nuances of a conflicted woman who just isn't cut out for motherhood. Cretton and his casting director do a fantastic job of picking young actors to play various stages of the siblings, so that it's never a distraction.

There are heartfelt interactions between father and the daughter he playfully calls Mountain Goat throughout the film, including during a climactic reconciliation, as well as among siblings, each sharply drawn with attention to character detail. You'll laugh and cry in ways that echo the reaction to last year's similar tale of an outlaw dad and his precocious kids, "Captain Fantastic." You'll likely forget about that horrific scar on Jeannette's body by the time it springs up at just the right time, in the perfect situation, serving the story in multiple ways at once -- brought home by Larson, still able to pull off playing a rebellious teen.

This is natural, tactile filmmaking that ably translates a beloved book while retaining a wholesome and honest tone. It is entertainment for all ages and lifestyles. There's no denying that Cretton, who wrote this with newcomer Andrew Lanham, is in tune with what we call the hum of human existence. And he knows just how to tug your heart without making you roll your eyes.

BONUS TRACK
The soundtrack is top-notch, too, mixing oldies from Waylon Jennings and Kitty Wells, with original music from Joel P. West. Here's a two-fer featuring the Lumineers ("Sleep on the Floor") and Reuben and the Dark ("Black Water"):



And Darla Hawn with the trusty standard, "Don't Fence Me In":


 
  

Unsung

RUMBLE: THE INDIANS WHO ROCKED THE WORLD (A-minus) - This heartfelt and technically precise documentary lovingly sings the praises of people of American Indian heritage who helped shaped popular music in the 20th century.

The movie starts at ground zero with Link Wray, the '50s guitar slinger who invented the power chord with the irresistible instrumental that gives the movie its name. The song -- devoid of lyrics -- was reportedly banned by some music stations merely on the basis of its gang-inciting title and its primal sound.

Filmmakers Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana then shift back in time to explore even deeper origins or American music -- blues/folk hero Charley Patton and jazz singer Mildred Bailey -- before returning to the baby-boomer era to celebrate Canadian Robbie Robertson (Mohawk) of the Band, folk sensation Buffy Saint-Marie (Cree), Jimi Hendrix (one-quarter Cherokee) and Redbone.

The array of talking heads is impressive: Buddy Guy, Steven Van Zandt, Tony Bennet, Steven Tyler, funkster George Clinton, Wayne Kramer (MC5), Quincy Jones, Martin Scorsese, Slash, the Black Eyed Peas' Taboo, a couple of Nevilles, and New Mexico poet Joy Harjo. Rhiannon Giddens leads a memorable front-porch jam session.

Bainbridge (a producer most of her career) and Maiorana (a cameraman) never make a false move. They are respectful of the culture. They compose riveting images. Their narrative flows effortlessly, with seamless transitions. They dig out fascinating facts. They let the music do much of the talking. In sum, this is an elegant elegy with a haunting undercurrent, a profound story that has long gone untold, at least in such a comprehensive fashion.

The filmmakers dig deep to tell the stories of some unsung performers: Jesse Ed Davis, a troubled man who played lead guitar with Jackson Browne and John Lennon, before drugs did him in at age 43, and Randy Castillo, a dynamic drummer for Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue, who died at 51 of cancer. Castillo's spiritual connection to his home state of New Mexico -- brought home by a friend, the guitarist Stevie Salas -- makes for deeply moving images.

"Rumble" starts with a twang and ends with a whimper. Like "20 Feet From Stardom" and "The Wrecking Crew," it shines a spotlight on both pioneers and unheralded sidemen. It is 103 minutes of joy.

THE SUNSHINE MAKERS (C) - This run-of-the-mill documentary tells the story of Nicholas Sand and Tim Scully, an odd couple who became notorious manufacturers of LSD in the '60s and '70s.

Newcomer Cosmo Feilding-Mellen takes a rote approach, relying on purported archival video of Sand, Scully and their cohorts, as well as trite stock footage of things like suspects being handcuffed and telephones ringing. Without that, he's stuck with two rather boring men reliving their heyday as the toast of Haight-Ashbury.

We watch Sand, now a heavy-set man, do naked yoga and tell tall tales, mostly about the numerous women he seduced over the decades. Frankly, some his stories come off as ... enhanced. Sand's hedonism is contrasted with the relatively monastic life of Scully, a classic chem nerd, who describes eating the same dinner for 30 years and performs a whiteboard mapping of the process for making LSD.

There is so much potential here, but the filmmaker never truly taps into the groove of the hippie era. Visual tricks paper over the lack of substance that takes this to Dullsville too often. Even the insider intrigue -- the pair were both financed and double-crossed by a trust-funder named Billy Hitchcock, whose writings are voiced by an actor but who, understandably, doesn't appear on camera or otherwise participate.

It is kind of fun to see dowdy old ladies in their 70s describe their carefree days of sex and drugs. And the men seem truly devoted to their utopian mission to turn on the world, one hit of Orange Sunshine at a time. Their story just didn't end up in the right hands.

BONUS TRACKS
The power chord that set rock 'n' roll apart, Link Wray with "Rumble," live in 1998:

Jesse Ed Davis with his solos in "Doctor My Eyes," a song that creeped me out when I heard it around age 9 on the radio at a cousin's birthday party. The good parts kick in at 1:47 and 2:28.


  

Davis and poet John Trudell with "Silent Lightning," from their late '70s collaboration before Davis died from drug use at age 43:



Davis laying down the groove for Taj Mahal's "Take a Giant Step":

Quirk, Part 2: Arrested Development

BRIGSBY BEAR (A-minus) - There's a fine line between charming and cloying. The men behind "Brigsby Bear" somehow skip effortlessly along that line, and the movie is never less than winning.

Kyle Mooney ("Saturday Night Live"), who came up with the story and wrote the screenplay with pal Kevin Costello, stars as James Pope, a 20-something newly released from a lifelong confinement in a compound at the hands of a couple who he thought were his parents (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams, both a sight for sore eyes) but who really stole him from the maternity ward and raised him in a remote outpost. The family observed odd rituals -- like those in '60s oddball sitcoms such as "The Addams Family" and "My Favorite Martian" -- such as formally shaking hands before sitting down to dinner. In a bizarre form of mind control, his parents created a weekly cartoon series centered on an improbably heroic space traveler, cuddly Brigsby Bear; dispensed Maoist allegorical guidance, mostly designed to brainwash the boy into subservience ("Curiosity is an unnatural emotion!"); and provided James with a complex serial to obsess over -- manna to any adolescent boy.

James is rescued and returned to his suburban roots -- his birth parents (another winning couple, Michaela Watkins and Matt Walsh (from HBO's "Veep")) and his slacker teenage sister, Aubrey (a delightfully dour Ryan Simkins). Sis grudgingly invites him to a party, where he struggles to fit in (and falls victim to a mystery pill) but eventually bonds with Spencer (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), who looks cool but turns out to be a nerdy fellow traveler. Turns out James, in his childish Brigsby T-shirt and scruff of beard, looks not clueless but like a typical millennial hipster. Spencer and a few others sample copies from the voluminous Brigsby VHS archives, uploading some episodes to YouTube, planting the seeds of an underground cult classic.

Spencer is a wannabe filmmaker, and soon he and James are filming a Brigsby movie, based on James' screenplay and storyboards. They score some props from the police evidence room, courtesy of a sympathetic cop, Det. Vogel (Greg Kinnear, pitch-perfect, as usual), who himself has a geek side and an unscratched acting itch.

That's a fairly neat set-up, and it is executed cleanly by director Dave McCory (a fellow "SNL" staff writer), who gets a lot of small things just right, such as the way that James -- a lovable innocent descended from Chauncey Gardner and Mork from Ork -- types tortured sentences and thank-you's into a Google search bar. The filming of the Brigsby movie is a shoestring affair, and McCory's project itself is an adorably ramshackle ode to unhip outcasts but is never ragged or mawkish.

Not much is explored regarding the incredible trauma James endured. Claire Danes (can she really be 38?) does offer a fine turn as James' frustrated and often incredulous therapist unable to manufacture an emotional breakdown. This certainly could have been a much darker movie; but it's not. Instead, this is an appealing flight of fancy about a man-child's obsession with the only origin story he has known, his unique way of reconciling that trauma. It's also a touching ode to non-traditional family structures.

The cast earnestly brings this home, especially Kinnear and that sideways smile of his. "SNL" big brother Andy Samberg (a producer here) nails a quick cameo as a fellow patient in a mental ward. And Kate Lyn Sheil ("Kate Plays Christine") is mesmerizing as the actress who got corralled to play space twins in the original Brigsby series and who now toils as a waitress in a diner. Sheil perfectly captures the wholesome appeal of that Princess Leia fantasy figure, with eyes that connect deeply with her smitten fanboy.

Easily dismissed as a trifle, "Brigsby Bear" carries a heartfelt message and is held together by Mooney's commitment to the conceit. It's a labor of love about a labor of love.

Quirk, Part 1: Marital Aid

BAND AID (B) - Zoe Lister-Jones came up with a great premise, and she takes it as far as the limits of twee indie filmmaking will allow her. The writer-director plays Anna, a 30-something trapped in a dull, bickering marriage with Ben (Adam Pally), having endless spats about sex and those dishes that pile up in the sink with the artfully dripping faucet.

As a way out of the rut, she suggests that they set their anger to music -- singing their fights. They dust off a bass and guitar and head to the garage to plug in and sound off. They recruit their goofy neighbor Dave (Fred Armisen) to play drums. (Armisen drummed in the Chicago band Trenchmouth in the '90s before finding fame on "Saturday Night Live" and "Portlandia.")

The couple grow closer, as the shared project (name the Dirty Dishes) gives them a common goal, and they get good enough to book a few gigs. That is, after a disastrous open-mic debut where Anna inadvisedly mixes booze and a tranquilizer and act loopy, all cute like they do in the movies. It's one of the movie's several self-aware missteps that make the viewer aware that they are watching a Sundance-branded and precious indie film.

Those quibbles aside, "Band Aid" is smart and often laught-out-loud funny. Lister-Jones (as detected in her previous writing efforts "Lola Versus" and "Breaking Upwards") knows how to tell a story efficiently, and she has a keen ear for interactions between the sexes. And with two blow-job cracks in the first five minutes, we know she's no wallflower -- though we are put on notice early on that the players are straining to be sassy and provocative.

Lister-Jones and Pally sync really well, and he has a derivative physical appeal that brings to mind Paul Rudd mixed with Seth Rogen. Some of the dialogue looks improvised, such as when he clamps a slice of pizza into a harmonica brace and savors a bit that's "Tom Petty" delicious. (Eating pizza, for him, rivals sex.)

The secret weapon here is Armisen, who is always funny to us, but whose reputation baffles others. Dave's comedic reveal is that he's a nerd who nonetheless lives with outrageously beautiful women, and that they co-habitate platonically as they all recover from sex addictions. Armisen brings an improv zing to his scenes with the co-stars, stealthily using his subtle manic energy to take the comedy to the fringes.

But the film gets overly mannered toward the end, as the giant elephant in the room (an overused emotional conflict endemic to young couples in movies) turns overwrought. Susie Essman (HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm") shows up as Ben's mother to dispense, in ways economic for plot development, a hunk of Wise Elder advice. The ending feels both insightful and a little too neat. As a rule, though, "Band Aid," like its co-stars, is funny and charming.

BONUS TRACK
The appealing trailer, with one of Armisen's best bits, about the band Dave used to play in:


 

One-Liners: Psych Rock

SOME KIND OF MONSTER (2004) (A-minus) - Put a metal band on a psychiatrist's couch and you get a miasma of neuroses and rock-star arrogance. Here, then, more than a decade ago, was Metallica, unplugged and unmasked.

Metal gods James Hetfield (guitar, vocals) and Lars Ulrich (drums) do their best Lennon-McCartney impressions from "Let It Be," persistently pushing each other's buttons and making you wonder how they ever formed a band to begin with. As the band enters the studio to begin work on a new album, Hetfield teeters on the brink of a breakdown, testing the patience of Ulrich, who takes gum-snapping to epic heights. It would take a year to finish laying down the tracks for "St. Anger," released in 2003.

Chiming in as the voice of reason is longtime producer Bob Rock, who stepped in as studio bassist after the band lost Jason Newsted in a fallout. Mostly on the sidelines is guitarist Kirk Hammett, who represents either the George Harrison character or the child of feuding parents. Hammett's simpleton demeanor must make Ulrich pull his hair out at other times.

The great hook here is Phil, the band's "personal enhancement coach," charging them tens of thousands of dollars a month for some group therapy sessions that serve only to drive Ulrich further up a wall. To note the obvious, comparisons to "This Is Spinal Tap," the mockumentary released 20 years before this, are unavoidable. This is juicy fly-on-the wall stuff, from their group lyric-writing sessions -- like high school freshmen with their spiral notebooks and pedantic rhyme schemes -- to failed vocal experiments.

The boys live cloyingly bourgeois soccer-dad lifestyles. Ulrich is an obnoxious art snob. (He comes off as both a prickly know-it-all and a practical bullshit detective.) Hammett is Jeff Spicoli at middle age. And Hetfield, after returning from his months-long dry-dock, can't make the simplest of recording decisions without worrying about the smallest of "triggers" that might lead to a relapse. He is both achingly human and wildly insufferable.

Veteran documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky leave no stone unturned, deftly knitting this together in a surprisingly snappy 2 hours 21 minutes. They eventually corral Dave Mustaine for a cameo -- he was the original lead guitarist who was unceremoniously dumped over substance-abuse issues and 20 years later was still waiting for an explanation and apology. (He went on to form rival Megadeth.) We also see the auditioning of bassists, leading to the hiring of the manic Robert Trujillo for the subsequent tour. (The multimillion-dollar package they offer him is straight out of a Fortune 500 portfolio.)

This is juicy stuff, an inside peek at the cartoonish life of pompous rock stars. Not to be missed.

WE ARE X (C) - This moody documentary about the insanely popular metal band from Japan is an unfortunate downer, which is understandable, considering the history of the group.

Unable to capture the Beatlemania spark that made them legends and would have elevated this to watchable, director Stephen Kijak doodles with camera flourishes and dawdles with story lines that lead to dead ends. Instead, we're treated to ponderous profiles of moderately interesting pop stars, interspersed with preparations for X Japan's comeback show at Madison Square Garden.

The big gun is Yoshiki, a rock legend of Lennonesque proportions, the Muppet-like drummer who needs to wear a neck brace when he plays and who collapses like James Brown at the end of every show. (His shtick is probably only partially showbiz and otherwise attributable to a lifelong asthma affliction.) Lead singer Toshi gives Journey's Steve Perry a run for his money when it comes to belting out over-the-top anthems.

Despite or because of their rabid popularity, these sensitive guys swirl through vortexes of depression. If you don't know the fate of the band members over the years -- and I didn't -- don't ruin it; it's quite chilling, as the film spirals deeper into darkness in the second half.

Yoshiki, a lifelong spiritual seeker haunted by the childhood trauma of his father's suicide, comes off as a major talent. He takes a detour into composing, drawing on his experience as a piano prodigy before rock stardom. He's a decent subject to build a movie around. But Kijak never finds the right hooks, choosing instead to wallow in new-age wankery.
 

New to the Queue

Turn, turn, turn ...

A renowned architect falls ill and gets trapped in a small Indiana town where he befriends a young woman, an architecture enthusiast who works at the local library, in "Columbus."

Destin Daniel Cretton and Brie Larson follow up "Short Term 12" with an adaptation of the memoir about a dysfunctional family, "The Glass Castle."

Aubrey Plaza ("The To-Do List," "Safety Not Guaranteed") looks like she's having fun as an internet stalker in "Ingrid Goes West."

The boys are back -- director Michael Winterbottom and stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon -- for another round of fooding, brooding, and Michael Caine-offs, "The Trip to Spain."

Steven Soderbergh is back, and he's got Riley Keough and Katherine Waterston with him in the pulpy "Logan Lucky."

A chubby white girl aspires to be a big-time rap star in "Patti Cakes."
 

Monogamy in Mono

THE LOVERS (C+) - It's difficult to pin down what this is or what it wanted to be. The previews make it look like a screwball comedy -- a middle-aged couple, cheating on each other, rediscovery their attraction to each other -- but it's dour and downbeat, and in the end it unravels unconvincingly.

Debra Winger and Tracey Letts are refreshingly frumpy as the aging spouses, Mary and Michael, getting their kicks elsewhere while sleepwalking through their domestic routines. He has a kittenish dancer on the side, Lucy (Melora Walters), and she found a hunk with an accent and a full head of hair, Robert (Aiden Gillen).

Hectored by their respective lovers, Mary and Michael -- after too much throat clearing in the plot -- dive back into their own passionate affair. Now it is they who are exchanging cheeky texts and lying their way out of trysts with Lucy and Robert. It's a cute set-up. But it doesn't have a logical place to go.

So enter the final piece of the puzzle: their son Joel (Tyler Ross), who is coming home for a visit with his girlfriend, Erin (Jessica Sula), even though he openly despises his parents and is disgusted by their sham of a marriage. Joel is the apparent stand-in for writer-director Azazel Jacobs, because Jacobs thinks the Joel angle is so fascinating that it dominates the film's final reel. But why would most of us care what their son thinks about their marriage? Why is that interesting?

Jacobs, the son of an experimental filmmaker, appears to be tiptoeing into the mainstream after a pair of arch dark comedies the past decade, "Momma's Man" (2008) and "Terri" (2011). Here he is aiming for dramatic heft, and he has Winger and Letts approach the material in a lethargic, low-key mode, as if he filmed them at normal speed and then slowed it down in post-production. They pause before they speak, which probably isn't that unusual in real life, but on the big screen you suspect that the lead characters might be having a mild stroke.

It's an apparent stab at profundity, but it misses the mark. Lucy and Robert are barely fleshed out, and even Mary and Michael have endless amounts of free time, even during the work week.

Everything is surprisingly sedate. Letts has a nice moment toward the end with young Erin, reminiscing about the man he was when he met Mary, but by that point, with the son having inexplicable hissy fits about his parents' various degrees of fidelity, you just want this wrapped up.

When it does end, after 97 minutes, the tidiness of the resolution -- with a bit of a twist on a twist -- is too convenient, as if the studio ordered it pinned onto the final cut. It's fun to see Winger and Letts, a couple of aging boomers, sink their teeth into their respective roles. Unfortunately, Jacobs doesn't offer them, or the viewers, much meat to feast on.

BONUS TRACK
The climactic song is from Labi Siffre, a British singer-songwriter and poet, his 1972 tune "It Must Be Love," which sounds like a Brian Wilson composition when it starts out:

Madness had a Top 40 hit with it a decade later; Siffre showed up for a cameo in the video: