Out of This World

BLACK PANTHER (C-minus) - We intentionally avoid super-hero movies, so we're not the best source here, but aren't they supposed to be fun? "Black Panther," an epic for the ages from the talented Ryan Coogler ("Fruitvale Station," "Creed"), is surprisingly dour and humorless. Chadwick Boseman is perfectly fine, if typically bland, as our hero, but it's Michael B. Jordan who adds all the sizzle as the rough-hewn brooder, N'Jadaka.

It's a heartening sentiment to suggest that a black culture in the heart of Africa, blessed with a rich natural resource and immune to outside forces, would forge a utopian world. And it's always aces when good wins out over evil. Coogler, a natural storyteller and powerful visual craftsman, merely plays with computer graphics and other silly toys for sequence after sequence of fantasy and cartoon violence. And check out the Wikipedia page's Plot section and tell me that whole narrative is not confusing as hell.

Coogler and the crew manage to tie the mythical Wakanda to modern-day social ills, but the overt suggestion that the kid from the Oakland streets (and abandoned by his father) is almost preternaturally corrupt and irreparably emotionally wounded comes off as unsettling, at the least. Luckily, the Good Guy has a way of returning from the dead at key plot points. (Did he cling to a branch after being hurled off a cliff?) Meantime, fancy fighter jets zip around and land on a dime, because they can do that in the movies. The women mostly stand around in service to the men and the needs of the narrative. And Martin Freeman seems tossed in as a CIA agent who is pressed into a little White Savior duty. Let's hope Coogler has gotten the Hollywood glitz out of his system and can go back to real life.

ISLE OF DOGS (B-minus) - Technically spectacular, this stop-action labor of love from beloved artiste Wes Anderson dog-paddles furiously to justify a raison d'etre. While I enjoyed it in the moment, it quickly fizzled from my memory. Maybe it's the animation, but it's not nearly as clever as Anderson's last such effort, "The Fantastic Mr. Fox."

As usual, Anderson meticulously crafts a unique world, this one dystopian; and here, it is a cadre of dogs who have been exiled to an island off Japan for health reasons embarking (sorry) on a "Green Beret"-like caper to rescue one of their own.  The detail in every frame can be breathtaking -- individual hairs in the dogs' fur flutter in the wind; expressions are human-like; contraptions are marvels of ingenuity.  There is so much detail included that the average viewer couldn't possibly take it all in. I alternated between a state of awe over the scrupulous production values and a state of frustration trying to decide if all that effort was worth it for a movie. It was for Anderson and his battalion (including an impressive array of voice talent, including many of Anderson's usual suspects), and I'm happy for them. Too often, though, this comes off as a retread, and art for art's sake.
 

Iron Curtain Classics

VIKTORIA (2016) (A-minus) - If you have the stamina, this two-and-a-half-hour droning drama about the fall of communism in Bulgaria -- centered on a "miracle" baby born without a belly button -- is one of the most gorgeous films you'll see. The debut from Maya Vitkova features a parade of stunning visuals and a gut-wrenching performance by Irmena Chichikova as the miserable of the spoiled child she never wanted in the first place.

Chichikova is Boryana, a brooding, moping woman who longs to escape the communist-bloc nation at the start of the film in 1979 and never gets over her disappointment of being trapped in Bulgaria. After a home-remedy abortion technique fails, she gives birth in 1980 to Viktoria, who is hailed by the government as a glorious symbol of the revolution because of her missing navel. Born at the same time is a club-footed boy whose life is forever twinned with Viktoria's, he being the red-headed stepchild in the eyes of the politburo. (The families are awarded apartments in a drab housing complex, and Viktoria's parents also get a little red clunker of a car.) Viktoria's bratty, entitled behavior will include constant bullying of the boy.

Fast-forward to 1989, and we meet Viktoria (Daria Vitkova), a snotty little princess who has a bat-phone linked directly to the party leader and who is chauffeured to school every day. Boryana is still miserable, the scorn in her eyes sharper and the bags under her eyes deeper. In a gorgeous sequence between the estranged mother and daughter, as the two part ways on a path, Viktoria is aged to her mid-teens (and played by Kalina Vitkova), now a more rounded character struggling with her loss of status after the fall of communism -- and developing some of the wanderlust that her mom has.

Boryana herself felt abandoned by her own mother, and she is hectored by a live-in mother-in-law. She simply has no use for any sort of family structure. One recurring theme involves Boryana's hatred of milk, likely not unrelated to her inability to nurse Viktoria. The story can be static and frustrating, but there's no denying the beauty and heartbreak painted onto every frame of the picture.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer hints at some of the mesmerizing camerawork by Vitkova and her cinematographer, Krum Rodriguez:


 

New to the Queue

... a bit of a dust-up ...

Two brothers return to the scene of the cult that they had escaped as teenagers, in "The Endless."

One of our favorite directors, Lynne Ramsay, shepherds a script from one of our favorite writers, Jonathan Ames (HBO's "Bored to Death"), starring a hit-and-miss lead (Joaquin Phoenix), for the pulpy "You Were Never Really Here."

Nonprofessional actors lend a documentary feel to Chloe Zhao's film about rodeo cowboys in South Dakota’s Sioux community, "The Rider."

Juliette Binoche stars in the latest exploration of female sexuality from Claire Denis, "Let the Sunshine In."

One of our favorites, Alia Shawkat, teams with Miguel Arteta ("Beatriz at Dinner") as co-writer and co-star in story about an intense 24-hour date, "Duck Butter."
 

A Flood of Memories

CASSETTE: A DOCUMENTARY MIX-TAPE (2016) (B) - A low-budget paean to the audio cassette, the genius at work here is the pilgrimage to the Netherlands to interview Lou Ottens, the Dutch engineer at Philips who took the old reel-to-real idea and condensed it into a compact case in the early 1960s. Ottens, who also was part of the team at Philips who invented the compact disc that helped shelved cassettes, shows no nostalgia but rather an appreciation for the evolution of ideas and technology. The Philips archives provide a wealth of supporting documentation here for the three-person production team.

Elsewhere, some of the usual suspects do wax nostalgic about the golden era of the mixtape, including Henry Rollins (not annoying at all here) and some rap and hip-hop old-schoolers who convey how crucial the distribution of mixtapes was back in the 1970s and '80s. Informative and charming.

THE GREAT FLOOD (2012)  (C+) - The wonderful guitarist Bill Frisell noodles his jazzy blues licks over archival footage of the massive Mississippi River flood of 1927. Bill Morrison, who would perfect his visual technique in "Dawson City: Frozen Time," creates a visual poem from the degraded nitrate stock that survived 85 years later. Lots of rushing currents and sand-bag crews. Morrison uses the project to make a point about racial inequality, letting the images indicate the unequal impact on blacks from Illinois down to Mississippi. The essentially silent film is surprisingly static, though. Frisell's songs tend to blend together, and the stray images too often feel scattered, even though Morrison curates them into categories. A final segment showing early blues masters -- including footage at Chicago's old Maxwell Street Market -- really suffers from a lack of audio; instead, we get a lazy cover version of "Old Man River."
 

The Road to Melville

Deux films de Jean-Pierre Melville:

LE SAMOURAI (1967) (B+) - A cool, handsome hired killer (Alain Delon) smolders through his days and nights in Melville's slick slow burn of a procedural. The screws twist slowly on stone-faced Jef Costello after a witness spots him leaving the scene of a shooting. Melville takes his time unwinding the sketchy plot. It's more about mood than narrative. Pretty gals aid Jef's cause. The colors are flatter than you'd expect from French cinema of the era; certainly grittier than Godard.

BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1956) (A-minus) - Bob the Gambler (Roger Duchesne) swaggers through the casinos and nightclubs of Paris in this early Melville effort in black and white. Bob headlines a complex plan to pull off a monumental casino heist. The femme fatale of the moment is the soft and pure Isabelle Corey. Bob, with his flowing white hair, has a recklessness about him that seems to portend doom. Melville explodes on the film scene with a verite style that revels in street scenes. Duchesne seems to sense that he is at the end of a long career, going for one last score along with his character.
  

RIP

Two from HBO ...

THE ZEN DIARIES OF GARRY SHANDLING (B+) - At a staggering four-and-a-half hours, this bloated character study from undisciplined fanboy Judd Apatow nonetheless provides a fascinating glimpse into the comedy and psyche of pioneering comedian and guru Garry Shandling. In the mode of HBO's "Montage of Heck," about Kurt Cobain, we delve deeply into the neuroses of an artist and performer.

Some of his disciples, including Sarah Silverman and Kevin Nealon, offer heartfelt insights, and peers like Bob Saget and Peter Tolan provide a bit of psychoanalysis, as does Linda Doucette, the former lover who sued Shandling after he fired her from "The Larry Sanders Show" as a response to their breakup. We feel the burden of the man who nearly single-handedly invented the millennial Golden Age of television, mainly through those diaries, which lay bare his insecurities through the self-help koans he scribbled throughout his life -- from Stuart Smalley-like aphorisms to devastating personal insights.

Shandling's brother died during childhood, and that painful experience -- which complicated the relationship with his parents, particularly a narcissistic mother -- provides a solid foundation for a narrative structure. There are plenty of clips of the comedian who, along with perhaps Albert Brooks, was arguably the funniest man of his generation. That there was heartbreak and fear underlying his art is no surprise.

KING IN THE WILDERNESS (B) - This standard two-hour documentary focuses on the final years of Martin Luther King (assassinated 50 years ago this month) and the frustrations he experienced in pursuing is seemingly outdated nonviolent peace movement during a rapidly evolving Black Power era and while his supposed civil-rights ally, President Johnson, was getting bogged down in a horrible war in southeast Asia.

The documentary humanizes King in some ways but continues the mythologizing in others. Stokely Carmichael is put forth as his key rival. Harry Belafonte and Andrew Young figure here as key talking heads. Director Peter W. Kunhardt ("Nixon by Nixon") does a workmanlike job. His choice of footage can be inspired at times. (It's difficult not to be moved by the sight of MLK Sr. wailing over his son's casket.) Nothing spectacular here, but a valiant attempt at bringing nuance to the King story on the 50th anniversary of the man's death.

Getting By

MR. ROOSEVELT (B+) - Noel Wells makes an assured feature debut as writer/director/star in this quirky hipster romp about a disaffected 20-something returning to the Austin scene and her ex-boyfriend to tend to her dying cat. Wells is disaffected Emily -- bored with her advertising job, conflicted about a comedy career (and YouTube popularity), and emotionally invested in her old cat, Mr. Roosevelt. She sort of just moved to L.A. one day, leaving Mr. Roosevelt and Eric (Nick Thune) behind. Eric now has a perfect new girlfriend, Celeste (Britt Lower), and has dumped his boho musician lifestyle in favor of studying real estate and letting Celeste make over him and his house.

Wells and Thune have fine chemistry. And Daniella Pineda, as an Austin waitress who befriends Emily, nearly steals the show with a rock star's presence. But Wells holds it all together with sharp humor and emotional grit -- offering up yet another millennial entry in the "Garden State" sweepstakes. Wells gets the little things near perfect (her return to Austin was so hurried that she brought only one childish outfit), and the ensemble cast is hard to resist.

QUEST (B) - This solid but unspectacular documentary follows a black family eking out a living in northern Philadelphia during the Obama years. Newcomer Jonathan Olshefski spent years with Christopher "Quest" Rainey and his family and friends, reserving judgment and merely presenting their story.

Quest is a devoted husband and father, and he mentors young rappers through his hardscrabble production studio. His wife, Christine'a, works in the medical field, and together they bring up a daughter, P.J., and Christine'a's older son who is battling cancer and raising a newborn of his own. P.J. is the symbol of hope, a teenager good at sports but awkward socially. When a street shooting touches the family, you see firsthand how urban violence has a human impact. But Olshefski keeps things low-key and doesn't grasp at Big Themes, instead letting the eventful-yet-uneventful goings-on of a typical American family play out over the long haul.
 

New to the Queue

... and holding ...

Lynn Shelton ("Humpday," "Your Sister's Sister") switches Duplass brothers and gives a lead role to Jay, teaming with Edie Falco, for the story about an ex-con adjusting to society for the first time as an adult, "Outside In."

We're not ready to quit Wes Anderson yet. He returns to stop-action animation ("The Fantastic Mr. Fox") with the dystopian "Isle of Dogs."

Laurent Cantet ("The Class") returns to an adolescent academic setting with a drama about students doing a group exercise with a novelist, "The Workshop."

Chinese students navigate life in the United States while attending a private college in Maine, the documentary "Maineland."

Fifty years on, a documentary about the final years in the life of MLK, "King in the Wilderness."

A "a warts-and-all examination of extended grief," the debut feature "Love After Love."
 

That '70s Drift: Cons

The more things change ...

WUSA (1970) (C) - Look out; here come the Seventies. The high of the Sixties starts to curdle in this Nixonian psychodrama about an alcoholic drifter settling in a seedy New Orleans and selling his soul at a right-wing radio station that promotes patriotism and conspiracy theories. Paul Newman lends mainstream cred to the counter-culture as gruff Reinhardt, who seems to have no ambitions beyond getting laid and getting a paycheck. Geraldine (Joanne Woodward) helps him with the first part, and creepy Bingamon (Pat Tingle) bankrolls the second.

Anthony Perkins plays Rainey, a somewhat addled photographer and census-taker purporting to working undercover to unravel WUSA's nefarious plot against people of color. It's hard to tell, though, from Perkins' bizarre portrayal, whether Rainey is heroic or mentally ill. The apparent white-power scheme is difficult to decipher, and Paul Newman's disengaged performance doesn't help. Shaky southern accents abound. Reinhardt takes up with some hippies. A climactic rally, where a gunshot rings out, comes off as stagy in the hands of director Stuart Rosenberg (re-teaming with Newman three years after "Cool Hand Luke"). You can sense the seeds of that '70s drift -- what would, in surer hands, emerge in classics like "Play Misty for Me" and "Nashville." But this one is too often a sluggish mess and has limited appeal even in our current neo-fascist revival phase.

PAPER MOON (1973) (B+) - Tatum O'Neal steals the show with a stunning debut in Peter Bogdanovich's valentine to Depression-era grifters. Tatum and dad Ryan O'Neal portray an odd couple (she may or may not be his illegitimate child) scamming their way through the heartland. Bogdanovich shoots in velvety black-and-white and pays fine attention to period detail. (The era he is portraying is closer in time to the movie's release than we are now to the movie.) Ringers like Madeline Kahn (as "dancer" Trixie Delight) and John Hillerman (in a dual role as brothers) help broaden the humor with a dollop of vaudeville.

Tatum O'Neal is a natural as Addie, reclining in bed while lighting up a cigarette and listening to Jack Benny. Ryan O'Neal is charming in a flat '70s way as Moses Pray, the Bible salesman scamming newly minted widows door-to-door. High jinks ensue -- Kahn steals the middle third of the movie -- and the bond between Moze and Addie deepens into mutual respect. Bogdanovich, playing during the heyday of Paramount pictures, engages in a labor of love, producing an instant classic.

BONUS TRACK
"Paper Moon's" title track:

 

Whatever It Takes

Young women conniving and thriving:

THOROUGHBREDS (B) - This thriller, about two young women who bond over a murder plot, boasts confidence and strong performances, but it's not convincing as a realistic story. Amanda (Olivia Cooke) and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) awkwardly try to bond again in Lily's Connecticut mansion as Amanda tries to re-acclimate to society after the mercy killing of her horse, which branded her as a pariah. Lily hates her step-dad, who comes off as coarse and creepy. Amanda is emotionally numb and blank-faced, while Lily puts on a perky face.

The slow burn here is a bit undercooked, but the actresses play off each other sharply in this debut feature from Cory Finley. This is entertaining enough across 92 minutes, and the slow twist about what's really happening in Lily's home is clever. But in the end there is something insubstantial, even theatrical about this genre exercise.

ROSETTA (1999) (A-minus) - The Dardenne brothers burst on the scene with this harrowing, brutal examination of the life of an underclass young woman struggling to get by with a drunkard of a mother in an unforgiving world. Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne) is plain-looking and prone to emotional outbursts. When she finds a boy who reaches out to her, she is like a wild animal, unable to forge an emotional connection. She's obsessed with finding and keeping a job, if only to send her mother to rehab. The Dardennes establish their shaky, over-the-shoulder style and they introduce a raw manner of storytelling that would flourish in harried cinema verite gems like "L'Enfant," "The Son" and "The Kid With a Bike." This one can be rough to sit through, but Dequenne cuts a compelling figure.
 

Crises

BRAD'S STATUS (C+) - We are big fans of Mike White, and he has a wonderful touch with stories centered around struggling women: "The Good Girl," "Beatriz at Dinner" and HBO's "Enlightened." Here, he puts forth a midlife crisis of a do-gooder mensch with a perfectly fine life -- cute, understanding wife and brilliant son who is headed off to college. But the voices in his head tell him that he doesn't measure up, to either his uber-successful former college buddies or to the potential of his own son.

Ben Stiller mopes through the proceedings, whining in endless voice-overs about the injustices raining down on a 47-year-old with a bounty of riches, even if they are not all monetary (and even if some of the riches come from his in-laws). His old buddies, often depicted living it up in simplistic montages, have snubbed him to the point of not inviting him to one of their weddings, a rebuff that Brad just can't let go of. But one of the pals (Michael Sheen) comes through for Brad when he needs a Yale alum to put in a good word for Brad's music-prodigy son, Troy (Austin Abrams, whose mumbling millennial manner provides the only fresh take among a talented cast). The twist here is that Troy seems to have his act together while Brad is a tightly packed ball of resentments.

Despite the hurdles that White sets up for viewers seeking entertainment, Brad does have qualities that a middle-aged white guy can identify with, exemplified in Brad's brief, innocent flirtation with one of Troy's female friends. But any substantive ideas put forth here are scattered and conflicting. In the end, Brad doesn't have it so bad, and we don't need to be lectured about his midlife angst.

DOUBLE LOVER (B-minus) - Francois Ozon, the best pound-for-pound storyteller in film today, fumbles an adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates short story and turns in the least affecting movie of his two-decade feature career. He once again taps Marine Vacth, from his 2014 release "Young & Beautiful," now in her mid-20s, to play Chloe, a paranoid woman who is tormented by her boyfriend's evil twin (both are played by Jeremie Renier).

This is a fairly pat horror film that comes not so much a twist as a gradual 180-degree rotation throughout the tense 107-minute running time. Is Chloe being deceived about her boyfriend's true nature? Why is she indulging her basest desires with his brother?

Ozon barely makes this worth viewing. He still knows how to have fun with a narrative. And Vacth, like in "Young & Beautiful," uses her steely, boyish model attractiveness to lure the viewer into the story. Grand dame Jacqueline Bisset turns up toward the end to effect a key plot swerve, but not in time to rescue this pulpy plaything from being only slightly above average.
 

New to the Queue

Drip, drip, drip ...

Armando Iannucci, who brought us the brilliant dark political satires "In the Loop" and HBO's "Veep," takes on the Soviet Union in "The Death of Stalin."

Charlotte Rampling draws us to the mopey drama "Hannah." 

A pair of snarky teens engage in a destructive friendship in the debut feature "Thoroughbreds."

A disillusioned single woman in Tokyo dons a blond wig and takes on an American persona, whereupon she falls for her hunky English instructor in "Oh Lucy!"
  

High Concept

COLLATERAL BEAUTY (2016) (D+) - This dumb movie, monitored as background Muzak on HBO, is a goofy rom-com disguised as a "Crash"-like swirl of personal tragedies. The producers thought it would be a good idea to have comic actor Will Smith act morose and have drama queen Helen Mirren try to yuk it up. Smith plays an ad exec mourning the death of a child from two years earlier, rendered mute and prone to creating elaborate domino sculptures (the Big Theme, if you weren't paying attention).  His three colleagues, each one grappling with their own personal demons, spy on him and discover that he has written angry letters addressed to Love, Time and Death. So they hire three actors to play his ludicrous game and represent Love, Time and Death.

Everyone will learn a Big Lesson, especially -- shock, surprise -- the three colleagues, one of whom is unlucky at love, another who is racing the clock, and another grappling with the possibility of death. Smith cries a lot. Edward Norton performs with his trademark smirk. Mirren looks embarrassed. Kate Winslet is horribly wasted. Keira Knightley (not Natalie Portman) flails as Love, fending off the creepy Norton character. No one has any chemistry with any other cast member. Alternatively maudlin and goofy, this does not work on any level. The reason the grade is so high is that it does have a fantastic ending. If only it weren't a chore getting to it.

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (2010) (B) - This makes me laugh, even the second time around. It is a shameless rip-off of "Back to the Future," "Porky's" and a few other slices of '80s cheese, but everyone in it is having so much fun. John Cusack strikes just the right tone as the leader of a band of misfits who travel through time via a mysterious hot tub during a reunion at a ski lodge. Rob Corddry is insane as the loud-mouth member of the bunch. He and Craig Robinson banter well, with the latter a master of incredulity.

A few familiar faces flit across the screen in minor roles: Lizzy Caplan as a love interest for Cusack, Crispin Glover as a staffer perpetually on the brink of losing an arm, and "Mad Men's" Jessica Pare in a lusty romp in the bubbling water. This is a heady brew of lust and laughs. And if you can get past the ridiculous concept (and Chevy Chase as the spooky maintenance man), you're in for a tub-full of yuks.
 

Far-Out Field Studies

MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND (C) - A spectacle in the true sense of the word, this vanity project comes from Spanish actress Ana Asensio, making her writing and directing debut with the tale of a struggling immigrant lured into an exotic underground scene in Manhattan. Asencio, sculpted and statutesque with penetrating eyes, slums a bit in the starring role, playing screw-up Luciana -- morose and melancholy -- a perpetually broke bumbler who is equally inept baby-sitting adolescents or hawing restaurant fliers while wearing a chicken suit.

It's a stretch to convince us that Luciana is both incompetent and desperate enough to fall for a scam perpetrated by her model pal Olga (Natasha Romanova). Luciana finds herself in an underground lair, amid a bevy of beauties lined up to satisfy the kinky desires of a random group of elite fetishists. Is her life in danger or is merely her self-respect on the line? Asencio is not shy about displaying her body for all to see, but Luciana's emotional life remains quite cloaked.

This descends into absurdity by the end of its 80-minute run, and there is no clear point to the exercise. (Luciana is haunted by a tragedy back in her homeland, a trope that is stale and clunky here.) An extended scene of Luciana bungling the after-school pickup of misbehaving siblings has a delightful edge to it, and there are scattered moments of sharp storytelling and camera work (the opening scene tracks with a series of women strutting through Manhattan before alighting on Luciana), but the descent into cheap Cinemax titillation makes this feel lurid in the end.

TABU (2012) (B-minus) - Half of an interesting movie from Miguel Gomes ("Our Beloved Month of August," which we still haven't gotten to), a 40-something auteur from Portugal. The first half is a chore to get through. It revolves around Pilar (Teresa Madruga), who has been jilted by the Polish student she was expected to host, coping with her eccentric neighbor Aurora (Laura Soveral) and Aurora's exasperated housekeeper Santa (Isabel Cardoso). Aurora seems to be losing her marbles, and characters often talk past each other rather than to each other.

The first half ends with Aurora's demise, and she and -- later, after she dies -- an old friend, Gian Luca Ventura (Henrique Espirito Santo), reminisce about their shared past. It turns out that back in their youth, Aurora (Ana Moreira in flashback) was a farmer and hunter in Africa (in the shadow of the fictional Mount Tabu). Ventura narrates the tale of free-spirited Aurora's scandalous affair with musician Gian Luca.

Gomes shoots in grainy black and white, and he flashes an old-fashioned, elegant visual style (with a slight surrealist nod to Guy Maddin's fever dreams). He mixes American rock classics -- both original and remakes (including by the Ramones) and both in English and Portuguese -- to evoke an era as well as to mix and match cultures and continents. It's a gorgeous movie that could essentially do without its first hour.

BONUS TRACKS
The trailers. First, "Most Beautiful Island":



 "Tabu":



"Be My Baby," in Portuguese, by Les Surfs:
Tabu - Be My Baby from Alex Mystery on Vimeo.
 
  

New to the Queue

The other side ...

Sally Potter ("Yes," "Orlando") returns with another chi-chi chamber piece, this time with Patricia Clarkson leading a solid cast, "The Party."

We liked Ryan Coogler's "Creed" so much that we're willing to gamble on a super-hero movie, "Black Panther."

The inimitable Francois Ozon ("Frantz," "Young & Beautiful") whips up another juicy plot, a love triangle this time, in "Double Lover."

Guy Maddin's preternaturally odd tribute to Hitchcock, an homage to the San Francisco of "Vertigo," the hourlong fever dream "The Green Fog."