That '70s Drift

 

SAVE THE TIGER (1973) (B+) - There are few actors who could do the things that Jack Lemmon did. He was a leading man with the heart of a character actor. Here he is Harry Stoner, a harried co-owner of an L.A. fashion house where he and his partner have been cooking the books to survive and now are considering arson as a solution.

Harry is obsessed with the past, in this case (it being the ugly early '70s) the 1939 Brooklyn Dodgers, World War II (he's a vet) and big-band music (he once was a drummer). When Harry wakes up in the opening scene, hung over from a party the night before, he looks ten times worse than the lush he played in "Days of Wine and Roses." But he cleans up well (a running gag throughout the film finds multiple acquaintances complimenting on his Italian silk suit) and heads to the office on the day of a big fashion show for buyers. On the drive in (in his Chevrolet Aircraft Carrier) he picks up a hitchhiker, Myra, a hippie chick who aimlessly car-surfs the Strip and propositions Harry, who politely declines. (An example of snappy dialogue from Steve Shagan, adapting his own novel: when Myra claims to be 20, Harry replies, "No one is 20!" He then lies and says he's 33.)

You just know Myra (newcomer Laurie Heineman) will show up again in the final reel, but before then, we need to explore the depths of Harry's desperation and degradation. Harry, hectored by his wife to see a psychologist, is sullen, but his unhappiness sometimes has a point -- he laments that Capri went from a battle site in Italy to a fashion forum, with no one appreciating the sacrifice. Meantime, doctoring the financials has led Harry and his partner, Phil (an perfect Jack Gilford), into a dance dodging mob shylocks (a nice turn by Ned Glass) and placating greedy buyers, one of whom demands a repeat visit with a prostitute from Harry's little black book. The arsonist, played by an oily Thayer David (the fight promoter in "Rocky"), holds his meetings in a dirty-movie theater. Every step of the way, Harry looks to shield Phil from Harry's deviant intentions.

After Harry has a meltdown in front of the buyers -- imagining maimed fellow soldiers in the ballroom crowd -- he has his reckoning with the arsonist and then a come-to-Jesus moment with his manic pixie dreamgirl. It's clear that Harry is not just cloyingly nostalgic, but he also has a profound need to feel alive again, even if it means just tossing the ball around and reliving the joy he found in that boy's game. This is a fine character study -- brought to you by Lemmon, the master -- even if it overdoes the schmaltz on occasion.

HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS (1981) (B) - Not so much a full-length film but rather a disconnected series of vignettes, this documentary chronicles some of the forerunners of the outlaw country scenes in Austin and Nashville in 1975 and '76. Townes van Zandt, seen here lubricated as he gives a tour of his farm, and Guy Clark are the big hitters here. David Allan Coe wallows in his prison-porn shtick, and we get glimpses of young up-and-comers Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle (barely 20 at the time).

It's fascinating to watch a guy named Larry Jon Wilson record a song in the studio, including overdubs. Coe drives his own tour bus into the grounds of the Tennessee State Prison. We get rambling standup from Gamble Rogers and fiery fiddle playing from Charlie Daniels. In a home jam session, van Zandt brings tears to the eyes of 80-year-old Seymour Washington with a rendition of "Waitin' Around to die." Beforehand, Washington dispenses advice on living well.

Director James Szalapski does nothing to knit these stories and performances together, but he has a decent eye for period detail, and he gets his fingernails dirty capturing these men living the outlaw-country life in the shadow of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, who could at least claim commercial success during this period.

BONUS TRACKS

The opening theme from "Heartworn Highways," Guy Clark's "L.A. Freeway":

 

Here's a good taste of "Heartworn," a studio session with Larry Jon Wilson recording "Ohoopee River Bottomland":

Then there's Townes van Zandt with the first song he ever wrote, "Waitin' Around to Die":

And from the closing credits of "Save the Tiger," one of Harry's blissed-out reveries, "I Can't Get Started," by Bunny Berigan:

Mike Nichols Double Feature

Revisiting a pair of '60s classics, the first two films directed by one of our favorites, Mike Nichols, as a biography of him gets released.

THE GRADUATE (1967) (A) - It's still difficult to disentangle this influential '60s box-office smash from the cultural phenomenon that radiated out of it (including the iconic Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack), but it still crackles with visual wit and burrows deep into the ennui not just of its young boomer hero Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) but into the midlife angst of his parents' postwar generation. It's funny, heartbreaking and challenging.

Director Mike Nichols has fun breaking from convention with unique camera angles, whether it's looking out from the perspective of a scuba outfit or using a stockinged leg to frame (entrap?) Ben, caught in sexual confusion. At times Nichols' groovy perspectives come off like Hitchcock shooting an episode of "Benny Hill." Risque for its time, the narrative holds up over the years as a condemnation of the empty wasted lives of the bourgeoisie. 

Anne Bancroft sizzles as the seductress Mrs. Robinson, the wife of the business partner of Ben's father. She toys with Benjamin both during their affair and after, as she maneuvers to thwart his chances to date her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). The heavy subject matter is leavened by the jangly comic script from Buck Henry and Calder Willingham. Hoffman was pushing 30 at the time but he tracks well as a budding college graduate. (Bancroft was only 6 years older than Hoffman but her character was twice Benjamin's age.) Ben is an absurdist creation, mumbling, fumbling, often bursting into sprints out of desperation, and sometimes squeaking in frustration.

Ben and Elaine have no clue what they want, a winking acknowledgment of a new generation scoffing at its parents' conventions. This culminates in perhaps the most perfect ending in movie history, in which the young couple display a range of emotions on their faces, unsure of what the future will bring. Nichols keeps this all fresh and exciting, smart and snarky, syncing his humor with Henry's complementary dry wit.

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966) (A-minus) - For his debut, Nichols, recruited by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, directed the rambunctious couple in Edward Albee's incendiary stage play. They play George and Martha, a foundering history professor married to the university president's daughter, and their toxic relationship ensnares an unsuspecting young couple, a new biology professor (George Segal) and his mousy wife (Sandy Dennis) for a drunken and disorderly wee-hours cocktail party.

Back in the day, heavyweight boxers used to go 15 rounds (instead of 12 or 10 now), and this script's onslaught of poisonous putdowns -- as slung by Taylor and Burton -- reminds me of those classic slugfests. The vitriol and emotional cruelty, even couched in black comedy, is relentless, and it might simply be too much for some viewers. The performances, however, keep this from descending into abject nihilism. Segal makes for a nice preppy punching bag, and Dennis' loopy young spouse injects a necessary fragility. Burton may never have been so darkly funny, and Taylor gives as good as she gets.

As the sun comes up and George and Martha figuratively slump in their respective corners, you might hear echoes of Apollo Creed's vow to Rocky Balboa -- "Ain't gonna be no rematch" -- but with these two, you suspect that this was just another Saturday night, and that their series of bouts will go on.

Exile in Guyville

THE CLIMB (A-minus) - This novel take on the buddy movie (and the age-old pitfall of the love triangle) comes from a fresh pair of voices, two guys named Kyle and Mike who play friends named Kyle and Mike.

Michael Angelo Covino takes the director's chair to oversee the script he wrote with Kyle Marvin, who starts out the film as the chubby friend to Mike, who waits for an arduous uphill portion of a bike ride to reveal that he has slept with Kyle's fiancee. Mike stealing Kyle's betrothed is just the first darkly comic twist of this bruisingly funny film. 

But the narrative doesn't go where you think it will. Quickly, Mike's fortunes crash and burn, and he becomes a pathetic mess. Meantime, Kyle, who has moved on to another fiancee, has cleaned up and shaped up and is trying to live a good life, said to be the best revenge. Slowly, the estranged friends start to warm to each other again, realizing their long-standing, if co-dependent, connection. Will Mike sabotage Kyle's relationship with a woman who, if we're being honest, is a bit of a controlling witch?

Covino and Marvin mix witty dialogue with old-fashioned slapstick but also penetrating observations in a thoughtful study of these characters. It is both laugh-out-loud funny at times, deeply moving at other times. It might make you wonder if a buddy -- and not the women you pursue -- could be the one best qualified to serve as a soul mate. This feature debut, expanded from a short that survives here as the extended cycling sequence that opens the film, heralds promising talent.

MARTIN EDEN (B) - This would-be epic based on the writings of Jack London -- transplanted to an indeterminate era in Italy -- keeps threatening to break out as a great film but never does. Director Pietro Marcello teams with writer Maurizio Braucci to adapt a novel from 1909 about a working-class autodidact determined to prove himself as a writer in order to win the love of an aristocratic woman.

Lucas Marinelli has the good looks and charisma to pull off the bigger-than-life title role of the fiercely resolved seaman who won't let anything stop him from getting published. Martin Eden fashions himself as a rugged individualist who refuses to get swept up in the socialist cause. He's a bit of a brute, and it is in defending a colleague in a fight that he gets invited to the friend's home and meets the friend's sister, Elena (Jessica Cressy). 

Martin can come off as a boor, trying to hard to prove his love for the lovely but somewhat bland Elena -- or at least to prove his worthiness. She insists that he go off and resume his education and seek out a mentor to learn the craft of writing before returning to her to be married. Martin, rejected by a school, buys a typewriter instead and perseveres by sheer dint of will and hard work to overcome class barriers. 

This all has the earmarks of a classic love story, and you cheer for director and cast most of the way through. However, a jump in time to the final reel -- where Martin's fortunes have changed, both for better and worse -- completely loses the momentum and the connections that had been scrupulously stitched together during the first hour and a half. (This one overshoots two hours, and it's poorer for that bloated runtime.) By the end, the wheels come off, any pathos is unearned, and it feels like a different movie altogether. It's a shame, because this one had promise.

BONUS TRACKS

From our title track, Liz Phair with "Girls! Girls! Girls!":

 

From "The Climb," a country dusty from Gary Stewart, "Drinking Thing":

Best of Ever, Vol. 2: Obsessions

An occasional series in which we revisit some of our all-time favorites.

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000) (A) - It's difficult not to swoon over this gorgeous love story. It invites you to flow along with Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung -- both old-Hollywood beautiful -- as they glide through 1962 Hong Kong, sometimes artfully in slow motion, ogled by Wong Kar-Wai's curious camera. 

The music, ranging from the hypnotic theme song that gets repeated to intoxicating effect to Nat King Cole crooning in Spanish, wraps everything in warmth and elegance. It takes a while to figure out who's who and why the attraction between the two main characters is taboo, and part of the fun is in figuring out not only their inclinations but what their spouses are up to, as well.

The outfits they wear are impeccable. Occasionally rain slicks the streets. Noodles are always aboil. Glances are stolen. Discretion is observed. It is looping but not repetitive. Cheung and Leung rhyme in more ways than one. If you're not in the mood for love at the start of the film, you'll almost certainly have succumbed by the end.

JAWS (1975) (A) - This is remembered by history as the first real summer blockbuster and for the ominous strains that herald the imminent arrival of the great white, but it is also the epitome of storytelling and moviemaking. Yes, we've had a ban on Steven Spielberg for decades now, but there is no denying that during his first decade or so -- roughly from "Duel" (1971) to "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) -- he had a magic touch and helped define a generation. 

"Jaws," to this day, is a rollicking epic with something for everyone -- it's a thriller, a comedy, a horror story and a snapshot of Americana in the middle of the Me Decade.  It has three lead actors -- Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss -- that feed off each other like dance partners. It updates the classic literature of "Moby Dick" and it skewers the evils of crony capitalism. 

Peter Benchley's screenplay (adapting his novel with comedy writer Carl Gottlieb ("The Jerk")) sings with wit and subtlety. And Spielberg, at the helm, wastes not a single frame or a minute of the two-hour runtime. (Try to catch it on the big screen.) He sweeps you up and carries you out to sea, eventually spitting you back on the beach emotionally wrung. It holds up 45 years later as a thrill ride that would make just about anyone fall in love with the movies. 

BONUS TRACK

That haunting theme to "In the Mood for Love":

And Nat King Cole's Spanish version of "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps":

Holy Crap* - Anal Retentive

 

There's an old Cheech & Chong bit from the 1970s about a guy who takes his kid to the doctor because the kid keeps shoving things up his nose. (Turns out, I'm reminded that it trafficked in stereotypical tropes, which hadn't triggered my teenage sensitivities back then, and it ended with the vaudevillian one-liner "Keep the change." We won't link to it.) 

The point is, it being 2021, the stakes for such crude humor are much higher now -- or should we say much lower? Exhibit A is "Butt Boy," in which our anti-hero, Chip Gutchell (writer-director Tyler Cornack) has a surprisingly enjoyable experience undergoing a prostate exam and celebrates his newfound joy by grabbing anything he can find and sticking them up his butt. Yes, that's the plot of a movie in this day and age. And ol' Chip doesn't just round up the usual suspects to indulge in anal gratification. In fact, you'd be quite surprised at what he can fit up there -- not just the TV remote but also small dogs and children.

If you were to bail out right there, I wouldn't blame you. I might have been better off diving for the remote after all of that is revealed in the first 10 minutes. I could have turned it off and filed a succinct essay under the Life Is Short umbrella. And yet, I persisted. Not that I'm proud.

So, the movie jumps ahead nine years, and Chip is still stuck in a loveless marriage, and he's in Alcoholics Anonymous, where he gets recruited to serve as a sponsor to a hard-drinking police detective, Russel (a ham-chewing Tyler Rice), who pines for an ex and seems to harbor a dark secret or two of his own. The two men find their anonymous world spill out into the open when Russel is called in to investigate the disappearance of Chip's co-worker's son during take-your-kid-to-work day at the office. (It was a mistake, during a game of hide-and-seek, to hide under Chip's desk. You think you've had to deal with anal-retentive co-workers? Wait till you meet Chip!)

This whole thing is not only ridiculous but fairly disgusting. (The trail of the investigation will lead -- literally -- up Chip's ass.) So why not turn it off and brand it with an F? Because there's almost something admirable to Cornack's devotion to the absurd premise. 

It's almost as if Cornack and co-writer Ryan Koch were dying for the opportunity to make their own detective movie -- maybe they were fans of the noir classics of Phillip Marlowe or old westerns -- and some movie executive, just to be rid of these pests, concocted the stupidest plot device they could think of just to toy with them. In my imagined scenario, Cornack and Koch take that dare and they say, "A movie where the bad guy hides all the victims and evidence up his butt? I'll see your crazy idea and raise you this otherwise conventional script starring a love-starved husband and a hard-drinking detective with some secret scores to settle!"

And they did it. Aside from that inane premise which permeates the entire film, "Butt Boy" is a conventional, borderline cliched whodunnit. Replace a man's anal cavity as the stash house with, say, an old barn in the woods, and cast Ryan Gosling in the role of the brooding, boozing cop, and you might have a mainstream hit on your hands. 

To me, that's the true takeaway from this exercise. Two filmmakers had a story to tell, and they knocked out a script, raised some financing, rounded up a cast of pretty good actors, and shot it and edited it. They had a vision, and they realized it. Their vision was an incredibly stupid one, but yet ... 

They persisted. They accomplished something, rather than just sit around feeling sorry for themselves with their thumbs up their ass.

GRADE for 'BUTT BOY':  C-minus

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

New to the Queue

 Brighter days ...

An older lesbian couple must deal with hardship before one of them comes out to her family, "Two of Us."

A period piece about the Black Panther movement of the '60s, focusing on Chicago leader Fred Hampton and an infiltrator in the ranks, "Judas and the Black Messiah."

Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby may be too good to pass up, albeit in another tale of forbidden love in the 19th century, "The World to Come."

We liked Azazel Jacobs' early work ("Momma's Man," "Terri"), but he stumbled last time with "The Lovers," yet we are drawn to his latest, "French Exit."

Ingrid Bergman Double Feature

Confession: Until this weekend, I had never seen "Casablanca," considered one of the greatest movies ever made, an iconic touchstone in American popular culture. The legend goes like this: I was in college at the University of Illinois at Chicago, working a weekend part-time kitchen job at B&B Catering on the near Southwest Side and also co-editing the weekly student newspaper. I was busy while trying to maintain an A-minus GPA. So I decided to set aside a whole evening to unplug from all that -- "Casablanca" was scheduled to air at 7 o'clock on Channel 9. Even back then I knew it should be part of my cultural education, long before I would start writing about film regularly. 

After dinner I went to my room, turned on the portable television set, dimmed the lights, reclined on my bed -- finally relaxing. And then, probably not long after the opening credits, I fell fast asleep. Lights out for the full two hours. Oh, well, I tried. Now, nearly four decades later, I finally patched the hole in my game. Without commercial breaks ...

CASABLANCA (1942) (A) - What can you say? It is filled with lines that have become embedded in our pop culture for decades. It's Bogie and Bergman, the good guys vs. the Nazis. The setting is exotic, the booze flows, the intrigue builds, and there's Sam (Dooley Wilson) at the piano, to tug at our heartstrings with Rick and Ilsa's song, "As Time Goes By." As Herman Hupfeld had written a decade before, during the depths of the Depression: "You must remember this / A kiss is just a kiss / a sigh is just a sigh."

Sigh. Even after all the time that has gone by, the parodies that have accumulated, the postwar glow that has worn out its welcome -- "Casablanca" still delivers. The story, the lines, the performances -- cutting edge for their time -- retain their power. It's a thrilling movie, even if you know in advance who gets on that plane at the end. 

Bogart's Rick Blaine is a hardened ex-pat who, after a series of dalliances with underground democratic movements in Europe, finds himself lying low in Morocco running a nightclub while walking a fine line among the Nazis, resistance and collaborators. Bergman's Ilsa is married to Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a resistance leader once feared dead. Ilsa and Victor are among the desperados seeking the transit letters that have fallen into Rick's lap and which will save the lives of whoever uses them to flee to freedom. 

Thus we have the epic set-up -- the "fight for love and glory," as the song goes -- of a love triangle unfolding in the early days of World War II, when no one new if democracy would defeat fascism. (Still an open question?) Amid the decadence of wartime Casablanca -- drinking, gambling, black-market haggling -- an international cast (including a marvelous Sidney Greenstreet as a rival club owner, Claude Rains as the French police captain Renault, and Peter Lorre as Ugarte the street hustler) savors a script (by Howard Koch and Julius and Philip Epstein) that crackles with wit and charm. Director Michael Curtiz makes sure it zips along in refined noir style. It is a cauldron of moral dilemmas tinged with old-fashioned romantic schmaltz. 

All the while, Rick drinks and smolders, and Ilsa agonizes about the choice she must make. Bogart's scowl is softened by those eyes of Ingrid Bergman, where all of her magic is contained. I defer the rest of the analysis to this Roger Ebert reconsideration from 1996. Whether you've ever seen "Casablanca" or haven't for a while, cue it up on a date night, dim the lights -- and hopefully you'll have had a nap earlier in the day, so you can savor this masterpiece.

GASLIGHT (1944) (B-minus) - Our curiosity got the best of us, marking the end of a presidential administration with a throwback to the origins (oranges?) of the term for making up lies and pretending reality isn't what it really is in order to make another person go crazy. Bergman plays the young wife who moves back into the London home where her aunt died, along with the creepy new husband who apparently stalked her and willed her into matrimony.

From the stable of fabled director George Cukor, this one slogs along for nearly two hours, taking its damn sweet time for Paula Alquist (Bergman) to start going crazy and then for her to figure out that she is not. Charles Boyer is magically suspicious, but he's pretty dull on the screen. A teenage Angela Lansbury debuts with a splash as a saucy maid.

This is a classic of film noir, and Bergman does her best to bring some realism to the era of emoting. But the suspense is just too creaky, and the inevitable reveal -- coaxed out by Joseph Cotton's handsome detective -- eventually loses its impact.

BONUS TRACK

HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR (1959) (B) - This foundational film of the French New Wave from Alan Resnais has its moments, but it's a pretty chatty and solemn rumination on both the joys and horrors of both remembering and forgetting. Resnais shows a little too much deference to the flowery screenplay by Marguerite Duras, about a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) who visits Hiroshima 14 years after World War II to film a movie and has a fling with a Japanese war veteran (Eiji Okada). Through flashbacks, the actress slowly unspools the wartime tale of her forbidden love with a German soldier that got him shot and her imprisoned in her family's basement. Rough stuff. Resnais' crisp black-and-white cinematography is bold and assured (it's his first feature after more than a decade of making documentary shorts), and his luxurious images -- in particular the modestly naked bodies of his handsome couple -- must have amazed audiences 60 years ago. However, the story itself creaks and lurches in ways that have not worn well. 

From the soundtrack:

The * of 2020

 

Let's just put an asterisk after every entry of 2020. We don't need to belabor the point.

Herein we celebrate the best films of the past year. As usual, it takes us a few extra weeks out in flyover country to catch up to the straggling titles. These past months it was actually easier to keep up with the scattershot slate of releases, because we could stream them on demand, with a few exceptions (more asterisks). 

The experiment that was the start of the third decade of the millennium (asterisk for the sticklers, you know who you are) mixed the good with the bad. On the one hand, a bunch of high-profile titles got pushed back to 2021. On the other hand, the ones that did get released were often immediately available, for a price, online. On the third hand (asterisk), we couldn't view them on the big screen in the company of others in a shared experience. It was what it was.

But as usual, there are only two or three films that could be considered truly great and which will stand the test of time (asterisk: I can't predict the future), followed on our list by some very good ones. We're going to be generous this time and make the list a fat 15, weighing it down with titles but lightening the load by including some sweet (if at times bittersweet) and uplifting minor-key movies that normally would have had a tougher time piercing our defenses. A little positivity couldn't hurt. (Asterisk.)

This year, it'll be a simpler list, with fewer categories and titles. Even before the asterisks started flying, we've made a conscious effort to downsize this forum and streamline what is now an eight-year relationship online. But you all out there still need images to stream, and below you'll find a couple of weeks worth of entertainment.

While it was easy to get cynical and jaded as a veteran moviegoer who feels like we've seen it all, we instead tried to get a little more discerning. And we were rewarded by seeing a lot of new talent and first-time filmmakers who made the list. We denote four of them below -- with an asterisk.

THE TOP 15

  1. We Are Little Zombies* - Easily the year's best director, Makoto Nagahisa, who splashes with this dark but heartwarming tale of four orphans banding together through post-millennial uber-angst. Never has nihilism been so colorful and groovy.

  2. Someone Somewhere - From France, the ache of loneliness, even when that certain someone is within reach, if only you knew.

  3. Never Rarely Sometimes Always - As raw as cinema gets, Eliza Hittman ("It Felt Like Love") gets back on her game in this jarring documentary-like traipse through the abortion system.

  4. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom - Viola Davis (best actor) is like a cat with a bird in its mouth, big-footing around this August Wilson play like she owned the damn recording studio in 1927.

  5. The Forty-Year-Old Version* - Another fresh voice, Radha Blank, a complex exploration of both race relations and the imminent approach of middle age, and how both of those factors help or hinder the making of art. (Best screenplay.)

  6. Beanpole - Visually striking and heart-wrenching -- how we somehow manage to get by psychologically in the wake of war.

  7. Corpus Christi - A gripping tale of a doomed young man vainly seeking redemption.

  8. Epicentro - One of two documentaries on the elite list, this one a gorgeous, meandering dive into one aspect of Cuban culture.

  9. The Climb - A novel take on the classic buddy film involving love triangles and the shifting power dynamics between two grown men. Both funny and unpredictable, with a smart visual sense.

10. Driveways - A mom, a son and the codger next door. The subsidiary culture clash takes a backseat to old-fashioned sweetness and light, giving hope to outsiders.

11. I Am Greta* - Remarkably intimate, this one succeeds not on its politics but rather on its sociological and psychological insights of one teenager trying to make a difference. From Nathan Grossman.

12. The Wolf of Snow Hollow - Jim Cummings' sophomore effort gets a little silly at times, but there's no one like him tearing up the screen with wild ranges of emotions mixed with acrid comedy.

13. First Cow - Another buddy film, this Kelly Reichardt period piece takes its sweet time to charm you.

14. The Life Ahead - Similar to "Driveways," this Italian mood piece presents an odd couple -- Sophia Loren's Holocaust survivor and a rebellious street kid -- and tugs at the heart in just the right ways.

15. Shithouse* - Another debut film, this one about a young man (writer-director-star Cooper Raiff) putting his vulnerabilities out there as he struggles through his first year of college. 

JUST MISSED THE LIST

• I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Wonderfully bizarre, until Charlie Kaufman goes completely off the rails in the final 20 minutes.
• Banana Split - Two girls bro it up as they bond over a shared boy toy.
• The Trip to Greece - We just can't quit these two clever Brits fictionalizing themselves in the hands of Michael Winterbottom.
• The devastating documentary about Romania's health care system, "Collective." 
• From Iceland, the full simmer of "A White, White Day."
• The beautiful black-and-white Soviet period piece "Dear Comrades."

TOP DOCS

• Crip Camp
• Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults - HBO's four-part series is the epitome of historical storytelling, spanning the decades-long death march of the most captivating of all cults.
• The Social Dilemma
• Feels Good Man
• Harry Chapin: When in Doubt, Do Something
• Class Action Park
• The Raft
• Earth
• The Edge of Democracy
• Other Music
• One Child Nation
• The Go-Go's
• Red Penguins

THE LEFTOVERS

  The 2019 films we caught up with:

• The elegant, fascinating love story "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" would have made our top five last year.
• The invigorating documentary about a family of rogue EMTs in Mexico City, "Midnight Family"
• From Serbia, the somber '90s war story "The Load."

COMING ATTRACTIONS

As noted above, releases were a little scrambled in 2020. You'll see "Nomadland," from Chloe Zhao ("The Rider") on some lists, and it did appear briefly online late in the year, but it won't get an official release until 2021. Same for "Gunda," the wordless documentary about farm life, which comes out next month. 

We're curious about Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" anthology (especially "Lovers Rock" and "Red, White and Blue"), but it's an Amazon exclusive. And Sofia Coppola's "On the Rocks" belongs to Apple TV. Finally, we doubt "Martin Eden" would crack our Top 15, but it's coming out on disc next week, so we'll find out soon.

Stay tuned for reviews of those titles and more as we re-emerge in 2021, hopefully in a dark, confined space at some point.

Modern Deprivations

In what almost certainly is a blog record, we have our first straight A of the year before the end of January.

ACASA, MY HOME (A) - This Romanian tale of two parents raising nine children off the grid on the outskirts of Bucharest plays like a mix of "The Wolfpack" and last year's "Honeyland," and it's better than both of those documentaries. The father is that classic mix of eccentric and abusive, and the mother is subservient. 

The children are like feral moppets gorging on nature. They sleep on the floor with chickens and pigs, and they rely on outsiders who donate clothes and toys, but their daily outings along the reedy delta seem to be truly exuberant experiences. They even have a hideout to go to whenever Child Services makes one of its periodic visits.

One of those visits results in a relocation to a city shelter. As Roma, they are treated like second-class welfare recipients. The children miss their natural playground and soon fall victim to the lures of modern culture, like cell phones and video games. The oldest boy finds a girlfriend and is soon talking smack to the old man. When removed from their natural habitat, the kids exhibit sharper sides of their personalities and insecurities.  

Director Radu Ciorniciuc has a goldmine of sociological insights to juggle here. However, nothing is black and white. It's not necessarily the case that the kids are better off in the wilds, immunized from 21st century evils. The parents themselves are rather sickly (the father has diabetes), and the children are not only poorly nourished but also illiterate and socially retarded. And we see a good amount of empathy and good deeds out of both the Child Services representatives and the government officials overseeing the construction of a gaudy nature preserve smack along the family's compound. 

Ciorniciuc really makes no judgments here, and that is endlessly refreshing. He offers up no facile takeaways, but instead embeds his camera so snugly into the family's existence that it takes a while to be amazed at how intimate yet invisible his presence is in the mix. He makes no false steps while crafting a quiet masterpiece.

NOTTURNO (B) - This is borderline war porn and should probably be downgraded to mere fetishism, but oh, how gorgeous are these scenes from Gianfranco Rosi depicting life among the ruins in Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan and Lebanon. Parking his camera in one place and either making or waiting for the light to be just right, Rosi unspools a series of unrelated vignettes, one more mesmerizing than the other.

There is no narration or on-screen identifiers, so most people will either have to spot the clues in context or just go clueless about where we are at a given time. Rosi at times mixes heart-wrenching visuals with absurdist shots of everyday ordinary life. 

Some scenes in particular are mesmerizing. We watch children in art-therapy sessions, including a boy with a stutter, describing horrific crimes against humanity by ISIS. Adults in a psychiatric facility rehearse a play based on the horrors of war. A couple in love share a hookah on a rooftop as gunfire rattles in the far distance, before he heads off to the streets to sing the praises of Mohammed. A young man paddles along the shiny surface of water in the middle of the night as oil-well fires glow in the background. A colorless prison yard comes magically to life as a parade of men in orange jumpsuits slowly spill out of a doorway, like dye leaching out onto the screen.

It may bother you that such manmade and godly beauty are employed to convey the depths of human desperation. Or maybe it's a decent way to get you to pay attention.

BONUS TRACK

From "Notturno," the haunting "Mawtini":

New to the Queue

Apres le deluge ...

A documentary about Romanian parents trying to battle the state while raising nine kids off the grid, "Acasa, My Home."

From Ukraine, a dystopian nightmare that takes place in the far distant future of the year 2025, "Atlantis."

From Italy, a fancifully shot and moody documentary about the war-torn regions of Iraq, Syria and their neighbors, "Notturno."

A debut feature out of Mexico, a mother searches for her missing son in the border drama "Identifying Features."

Midlife Insights

A WHITE WHITE DAY (B+) - Ingvar Sigurdsson is a force to be reckoned with in this harrowing tale of an emotionally knotted man coming to terms not only with the death of his wife but also the apparent realization that she may have been unfaithful. A bit sluggish over its nearly two-hour running time, this simmering suspense film builds relentlessly and convincingly in the hands of writer-director Hlynur Palmason.

Sigurdsson's Ingimundur has a stony demeanor and seems to gain solace from only two things: the house he is methodically building and the time he gets to spend with his charming tween granddaughter, Salka (Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir). Ingimundur is a small-town police chief on leave of absence, and he eventually develops a third obsession -- confronting the man suspected of sleeping with his wife.

Palmason does a brilliant job of setting the table in the first half, and his camerawork in the second half lends an immediacy that gradually heightens the tension until Ingimundur finally achieves his reckoning. Our hero seems barely in control -- it's almost amusing how many times he puts his granddaughter in danger, as if she's a patrol partner -- yet he is intellectually astute as he navigates his own emotional landscape. In the end, it seems that the only thing that could console him -- a reckoning with his dead wife -- is impossible.

THE MEASURE OF A MAN (2016) (C) - Not even Vincent Lindon can rescue this lethargic character study of an out-of-work husband and father trying to salvage his dignity as a breadwinner. Lindon reunites with Stephane Brise, the director of "Mademoiselle Chambon," but there is no spark in this depiction of the drudgery of working-class life.

Lindon's hangdog expressions are a good fit for the role of Thierry, who seems beaten down by the unemployment system that fumbles its attempts to retool his skills and who seems emasculated by the penny pinching he is forced to do on behalf of his wife and handicapped high school son. Thierry, finally -- but not until the second half of the movie -- lands a job as a security guard at a megastore, where he now must harass customers and employees who, like he was, are strapped for cash and down on their luck, descending into petty theft.

File this one under Fast Forward Theater. Brise drags out scenes interminably, too enamored of an apparently amateur cast to convey the realism of France's bureaucracy and the beatdown felt by the lower classes. But realism doesn't pop on the screen here; instead, interactions run in circles and later repeat themselves. This was a valiant attempt to connect with the hoi polloi, but it pretty much goes nowhere.

BONUS TRACK

From the closing credits in "White Day," Leonard Cohen's mournful "Memories":

Twilight of Twee: Part 2 -- The Drift

HAM ON RYE (D+) - This one is about as thin and derivative an idea as you can put forth, and the cheap production values and zombie-like non-actor cast drag this into the territory of unwatchable. This modest debut feature from Tyler Taormina tracks a bunch of suburban kids as they muddle through some sort of local rite of passage.

It is difficult to grasp the true narrative here. The first third of the film is all vague setup -- high schoolers getting dressed up and traipsing, pilgrimage-style, to a local sandwich shop, as if it is their prom destination. It is tempting to mention "Dazed and Confused," a landmark in slacker filmdom, but Richard Linklater's Gen X Austin nugget was some sort of intellectually engaging action film compared to this lethargic game of play-acting. 

This has more of a kinship with the early films of Matthew Porterfield, such as "Hamilton" and "Putty Hill," where non-actors toss off non-sequitur-filled mini-monologues and perform random menial tasks like cutting the grass in extended takes. Here, there is no one person to focus on (let alone a Matthew McConaughey lurking in the mix) until the final third, and even then it is by default, because she has suddenly become isolated. And her main duty is to call friends' voicemails or knock on their doors looking for them. (Yes, it's that exciting to watch.) One scene dramatically ends on a close-up of a balloon clinging to a ceiling, perhaps this generation's version of the plastic bag in the wind from "American Beauty." You sense Taormina is making some sort of statement about the schism between college-bound hetero-normative young adults and "outcasts," but that's about the best guess I can muster.

With no real narrative except for a bizarre, anachronistic teen mating ritual followed by under-explained extra-terrestrial twist to set up the final act, the writer-director leans into style over substance, and his style seems to depend on whatever he could scrape together on a micro-budget (including fake driving backgrounds). At first you wonder if it's a period piece, because no one uses a cell phone; but then late in the film a character casually whips out her device as if maybe she had somehow escaped to the future. Taormina underscores it all with music that obviously means more to him than it possibly could to his character -- a mix of oldies and more recently recorded faux-ldies, plus some cringe-inducing new-age pan flute airs -- none of which syncs with whatever these kids are going through.  I had way more ennui for 84 minutes than these kids did.

BONUS TRACK

The kids, for no rational reason, dance chastely to girl-group records, like "Tonight I'm Gonna Fall in Love" by the TearDrops:

The more modern entries on the soundtrack either try to emulate dusties or fall into the familiar "Garden State" patois of indie wimp-rock. Here is Captain DaFeira with "Tribe":

Twilight of Twee: Part 1 -- The Grift

KAJILLIONAIRE (C) - There was a moment in time for Miranda July. That era probably was the 1980s (but she was still a kid then), so we settled for the retro version that she presented a decade ago as an adult. But time has not been kind to her manic-pixie take on the world that she offered up so effortlessly back in the Before Times. Something seems stale.

July, a wry writer and occasional filmmaker, splashed with the witty and deadpan "Me and You and Everyone We Know" in 2005 and followed it up in 2011 with the quietly charming relationship film "The Future" -- which gave us a talking cat named Paw-Paw (voiced by July) as one of the main characters -- but hadn't produced a film since. Now in her mid-40s, it seems her moment in cinema may have aged out of the system.

Her cutesy idea here is to create a bizarro family of socially dysfunctional grifters and see if they can out-outre each other. She doesn't so much assemble a cast as take hostages -- powerhouses Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger as the cruelly unemotional parents and the way-past-her-prime Evan Rachel Wood as their abuse-victim daughter, whom they have charmlessly named Old Dolio, after a homeless man who they thought was going to bequeath them some money somehow. They live in an office-building connected to a factory, where waves of pink bubbles constantly seep through the walls, because -- well, because it's just one of July's fairy-dust brainstorms.

This has all the hallmarks of established actors indulging an avant-garde filmmaker by work-shopping her half-baked ideas and seeing if anything sticks. Jenkins and Winger give it their all (digging deep, I'm sure, into their '70s Method training), and they try not to seem embarrassed in their obviously out-sized but under-sketched roles. Wood affects a husky grumble of a 20-something who was raised by wolves and knows only one thing -- how to scam money in order to pay for the next meal. But she shows little range or ability to connect with Gina Rodriguez as Melanie, who comes along to help rescue Old Dolio from this suffocating existence.

Melanie is meant to represent empathy and humanity here, but she comes off as little more than a narrative device, almost a Magical Minority, who unconvincingly is powerfully drawn to her very own Eliza Doolittle. But Rodriguez, too, is victimized by July's inability to flesh out what could have been a fine short story into a feature-length movie, as well as July's failure to literally piece together a convincing fully-realized film. July attempts to convey a washed-out L.A. but shows none of the flair of Sean Baker or others who can use a camera to make their images come alive. July is a huge talent as a writer and performance artist/curator, but this tale of a family of emotionally stunted oddballs lays bare her own arrested development as a filmmaker. 

BONUS TRACK

Besides a well-placed Bobby Vinton song (!), July finds interesting sounds, including this piano piece, "Melusine," from her college pal Summer Mastous:

Which led us to this, also from Mastous:

RIP, Michael Apted

 

The man behind the "Seven Up" series of documentaries that spanned six decades (most recently "63 Up"), Michael Apted, has died at age 79.

We gave him some due in our reviews of his series that chronicled a cohort of British baby boomers since the 1960s as they passed through their seven-year cycles of life. About a year ago we revisited the entire series. Part one covered the first four episodes. Part two covers the next four entries, and our post includes video of an interview Apted did with Roger Ebert.

 

Apted was part of the crew for "Seven Up" in 1964 when it was made for British television, and he then took over the rest of the series. It remains to be seen if, five years from now, someone will take over the project and continue it with "70 Up." The series remains one of the landmark achievements of documentary filmmaking and an endlessly fascinating sociological study.

Apted had other achievements to list on his resume, including directing "Coal Miner's Daughter" in 1980, as wells as a run as three terms as president of the Directors Guild of America. Here is an obituary.

Men Behaving Badly

THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW (A-minus) - Jim Cummings comes storming back from "Thunder Road" with another character on the brink of a mental breakdown, this time as a small-town sheriff's deputy battling to stay sober as he hunts a werewolf-style killer that defiles its female victims under the light of each full moon. Cummings again writes, directs and stars, and his bottled-up John Marshall can rarely keep his emotions in check, not unlike the mysterious creature who emerges during each lunar cycle. As with his previous effort, Cummings manages to make his character's meltdown both hilarious and harrowing, achieving more character development in 10 seconds of emoting than many others can over the course of an entire film.

John worries about his dad, the aging Sheriff Hadley (a wistful Robert Forster in his final role), who has a heart condition, and about his teenage daughter, Jenna (Chloe East), who is a pawn in the bitter breakup between John and his wife. John, as de facto sheriff while he pushes his dad to retire, takes his frustrations out on the rest of the sheriff's crew, big-footing crime scenes and barking out insults. Riki Lindhome is on hand as a detective who provides the voice of calm and reason.

As the body count rises and the townies question the aptitude of this collection of Barney Fifes, John internalizes all the public and personal strife, continuing to lash out in every direction as he flails for a life preserver. (Last time we called him a cross between Jim Carrey and Jason Schwartzman. He's one of those tightly wound souls we used to call a ketchup bottle.) Announcing to an AA gathering in the opening scene that he has been with the program six years -- though sober for only three -- he finds himself stumbling along the 12 steps

 

This is Cummings' show for 83 minutes (he knows how to get in and out of a story), and you'll either fall for his shtick or you won't. And he might be pushing it if he keeps portraying crazed cops on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But for now, he's 2-for-2 and a refreshing new voice on the scene.

 

THE NEST (B) - Sean Durkin, finally following up "Martha Marcy May Marlene," teams Jude Law and Carrie Coon for this '80s period piece about an ambitious but delusional financial analyst who drags his wife and two kids back to his home turf of London, where their family structure just further disintegrates. Despite strong performances, the results are mixed.

Like with "Martha," Durkin creates a slow burn of a narrative that pivots on the tension between a couple at odds with each other, in this case boastful Rory (Law) and his unhappy American wife Allison (Coon). He is trying to recapture some former glory as a golden boy, but you can tell from the start that it's all a big bluff. She wants to train horses and riders, but shipping her prized equine across the pond creates problems, and Allison just cannot abide the role of trophy wife at British social gatherings, especially when she has to listen to her husband shovel the cocktail-chatter bullshit.

Rory has imprisoned his family in a creepy manor in the countryside, and the kids suffer the indignities typical of the era -- bickering parents who can't be bothered to do the simple parenting tasks, such as getting the kids to school on time. Teenage Sam (a sharp Oona Roche) acts out rebelliously, partying with her friends and talking smack to her parents over legitimate grievances. Younger Benjamin suffers from tween angst and neglect, at times a boy who just wants his mommy and daddy, a simple plea that often falls on deaf ears. 

Law and Coon, along with the kids, dig deep for emotional resonance, but Durkin too often drags this out as if he's about to spring a horror-movie surprise on you, but that ghost in the machine never jumps out. It's a mildly clever misdirection, but it's a disappointment nonetheless. Still, he knows how to set an ominous mood, and the cast does its best to pull this one out.

BONUS TRACKS

The trailers: