Movie review by Greg Carlson

With co-director Paul Sng, Celeste Bell celebrates the legacy of her mother Marianne Elliott-Said – known better to the world as the inimitable X-Ray Spex leader Poly Styrene – in an intimate documentary that is part memoir and part biography. Balancing the private and the public sides of the musician’s complex and complicated life, the filmmakers use their unprecedented access to cover both well-known and lesser-known dimensions of Poly Styrene’s remarkable career with sharp eyes and keen insights. Honoring the subject’s gift for future-thinking critiques of misogyny, commodification, consumer culture, class warfare, racial division, environment-choking petroleum products, and a range of other social concerns, Bell and Sng put together a worthy tribute to a deserving original voice.

Bell appears throughout the film as narrator and guide, drawing from her lovely 2019 book “Dayglo! The Poly Styrene Story,” co-authored with Zoe Howe, who is also credited as one of the movie’s writers. As Marianne’s only child, Bell acknowledges the heavy burdens and challenges of speaking for Poly Styrene following the singer’s death in 2011 at the age of 53. The second half of the film examines Bell’s unconventional childhood, when Elliott-Said struggled with mental illness, misdiagnosis, prescription medication, and institutionalization. Her participation in the Hare Krishna movement arguably exacerbated the inability to properly care for Bell. Following years of pain and mistrust, the two would reconcile.

As a woman of color, Poly Styrene’s incredible projection of powerful self-confidence was forged from the adversity of her childhood. Sng and Bell present an excellent explanation of the “nowhere land” inhabited by mixed-race children rejected as being neither Black nor white in the Brixton neighborhood where Mari often fended for herself while her single mother worked all day. The timing and conditions were just right for an awakening to the thrill and chaos of punk rock; Mari’s attendance at a life-changing Sex Pistols show led quickly to the formation of X-Ray Spex and the adoption of the Poly Styrene persona, which Elliott claimed to have selected from the Yellow Pages.

Styrene’s image helped make her and break her. Once X-Ray Spex began receiving airplay, turning up on television, and fielding interview requests, Styrene was constantly scrutinized for the braces on her teeth, her racial identity, her hair, and her weight. In several archival clips, we witness Styrene deflecting, defying, and dismantling the vacant probes, but her frustration is palpable. Additional context is provided from writings and diary entries performed by Ruth Negga. The toll of fame and the rock life would reach a flashpoint when X-Ray Spex came to America for a residency at CBGB.

The movie’s title, “Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché,” references one of the classic songs that identified a particular kind of self-reflection present in the original wave of popular punk recordings. Anthems of self-loathing were commonplace amidst the nihilism being explored by the angry and disaffected progenitors of the movement, but Styrene – as her very name implied – would regularly contemplate the thin line between the artificial and the authentic (one of the genre’s ultimate preoccupations). The film is not a critical deconstruction of the music of Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex, but enough time is spent and enough awesome performance footage is included to send newcomers in search of “Germfree Adolescents” and more.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Just as “Aftersun” explores the contours of a father-daughter relationship, Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter” laser-focuses on the particulars of a parent-child bond. In this case, Hogg’s longtime friend, collaborator, and all-around force of nature Tilda Swinton plays both mother and daughter in a film linked to Hogg’s “Souvenir” series as a kind of spiritual/spirited sequel. In an interview with David Sims in which the notion of the “Hogg-verse” is proposed, the filmmaker indicates that she opted to use “Souvenir” monikers Julie and Rosalind “late in [the] development” of the movie. “The Eternal Daughter” can be viewed independently from the pair of stories starring Swinton’s own daughter Honor Swinton Byrne, but the in-world connections provide an extra layer of enjoyment.

“The Eternal Daughter” is, among other things, a ghost story. The fog-shrouded onetime manor/current hotel where the now middle-aged Julie takes mom Rosalind for both birthday celebration and potential film research is a spectral presence situated in the Welsh countryside. We discover that Rosalind spent time there years ago when it belonged to the family of her aunt as a private residence. Like the Pevensie siblings in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” young Rosalind was sheltered in the manse with other relatives during World War II. As the elder shares recollections with Julie (who often records the audio without her mother’s knowledge or consent), Hogg asks the viewer to pay close attention to the two women, simultaneously intensifying the bond between them and outlining their stark differences.

Despite the seriousness of mortality, history, and things now lost, Hogg and Swinton never take themselves too seriously. “The Eternal Daughter” is often hilarious, the laughs in balance with the disconcerting feelings of dread brought on by nervous dogs, odd sounds in the night, empty hallways, and the driver who warns of a figure glimpsed standing in a window. Our first strong indication of a sense of Hogg’s playful fun – outside Swinton’s terrific double role – is the scene introducing the sour receptionist played by Carly-Sophia Davies. The check-in exchange, in which Davies’s unnamed clerk gives Julie a hard time about specific room availability even though every room in the entire joint appears vacant, is just one absurdly funny exchange.

Both Davies and Swinton deadpan their way through several low-stakes irritations and indignities – the inn is so short-staffed, the insolent character played by Davies also waits on guests at mealtime. We wouldn’t be surprised to learn she is also preparing the food in the kitchen. Hogg is a master at hinting at unseen worlds. Each night, Julie watches the clerk in and around the car of a visitor (perhaps a lover?). We share Julie’s voyeuristic thrill, even as the act of looking humanizes and enhances someone we know so little about. A couple other people pop in and out – there’s a great scene with the groundskeeper played by Joseph Mydell and another diversion with the unwanted visit of a relative (Crispin Buxton) – but the heart of the tale takes place in the conversations shared between Julie and Rosalind, brought to life so exquisitely by one of our finest screen performers.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Shimmering like a mirage that retreats and dematerializes the closer one gets, “Aftersun” may just be the best movie of 2022. The self-described “emotionally autobiographical” feature debut of Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells, the film is a treasure for those viewers who prefer ambiguity and understatement. The deceptively straightforward story follows the low-key father-daughter holiday of 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and about-to-turn-31 Calum (Paul Mescal). Their vacation at a seaside resort in Turkey, filled with seemingly carefree time in the swimming pool, billiards and arcade games, moonlight dining, and DJs spinning the hits of the late-90s period at dance parties, veil feelings of frustration and darkness that trouble Calum.

Despite just a small handful of student films completed during her time in NYU’s graduate film program, Wells demonstrates the confidence and command of a veteran storyteller. “Aftersun” has drawn multiple comparisons to the cinema of fellow Scot Lynne Ramsay in both thematic and stylistic approach – a genuine compliment to the emerging talent. The filmmaker has acknowledged the influence of Chantal Akerman, Edward Yang, Todd Haynes, Sylvia Chang, and Barry Jenkins (who served as an “Aftersun” producer). Wells is certainly no slavish imitator, though. She constructs her very own universe with an eye and ear for the particular and the unique.

“Aftersun” joins a short list of films that successfully use the father-daughter relationship as a means to examine the liminal state between childhood and adolescence as well as the inevitable recognition of flawed personhood that manifests once we begin to see a parent as an individual. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Paper Moon,” and “Leave No Trace” are just three examples that explore different dynamics unique to childrearing. And despite the obvious differences in depictions of wealth and privilege, “Aftersun” rhymes with key aspects of Sofia Coppola’s beautiful “Somewhere.” In one similarity, both Calum and Stephen Dorff’s Johnny Marco are encumbered with casts while they nurse broken bones back to health.

Those parallel rhetorical signifiers in the two movies suggest splintering and fragmentation beyond the physical circumstances that necessitated trips to the emergency room, and both daughters will, in ways particular to their circumstances, grapple with the unfair burden of looking after the dads. Wells and Coppola are also both deeply invested in the observational. In “Aftersun,” camcorder footage links past and future and glimpses of Calum as imagined by the grown-up Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) strobe in a haunting dreamscape motif.

Wells distances Calum from both Sophie and the viewer, dropping hints throughout the narrative regarding the extent of his depression and an unspoken inclination to self-harm. With director of photography Gregory Oke, Wells often chooses to partially obscure Calum, framing him in compositions that hide or cut off our view of the whole. The cumulative effect is potent, even heartbreaking. Several scenes qualify as moments out of time: a lost diving mask, a visit to a rug merchant, a karaoke performance, a spine-tingling application of “Under Pressure.” All these and many others charge “Aftersun” with a quiet devastation and poignance that linger long after the film ends.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

How many “Babylon” reviews and essays will at some point use the words orgiastic and overlong to describe Damien Chazelle’s raucous Hollywood fable? To date, the filmmaker remains the youngest winner of the Oscar for Best Director, which he received for “La La Land” during a ceremony enshrined in Academy legend for the embarrassing Best Picture envelope gaffe at the end of the telecast. That film, which also mines movie-mad dreamscapes, cemented Chazelle’s status as a top-tier storyteller following sophomore barn burner “Whiplash.” His latest, a wild and uneven quasi-epic that ogles stardom and cinephilia through the eyes of a group of characters during the tumultuous transition from the silent era to the advent of synchronous sound, is certainly hungry for attention.

The film’s length, a whopping three hours and eight minutes, could test the patience of ticket buyers who might opt instead to watch at home, where bathroom break pauses can be made on demand. “Babylon” goes big and refuses to be ignored, even if a much better, much shorter movie exists somewhere inside the messy sprawl. Among the ensemble, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt command the most scrutiny based on star power, but Diego Calva’s Manny Torres serves as the point of audience identification. Several other supporting players, including Jovan Adepo’s jazz trumpeter and Li Jun Li’s intertitle writer/chanteuse, seem at first to point in the direction of an interlocking narrative structure that never fully materializes.

Despite good intentions, Chazelle’s approach to the inclusion of historically marginalized characters of color partially backfires. Calva ends up with more screen time than either Adepo or Li – whose Lady Fay Zhu was based in part on Anna May Wong – but the climactic “Cinema Paradiso”-style montage that Chazelle offers as an affirmation of the magnificent, life-altering power of the art of the motion picture is something of a curiosity given the dark and grim critique of the soul-crushing production conditions preceding it. Are we supposed to sympathize with the once optimistic Torres, who grows increasingly bitter, disillusioned and unpleasant as he rises through the ranks?

For maximum enjoyment, movie lovers will make a sport of identifying Chazelle’s many homages and intertextual acknowledgments. Obviously, “Singin’ in the Rain” serves as inspirational sunshine to the “Babylon” thunderstorm, and Chazelle pays his respects in multiple scenes. The tragedy of the unfairly maligned Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle is used as the basis for a sequence of events that will launch the career of Robbie’s “wild child” Nellie LaRoy. The ghosts of Murnau, Griffith, Wellman, von Stroheim and others haunt the productions mounted at the Kinoscope studio and the milieu surrounding it.

Chazelle pays tribute to more contemporary heroes, too. The influence of Scorsese and Altman is unmistakable and one scene straight-up copies the anxious “Jessie’s Girl” drug deal gone sideways in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights.” Pitt relishes the tragedy and the comedy in perpetual bridegroom Jack Conrad, his Clark Gable/John Gilbert mashup. Like Cliff Booth in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” – another metanarrative blending Los Angeles fact and fiction – Conrad never has to think about how incredible he looks. The actor wears the role of silver screen royalty like a finely-tailored suit.

With an explosive elephant, a golden shower, and cocaine-fueled, money-to-burn decadence, the Dionysian bender that opens the film is rivaled only by the frenetic sequence in which Nellie becomes an overnight sensation, summoning tears at will and upstaging the irritated headliner while a nearby battle scene rages before a different crew. Even though Nellie’s accent and affinity for sewer-mouthed profanity veer close to Harley Quinn, Robbie sinks her teeth into the role. To paraphrase the sentiments expressed by Jean Smart’s gossip columnist/critic Elinor St. John in the movie’s best speech, Margot Robbie will live forever.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Veteran critic Elvis Mitchell’s excellent documentary/essay “Is That Black Enough for You?!?” gazes deeply and lovingly at the rich and varied historical contributions of African American film artists, focusing especially on the vibrant and tumultuous 1970s. Extending beyond Blaxploitation to consider the complete cinematic spectrum from independent productions to the output of the major studios, Mitchell’s guided tour is every bit as indispensable as “A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies.” Like that sprawling 1995 gem, Mitchell’s work comes from a place of intense cinephilia and personal knowledge. If you can’t live without the movies, “Is That Black Enough for You?!?” is one of the year’s essential experiences.

The film’s home on Netflix follows an October premiere at the New York Film Festival, where Mitchell and producer Steven Soderbergh engaged in a conversation moderated by NYFF executive director Eugene Hernandez. During that discussion, Mitchell says that at one point he pitched the project as a book and was subsequently turned down by every major publisher. Fortunately for viewers, the artifact that ultimately came to fruition brings to bear the very same storytelling tools of sound and vision that the director highlights through dozens of electrifying movie clips and choice music selections.

As the festival program points out, Mitchell’s approach is both “personal and panoramic.” “Is That Black Enough For You?!?” consistently finds the right tone and balance even when one wishes certain movie titles, filmmakers, or performers were afforded more time on the screen. The vibe is so fluid – in terms of quantity and quality – you’ll want to frequently pause, rewind, and review the incisive assemblage. One imagines scores of wannabe directors feverishly scribbling notes and making to-see lists while Mitchell lays out one astonishing lesson after another.

The talking-head subjects, including Harry Belafonte, Samuel L. Jackson, Charles Burnett, Whoopi Goldberg, Zendaya, Antonio Fargas, Billy Dee Williams, Glynn Turman and others, follow Mitchell’s lead by outlining their own relationships to hallmark movies and silver screen gods and goddesses. Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Pam Grier and Richard Pryor are better known by mainstream (read: white) audiences than Rupert Crosse, Diana Sands, Sheila Frazier, Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, but Mitchell seamlessly transitions among assessments of these talents and others without skipping a beat. The expert curation makes you feel like you are at a party where our generous host is making warm introductions to old friends.

With editors Michael Engelken and Doyle Esch, Mitchell illuminates dazzling and enticing moments from too many films to name in a short review. “Nothing But a Man,” “Save the Children,” “The Education of Sonny Carson,” “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” “Abar,” “Watermelon Man,” and “Ganja & Hess” are just a fraction of the total. In one example of Mitchell’s brilliance as an educator, the lasting influence of Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” is presented in side-by-side diptychs, a terrific technique also used to great effect this year in “Lynch/Oz.” Mitchell returns to the device to mark the way that the opening strut and swagger of “Saturday Night Fever” cribbed from “Shaft,” illustrating just how much big-budget fare for white audiences borrowed and stole – Mitchell goes with “expropriated” – from Black cool.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Noah Baumbach’s ambitious, hysterical adaptation of Don DeLillo’s famously “unfilmable” modern classic “White Noise” is – given the bona fides of the source material – certain to divide opinion. For the supporters, the director’s cinephilia sparks and shimmers from one giddy moment to the next. Nobody will overlook the homage to Godard’s “Weekend,” but the filmmaker just as enthusiastically embraces the 1980s-era Spielbergian domesticity on display in “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “Poltergeist.” Snootier members of the intelligentsia will whine that the movie dumbs down or misses altogether the philosophical heft of the book, and the structure presents some screenplay difficulty, but Baumbach mostly has his cake and eats it: “White Noise” is very entertaining and very funny.

Netflix splashed out a reported 80-million dollars on the movie, and from the opening frames, it is clear that Baumbach is working with the largest budget of his career. Rejecting digital acquisition, the glorious 35mm motion picture photography by Lol Crawley captures all the hues in Jess Gonchor’s candy-colored production design. The 1984 setting keeps with the novel and Baumbach runs wild with the consumerism relentlessly critiqued by DeLillo. The shelves of the well-stocked A&P offer seemingly endless choices for product brands that are looped on television screens playing well-known jingles. It’s all presented as a period piece, but the foundational themes (as well as the odd coincidence linking the central protagonist’s research agenda with Kanye West’s latest awfulness) are evergreen.

Adam Driver, making his fifth movie with Baumbach, plays Jack Gladney, a middle-aged, death-obsessed, oft-married professor known as a pioneer in the field of “Hitler studies.” Gladney’s inability to speak fluent German may cause feelings of deep insecurity, but he puts up a good front for his colleagues and an even better one for his family. Spouse Babette (Greta Gerwig) is equally concerned with mortality. Daughter Denise (Raffey Cassidy) suspects that Babette is taking pills and aims to expose the secret. Baumbach condenses and simplifies the book’s presentation of the Jack/Babette family tree, keeping the focus on the interactions of the core group. Don Cheadle’s Murray Siskind and the rest of Gladney’s fellow academics (including Jodie Turner-Smith as Winnie Richards and Andre Benjamin as Elliot Lasher) are not utilized to their full potential.

Given the massive scope and diversity of DeLillo’s themes, any film adaptation would necessitate deletions and sacrifices. Baumbach favors the black comedy over a sense of real existential dread, but the decision doesn’t necessarily cause the movie any harm. The scale of the novel’s second section, “The Airborne Toxic Event,” sees Baumbach choreographing eye-popping action in and around evacuation site Camp Daffodil. The ensuing panic perfectly captures the confusion caused by rapidly-evolving instructions from apparently clueless civil and government authorities. The proximity of the movie to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic rings some bells. Other chimes are sounded in the environmental and climate-change disaster realities that have only become more urgent since “White Noise” was published.

By the time “White Noise” returns to the grocery store for a dance party finish that shares some DNA with the concluding scene of “Fantastic Mr. Fox” – incidentally the only other literary adaptation for which Baumbach has a screenplay credit – admirers of the filmmaker will be smiling at the ways in which the new movie embodies Baumbach’s longtime preoccupations and simultaneously points toward bold new possibilities.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Citizenfour” Oscar-winner Laura Poitras profiles photographer and activist Nan Goldin in “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Like its talented subject, the movie cannot be confined to a single category or story arc. Along with a penetrating, candid examination of Goldin’s career trajectory, the film spends considerable time on the artist’s efforts to hold Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family accountable for the overprescribing of opioids including OxyContin. Poitras artfully covers lots of territory in the documentary, which received the Golden Lion, the Venice International Film Festival’s highest honor, in September of 2022.

Goldin may not be a household name outside the art world, but her searing and confessional pictures are among the most influential to emerge from New York City’s post-Stonewall cultural explosion. Documenting friends, acquaintances, and her own intimate relationships, Goldin profiled members of the gay and transgender community with the eye of an insider. Her interests also led to photos of the Bowery-based drug scene and images of the vibrant post-punk and new and no wave music worlds. The film’s center section examines in detail “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” Goldin’s protean slideshow.

Goldin crosses paths with many other aspiring creative artists during her most fecund years, and Poitras carefully organizes the guest book by allowing some notable faces to flutter and flicker by and others to take up more space and greater prominence. The deeper Poitras dives, the greater the realization that so many of Goldin’s peers lost their lives to AIDS or drug overdoses. Goldin once wrote of her late friend and collaborator Cookie Mueller: “She was the starlet of the Lower East Side: a poetess, a short-story writer, she starred in John Waters’s early movies. She was sort of the queen of the whole downtown social scene.”

Mueller may personify and characterize the moment in time that Goldin so memorably captured, but Poitras devotes just as much or more attention to David Wojnarowicz, who was recently memorialized in Chris McKim’s vital, feature-length portrait. Goldin’s curatorial role in the “Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing” exhibition in 1989 is highlighted by the director for more than one thematically resonant meaning – you marvel at the way Poitras connects the dots between ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) to illuminate the intersection of politics and art that will factor in different stages of Goldin’s life.

Seen planning and carrying out the civil disobedience designed to force prominent museums to remove the Sackler name from buildings, wings, galleries, and collections, Goldin leverages her own prominence to bring about change. Like many autobiographically-inclined artists, Goldin preserved and archived her own family history. The tragedy of older sister Barbara, who took her own life in 1965 when Nan was eleven, haunts “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” as profoundly and poignantly as any of the photographs Nan would go on to make. Goldin’s openness and forthrightness extends to her advocacy on behalf of so many others who, like herself, struggled or continue to struggle with opioid addiction.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Few reviews of Maria Schrader’s sturdy “She Said” go without mentioning “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight.” The new film, in line to pick up some award season recognition on the basis of its subject matter alone, follows the work of Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporters Megan Twohey (played by Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) as they doggedly pursue on-the-record confirmation of the sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and rape accusations against Miramax mogul and Oscar-winning producer Harvey Weinstein. “She Said” is based on the 2019 Kantor and Twohey book of the same name – which emerged from the Times story first published in 2017.

Schrader is steady at the helm, navigating all manner of curious obstacles that come with dramatizing such a high-profile chapter in recent Hollywood. Scenes are shot at the newspaper’s iconic Midtown Manhattan location, Ashley Judd plays herself, and a number of other well-known celebrities factor in the narrative. The damning, horrifying, undercover audio of Weinstein made by Ambra Battilana Gutierrez while working with the NYPD in 2015 is included, extending its status as a smoking gun in the saga. Gutierrez just testified on November 8, less than two weeks before the premiere of “She Said,” during Weinstein’s current rape trial in Los Angeles.

Screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz and director Schrader make the right decision to carefully limit the ways in which Weinstein physically inhabits the movie. With the exception of the authentic sting recording, Weinstein is played by actor Mike Houston. But the filmmakers refrain from allowing a fully-formed performance of the figure to occupy center stage as the ranting bully previously established in Weinstein profiles. Instead, the disembodied voice heard in a small number of phone calls focuses on the producer’s paranoia, manifested in a strange obsession with Gwyneth Paltrow. Instead of giving Weinstein oxygen, the story is methodical and procedural. Can Twohey and Kantor convince women previously victimized by the serial predator to talk?

Condensing, combining, and streamlining are expected elements of movie storytelling, but “She Said” works toward a composite that validates as many facts and details as possible within the limitations of the feature film format. The depiction of the personal, nonwork experiences of Kantor and Twohey revolves around the ongoing challenges of motherhood and work/life balance. “She Said” acknowledges the toll of the job. In one scene, Twohey tees off on a rude and aggressive creep who doesn’t want to be dismissed. In another, a threatening, anonymous phone call unnerves and unsettles.

In 1982, Carol Gilligan wrote, “As we have listened for centuries to the voices of men and the theories of development that their experience informs, so we have come more recently to notice not only the silence of women but the difficulty in hearing what they say when they speak.” Gilligan’s words are an apt reminder to those who have criticized “She Said” for not fully conforming to the rhetorical strategies embodied by so many cinematic “true life” accounts of journalists at work. The way in which the film presents the testimony of Laura Madden (Jennifer Ehle), Zelda Perkins (Samantha Morton), Rowena Chiu (Angela Yeoh), and others affirms the value of Schrader’s strategy: listen and then listen some more.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel dispense delights of all kinds in their breezy documentary “The Pez Outlaw,” an imaginative portrait of wily entrepreneur Steve Glew. A single-minded obsession with the colorful candy containers sets the stage for a tongue-in-cheek drama that casts Glew as himself in a series of “Unsolved Mysteries”-meets-Wes Anderson reenactments. Some viewers may not receive the title subject’s idiosyncratic personality in the spirit offered by the filmmakers, but the whole goofy tale is so harmless, it’s hard to watch without a smile on your face.

Depressed and discouraged, Glew was working in a Michigan machine shop when he experienced a “light bulb” moment that would soon lead him to a Pez factory in Eastern Europe. Traveling to Slovenia with son Josh, Glew made key contacts and filled duffel bags with Pez designs and prototypes that were unavailable in the United States. His intuition was correct: the toys he acquired for pennies could be resold to rabid collectors for a significant mark-up. From there, it was just a short leap to the wild brainstorm of commissioning variant colorways and other modifications. Some of the film’s interview subjects affirm that Glew single-handedly transformed Pez collecting.

There was only one small problem: Glew was breaking the law as a smuggler.

Even though the Storkels flirt with the idea of a deeper dive into the ethics of Glew’s willingness to flout import and customs regulations, the manner in which the movie addresses the blunders of Pez’s American administration paints executive Scott McWhinnie as villainous killjoy to Glew’s mischievous elf (“magical troll” is the more common epithet used by some of the collectors who knew him). With a flowing white beard and a glint in his eye, Glew gleefully recounts sticking it to Pez U.S.A. for as much and as long as possible. Although not quite in the same league, “The Pez Outlaw” is reminiscent of Seth Gordon’s “The King of Kong,” with Glew as the beleaguered Steve Wiebe and McWhinnie as the hissable Billy Mitchell.

Glew is far from a reliable narrator, and the filmmakers seize the opportunity to run with all sorts of the farfetched claims made by or about him (one of the most amusing is Glew’s insistence that he was personally responsible for the institution of the one-per-household limitation on mail-in cereal box premiums). The more time you spend with him, the more he comes across as a shrewd mercenary hiding behind the “dumb American” facade that he acknowledges served him well on his excursions overseas and his subsequent battles with “Pezident” McWhinnie.

Fortunately, the Storkels include enough material centered on the durable and enchanting romance between Glew and wife Kathy to keep us firmly on his side. Candid and every bit as sweet as a sleeve of twelve cherry-flavored Pez, Kathy represents a nurturing and encouraging spirit able to keep her partner grounded when he would otherwise zoom off into the stratosphere. In 2014, the enterprising and ambitious Glew offered the movie rights to his life story on eBay. Fortunately for us, the documentary approach eventually prevailed, proving the old adage that truth can be stranger than fiction.