Movie review by Greg Carlson

In one of the best scenes of the year, Tilda Swinton’s Jessica Holland sits with audio engineer Hernan Bedoya (Juan Pablo Urrego) behind a massive mixing console in a recording studio in Colombia, working to recreate a mysterious sound that she has been hearing intermittently. Drawing initially from a collection of stock effects, Jessica and Hernan take their time as they methodically narrow down the possibilities, closing in on the particular qualities of the bang that has intruded in Jessica’s life. Shaping and bending the wave with his digital tools until Jessica is satisfied, Hernan is as unhurried as anyone in the cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a modern master of the slow and contemplative style of storytelling some would call transcendental.

This exchange in “Memoria” illustrates the filmmaker’s playful sense of humor regarding the artistic enterprise, a kind of winking, behind-the-curtain glimpse at the sausage-grinding process of making sure all the post-production details are just right. The sound Hernan ultimately conjures, for all intents and purposes, is indistinguishable from the one that has been following Jessica around, disrupting her sleep and messing with her head. But reading “Memoria” as metanarrative unlocks only one layer of joy – Weerasethakul treats Jessica’s quest with complete respect. The source of the sound is eventually revealed. And with that revelation, the filmmaker just GOES FOR IT.

Both Weerasethakul’s full-length collaboration with Tilda Swinton and the “Memoria” project have been a long time coming. Swinton was to have appeared in “Cemetery of Splendour” (she also contributed to the first English-language book on the filmmaker, published in 2009). Weerasethakul spent time in Colombia in 2017 to develop what would become his first feature shot outside Thailand. The global constitution of “Memoria” may also represent a bid for greater creative freedom; Weerasethakul has for years been frustrated by the censorship imposed in his home country.

“Memoria” entices with its aural preoccupations, but the film is rich with many other ideas and explorations. Admirers of Weerasethakul’s filmography, which includes the brilliant 2010 Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” can bask in the sublimity of Jessica’s episodic encounters. The best of these may be the shift from the urban Bogota to the rural Amazon jungle: Jessica leaves the city only to meet another Hernan Bedoya (Elkin Diaz) whose total recall and superpowered sleeping abilities are as remarkable as his surprise connection to Jessica. Is this second Hernan, rhyming like David Lynch’s “two Chalfonts” or Fred Madison/Pete Dayton, a coincidence, a doppelganger, a mirror?

The film’s official website is as delightfully enigmatic as the experience of watching “Memoria.” It contains a section called “Bang Stories,” a quartet of firsthand accounts of alarming sounds ranging from the comic to the unnerving to the traumatizing. Superfans will also discover the opportunity to purchase a hardcover, companion art book containing “photographs, a personal diary and sketchbook, research notes, treatment excerpts, and email correspondence.” Scouring the website for clues and insights also turns up this absolute catnip: Weerasethakul writes, “I imagine a scenario in which Jessica Holland, a comatose character from Jacques Tourneur’s ‘I Walked with a Zombie,’ wakes up. She finds herself in Bogota, being drawn by a dream or a trauma that she doesn’t remember.” Count me in.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Since his big screen debut in 1996, Paul Thomas Anderson has made a series of rewarding movies as identifiable by their director’s gift for dazzling cinematics as they are by bravura performances and exhilarating ensembles. Anderson has noted that there is nothing quite as exciting as watching a movie star at work, but unknown actors bring an altogether different kind of energy to the mix. In his ninth feature film, “Licorice Pizza,” the filmmaker directs newcomers Alana Haim (of the sister pop/rock trio Haim) and Cooper Hoffman (son of Anderson’s longtime collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman) in an Andersonian mashup that merges San Fernando Valley fact and Hollywood fiction.

The early 1970s time period and location draw favorable comparisons to Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which takes place four years prior to the events of “Licorice Pizza.” Both movies warp and bend nostalgia-infused fantasy with fancifully augmented depictions of celebrities whose lives intersect with the protagonists. Both movies rejoice in the perfectly placed needle-drops of carefully curated songs emanating from car speakers and transistor radios. Both movies nail the anything-is-possible look and feel of Southern California dreaming.

Hoffman’s Gary Valentine, whose exploits are based in part on the tales of producer Gary Goetzman, is as precocious and entrepreneurial as fellow fifteen-year-old Max Fischer in “Rushmore” (he also brings to mind Tom “The Great Brain” Fitzgerald). Despite the stylistic differences between the imagined worlds of the two Andersons, Valentine and Fischer develop serious crushes on older women, cook up all manner of fake-it-til-you-make-it schemes, see the world not necessarily as it is but how they want it to be, and navigate the liminal state between childhood and adulthood with the support of single parents.

The big difference, however, is that “Licorice Pizza” belongs as much – or more – to Haim’s Alana Kane, the rudderless and restless young woman who captivates Gary when they meet on yearbook picture day at his high school (she’s working as a photographer’s assistant). Anderson recognizes the age-inappropriate obstacle of the potential romance. Much of Alana’s push-pull attraction/repulsion toward Gary revolves around her recognition of their decade gap. But no matter how she tries to leave the teenager’s orbit – in one of the film’s many side trips she volunteers for real life L.A. city council member Joel Wachs’s campaign – she realizes that she has found a kindred spirit.

Their friendship courses through a warmhearted array of offbeat anecdotes that ultimately strengthen their takes-one-to-know-one bond. In one terrific sequence, they deliver and set up a waterbed for hairdresser turned movie mogul (and Barbra Streisand beau) Jon Peters, played by Bradley Cooper in a livewire, scene-stealing turn. In another, Sean Penn materializes as a William Holden surrogate who, not unlike Peters, tests Alana’s receptiveness to his predatory creep game and not-so-veiled come-ons. Penn, gunning a motorcycle near hangout Tail o’ the Cock, lets rip the speed and motion that Gary and Alana demonstrate more regularly on foot. They run with intensity and purpose, racing headlong in the direction of endless possibility.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Master filmmaker Jane Campion, notching a fresh Silver Lion win for Best Direction at the recent Venice Film Festival, returns to the screen after a twelve-year absence with “The Power of the Dog,” a handsome and potent Western based on the 1967 novel of the same title by Thomas Savage. The 67-year-old’s last feature, the lovely John Keats/Fanny Brawne romance “Bright Star,” stands among Campion’s most accomplished movies. “The Power of the Dog” can be added to that list. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another dozen years for the next one.

Benedict Cumberbatch anchors a superb cast as Phil Burbank, a wealthy and well-educated rancher whose close partnership with his brother George (Jesse Plemons) is threatened when George marries widow Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst). Both Rose and her delicate son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) face the nonstop humiliation of Phil’s cruelty and harassment. Campion initially plays up the marked contrast between the siblings, hinting that the successes built by Phil and George could be destroyed by some unspoken turmoil — George is polite and fastidiously groomed while Phil is rude and much in need of soap.

The quotation from Psalm 22:20, “Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog” gives the story its title and initializes the possibility that Phil and George may travel the path of Cain and Abel or Jacob and Esau. But Campion knows when to hold back information and when to offer revelations that rearrange what we thought we knew about these characters and the things they hide in their hearts. Phil’s unyielding recalcitrance will be tempered with a degree of audience sympathy that brings to mind the danger of the love shared between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in a narrow space where queerness defies the expectations of heteronormative cowboy life.

Campion investigates the bond between Phil and his late mentor Bronco Henry without flashback. Instead, our own feelings toward the hard protagonist begin to shift once we discover more about Phil through his evolving interactions with Peter. “The Power of the Dog” contains several instances in which major surprises force us to reevaluate things we have witnessed with our own eyes. And Campion, assisted by Jonny Greenwood’s superb score, is brilliant at tightening the screws. Entire scenes unfold without spoken dialogue. Instead, the sounds in the ranch house — boots on stairs, an unwelcome duet between Rose and Phil — are as tense and evocative as any horror movie.

It is surely a disservice to reduce Campion’s filmography to a study in gender, despite the longstanding focus of so much scholarship. In her essay “The Limits of Sexual Emancipation: Feminism and Jane Campion’s Mythology of Love,” Noelle A. Baker asserts in her opening line, “Jane Campion directs movies about strong, eccentric women.” While “The Power of the Dog” makes an argument for the addition of “…and men” to that statement, Dunst’s Rose, indeed strong and eccentric, is another in a long line of richly drawn figures whose interactions with and reactions to all of those in her orbit explode with thrilling complexity and layers of meaning.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

With almost surgical precision, filmmakers Peter Middleton and James Spinney dissect the life and work of “The Real Charlie Chaplin,” a worthwhile addition to the many studies of one of the most recognizable screen performers in cinema history. Their documentary functions partly as critical biography, using Chaplin’s narrative preoccupations as the basis of a psychoanalytical reading of the man’s oeuvre — and vice versa. But the film also moves to scrutinize the auteur’s behind-the-scenes behavior, addressing Chaplin’s sexual predilection for adolescents. Three of the four women he would marry — Mildred Harris, Lita Grey, and Oona O’Neill — were teenagers at the time of their respective unions.

Middleton and Spinney access Chaplin’s incomparable filmography to illustrate their film’s central premise: that Chaplin was so closely identified with the character of the Tramp that we still struggle to separate the creation from the creator. Readers of David Robinson’s essential 1985 volume “Chaplin: His Life and Art” and viewers of Richard Schickel’s 2003 film “Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin” have already witnessed, to a significant degree, the reconciliation of Chaplin and the part he played for so long. Middleton and Spinney decide against the conventional talking head approach favored by Schickel, opting instead for a hit-or-miss series of reenactments (not unlike Clio Barnard’s technique in “The Arbor”) in which actors lip-synch to audio recordings.

Much more consistently engaging is the liberal use of archival material, particularly in the spectacular early sections that contemplate not only the origins of the Little Fellow’s iconic costume but also the way in which that outfit anticipates a personality, encompassing in wordless pantomime all the pluck, tenacity, sexual fluidity, mischief, pathos, fearfulness, and desire to be treated with dignity that would endear our ultimate underdog to millions of viewers. The filmmakers delight in showing clip after clip of Chaplin impersonators practicing the twirl of the cane, the angle of the bowler, and the twitch of the mustache.

Just as it anchors the design perfection of Olly Moss for Criterion’s “The Great Dictator,” that latter item will return later in the film when Middleton and Spinney explore the Tramp’s most unexpected doppelganger: Adolph Hitler. The future tyrant was born just four days after Chaplin, and the similarities in their impoverished backgrounds have enough juice to link the two (see also Brownlow and Kloft’s “The Tramp and the Dictator”). Chaplin’s political consciousness would later lead to an awful cycle of FBI “leaks” — outright fabrications — to Hedda Hopper, who would then publish columns that Hoover would quote to escalate the bureau’s attacks on Chaplin.

The latter portions of the feature are illustrated with the oft-excerpted home movie footage of Chaplin with Oona and children at their Manoir de Ban estate in Switzerland, and they touch on the familiar beats of political exile ahead of the moving acceptance of an honorary Academy Award in 1972. At one point, we hear narrator Pearl Mackie (who is terrific from start to finish) say, “When you ask for the real Charlie Chaplin, a thousand voices reply.” No doubt each new generation will reexamine and reassess the offscreen Chaplin even as the monumental achievement expressed through his body of work will continue to seduce freshly-stunned viewers.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Penny Lane follows her thought-provoking examination of the Satanic Temple with a subject many would anoint as the Devil of Smooth Jazz: Kenneth Gorelick, known to millions of record buyers as Kenny G. Far from a straightforward biographical profile, Lane embraces G’s decades-long divisiveness to elaborate on questions of taste, appropriation, and genre. And the musician’s participation in the documentary only adds to the film’s status as a must-see. Lane gets to have her cake and eat it — G is comfortable with the endless supply of jokes made at his expense, a condition that gives Lane the space to examine the highs and lows of a peculiar cultural figure.

With “Listening to Kenny G,” Lane affirms her status as one of the most talented nonfiction storytellers working today. Her films may not yet approach the dazzling, next-level craft displayed by masters like Errol Morris and Kirsten Johnson, but if she keeps producing movies like her latest, it won’t be long before she ends up on the short list of greats. Lane combines bottomless curiosity with an impish sense of playfulness that reads to some observers as a mean streak. And yes, there are moments in “Listening to Kenny G” when Lane lets her subject fumble like a poseur unworthy of his association with the word jazz.

The director enlists a murderer’s row of jazz scholars, academics, and journalists to deconstruct the complexities and problematics of Kenny G. Ben Ratliff of “The New York Times” puts his finger on that most quintessential of Kenny G associations when he notes that G’s music brings to mind the act of waiting — in a dentist’s office, a bank, a lobby, an elevator, etc. Columbia University’s Chris Washburne, NYU’s Jason King, and Will Layman of “PopMatters” join Ratliff and a few others to explain so much visceral critical revulsion in the face of widespread popularity.

Lane alternates between her time spent with Kenny G and the talking heads wielding their scalpels. She also sketches the trajectory of G’s unprecedented career ascendancy, covering early videos, the Johnny Carson appearance when “Songbird” took off, G’s golf game (another aspect of his extracurriculars that naysayers love to skewer), and the unofficial status of “Going Home” as an end-of-day fixture played in food courts and train stations across China since 1989. Most of this stuff projects Wonder Bread innocuousness, but Lane plows headlong into the much deeper controversy of G’s “duet” with Louis Armstrong.

To this end, the prosecutors take turns articulating G’s ignorance of jazz tradition and its improvisational give-and-take musical conversations between and among players. Jason King notes, “He seems to draw from this rich and venerated history of Black music without necessarily contributing much back to the form. He’s such a deeply problematic figure because he really extends this long and troubling history of appropriation in popular music.” Some of Lane’s interviewees read aloud from Pat Metheny’s poison-pen comments on the “What a Wonderful World” recording.

Through it all, Kenny G radiates a Zen-like calm, deflecting even the most caustic insults. So what if he fails to identify Thelonious Monk in a portrait of greats allegedly responsible for inspiring G’s own “New Standards” album? Who cares if he claims, “I don’t know if I love music that much” in conversation with Lane? Kenny G, who says he still practices three hours a day, every day, knows that he can’t be all things to all people. Lane also knows it, as her terrific movie attests.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Had a home video copy made its way into his eclectic collection, one cannot help but wonder how Ingmar Bergman might have rated Mia Hansen-Løve’s utterly delightful “Bergman Island.” The French director’s first English-language movie is a bold and satisfying metanarrative that uses the legendary Swedish auteur as the starting point for a dreamy consideration of life, art, romance, loss, regret, and the many challenges of the creative process. Setting the action on Bergman’s hallowed turf turns out to be far more playful and far less austere than one might first guess. Hansen-Løve never takes herself too seriously, lining up a parade of references from “Persona” to “Cries and Whispers” with more disarming humor than ponderous melodrama.

The Fårö setting provides the filmmaker with a treasure chest of opportunities to indulge and explore cinephilia, reflexivity, homage, and intertext, but the potential autobiographical interpretations are equally enticing. The broadest strokes of the director’s previous relationship with Olivier Assayas mirror the fictional marriage between Vicky Krieps’s Chris and Tim Roth’s Tony. Participating in a residency program that lodges the couple in the bedroom where “Scenes from a Marriage” was filmed (just one of Hansen-Løve’s sly jokes), Tony and Chris interact with Bergman admirers and scholars ahead of a retrospective screening of one of Tony’s films.

Hansen-Løve makes clear to the viewer that Chris, a screen performer branching out behind the camera, feels overshadowed by her more celebrated husband. Whether by chance or by choice, the casting of Krieps resonates. Her Hollywood breakthrough as haute couture dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock’s muse Alma Elson in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” resides at the heart of another story concerned with artistic practice and the shifting dynamics of women finding power while entangled with professionally accomplished and “difficult” men.

As Chris’s restlessness and her increasing distance from Tony hint at deeper conflict hidden just below the surface of their partnership, Hansen-Løve launches the movie into orbit with “The White Dress,” the story-within-the-story that Chris narrates to a distracted Tony, hoping in vain that he might offer valuable, constructive feedback and make suggestions for an ending. In her screenplay, Chris imagines Mia Wasikowska as protagonist Amy, whose own desire to reconnect with old flame Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie) while attending a wedding on Fårö triples — and arguably quadruples — Hansen-Løve’s self-portraiture.

The new “Bergman Island,” which shares its title with the 2006 documentary by Marie Nyreröd, isn’t shy in its critiques of the gifted moviemaker. Chris, who refuses to fawn over the man despite demonstrating enough knowledge of his career to keep pace with Tony and the other superfans, wonders aloud whether Bergman sacrificed being a good parent (nine children!) for his art. The frozen-in-time preservation of Bergman’s properties allows his spirit to live on in the pilgrims drawn to Fårö. Several of the famous filmmakers in Jane Magnusson and Hynek Pallas’s “Trespassing Bergman,” another documentary that takes a voyeur’s tour of Bergman’s personal rooms, do their best to account for his fixation on the spiritual and the erotic. Mia Hansen-Løve now joins their ranks.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

First, a note to the naysayers and cynics and grumps and sourpusses and killjoys who would dismiss Wes Anderson as a suffocating ironist infatuated with his dollhouse miniatures and his own cookie cutter formulae recycling the same set of actors within his symmetrically composed frames: GET LOST, GO AWAY, SHOVE OFF. “The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun” is not for you. But for those who have maintained punctuality and perfect attendance, those who have ever substituted a Tic Tac for prescription stomach cancer medication, those who keep dues paid-up in the Society of the Crossed Keys, you don’t need me or anybody else to tell you that the enchantments to be found in Ennui-sur-Blasé provide the exact opposite of boredom-on-apathy.

Anderson’s longtime affection for “The New Yorker” gives “The French Dispatch” its structure, its themes, and its emotional core. Bill Murray’s Harold Ross-esque Arthur Howitzer, Jr., the scion of a newspaper publisher, presides over the magazine produced from his adopted home in France. The conclusion of Howitzer’s spectacular half-century run as editor-in-chief results in the dramatization of the final issue of “The French Dispatch,” broken into a prologue, three stories, and an obituary. While any of the individual segments could have evolved into feature length, Anderson takes complete advantage of the creative form of the omnibus to configure a coherent and cohesive whole.

“Bottle Rocket,” of course, was a short before it was a feature. And “Hotel Chevalier” and “Castello Cavalcanti,” along with several promotional films and advertisements, point toward Anderson’s interest in experimentation beyond the cinephile’s acknowledged admiration of anthology films like De Sica’s “The Gold of Naples” and Max Ophüls’s “Le Plaisir.” The director’s adherents will spend hours parsing the long-delayed movie’s chapters, debating favorites and identifying cross-pollination. One dreams of a companion glossary similar to the reference guide contained on Criterion’s “Band of Outsiders” disc to identify all the specific literary and cinematic allusions.

Each section offers up an array of Anderson’s giddy passions, in both text and subtext. Owen Wilson, as Herbsaint Sazerac, invites us to the party via “The Cycling Reporter,” a gliding, velocipede-mounted travelogue highlighting the love and squalor of Ennui’s past and future, with special focus on the dregs, the destitute, and the failures, not to mention marauding choirboys half-drunk on the Blood of Christ. In “The Concrete Masterpiece,” Tilda Swinton’s J. K. L. Berensen expands on Anderson’s established contemplation of incarceration — both spiritual and material — in a deeply satisfying tale based in part on S. N. Berhman’s 1951 profile of art dealer Joseph Duveen.

Frances McDormand portrays Lucinda Krementz in “Revisions to a Manifesto,” inspired by Mavis Gallant’s observations on the May, 1968 civil unrest in Paris. Krementz and Léa Seydoux’s prison guard Simone mark significant strides toward greater depth, richness, and significance than Anderson has, with few exceptions, previously shown to women. In “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” by Jeffrey Wright’s Roebuck Wright (a mashup of James Baldwin and A. J. Liebling), the author recounts with perfect typographic memory a sprawling and sumptuous kidnapping yarn while being interviewed on a talk show.

Wright, working for the first time with Anderson, fits right in alongside the veteran troupe members. A number of critics have bristled at the way in which “The French Dispatch” relegates top-flight talent, like Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Edward Norton, and several others, to near-cameo status, but I don’t mind seeing Anderson alumni (Bob Balaban! Larry Pine! Tony Revolori!) populate the cast the way that Hitchcock frequently plugged in Leo G. Carroll or David Lynch counted on Frances Bay. And even though she is not currently listed among the performers set to appear in Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” I will keep my fingers crossed that Elisabeth Moss will be back for more.

Like the very best of Wes Anderson, “The French Dispatch” is large and contains multitudes. The autobiographical touches, expressed by the ensemble of fictional expatriates and natives alike, are as bewitching as the director’s exuberant application of physical set pieces, period design, shifts between color and monochrome, changing aspect ratios, animation, self-reflexive stage plays, breathless cutaways, snap-zooms and on-the-fly reframings, onscreen graphics, leaps in time, living dioramas, and the dazzling marriage of images and words. The earnest and the parodic coexist as comfortably as the close proximity of humor and sorrow. It should go without saying that “The French Dispatch” requires multiple viewings to unlock its generous and special secrets.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The many media attempts at Frank Herbert’s epic space fantasy “Dune” speak to its lasting appeal and its potent impact. David Lynch’s movie, defended by the filmmaker’s most ardent supporters but excoriated by a larger chorus disappointed in the heavy hand applied by House De Laurentiis, marked the end of a lengthy journey to the screen that defeated the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ridley Scott along the way. Dreams of what might have been — Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen! Moebius and H. R. Giger design! — gave way to the realities of any “faithful” adaptation. At its best, Herbert’s book presents a stunning vision of political power, ecological and environmental awareness, ruling-class genealogy, military conflict, and thrilling mysticism and religious mythmaking filtered through a messianic hero’s journey.

At its weakest, “Dune” has too many scenes of people standing around and talking.

Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part One” is a worthy addition to the collection, besting the Lynch in certain ways but still flummoxed and frustrated by the source material’s conversation-heavy downside. Villeneuve is clearly a fan, a Bene Gesserit-level adherent to the Weirding Way and a desert mouse who respects the Shai-Hulud. The director’s impressive track record with dazzling ideas and/or imagery in settings both smaller (“Prisoners,” “Enemy”) and grander (“Arrival,” “Blade Runner 2049”) raised expectations higher than a Guild Navigator on uncut spice. The filmmaker delivers at least 450 meters of world-building eye candy to remind everyone of Herbert’s far-reaching influence.

Villeneuve juggles a huge cast filled with famous and should-be famous performers well-suited to flesh out their occasionally flat literary antecedents. Some great faces made up Lynch’s roster, including many favorites in the filmmaker’s stock company, and Villeneuve could not ask for more capable portrayers in nearly all the principal and supporting roles. Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica and Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides, despite sharing few one-on-one scenes, walk off with the movie. While Lynch’s screenplay diminished and truncated Jurgen Prochnow’s Leto, Villeneuve concentrates the time and attention required to express the Shakespearean tragedy of the Red Duke and articulate the emotional connection between Leto and his son.

Perhaps Jodorowsky was on to something when he argued for a ten to fourteen-hour running time. If all goes according to plan, “Dune: Part Two” will remedy the insufficient, almost fleeting presence of Zendaya’s Chani, Javier Bardem’s Stilgar, and even Dave Bautista’s Beast Rabban. There’s no question that Villeneuve’s decision to divide the book leaves both newcomers and the “Dune” faithful with lots of questions and the empty feelings that go along with unfinished business. My friend Aaron Anderson is spot-on with his note that the second section should have been filmed at the same time and prepared for a 2022 release.

Villeneuve’s “Dune” takes itself so seriously that plenty of observers have dipped their Gom Jabbar needles into poisoned inkwells. David Ehrlich’s vicious takedown is entertainingly arch, slightly cruel, and not entirely fair. Peter Opaskar’s wild, tongue-in-cheek defense of Lynch’s version as the greatest film ever made — one of several recent reassessments of the 1984 movie — was posted before Opaskar watched the new one. I am glad to live in a world where we already have two big screen interpretations and Frank Pavitch’s fantastic documentary. If we don’t destroy ourselves, there will surely be enough “Dune” by the year 10,191 to please everybody.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Maureen Bharoocha’s “Golden Arm” applies the irresistible combination of long-haul trucking and competitive arm wrestling in the tradition of Menahem Golan’s 1987 Sylvester Stallone cult nugget “Over the Top.” Close friendship replaces father-son bonding as the emotional heartbeat of the story, and Bharoocha, working from a very funny screenplay by Ann Marie Allison and Jenna Milly, capitalizes on the opportunity to imagine a cartoonish subculture grounded in pathos. Originally programmed as part of the canceled 2020 South by Southwest festival, “Golden Arm” had to settle for a small theatrical run and an April 2021 arrival on-demand. As a result, the film has received less love and attention than it deserves.

Television comedy and Upright Citizens Brigade veteran Mary Holland is Melanie, an about-to-be-divorced baker struggling to make a success of her profession. Truck-driving best friend Danny, played by fellow UCB alum Betsy Sodaro, convinces Mel to close up shop for a few days and join her on a delivery. Bharoocha rockets through basic exposition on the way to revealing Danny’s real plan: enter Mel into the arm wrestling nationals being held in Oklahoma City. The purse is fifteen grand, but the bigger prize is an opportunity for the pals to rebuild the tight bonds of their younger days.

Naturally, the cautious, vanilla Mel (who blanches at Danny’s liberal use of descriptive profanity, especially a certain term applied to genitalia) initially resists the call to step up, but Danny’s powers of persuasion and the desperation to collect the handsome winnings convince her otherwise. Unable to compete, Danny’s own wrestling arm is wrapped up in a brace, which adds another layer of pressure. Bharoocha seizes on the script’s episodic structure to explore multiple genres; “Golden Arm” works as both a road movie and as a tournament/elimination-style sports contest, but the relationship of Mel and Danny always sits squarely at the heart of the film.

Bharoocha also manages a colorful gallery of supporting characters, each of whom adds to the circus. Revealing a steady hand and deft touch for romance, the director nails the scenes shared by Holland and Eugene Cordero, who plays referee Greg. The dialogue anticipating their flirtatious magic hour kiss against the chain link fence at a baseball diamond is one of the year’s sexiest screen conversations. De rigueur training montages get an assist from Dot-Marie Jones. Olivia Stambouliah’s Brenda the Bone Crusher, Mel and Danny’s bête noire, is a delightfully hissable nemesis (so many of the arm wrestling personae boast sweet monikers). Ron Funches as organizer Carl, Danny’s friends-with-benefits hookup, is as wonderfully awkward as Ahmed Bharoocha’s Jerry, who serves as Danny’s personal gofer and Swiss Army knife.

It is not difficult to picture a studio-backed “Golden Arm” with a bigger budget and the likes of Kristen Wiig as Mel and Melissa McCarthy as Danny, but the scrappier and scruffier version that got made is somehow more perfect because of its limitations and rough edges. Holland and Sodaro are so effortlessly good together, their characters evoking the kind of visual contrast unforgettably rendered by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, that they deserve every bit as much recognition as better known A-list comics. The scene-stealing Sodaro’s work as the lusty, foul-mouthed, wrecking-ball extrovert is equal to the best of Jack Black and Zach Galifianakis.