Movie review by Greg Carlson

For Beastie Boys fans, the personal “soundtrack of our lives” stories are at least equal in number to the records, cassettes, and compact discs sold. Some of us got in with “Licensed to Ill” in 1986 (gratitude to you forever, Brandon Roy) and never looked back, anxiously awaiting each album and committing to memory the rhymes within 24 hours of release. If you were of a particular age and inclination, you grew, and grew up, alongside Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D — every new project an evolutionary step in how to dress, how to sound, and how to behave.

Adam Yauch died of cancer at the age of 47 on May 4, 2012. We cried when we heard the breaking news reports. We cried again a few weeks later when mailboxes delivered the “Rolling Stone” with the black and white photo of MCA’s face on the cover.

We weren’t ready for the Beastie Boys to be over. Toward the end of Spike Jonze’s documentary “Beastie Boys Story,” available on Apple TV+, an emotional Adam Horovitz sits on the edge of the stage at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre and talks about headlining Bonnaroo in 2009, saying, “We didn’t know it was gonna be the last show we’d ever play.”

“Beastie Boys Story” is inspired by the 572-page, cut-and-paste, oral history/memoir “Beastie Boys Book,” published in 2018. Along with Horovitz and Michael Diamond, Jonze curates the arc of Beastie Boys history, condensing and trimming much from between the covers but (mostly) making up for it by carefully selecting from an expansive vault of dazzling audio, video, and photographic documentation. Presenting to a live audience, Mike D and Ad-Rock, with lots of jokes and a few tears, acknowledge the teleprompters and their frequent miscues.

Not everyone will appreciate the artifact. Writing for Pitchfork under the headline “Spike Jonze’s New Beastie Boys Movie Is No Fun,” Jayson Greene gripes that the film is like a PowerPoint “with running commentary.” Others have tagged it as a lengthy TED Talk.

If you listen to Beastie Boys, Jonze’s technique — a familiar blend of rough and smooth, high tech and low tech — comes correct. If you don’t listen to Beastie Boys, the movie serves as a biographical and musical introduction. In addition to the importance of centralizing and eulogizing the absent MCA, speaking for him because he can no longer speak for himself, Mike D and Ad-Rock walk the viewer through several volcanic, career-altering tracks. The chapter heading “The Song That Changed Everything” turns out to be applicable more than once.

The slices and samples of Kurtis Blow, Slick Rick, and Jimmy Castor Bunch on “Hold It Now, Hit It” and Yauch’s imaginative kitchen table reel-to-reel Rube Goldberg loop of Led Zeppelin for “Rhymin and Stealin” eventually lead us to another card that says “Earlier We Had Mentioned a Song That We Thought Had Changed Everything. And It Had, in a Way. But This Is Actually the Song That Changed Everything.” You may be familiar with how that next one plays out. “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” becomes an anthem and an albatross, a skeleton key and a mummy’s curse.

When Diamond and Horovitz finally move on to the recording of “Paul’s Boutique,” the tale of which occurs about halfway through the nearly two-hour running time, one feels a sense of relief. The cartoonish dicks and boorish misogyny start to fade. The “Check Your Head” anecdotes continue to move the needle in a positive direction. It’ll be a minute before the film gets to MCA’s all-time most quoted verse, the turning point that begins “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue,” on the “Ill Communication” opener “Sure Shot.” The not-so-secret formula of longevity is so obviously found in the willingness to mature and to learn and to change. Mike D quotes Ad-Rock’s response to an interviewer’s accusation of double standards: “I’d rather be a hypocrite than the same person forever.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Writer Rita Kalnejais adapts the script of her own 2012 play “Babyteeth,” and Shannon Murphy, delivering her feature directorial debut, guides a fantastic ensemble of performers to success in what could have been an all-too-familiar dying-young melodrama. The depiction of terminal illness is so tried and true as a storytelling device that I can’t help but think of Roger Ebert’s pointed cinematic rule dubbed “Ali MacGraw’s Disease,” which notes that “the only symptom is that the sufferer grows more beautiful as death approaches.” While this is certainly the case with Eliza Scanlen’s radiant Milla Finlay, “Babyteeth,” largely allergic to cliche, feels more fresh and original than one might expect from the plot description.

Much of the movie’s vitality can be located in the way each of the central characters is so fully realized. Milla’s parents, Anna (Essie Davis) and Henry (Ben Mendelsohn), affluent and progressive, must come to grips with their teenage daughter’s romantic interest in Moses (Toby Wallace), a homeless, twenty-something fuck-up looking for small-time pharmaceutical scores he can turn into a little cash or his own next high. One imagines that mom and dad would be less likely to tolerate Moses’ presence if Milla wasn’t so sick, and Moses is smart enough to recognize how he can take advantage of the Finlay family’s largesse. The extent to which Moses genuinely cares for Milla evolves into one of the movie’s going concerns.

“Babyteeth” is finally available for American audiences on demand, following a Venice International Film Festival premiere in September of 2019. Scanlen, who played Beth in Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” and Amma on the HBO miniseries “Sharp Objects,” is quickly establishing the bona fides that could lead to higher profile roles. Last week, however, the actor issued an apology in the wake of claims of racism and cultural appropriation in her own debut as writer/ director, a short film titled “Mukbang” that won a Rouben Mamoulian Award at the Sydney Film Festival. Controversy aside, Scanlen is a presence in “Babyteeth,” playing Emma with a mixture of vulnerability and ferocity.

Mendelsohn, Davis, and Wallace are equally effective, and Murphy sets up little moments filled with acutely observed details for each. In one, Henry perfectly summarizes the tension that drives the narrative, saying to Moses, “I don’t like you, but Milla thinks you’re something special. She should have the world at her feet right now.” He then offers to write unethical prescriptions to feed Moses’ drug habit, a stunning demonstration of the lengths a father is willing to go for his daughter. The gesture is also a heartbreaking indicator of Henry’s own dysfunctional struggle to deal with an unthinkable set of circumstances.

Throughout the movie, scenes are labeled with chapter headings blunt and/or poetic, such as “Relapse. Milla Starts Chemo” and “Just Another Diamond Day.” The latter is a reference to the Vashti Bunyan song on the excellent soundtrack, which also features a sweet karaoke rendition of Donnie and Joe Emerson’s “Baby” and several other diegetic performances by violin student Milla and one-time concert pianist Anna. The inevitable outcomes of the genre exist within fairly narrow limits, but Murphy sticks the landing on “The Beach,” a coda that embraces sorrow and grief without undercutting or dismissing the humor and absurdity that came before.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

One of the most effective storytelling strategies in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” is the application of the simple and elegant dichotomy. Lee has long enjoyed exploring dualities, as the apparent bifurcation of moral choice-making appeals to our human nature: black and white, yin and yang, stop and go, yes and no. It is, however, the complementarity and interconnectedness of seemingly polar opposites that moves toward the complexity and richness that cannot be found in a heads/tails outcome. Four Vietnam veterans return to the place where the fifth member of their group was killed in action. Is the principal purpose of their pilgrimage to recover the remains of their fallen friend or is it to locate millions of dollars in gold bars they buried decades ago?

Several of the filmmaker’s other interests, including generational divisions and difficult father-son relationships, both of which are on view in, among others, “Jungle Fever,” “He Got Game,” and “Get on the Bus,” move in tandem with Lee’s always bold stylistic chops. Music choices, including familiar period expressions of social consciousness as well as loaded intertextual cues (including “Ride of the Valkyries”), take up residence alongside yet another emotionally-charged score by Terence Blanchard. Isolated vocals from Marvin Gaye, strikingly recontextualized, punctuate key scenes.

Lee’s cinephilia is yet another reason for movie lovers to enjoy “Da 5 Bloods.” Overt and subtle references to all kinds of classics, from “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket” to “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” populate both the principal plot and the margins. But in terms of Lee’s own decades-long reputation as a maverick working within and without the industry, “Da 5 Bloods” bears a close spiritual kinship with Samuel Fuller’s “The Steel Helmet.” Both Lee and Fuller capture the capricious, haphazard, and senseless violence of war and its particularly grim toll on the working class, the blue collar, and the poor.

There is surely a great deal of Fuller in the presentation of Delroy Lindo’s character Paul, a red MAGA cap-wearing sufferer of PTSD who is especially haunted by the death of brother-in-arms Norman Earl “Stormin’ Norman” Holloway (Chadwick Boseman). Giancarlo Esposito claimed that Lee might have cast real life father and son Denzel Washington and John David Washington, but Lindo — who has received richly deserved acclaim for his emotionally raw portrayal — and Jonathan Majors are so commanding it is difficult to imagine any duo surpassing the quality of their efforts.

Lee reworked the original script by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo with his “BlacKkKlansman” co-screenwriter and fellow Oscar recipient Kevin Willmott. The result of their labors perfectly suits Lee’s baroque, anything goes, more-is-more approach. Newton Thomas Sigel’s photography is vivid, crisp, and colorful, even if many of the computer-generated special effects — especially the repeated plumes and sprays of blood — don’t quite meet Hollywood’s state of the art verisimilitude. Far more impressive is the decision to use the same quartet of performers — Lindo, Broadway pro Norm Lewis, and “The Wire” castmates Clarke Peters and Isiah Whitlock Jr. —  in present and in flashback without any kind of “de-aging” nonsense. With this choice, Lee suggests something meaningful about time and how it can change or freeze us in indelible ways both predictable and surprising.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Another significant 2020 title skipping theatrical release for digital platforms, Josephine Decker’s “Shirley” premiered at Sundance in January, where Decker received a U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Auteur Filmmaking. “Shirley” marks yet another career milestone for the dynamic filmmaker as she moves in the direction of wider accessibility and potentially larger audiences without abandoning the sharpest hallmarks of her breathtakingly personal storytelling techniques. The presence of Elisabeth Moss in the title role adds a layer of appeal to the lushly photographed and handsomely designed re-imagining of author Shirley Jackson’s idiosyncratic life in North Bennington, Vermont.

Decker’s film, with a screenplay by Sarah Gubbins based on Susan Scarf Merrell’s 2014 novel, has been erroneously identified as a Jackson biopic, but the events depicted in the book and on the screen are largely fiction. The messier, blurrier canvas perfectly suits Decker’s gifts by offering a space in which the filmmaker can continue to explore her interests in liminality and artistic/philosophical truth without the encumbrances of the dreary and the mundane. In other words, viewers looking for some kind of historically accurate staging of Jackson’s “life” will not find it here. Instead, “Shirley” fantasizes an intense and sexually charged variation on Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and Mike Nichols’ 1966 film of the play.

In real life, Jackson was married to professor and critic Stanley Hyman (a fantastically vain and oily Michael Stuhlbarg), by all accounts a philanderer in frequent pursuit of liaisons with his students. In the imaginary account, Hyman’s academic admirer and fresh Bennington College hire Fred Nemser (Logan Lerman) is invited to take a room in the house Shirley rarely leaves. Nemser’s new wife Rose (Odessa Young), it is quickly decided, can provide domestic “help” (or, perhaps more accurately, servitude) to Shirley while the men are on campus. Decker mines the rich vein of skewed gender expectations, using the period setting to focus viewer attention on so many absurd inversions. Stanley’s jealousy over the literary celebrity — and profitability — of triumphs like “The Lottery” always threatens to boil over.

Moss is nothing short of phenomenal, filling out her performance with a steady flow of poisonously perfect wisecracks, putdowns, and insults that hit their marks like darts from an accurately aimed and effortlessly puffed blowgun. Decker beckons us to follow this unusual guide on a journey deep into the overgrown and tangled jungle of creation and art-making. Rose, it unsurprisingly turns out, is far more suited to Shirley’s mysterious and mystical witchcraft than she is to cooking and cleaning. Is Shirley capable of true friendship or is she too armored, too caustic, too far inside her own tortured processes and alcohol bottles to open up her heart to another human being?

The answer to that question takes up the later stages of the film, and Decker, Moss, and Young all bask in the complexity and ambivalence and eroticism of the dialectics favored by the filmmaker: teacher/pupil, writer/reader, veteran/novice, dominant/submissive. Working on the book that will become “Hangsaman,” Shirley and Rose spend time thinking deeply about the Bennington student who disappeared without a trace on the hauntingly named Long Trail. Shirley says to Rose, “The world is too cruel for girls.” Paula Jean Welden really did vanish in December of 1946, the likely victim of violence at the hands of a man, and she is both doppelganger and ghost — a vivid reminder of an unrealized future.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Natasha Gregson Wagner, known to David Lynch fans for her performance in “Lost Highway,” guides viewers through an intimate but tightly controlled portrait of her iconic mother in “Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind.” Available on HBO following a Sundance premiere in January, the biographical documentary is directed by veteran “making of” maestro Laurent Bouzereau, frequent chronicler of Steven Spielberg projects and architect of dozens of other behind-the-scenes shorts. Joined by producer Manoah Bowman, with whom Gregson Wagner co-wrote “Natalie Wood: Reflections on a Legendary Life,” Bouzereau accesses a huge trove of archival material, some of it never before seen publicly.

In part a response to the lurid gossip contained in books like Suzanne Finstad’s 2001 “Natasha” — reissued recently as “Natalie Wood: The Complete Biography,” with even more alleged revelations about the star’s untimely demise — Gregson Wagner’s account of her mom’s legacy is deeply sympathetic. So too is the film’s treatment of Robert Wagner, the man who raised her after reuniting with Wood for the couple’s second marriage to one another. Wagner, who turned 90 in February, has long faced scrutiny for what he did or did not do the night Wood left their yacht during a Thanksgiving weekend getaway in 1981. On-camera conversation between Gregson Wagner and her “Daddy Wagner,” or R.J., as he is known to friends and family, forms the spine of the chronicle.

In addition to framing Wagner’s role as the love of Wood’s life, the filmmakers capitalize on their expansive library of content and the colorful headlines ignited by Wood’s contributions to Hollywood history. As a child performer, Wood became the primary breadwinner for her family. Bouzereau and Gregson Wagner show a fair bit of restraint, but it is not difficult to get a sense of the latter’s strong disapproval of Wood’s mother (as well as sister Lana). Fans able to watch Wood grow up onscreen, from “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” and “Miracle on 34th Street” to “Rebel Without a Cause” and “The Searchers” to “Splendor in the Grass” and “West Side Story,” already know the star’s extensive filmography.

Interviews with several high profile friends, including Mia Farrow, Robert Redford, and Elliott Gould, are sandwiched among a handful of curious contributions by people like Natalie’s personal assistant Liz Applegate, who explains that she often worked from a desk in the corner of the master bedroom, with Wood and Wagner between the sheets just behind her.

An even more peculiar inclusion is “Brainstorm” director Douglas Trumbull, who more or less condemns his own skills by insisting that Wood and Christopher Walken, a guest on the boat the night of Natalie’s death, had zero romantic chemistry. The idea, of course, is to pour cold water on the rumor that the co-stars were sleeping with one another. Not surprisingly, Walken was not interviewed for the movie, but does appear in a few old clips. Wagner goes out of his way to acknowledge the elephant in the room, saying, “Chris was there. He, by the way, is a very stand-up guy. A true gentleman.”

Trying to free Wood from the enormous shadow cast by her death is no small feat. “What Remains Behind” doesn’t quite manage the task, but the movie brightens up in sections focused on Wood’s devotion as a loving and involved parent and her efforts to combat the patriarchal inequities of the historically sexist motion picture industry. Even so, the complexities of Wood’s relationships with figures like Warren Beatty, Frank Sinatra, Michael Caine, and Nicholas Ray are downplayed in favor of a shinier and more polished version than one confronting the dark side of the routine exploitation of young women that pervaded, and continues to pervade, the movie business.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The most compelling and powerful idea in Kitty Green’s compelling and powerful film “The Assistant” resides in the network of complicity protecting the predator/stand-in for Harvey Weinstein and those like him. Green expresses, in the microcosmic minutiae of office-life orbit, a detailed picture of institutionalized harassment and mistreatment. Even though the movie’s particular events are set within the film industry, Green’s message is universal: for every man in a position of authority who manages to get away with the horrific behavior of sexual assault, cruelty, and bullying, there is a group of enablers maintaining a rotten status quo.

As aspiring film producer Jane, Julia Garner seldom leaves the frame and grips the attention of the viewer from first scene to last. As the lowly employee who arrives before sunrise to turn on the lights, make coffee, print and distribute reports, and tidy anything overlooked by custodial staff, Jane seems more intern than valued team member. Yet, her willingness to accept this grim hierarchy is instantly recognizable. We don’t need to be told that Jane’s hellish and humiliating servitude is a “rare opportunity and privilege” that hundreds of others would also suffer while chasing Hollywood dreams.

Green, the documentarian whose brilliant “Casting JonBenet” seamlessly traversed the realms of nonfiction and fantasy, wrote the “The Assistant,” and her screenplay carefully parcels out the dialogue that, little by little, exposes an insidious culture and climate. It is, however, the filmmaker’s commanding ability to communicate in purely visual terms that distinguishes “The Assistant.” Jane watches the copy machine spit out an endless stack of anonymous headshots. She tends to the chairman’s young children. She shares an elevator with a famous actor (Patrick Wilson) so used to owning physical space that a clumsy exit dance tells us he didn’t even register Jane’s presence. All three examples speak volumes about the dynamics of gender.

Green said in an interview with Marshall Shaffer that both “Casting JonBenet” and “The Assistant” are about the exploitation of women. In the latter, the protagonist will — against all odds — muster the courage to visit human resources to voice her concerns about the safety and wellbeing of a new hire: a very young former waitress from Idaho personally selected by the big boss and escorted by Jane to the Mark Hotel. The HR interaction that plays out, between Jane and Wilcock (Matthew Macfadyen), is arguably the movie’s critical scene. Their conversation is a tension-filled back-and-forth illuminating the wide berth of tolerance that shields money-makers against credible accusations, and it shakes Jane to the core.

Green’s skillful direction is a master class in strategic elision. Unlike the provocative private office scene between Margot Robbie’s Kayla Pospisil and John Lithgow’s Roger Ailes in “Bombshell,” Green withholds any dramatizations of behind-closed-doors transgressions. Instead, the chairman remains ever hidden from our view in a choice that only intensifies his fearsome reach and underlines Green’s critique of an unjust system. The mogul’s voice (supplied by Joy O. Sanders) is filtered through the telephone, and the sadism and degradation are as chilling to us as the ritual in which Jane writes him emails of apology helpfully wordsmithed by the two young men with whom she shares workspace.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Cinematic depictions of the creative process are as common as they are usually unconvincing. Whether encapsulated in a montage or stretched out over several scenes, images of painters painting, composers composing, writers writing, and rockers rocking are regularly meant to convey to the viewer a sense of awe or accomplishment when the final product is revealed. Frustration and failure can also factor in some of the best films about the struggles of making something out of nothing. “Barton Fink” is tough to beat, and “Amadeus” communicates triumph and defeat with equal brilliance.

Musician Marc Collin’s “Le choc du futur,” one of the handful of South by Southwest-selected features recently included in the festival’s online partnership with Amazon Prime, capitalizes on a modest budget to imagine its 1978 setting amidst the rapid evolution of electronically-generated, synthesizer-based pop recordings in dance and other genres. More precisely, Collin spins a recognizable tale — the burdens and challenges faced by women in an industry controlled by men — to render the details of a moment in time. Collin knows his stuff. The massive wall of equipment that dwarfs the protagonist has been assembled with care and becomes a character in its own right. But one of the most appealing things about the film is that the director is no snob; you don’t have to be an aficionado to appreciate the journey.

The majority of the film’s action is confined to the gear-filled apartment Ana (Alma Jodorowsky, whose grandfather is indeed Alejandro) watches for a traveling friend. Collin eventually visits a few more locations, but “Le choc du futur,” whether by design or by budgetary limitations, tethers our protagonist to the tools of her trade. Ana’s self-quarantine is one of devotion to her craft and is unrelated to the one currently underway. Ana also receives many guests, and each one, like a new instrument added to the symphony, expands our understanding of her character and her objectives.

Collin contrasts Philippe Rebbot’s entitled producer/go-between — whose unwelcome and creepy advances Ana must routinely deflect — with the warmer and more avuncular personality of Geoffrey Carey’s instantly recognizable aging hipster. Carey and Jodorowsky share one of the movie’s best scenes, when he drops the needle on a stack of fresh records to gauge Ana’s reaction. She misses the boat by shrugging off Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop,” but the interaction establishes Ana’s hunger for fresh sounds. Even more rewarding is the sequence in which a vocalist played by Clara Luciani establishes a powerful creative connection, leading to the film’s most sustained depiction of song-building.

Several critics have complained that Collin fails to fully explore the social inequities and gender imbalance that put Ana at a disadvantage compared to male artists who don’t have to deal with misogyny and sexism. But Collin’s more subtle approach rewards us with front-row seats to this highly specific world. One of the most accomplished elements of “Le choc du futur,” which is Collin’s feature debut (he is better known as covers project Nouvelle Vague’s co-founder), is the way it engages in an ongoing conversation on the nature of art and how we consume it as well as create it. Ana’s desire to add her voice as a practitioner is echoed in a closing title that pays tribute to the groundbreaking women of electronic music.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

As alternative viewing strategies for avid moviegoers seeking fresh content continue, the South by Southwest filmmakers who opted to join the Amazon Prime collection have benefited this week from attention that would have otherwise been more limited by the in-person version of the Austin, Texas showcase. One of the best films in the lineup is Rachel Harrison Gordon’s narrative short “Broken Bird.” Crafted with a level of sophistication and storytelling acumen rarely seen in first-time efforts, let alone pieces that begin as film school assignments, Harrison Gordon’s movie is a whole world. It may be only ten minutes long, but the rhythms, characterizations, and thematic interests make “Broken Bird” feel like a richly detailed feature-length accomplishment.

If Harrison Gordon ever develops this story into a long-form effort, I will be among the first in line to buy a ticket. I would also wish for the same performers, since the actors selected by the moviemaker are perfectly cast. The director’s statement shared by Harrison Gordon on the movie’s website reads, “‘Broken Bird’ follows Birdie, a biracial girl raised by her Jewish mom in a New Jersey suburb, as she spends a rare visitation day with her father while preparing for her Bat Mitzvah. She overcomes her doubts, and decides to risk inviting him back into her life. Birdie confronts what independence means as she steps into adulthood on her own terms.”

Harrison Gordon concludes, “This film celebrates the various worlds and lives we incorporate into our own unique identities. I had to learn to be comfortable in my own skin, and I know there are a lot of young people out there who feel the same way. I hope they can take a measure of comfort from Birdie’s story, and that they see their own strengths through Birdie’s eyes.” While Harrison Gordon pulls many of the details contained within the narrative from her own biography, “Broken Bird” — like all great examples of bildungsroman — locates the universal in the specific.

Indigo Hubbard-Salk (who plays Skylar Gilstrap on Netflix’s “She’s Gotta Have It”) inhabits Birdie with fierce individuality. Harrison Gordon shrewdly resists any overt dramatizations of troubling alt-right politics that would place her alter-ego in the crosshairs of the racist and the anti-Semite. Instead, no matter what our own demographic signifiers may be, we get the humanness of a young person still grieving over the loss of her previously united nuclear family. At a restaurant, Birdie’s father Andre (television veteran Chad L. Coleman, so superb in “The Wire” and several other series) orders her a forbidden soda, and the small, seemingly inconsequential exchange tells us as much about Birdie’s two worlds as the scene in which she has her hair straightened.

Music connects Birdie to her father and to the particulars of her experience, and Harrison Gordon’s song choices ring out. Too many filmmakers misunderstand the function of a well-placed needle-drop in the diegesis, especially when they succumb to the temptation of an unnecessary explanation or lecture. The inclusion here of Nina Simone’s recording of “Eretz Zavat Chalav” speaks for itself. And while the version of “Bad Girls” excerpted in one of the movie’s most powerful scenes is by Penelope and the Dream, the movie’s precise integration of “toot toot, hey, beep beep” from the Donna Summer classic will break your heart.

“Broken Bird” premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and is available to watch online at no cost until May 6, 2020, as part of Amazon Prime’s collaboration with SXSW.