Movie review by Greg Carlson

Fans and readers as well as the uninitiated will appreciate veteran filmmaker Vivian Kleiman’s “No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics.” Drawing from richly detailed and insightful interviews with a quintet of masters, Kleiman elects to cover as much territory and history as possible without taking on the burden of comprehensiveness. Even so, the director’s scope is broad and illuminating. Viewers without any background in mainstream or independent comics should be inspired by the deeply personal — often confessional — descriptions of the art life.

The principal interview subjects are Alison Bechdel, Jennifer Camper, Howard Cruse, Rupert Kinnard, and Mary Wings, but Kleiman also periodically cuts to comments from younger creators who acknowledge specific relationships — and debts of gratitude — to the work of the trailblazers. Additionally, these representatives appearing under the label “Next Gen Comics” articulate with acuity the importance of representation. For example, Ajuan Mance says, “The idea of creating comics that aren’t really about making people heroic is one of the things that I think queer comics have done the best.”

Maia Kobabe adds, “When you are drawing yourself, you can draw yourself however you want. And that is another reason why I think that comics is a media that is so friendly to a queer author.” Kleiman is particularly skillful in grabbing hold of and communicating the universal and the precise. “No Straight Lines” never once feels like homework, even when covering the historical emergence of LGBTQ+ comics or how the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis motivated raw and haunting expressions of rage, grief, and pain in achievements like David Wojnarowicz’s “Seven Miles a Second.”

For the general audience, Bechdel might be the best known of the featured artists (especially today), but few followers would disagree with Camper’s widely-repeated assertion that Howard Cruse deserves to be known as the “Godfather of Queer Comics.” A monumental figure and mentor to many, Cruse’s death at the age of 75 in November of 2019 casts both a celebratory and elegiac glow over his featured scenes. From his emergence in the 70s underground to his role as founding editor of “Gay Comix” to the publication of the “Wendel” strip in “The Advocate” and the wider reach of “Stuck Rubber Baby,” Cruse’s biography could easily sustain a feature documentary by itself.

Impressively, Kleiman manages to spread the wealth. One could argue that “No Straight Lines” might have benefited from a little more Wings, even though the film does make time to recall the birth of “Come Out Comix” as a direct response to Trina Robbins’s “Sandy Comes Out.” Kinnard explains his motivation for bringing to life characters like Superbad and Brown Bomber. The influence of Bechdel’s “Dykes to Watch Out For” and the multiple successes of “Fun Home” are finely rendered, and the often hilarious and always razor-sharp perspectives of Camper, the founding director of the Queers and Comics conference, may constitute the film’s most valuable set of observations.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of “No Straight Lines” is evident again and again in the close-knit support shared among the “elder statespeople.” The element of game recognizing game in the broadest sense, the mutual admiration of top-flight talent, and expressions of love fill in the spaces between looks at specific titles and publishing milestones. In one example, Kinnard shows a special gift organized by Bechdel, and the placement of the moment within the larger context illustrates Kleiman’s sense of perfect timing.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Of the many offspring of “The Graduate,” few films approach the original’s perfect blend of eager but anxious anticipation regarding the future and post-adolescent tendencies toward solipsistic self-pity. Or, for that matter, the quality of the comedy and the level of craftsmanship. Mike Nichols directed the 1967 masterpiece with such skill, filmmakers still drink from the well more than half a century on, seeking to replicate some of that bottled lightning. “Shiva Baby,” Emma Seligman’s feature debut as writer and director, doesn’t have a budget equivalent to “The Graduate.” Nearly all of it takes place in a single location and close to real time. But the new filmmaker works wonders within these limitations.

As spiritual heir to Benjamin Braddock and his soul-crushing indecisiveness and lack of direction and purpose, Rachel Sennott’s Danielle is a roiling cauldron of contradictions. And although Sennott is neither Jewish nor bisexual, her commitment to the character results in what deserves to be a star-making performance. Danielle shares many other traits with Dustin Hoffman’s Ben. Both are smart, charismatic, horny, insecure, funny, cruel, petty, and self-centered. And both navigate difficult and potentially explosive sexual minefields with older, married partners.

The double application of the movie’s title refers to Danielle and to the child of her “sugar daddy” Max (Danny Deferrari), who unexpectedly shows up at the post-funeral gathering of the mutual acquaintance Danielle never manages to identify. Max’s baby, along with wife Kim (Dianna Agron), will provide plenty of tension as the story unfolds. But before all that awkwardness, we learn in the opening scene that the adulterous Max offers Danielle cash (and a lovely bracelet that will work as a mini MacGuffin) in exchange for sex. Danielle’s parents, who still cover her living expenses, believe that she earns money babysitting.

“Shiva Baby” is most certainly not a movie for those who get clammy and start to sweat at secondhand embarrassment. Seligman brilliantly modulates the rhythms of the social gathering, placing viewers in position to vicariously share one humiliation after another as Danielle is continuously infantilized by her mom and dad (Polly Draper and Fred Melamed). The original short version of “Shiva Baby” was Seligman’s NYU thesis film. A comparison of the two demonstrates several strong choices made by the writer-director to expand the narrative world. “Sugar,” a 30-minute comedy series based on the “Shiva Baby” universe, is being developed by Seligman for HBO.

The short, which can be found online, showcases Seligman’s already sharp staging and timing chops. It stands on its own as a self-contained gem of the form. The feature adds a rewarding subplot involving longtime close friend/one-time girlfriend Maya (Molly Gordon). Maya’s bullshit detector is finely calibrated. She knows something weird is up with Danielle and aims to figure it out, stacking another layer of stress on the increasingly harried protagonist. Seligman nails the multiple ways in which we perform identities tailored to the specific requirements of any given audience — especially the ones made up of our closest relatives. Which facet of the protean Danielle represents the “real” or “authentic” person?

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The prerequisites for continued Marvel Cinematic Universe domination are met: a script balancing eye-popping action and emotionally-charged character development; a narrative that functions as a standalone entertainment but also plugs directly into the massive, always-expanding mainframe; an expert ensemble capable of playing both tongue-in-cheek metanarrative and earnest pathos as required from scene to scene. And as an added bonus for those who keep their scorecards up to date, we finally learn what happened in Budapest.

For fans, the lengthy wait for “Black Widow” was worth it. Despite the very real potential for franchise fatigue — the amount of so-called Phase Four content, which includes the already available Disney+ “WandaVision,” “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” and “Loki,” with another ten small screen titles and ten more theatrical features on the way, is… a lot. But one look at director Cate Shortland’s solid entry confirms that Scarlett Johansson most certainly merits her own standalone victory lap following Natasha Romanoff’s fate in “Avengers: Endgame.”

Shortland brings her keen feature filmmaking chops to “Black Widow” as a welcome addition to the talented pool of storytellers who can match the Kevin Feige house style without any significant artistic compromise. For my money, James Gunn remains the most recognizable and distinctive directorial voice in the stable, but Shortland’s previous features — “Somersault” (2004), “Lore” (2012), and “Berlin Syndrome” (2017) — form an engrossing and intense cinematic hat trick that rivals the filmography of any director on the Marvel team.

“Black Widow” runs 134 minutes to the 145 minutes of meme-generator “F9,” but it can teach the Fast and Furious gang a thing or two about family. The ties that bind kickstart a white-knuckle, running-on-empty, opening action sequence set in 1995 Ohio that serves as a prelude for a closer look at the gender-based costs of the mysterious Red Room and its unethical programs. As General Dreykov, Ray Winstone makes a menacing adversary to our hero. Screenwriter Eric Pearson ups the ante in his use of Taskmaster, playing with the themes of patriarchy and doubling/mirroring Natasha’s emphasis on and interest in lineage.

Several critics have compared “Black Widow” to the Bourne series of political thrillers based on the adventures of Robert Ludlum’s gifted assassin. The resemblance most certainly extends to the specialized training of the lead characters and the stylistic focus on intense stunt work and kinetic hand-to-hand combat. But Shortland, who includes a clip of “Moonraker” along with evidence that Nat can recite Christopher Wood’s James Bond dialogue by heart, resists taking things too seriously, despite the tragic shadows that darken Romanoff’s origin story.

“Black Widow” is closer to the Christopher McQuarrie “Mission: Impossible” films than to Bourne, bending toward elements of the fantastic and liberal doses of visual and verbal wit (not to mention a shared affinity for a great motorcycle chase). David Harbour’s bearish Alexei “Red Guardian” Shostakov struggles to squeeze into the old uniform and Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova mocks the signature Marvel landing pose. Rachel Weisz’s Melina Vostokoff is funny, too. She just isn’t given as much to do. If indeed the torch has been passed from Johansson to Pugh, who has looked every bit the star since her stunning breakout performance in “Lady Macbeth,” the Black Widow legacy is in fine and capable hands.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Janicza Bravo’s “Zola” — titled onscreen as “@Zola” or “@zola” depending on your favorite style guide — is the curious story by Aziah “Zola” Wells candidly recounting a partly truthful and partly embellished autobiographical sex trafficking road trip odyssey she unloaded as a series of 148 tweets in the fall of 2015. The thread, which Wells took down twice before getting the desired traction, became a Twitterverse cause célèbre. Movie adaptation plans quickly followed. By early 2016, James Franco was identified as the director before sexual misconduct allegations torpedoed that potential iteration of the project.

Franco’s exit and Bravo’s entrance turned out to be the greatest gift Wells could have imagined, as “Zola” took shape as an audacious and original feat of personal storytelling and directorial bravado almost unimaginable from any studio. Crafting a script with Jeremy O. Harris, Bravo draws in part from David Kushner’s “Rolling Stone” summary titled “Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted.” The result is a whiplash catalog of increasingly wild situations and dizzy but calculated shifts in tone. Comedy, tragedy, horror, and parody take turns at the wheel.

Despite its outward appearances and its stylistic kinship to the Florida trash culture milieu of Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” and “The Beach Bum,” “Zola” communicates a series of sophisticated ideas through its use of voiceover narration, nonverbal reactions, and spoken dialogue of restaurant server and part-time exotic dancer Zola (Taylour Paige, fantastic). With one notable exception, the narrative is filtered through the watchful, skeptical consciousness of a unique voice we are invited to respect and trust.

After a friendly if sketchy customer named Stefani (Riley Keough) invites Zola to join her on the Detroit to Tampa adventure that allows Bravo to play with the tropes of first the road trip and then the mala noche, Zola navigates a treacherous series of in-over-her-head episodes when the group’s two male travel companions are exposed for their truer selves: “roommate” X (Colman Domingo) is Stefani’s malevolent pimp and boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun) is an incompetent danger-magnet apparently incapable of making a sound decision.

With Bravo’s guidance, Keough navigates the minefield of grotesque stereotype and cultural appropriation suggested by the African American Vernacular English spoken by “white bitch” Stefani. But “Zola” is a star-making opportunity that Paige owns with every raised eyebrow and skeptical look. Zola is confident and self-assured, but Paige also expresses her fear, nervousness, and vulnerability. The heavy-duty misogyny of coercion, abuse, and assault is amplified by Bravo’s unsettling comic gloss. And the presence of casual, everyday racism, as glimpsed through vehicle windows and hovering at the edge of the frame, creeps close in a grim display of thematic anamorphosis.

At one point, composer Mica Levi’s harp glissandos nod directly to Bernard Herrmann’s “Taxi Driver” score, and the homage is just one of many surprises that propel the film to multiple-view territory. Bravo’s many tasty touches, including the protean speaking voice of X, a slideshow montage of the genitalia of Stefani’s clientele, a heaven-sent strip club prayer circle, the bouncing basketball beat outside the hotel room, and the conspiratorial social media dispatches (“Y’all wanna hear a story about…”) accompanied by those familiar chirps and whooshes, identify the filmmaker as a genuine talent.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

If the accolades bestowed on Ahmir Khalib “Questlove” Thompson’s directorial debut as feature documentary filmmaker are any indication, we are on the cusp of a fresh “Summer of Soul” in the hot months of 2021. Claiming both Grand Jury and Audience Award prizes following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Questlove’s beautifully constructed movie is a history lesson and a celebration. Something akin to the unearthing of a time capsule, the film presents the sights, sounds, and memories of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of concerts staged over a six-week period at Marcus Garvey Park (then called Mount Morris Park) in New York.

Featuring thrilling live sets by a to-die-for lineup including Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Max Roach, the Staple Singers, Mahalia Jackson, the 5th Dimension, David Ruffin, and many others, the concerts have been called the Black Woodstock for their emphasis on African American pride and popular culture. Despite capturing the shows, producer Hal Tulchin never transformed the material into a theatrically-released concert film or films (WNEW Channel 5 did air a series of specials at the time). Incredibly, the treasure trove sat in a basement until Questlove made it his mission.

Questlove assembles the wide range of elements with the skill of a seasoned scholar and practitioner, blending songs with memories in a master mix made especially challenging given the staggering amount of talent and the desire to tell the accompanying story. Several interviews and articles have addressed the Roots co-founder’s bona fides as musicologist, DJ, percussionist, historian, record producer, songwriter, and superfan. The full title of the movie, “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” alludes to the messages of pride and power sparking and crackling through the music.

Many of the interview subjects contextualize 1969 as an inflection point in Black history, citing the recent changes and upheavals of the American civil rights movement as catalyst and prologue. The Black Power movement — still in its ascendance at the time of the Harlem Cultural Festival — informs the attitudes of the performers on the stage and the citizens in the audience. Fifty years have elapsed in a blink. And yet, “Summer of Soul” is one of those instantly recognizable artifacts armored in timelessness. True, the “creamsicle” getups of the 5th Dimension all but shout their date and time stamp, but plenty of other togs would be fashion-forward today.

Musa Jackson, who attended as a boy, describes the general atmosphere, recalling the beautiful women and beautiful men (“It was like seeing royalty”). He paints a vivid picture of a scene familiar to all who love the adrenaline rush of outdoor concerts: “It was the ultimate Black barbecue. And then you start to hear music and someone speaking. And you knew it was something bigger.” “Summer of Soul” is indeed something bigger. Fans of rock, R&B, soul, funk, pop, gospel, and jazz will now be able to comb through the songs to study highlights and locate new favorites.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

On the heels of criticism for defending Lin-Manuel Miranda and “In the Heights” against accusations of erasure and colorism, legendary stage and screen talent Rita Moreno made an apology of her own just this week. In part, her statement read “…celebration for some is lament for others.” That sentiment also readily applies as one of the guiding themes of filmmaker Mariem Perez Riera’s “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.” Following a world premiere as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, the documentary makes a stop in theaters before a broadcast date in the thirty-fifth season of “American Masters” on PBS.

Moreno, an indefatigable 89 years old, is a worthy subject for a full-length entertainment industry/performing artist biography. Joining similar retrospectives like Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You” and Laurent Bouzereau’s “Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind,” Perez Riera’s film draws from a seven-decade archive of material, new interviews, and the presence and full participation of Moreno — outspoken, candid, and direct, even if the veteran celebrity is always “on” when the cameras are around.

Longtime appreciators of Moreno already know that she is a member of the elite company who can claim status as an EGOT winner. Perez Riera enlists fellow Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony recipient Whoopi Goldberg as one of several on-camera interview subjects attesting to Moreno’s achievement, but Goldberg’s introspection communicates the wisdom of humility: she notes simply that Moreno just put in the work, grinding away in a tough business. Perez Riera is acutely aware that Moreno’s status as a Puerto Rican made that journey even more challenging — one of the film’s most eye-opening sections shows Moreno in thankless part after thankless part, like the “exotic” indigenous “island girl” of indeterminate accent in dated fare like “Pagan Love Song” and “Seven Cities of Gold.”

The objectification of Moreno would not be limited to the roles she played in the movies. Perez Riera addresses the grim realities of a sexist and racist system controlled by white men accustomed to massive reserves of power and getting their way all the time. Moreno, whose early public devotion to civil rights and social activism indicated yet another arena in which she operated in the vanguard, doesn’t blink speaking truth to power. She calls out the disgusting behavior of people like Harry Cohn. She speaks about being raped by her own agent. She had an abortion after becoming pregnant by Marlon Brando.

With the exception of Rita Hayworth, whose ethnicity was essentially hidden as her star persona was cultivated by studio handlers, Moreno had virtually no women of color as screen role models at the time she began working in Hollywood. Her unforgettable, Academy Award-winning performance as Anita in “West Side Story” marked a significant milestone, but high-profile offers did not follow. Moreno confirms that she received plenty of scripts involving street gangs and little else. “Just a Girl…” effectively handles the complexity of “West Side Story,” confronting with eloquence the way a text can be simultaneously empowering and problematic.

Perez Riera strikes the right balance of “then-and-now” throughout the fast-moving 90-minute running time. In a career that covers “Singin’ in the Rain” to “The Electric Company” and “The King and I” to “The Muppet Show” and “Oz,” Moreno could be the subject of a multipart series (the way in which Moreno digs into her tumultuous relationship with Brando is catnip; the anecdote she provides about a key scene in “The Night of the Following Day,” like all good stories, leaves you wanting more). There is no question that popular media still has miles to go toward inclusiveness and representation, but thanks to Perez Riera’s strong storytelling, we can appreciate Rita Moreno’s skill, determination, and perseverance. She is a gift.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Edgar Wright — the subject of his own cult of fandom — knows a thing or two about obsessive devotion to odds and ends of pop culture. And with “The Sparks Brothers,” the filmmaker’s first feature-length foray into nonfiction, Wright applies the same attention to detail and supercharged storytelling that he brings to his fiction worlds. Built to impress longtime listeners and new ears alike, Wright’s love letter to Ron and Russell Mael — the Southern California brothers whose idiosyncratic and influential records have been part of the art pop landscape for half a century (!) — complements the sensibilities of the masterminds behind glories like “Kimono My House” and “Angst in My Pants.”

Like the famous quotation (often attributed to Brian Eno) that “not a lot of people bought the first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did started a band,” Sparks has inspired a wide variety of recording artists who gained greater levels of fame and fortune. From the Sex Pistols to Bjork, Sonic Youth to Duran Duran, Joy Division to the Human League, Ween to Weird Al, and Beck to Depeche Mode, generations of performers fell under the spell of the Mael blend of wickedly arch wordplay and shimmering, rhythmic synth lines.

Wright lines up a murderer’s row of effusive admirers eager and willing to describe the ways in which Sparks blew minds and broke hearts. Jane Wiedlin (hail “Cool Places”), Flea, Jason Schwartzman, Alex Kapranos, and dozens of others contribute in the talking head department, and the anecdotes shared are as delightful and funny as “The Number One Song in Heaven” or “Thank God It’s Not Christmas.” My own first Sparks experience was hearing “Eaten by the Monster of Love” underscoring a classic scene in “Valley Girl,” which I first saw on a tiny television that was temporarily allowed in my junior high bedroom because I was sick and out of school for a few days.

Throughout the film, Wright leans heavily on the band’s massive collection of archival audio and video to drive the epic tale forward. The striking visuals designed by the Maels — from album covers to television appearances — radiate from the distinctive looks cultivated by Ron and Russell. Ron’s small brush mustache evokes both Chaplin and Hitler, a point which Wright appropriately explores alongside the heartthrob curls and blistering, androgynous falsetto of Russell. The distinctive stage presence of the pair was captured on “American Bandstand” and “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” for thousands of kids who never had the opportunity to see them live.

Sparks also made music videos before MTV was a thing, and Wright takes obvious joy uncorking so many clips of their innovative and expressive short films. Applying the weird science of collage and cut-out animation and the puppet and stop-motion work of Joseph Wallace, who directed the lovely “Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)” for Sparks in 2017, Wright evangelizes as much as possible throughout the film’s generous 140 minute running time. Even though Ron and Russell never quite achieved the complete mainstream success or superstardom they deserved, their legendary status has long been cemented by fierce individuality, bold experimentation, and artistic integrity.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Horror hounds and those who — like me — are attracted to movies about movies will appreciate “Censor,” an intriguing but uneven period piece. The feature debut of director and co-writer Prano Bailey-Bond, the film is set initially within the drab offices of the group of professionals responsible for assigning film ratings during the 1980s “video nasty” phenomenon in Great Britain. Despite the potential to showcase outrageous practical effects and the onscreen depiction of blunt-force trauma and tool-assisted mayhem in tribute to artifacts like “The Driller Killer” and “I Spit on Your Grave,” Bailey-Bond demonstrates a greater interest in the psychological dimensions of her protagonist’s crucible.

Niamh Algar plays buttoned-up Enid Baines, a smart and thoughtful censor who takes seriously the work of determining what violence and gore might be left in place before any given movie to which she has been assigned can be “passed” and made legally available for public consumption. Beyond the initial act, Bailey-Bond does not explore the British Board of Film Censors (later British Board of Film Classification) and the evolution of low-budget, independent horror and exploitation moviemaking that triggered concern in the first place. “Censor” nods to the video rental store culture of the era but does not indulge it or embrace it.

Instead, the tantalizing possibility of a direct personal connection to Enid — she starts to wonder whether a performer in a sadistic film under review could be her missing sister — aligns the movie with tropes concerning the main character’s grip on reality. Enid’s willingness to go down that rabbit hole is reminiscent in a certain way of Harry Caul in “The Conversation.” “Censor” is nowhere near as good or as satisfying as Coppola’s beloved film, but both movies feast on personal second-guessing, paranoia, and the possibility of real danger. They also share an affection for analog technology and the power of interpreting and/or misinterpreting recordings of what we think we see and hear.

Enid might be akin to a Final Girl as she navigates her personal downward spiral and descends deep into the mystery of the film within the film (called “Don’t Go in the Church” with spot-on video nasty authenticity). And Bailey-Bond handles with confidence a number of solid scenes, including a creepy encounter with an odious and sleazy producer played with relish by Michael Smiley. Also effective is the tension between Enid and her grieving parents. The painful decision to get on with their lives by finally taking the step to have their long-departed child declared legally dead is a sobering reality check for the skeptical and frustrated Enid.

There is enough dark humor in “Censor” to avoid arguments that the filmmaker is taking it all too seriously, but Bailey-Bond carefully modulates the tone to achieve her desired outcome, which has led some to complain that there isn’t enough splatter to capitalize on the premise. Had “Censor” managed both Enid’s personal nightmare and wrestled more deliberately with some of the moral questions posed by the title, viewers might have been inclined to initiate conversations about the horror genre’s traditions of transgression.