Movie review by Greg Carlson

Theo Anthony’s thought-provoking Sundance Special Jury Award prizewinner “All Light, Everywhere” ponders a great many questions joining past and present, perception and reality, and beholder and beheld. Among its fascinating explorations is the link between the development of photographic processes and their application in the arenas of warfare and policing. Anthony contemplates the ways in which the design of the camera and the gun share several disturbing traits — extending well beyond the basic idea that both machines “shoot” when a trigger is engaged.

Constructed as a highly intelligent, highly inquisitive stream-of-consciousness personal essay, “All Light Everywhere” succeeds on the basis of Anthony’s editorial choices; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which by themselves constitute several chapters or mini-documentaries capable of dropping one’s jaw. If Anthony’s second feature can be distilled to a single penetrating thesis question, it has something to do with the “truth” of the photographed image. We have long been taught to accept the shaky premise that the camera records and transposes the objectively “real.”

Anthony is not the first theorist to shred that assumption, but the reason that “All Light, Everywhere” merits careful attention has much to do with the film’s timeliness. As America continues to be choked by routine gun violence and murders of citizens by the very police officers sworn to protect and serve them, the film upends the argument that body cameras and the data they capture benefit and safeguard the taxpayer by holding law enforcement to some degree of accountability.

A visit to Arizona-based Axon Enterprise, Inc. supplies one of the movie’s meatiest segments. Rebranded from TASER International, Inc. (the original acronym referenced Tom Swift’s Electric Rifle as described in a 1911 novel for young adults), Axon not only manufactures and markets electroshock weapons and user-worn cameras, it has expanded into the “cloud-based digital evidence management system” Evidence.com, a rather ominous repository of the images captured by organizations outfitted with Axon cameras. The implications of this technology-driven, information-based phenomenon and the inevitability of the perpetuation of unchecked racist and classist institutional power send an icy chill up the spine.

Anthony’s level of access to Axon, as seen through the slick and eager salesmanship of executive Steve Tuttle, at first seems almost too good to be true. Why, we wonder, would this company be so willing to open its doors to a filmmaker whose point of view is almost certain to oppose Axon’s well-practiced rhetorical jargon? The answer may have to do with Axon’s commanding perch within the industry and its Orwellian doublespeak concerning a definition of “transparency” quite some distance away from the objectivity implied by the use of the word.

“All Light, Everywhere” is itself an artifact of our culture of observation and monitoring — something not lost on Anthony as his crew attends a Baltimore community meeting in which Ross McNutt from Persistent Surveillance Systems attempts to sell understandably skeptical neighbors on the “value” of constant aerial recordings of the streets below. Anthony integrates these contemporary illustrations with doses of history, from motion studies to military pigeons to mug shots, that connect the dots with almost cosmic sweep.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Another movie long-delayed by the pandemic, “Saint Maud” can finally be viewed on Amazon Prime and several other online outlets (the world premiere took place a lifetime ago at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival). Writer-director Rose Glass makes a convincing feature debut with an unsettling study of a personal carer who obsessively ministers — in every sense of the word — to a professional dancer ravaged by cancer. The subject matter is pitch black, but Glass is smart enough not to take herself too seriously. “Saint Maud” is as funny as it is grim.

“Saint Maud” has been favorably compared to an impressive roster of memorable films both old and new, including “Carrie,” “Under the Skin,” “The Witch,” “Persona,” “Taxi Driver,” and “The Exorcist.” Parallels to these movies and several others are most certainly present, even if “Saint Maud” is not nearly as strong or as brilliant as its direct and indirect inspirations. As Katie/Maud, Morfydd Clark immediately conveys a blend of self-disciplined piety and roiling inner conflict that links her to characters as far apart as Carrie White and Travis Bickle. Her willingness to veer from the truth — like the name change to distance herself from a recent work-related catastrophe — signals deeper trouble.

Glass asks the audience to wonder about the details that derailed Maud’s previous job and brought her so quickly to an intense devotion to Roman Catholicism. The young woman bonds with new patient Amanda Kohl, played by the reliably great Jennifer Ehle, and the change in venue from institution to private home intensifies the anxiousness and foreboding. Glass increasingly toys with the line separating the real from the supernatural, and when we see or hear things — does that creepy voice that speaks to Maud in Welsh come from God or the Devil? — we still find room to empathize with our lonely and desperate protagonist.

Sure, “Saint Maud” can be called a horror film, but it is equally a psychological drama that gets a lot of mileage from a tried and true trope: the shifting power dynamics in a superior/subordinate relationship. Maud is Amanda’s nurse and also Amanda’s employee. And yet, Amanda’s diminished physical condition means that Maud can wield control in many situations. Glass manipulates the audience by withholding the concrete and emphasizing the abstract. To what extent does Maud dream about the kind of life Amanda once enjoyed as a vibrant performing artist? Are Maud’s acts of self-flagellation for penitence or sexual gratification?

Yet another link to modern pop culture is the presence of William Blake, and particularly Blake’s image “The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun.” Like Francis Dolarhyde in the Thomas Harris novel “Red Dragon” (and its cinematic adaptations), Maud experiences a kind of inspirational, transcendent ecstasy upon encountering Blake’s hallucinatory interpretation of events described in the Book of Revelation. The many contrasts probed in “Saint Maud” — good and evil, belief and atheism, celibacy and liberation — are starkly compared and contrasted in the differences between Maud and Amanda. Each woman imagines she might be able to build a persuasive argument. Each woman underestimates the other.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Hard to say whether non-cinephiles will be interested enough to watch a feature-length documentary about a movie critic, but Rob Garver’s “What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael” is a worthwhile biography of a fascinating life led with purpose and conviction. Of course, the film-obsessed won’t need to be told twice — Kael’s passionate, singular voice inspired moviemakers and movie viewers for decades. If Roger Ebert is the best-known American film critic of the last century, then Kael is certainly the most influential.

Garver draws heavily from the career highs and lows detailed in the late Brian Kellow’s top-notch 2011 book “Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark,” and that’s more than enough to provide the film with a complete supply of devilishly entertaining anecdotes and a solid structure. While it may seem impossible in the fractured landscape of today’s internet for one writer to wield enough power to make a film’s fortunes, Kael’s impact astonishes.

The section on “Last Tango in Paris” — in the running with “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Nashville” as her most famous rave (see her notes on “The Sound of Music,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Blade Runner,” and “Shoah” for the flipside) — illustrates the extent to which Kael’s enthusiasm could lift a movie’s commercial prospects. Her full “Last Tango” review, in which she links Bertolucci’s controversial film to the “hypnotic excitement” of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” was used as the advertising campaign in a two-page New York Times Sunday spread.

Molly Haskell, who happened to be married to Kael rival Andrew Sarris, wonders aloud why Pauline would defend a movie that was so “artificial, forced, calculated, ugly, [and] unerotic.” Some have accused Garver of crafting a hagiography, but they miss one of the film’s most thrilling dimensions: the presence of those with whom Kael disagreed and those she stabbed with the razor-sharp tip of her poison-dipped pen. The clip in which David Lean admits to having his confidence shaken by Kael’s cruelty is poignant, no matter what you think of “Lawrence of Arabia.”

Plenty of directors and stars feared Kael’s reactions to their movies, and Garver includes an entertaining montage of personal letters written (by the likes of Steven Spielberg, Jessica Lange, Kevin Bacon, Carol Burnett, and many others) in the hope of maintaining favor or just making a connection with the fierce cinema savant. The titles of her books — “I Lost It at the Movies,” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” “When the Lights Go Down” — cheekily allude to the seductive, sexual pull offered by the filmgoing experience. How many of us studied those collections carefully and closely, along with each must-read piece in The New Yorker?

Even though Garver is faced with the challenging task of balancing the personal components of Kael’s life and the professional examination of her peculiar vision for the cinema, he finds a rhythm and settles into it. Kael’s movie-mad minions will gobble up the latter, made all the more tantalizing by dozens of scenes from the films she championed or throttled. There are plenty of talking heads, including Kael’s eloquent and indispensable daughter Gina James, but “What She Said” is most alive and electrifying when Garver uses old radio and television clips of the critic speaking for herself.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

As tantalizing subject matter goes, the topic of Marilyn Agrelo’s “Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street” is as much a slam dunk as Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Even though the 107-minute documentary sticks mainly to the contents of Michael Davis’s excellent 2008 book, which was published in anticipation of the show’s 40th anniversary in 2009, fans will not fault Agrelo’s tough editorial choices. The director has so much material from which to select, nothing in “Street Gang” feels wasted, out of place, or inessential. Viewers who grew up on the series will enjoy both a heady wave of childhood memories and a fresh, behind-the-scenes perspective on American television’s most influential children’s educational program.

The most devoted will have opinions on the right way to divide up the credit for the show’s success, and one of the most satisfying aspects of Agrelo’s film is the manner in which she thoughtfully considers so many of the players central to the development of “Sesame Street.” People will likely come for Jim Henson and Frank Oz and the Muppets, but stay for Joan Ganz Cooney and Jon Stone and Christopher Cerf and Joe Raposo and several original cast members whose anecdotes point to the scope and scale and ambition of the endeavor. Agrelo has a terrific feel for the various layers that define “Sesame Street,” and articulates the value of the iconoclastic, subversive, and progressive elements baked into the enterprise.

You won’t find any sustained critiques of well-meaning white liberalism in Agrelo’s film, but the director handles the socio-political dimensions of “Sesame Street” with clarity. Obviously, the diversity of the cast, the urban setting, the recognition and inclusion of the Spanish language, and the basic respect for multiculturalism were inspired by and adjacent to Joan Ganz Cooney’s feelings about the civil rights movement. Agrelo includes a reminder that “Sesame Street” was briefly dropped from Mississippi airwaves (see Jake Rossen’s “Mental Floss” article for a deeper dive). Not everyone shared the love.

And to underscore the adage that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, Agrelo lights up the story of Matt Robinson. Spanning only a few pages in the Davis book, Robinson’s importance to early “Sesame Street” could have been easily overlooked in the film. For seasons one through three, Robinson portrayed Gordon — the very first person introduced in the initial scene in the inaugural episode — with what Davis describes as “a near-perfect blend of urban cool and downtown sophistication.” Robinson would also create the controversial Roosevelt Franklin, the proud and soulful Muppet that, according to his critics, reinforced negative stereotypes.

Agrelo instinctively settles into a rhythm that ties together such a massive undertaking. Legendary milestones, like the handling of Mr. Hooper-portrayer Will Lee’s death, have been thoroughly covered elsewhere, but receive the proper and necessary respect one would expect. In 2014, Caroll Spinney was the subject of his own feature documentary, “I Am Big Bird,” but it’s impossible to imagine a wide-ranging history without addressing the one-two punch of the giant yellow avian and the irritable green trash-lover. Don’t be surprised if “Street Gang” leaves you wanting more — that’s often the mark of something special. I’m ready for full-length cinematic treatments of Henson’s infinitely creative experimental short films, the performances of the celebrated musicians and guest stars who stopped by to say hello, and a biography of Count von Count performer Jerry Nelson.

For the record, the Count is my favorite Muppet. I’d like to hear about yours.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Talented hyphenate Ben Hozie breaks through with “PVT Chat,” an audacious and exciting low-budget, NYC indie sure to generate equal measures of interest and controversy for its onscreen depictions of graphic masturbation. Hozie, the guitarist and vocalist of Bodega, serves as the movie’s director, writer, cinematographer, and editor. Sparking with “going-nowhere-fast” energy that parallels the urgency and big risks of “Uncut Gems,” Hozie’s film is something of a companion piece to the Josh and Benny Safdie showcase. Along with the familiar face of Buddy Duress, the presence of Julia Fox — who made her feature film debut playing Howard Ratner’s inamorata Julia in “Uncut Gems” —  links the two movies.

The onscreen title “PVT Chat: A Romance About Freedom Fantasy Death Friendship” promises something more substantive than a strictly prurient piece of exploitation. And although it aims for a different vibe and tone than the Isa Mazzei-written, Daniel Goldhaber-directed “Cam,” the film joins a short but expanding list of titles examining the constantly-evolving world of computer-mediated sex work. Peter Vack’s Jack represents many young men telling tall tales and constructing identity in real time inside the virtual realm of the internet. Jack mainly switches between online poker and cam girls. He develops feelings for domme Scarlet (Fox), who expertly indulges Jack’s submissive yearnings.

Unlike so many mainstream cinematic depictions of BDSM and kink that treat the subjects as an easy joke, near-criminal aberrance/deviance, a source of embarrassment and shame, or a combination of all of the above, Hozie presents the lusty releases with matter-of-fact directness. Vack’s uninhibited performance is matched by Fox’s own fearlessness, and deep into the story Hozie surprises with a major shift in point-of-view that asks the viewer to reorient previously established attitudes about the transactional nature of Jack and Scarlet’s relationship. By opening the door to a consideration of Scarlet’s desires, Hozie both humanizes her and explores how online space is complicated by IRL actions.

In an excellent consideration of “PVT Chat” for “Paste,” Mary Beth McAndrews writes, “Self-pleasure has become prioritized over real life connections — illustrating intimacy’s shift from physical contact to an ethereal, individual experience built upon fantasies.” In one sense, this statement alludes to the way in which Hozie’s movie belongs to a tradition of self-reflexive cinema. In another, it makes a strong case for the film’s credulity-stretching coincidences and connections that have raised the eyebrows and ire of less charitable critics. Like the movie or lump it, Hozie nails the greener-grass metaphor with a clarity that reminded me of the last lines of James Joyce’s “Araby.”

The “unsimulated” (a loaded word, to be sure) capture of certain acts places “PVT Chat” in a fraternity of provocative movies that includes Michael Winterbottom’s “9 Songs” and several works by Catherine Breillat and Gaspar Noe. Hozie, however, expresses love and sympathy for art-makers of all kinds. He understands the grind required to pay the bills and the way the hustle spills from one kind of survival to another. The biographies of both Fox and Vack boast bona fides that sharpen the verisimilitude. Both performers can point to artistic projects that extend beyond screen performance. Add to that Fox’s once-upon-a-time experience working as a dominatrix and “PVT Chat” feels like an inside job.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Validated and legitimized by a kind of inflated imprimatur as an episode in “The New York Times Presents” series, filmmaker Samantha Stark’s “Framing Britney Spears” is a frustrating piece of lopsided speculation that never quite does enough to investigate and interrogate the horrifying treatment experienced by its subject as a young woman in the spotlight. In other words, the nonfiction celebrity exposé risks becoming the thing it may set out to critique: a sensationalized provocation long on gossip and short on complexity. It doesn’t help that Spears did not participate in the production, but did anyone expect her to do so?

To Stark’s credit, the film’s straightforward chronology presents an overview of the pop star’s classic American success story that capably explains the appeal of the determined kid from small-town Louisiana as she rockets to fame and fortune. The film might have focused on the ways in which Spears was chewed up and spit out by an industrial machine that exacts incalculable costs from children treated too quickly as adults. Accelerated sexualization and the brutal demands of generating wealth and income for both corporate master and a small army of employees and family members are grim conditions that go back to the beginning of modern Hollywood.

In a landscape in which the recent past is being scrutinized for misogyny, double standards, and interactions that have aged like milk, Spears earns sympathy and respect she never received during the time she was constantly assailed with questions about her body, her sexuality, her authenticity, her morals, her character, and her motivations. Stark has no trouble pointing to multiple examples of how Spears was bullied on camera by the likes of Diane Sawyer and Matt Lauer, not to mention the non-famous “journalists,” mostly much older and male, who asked all kinds of nonsense.

After Spears and Justin Timberlake ended their romantic relationship, an anti-Britney narrative quickly cast her as the villain, the cheater, the heartbreaker. But once the story arrives at the low points in the saga (the so-called “downfall”), exemplified by the hellish omnipresence of the paparazzi following the birth of Spears’s children, Stark turns her attention to two ideas that deserve more thoughtful and thorough treatment than the movie can adequately address: the permanent legal conservatorship allowing Britney’s father James “Jamie” Spears control over her healthcare and finances and the so-called “Free Britney” movement that trips over unsourced and unverified conspiracies as much as it provides genuine support for the singer’s autonomy and independence.

The best aspects of “Framing Britney Spears” are implicit while the least effective parts are explicit. And in the absence of direct comment from Spears, Stark surely could have used more evenhanded and considerate interview subjects. The episode’s most reasoned commentator is former MTV personality Dave Holmes, who demonstrates an understanding of the ways in which superfans project all kinds of desires through close identification with a celebrity. Watching “Framing Britney Spears,” I thought about Margo Jefferson’s “On Michael Jackson” and imagined what the film might have been like had Stark taken Jefferson’s approach.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Joining the group of nonfiction portraits that includes “Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures,” “Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes,” “Room 237,” “S Is for Stanley,” and “Filmworker,” Gregory Monro’s “Kubrick by Kubrick” is a worthy addition to the growing collection of documentary films exploring various aspects of the life and career of the legendary auteur. The most devoted fans might complain that Monro doesn’t offer much in the way of revelation or surprise, but the movie’s primary allure is the voice of the master filmmaker. Drawing from a quartet of recorded interviews conducted by the great author, critic, and “Positif” editor Michel Ciment, Monro’s movie has the effect of placing the notoriously particular and media-shy Kubrick in the room with the eager listener/viewer.

“Kubrick by Kubrick” was initially broadcast on French television in 2020 via the Arte network. A planned American screening as part of the Tribeca Film Festival was scratched as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While it has so far popped up online in a few legal-to-view venues, the film remains elusive in the United States at the time of this writing. Interest in Kubrick will undoubtedly increase the odds of eventual digital/streaming availability, even if physical media enthusiasts may not want to hold their breath.

Along with the novelty of hearing directly from Kubrick, whose sound clips are paired with appropriate visuals frequently selected from his movies, Monro pays tribute to the Kubrickverse via a reconstruction of the iconic, otherworldly, Tony Masters-suggested, Harry Lange-designed bedchamber from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Just as the monolith appeared before David Bowman in the room with the illuminated floor and the Louis XVI-inspired furnishings, Monro adorns the environment with one-sheets and replicas of key props, like Jack Torrance’s typewriter and axe, Dr. Strangelove’s wheelchair, Dolores Haze’s heart-shaped sunglasses, and the Carnival of Venice mask familiar to Dr. William Harford.

Along with Kubrick’s own words, Monro fleshes out the individual segments on select SK films with a top-notch series of cuts from news stories, television clips, and a lineup of archival interviews. Performers Sterling Hayden (wearing a wonderfully bushy beard), R. Lee Ermey, Malcolm McDowell, Marisa Berenson, and other familiar faces convey individual insights and perspectives. Kubrick’s thoughts on larger-than-life characters like Torrance and Alex DeLarge are even more delectable and tantalizing, especially when they do not exactly align with popular readings.

Not every movie in the filmography gets the same royal treatment, but Monro’s approach works well as a kind of thematic primer on Kubrick’s storytelling interests as well as an insightful behind-the-curtain peek at some of the director’s attitudes. One especially tantalizing quotation suggests a yearning for advanced cinematic devices that could one day transcend the limits of conventional film grammar and language, when Kubrick says, “I do think the real explosion will come when someone finally liberates the narrative structure.”

Kubrick also says, “I think that one of the things that characterizes some of the failures of 20th century art and all art forms is an obsession with total originality.” Upon hearing both of these statements, one simultaneously longs for follow-up questions to further explore such incredible ideas and envies Ciment’s intimate audiences with Kubrick throughout the years.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

One of several powerful films included in the upcoming 2021 North Dakota Environmental Rights Film Festival — screening virtually from April 11 through April 25 — director Shannon Kring’s “End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock” looks at recent history through the eyes of several committed and passionate indigenous water protectors. Following its recent world premiere as part of the 2021 DocPoint showcase of nonfiction in Helsinki (members of the production team and a share of the movie’s financing came from Finland) and a domestic debut at Slamdance, Kring’s feature has already booked more than half a dozen additional festival engagements.

While Kring traces the events surrounding the grassroots movements that began in early 2016 to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (frequently identified on social media as #NoDAPL), the filmmaker’s decision to tell the story through the words and perspectives of a number of women transforms the viewing experience. Standing Rock Historic Preservation Officer LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, who initiated the Sacred Stone Camp, provides unwavering leadership in the face of overwhelming odds and a history of systemic marginalization, mistreatment and genocide by the government of the United States.

Alongside LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Kring listens to the voices of others who have deeply personal stories to share. Particularly persuasive are Wašté Win Young, Phyllis Young, Frances “Punchy” Hart, Frances Zephier, and Linda Black Elk — although a number of others offer perspectives that are every bit as important and compelling. Not everyone will be comfortable with Kring’s storytelling approach, which frequently and deliberately interrupts unfolding events related to DAPL to address stark class and race-based disparities exacerbated by unconscionable violations of sovereignty — even when written into law.

But Kring’s approach is sound: one cannot separate the unfolding Dakota Access Pipeline saga from the decades-long pattern of injustice perpetrated by the greedy and the politically well-connected. Kring draws briefly on archival footage to illustrate the atrocious policies that forced families apart in the name of assimilation during the era of Indian Residential Schools. Neither Kring nor her subjects identify which outrage is worse. They do not need to do so. The environmental nightmare that includes running oil underneath the Missouri River lacks wisdom and humanity. So too did the deliberate dismantling of Native American culture.

And yet, these women remind us, the cycles continue and the call to involvement does not abate. “End of the Line” belongs to a tradition of activist filmmaking that draws from investigative journalism as well as from artistic principles and techniques. With an assist from director of photography Marc Gerke, Kring speaks truth to power as a witness to history. The sight of enforcers wielding pepper spray, swinging batons, spraying firehoses and unleashing attack dogs is as appalling as the audio of Jack Dalrymple’s creative rhetoric: “We cannot allow our state highways and our county highways to be taken over by agitators from other areas of the country.”

Those “agitators” included representatives from more than three hundred tribes as well as supporters from around the world.

More than 40 films will screen online leading up to and through Earth Day 2021, April 11-25. Tickets and passes for the festival are on sale now at www.nderff.org.