Movie review by Greg Carlson

Peter Medak, the veteran filmmaker who met with early career success directing Peter O’Toole in “The Ruling Class,” puts together a fascinating cautionary tale in “The Ghost of Peter Sellers.” Haunted for more than four decades by the catastrophic disaster of his ill-fated relationship with the legendary comic genius, Medak revisits the painful memories of his “collaboration” with Sellers on the DOA feature “Ghost in the Noonday Sun.” Approaching 80 when he decided to exorcise his demons, Medak tracks down the surviving participants of the debacle. The story that emerges — part apology, part accusation, all therapy — is essential viewing for cinephiles and Sellers fans.

Medak was hand-picked by the mercurial star to take the helm of “Ghost in the Noonday Sun,” a pirate comedy loosely based on Sid Fleischman’s 1965 book for young people. And almost immediately, the 1973 shoot was plagued by Sellers’ idiosyncratic behavior and bottomless unprofessionalism. Medak, who accesses a wealth of files including budgets, logs, scripts, still photos, behind-the-scenes footage, and clips from “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” itself, recounts one jaw-dropping anecdote after another. Sellers’ lack of interest in the role he was to play was so poisonous, he reportedly didn’t bother to read the screenplay.

When Sellers arrives at the location in Greece, he won’t enter his rental quarters until an assistant sets up the stereo system and puts on a certain record. Not long after, Sellers more or less entirely fakes a heart attack and sneaks out of the local hospital and back to London. An apoplectic Medak discovers the deception when he sees a photo of his star out to dinner with Princess Margaret. Sellers falls out with pal/co-star Tony Franciosa and refuses to appear in the same frame with him, forcing Medak to restructure all their scenes. Sellers manipulates Medak, cajoling him into shooting a Benson and Hedges cigarette commercial — even as the actor reportedly represents the anti-smoking league.

In one of the many on-camera interview sessions, Medak says, “I want to kill people, but they’re all dead.” We understand he primarily means Sellers, but there is enough blame to go around. Medak’s talking-head interviews, often touching and poignant, remind us that the inevitable creep of time slows even the most vital lions. Lessons from the late producer John Heyman are particularly illuminating in this regard. But the visual spark of Medak’s film jumps out at us whenever we see the charismatic Sellers. And the funny thing is, Medak refuses to throw the man under the bus, recognizing that Sellers was positively sui generis.

“The Ghost of Peter Sellers” can be added to the shelf containing worthwhile movies about movies that didn’t turn out the way they were originally envisioned. “Burden of Dreams,” “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” “American Movie,” “Overnight,” “Lost in La Mancha” “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau,” “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead,” and a number of others could make up the screening list on a syllabus for “Abandon Hope 101: Filmmaking as Folly.” If failure is the greatest teacher, then Peter Medak has earned his doctorate.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The line is repeated so often that it does an instant, sexist disservice to the band’s greatness: The Go-Go’s were the first group composed entirely of women who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to climb to the top of the charts. And the next cold fact, cited more than once in Alison Ellwood’s new documentary on the group, rings with the subtext that no matter how good they were, in an industry dominated by men, misogyny, and the gatekeeping of the patriarchy, the band members continue to be judged by their gender: The Go-Go’s have not (yet) been added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ellwood’s film, now on Showtime following a January premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, makes the case for their inclusion.

Presented with straightforward diligence, “The Go-Go’s” moves confidently through a chronological account of pop and rock’s oldest plot. The exegesis of the rise-and-fall arc, however, comes courtesy of the participants themselves. All five members of the key lineup — Charlotte Caffey, Belinda Carlisle, Gina Schock, Kathy Valentine and Jane Wiedlin — contribute candid and heartfelt onscreen commentary. So much of what they have to say vibrates with raw, emotional power, you might think they broke up yesterday rather than in the mid-1980s.

One of the very best aspects of Ellwood’s storytelling is the extent to which the movie takes us from the intensity of the Los Angeles punk scene of the late 1970s to the glossy clips and colorful magazine cover shoots of the early MTV era, when the band reached an undreamed-of popular zenith. Fans new and old will appreciate learning more about the group’s punk bona fides. In both realms, “The Go-Go’s” boasts a treasure chest full of archival content in all shapes and sizes, and the imagery almost always complements the anecdotes told by the subjects with delightful detail. As Glen Weldon has pointed out, “the film’s determination to show its work is striking.”

And along with the sights, Ellwood curates just the right sounds. For viewers of a certain age, especially the ones who wore out our records and cassettes of “Beauty and the Beat,” “Vacation,” and “Talk Show,” the durable songcraft contained within the grooves of one of modern recorded music’s most infectious one-two combinations could sustain its own separate documentary (or at least a thorough track-by-track examination and breakdown in cult favorite series “Classic Albums”). Both “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Our Sealed” continue to live as electrifying Mount Olympus earworms, and when the film turns its attention to their origin stories, you might feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Several valuable and eloquent guests stop by, including manager Ginger Canzoneri, Miles and Stewart Copeland, Lee Thompson of Madness, and Lynval Golding of the Specials. The most riveting revelations, however, are the ones recounted by the Go-Go’s. The movie is very funny — Ellwood has even claimed that an early cut was “too funny” — and Schock might just be the most hysterical storyteller of the bunch. But alongside the humor is plenty of heart, and viewers might be surprised to find themselves blinking back a few tears when the women share the depth of sorrow, pain, and frustration caused by the demons of drugs, ego, and money.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Jeffrey McHale’s “You Don’t Nomi” lines up a colorful gallery of defenders and detractors ready to reflect on the serpentine journey of Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 spectacle “Showgirls.” Contemplating the movie’s gradual redemption as a kind of cult trash masterpiece balanced on the wire between self-aware satire and so-bad-it’s-good embarrassment, McHale has made a potent film essay investigating the boundaries of camp, reception, and artistic intention. No matter how one feels about the NC-17 Las Vegas odyssey of Elizabeth Berkley’s Nomi Malone, McHale’s feature is a thoughtful consideration of the multitudinous ways that some popular texts take on new and unexpected life long after their original theatrical engagements.

After viewing the documentary, I shared some thoughts with my friend and fellow cinephile Dan Hassoun. He noted that the movie “nails that sense of being awed/horrified/fascinated by something all at once, which is rare for a labor-of-love fan film to acknowledge,” and observed “how the film operates as both an auteurist exploration of Verhoeven while at the same time allowing for an anti-auteurist sense of how reception evolves past the intentions of the director.”

Packed with archival goodies that include time-capsule news media clips (featuring some great pearl-clutching, finger-wagging, and eye-winking from several recognizable presenters) and enough footage from Verhoeven’s own oeuvre to test the limits of fair use, McHale skips talking heads for all of his new interviews. It’s a good choice, as our eyes remain glued to the many scenes being deconstructed by deeply invested cinephiles like “It Doesn’t Suck: Showgirls” author Adam Nayman and writer David Schmader, whose hilarious and heartfelt scrutiny at “live annotated” screenings led to an MGM invitation to record a special edition DVD commentary.

McHale covers a lot of ground and sprinkles a lot of catnip. In one delectable sequence Jeffrey Sconce talks about Jack Smith’s adoration of Maria Montez’s total commitment in “Cobra Woman,” comparing it to the “hysterical energy” of Berkley. In another, “Showgirls” is anointed as the third jewel in a triple crown that includes “Valley of the Dolls” and “Mommie Dearest.” Drag performer Peaches Christ explains the participatory thrill of the midnight movie phenomenon and April Kidwell speaks candidly about her own intense identification with the star of “Showgirls.”

I was taken with the film’s comfortable attitude toward the complexity and ambiguity of work that can support and sustain such wildly opposite readings. Several times, McHale juxtaposes voices in sharp contrast with one another: “Showgirls” as pedestrian and mainstream versus “Showgirls” as rare and on the edge. Haley Mlotek’s compelling claims that Verhoeven is a misogynist abusing his position of power as a white male clash with Susan Wlosczyna’s opinion that Verhoeven is a filmmaker who “gets women” and doesn’t view them as “fragile creatures who need saving.”

Whether it is possible for him to be both manifests in the rise-and-fall trajectory of Elizabeth Berkley, the “Saved by the Bell” performer whose career was thoroughly dismantled by the failure of “Showgirls.” Much time is spent on Berkley’s performance, and McHale reminds us that the exaggerated emotional pitch of Nomi owes as much to the dialogue written by Joe Eszterhas and the precise demands and instructions of Verhoeven as it does to Berkley’s own choices. The one thing upon which it seems all agree is that Berkley got a very raw deal that she did not deserve.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Natalie Erika James delivers a strong directorial debut with “Relic,” another Sundance 2020 world premiere now available on demand. Working from a screenplay she co-wrote with Christian White, James thoughtfully explores mother-daughter relationships, the icy grip of dementia, and the inevitability of human mortality. Situating her core themes within the corner of art-house horror often identified as the slow-burn variety, James mostly skips the jump scares in favor of creeping dread and layered metaphor. Some of the resulting ambiguity might disappoint viewers seeking either concrete, logical explanation or deeper, world-building mythology, but the three central performers more than make up for any significant shortcomings.

Kay (Emily Mortimer) and her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) visit the home of Kay’s mother Edna (Robyn Nevin) — some distance from Melbourne — when alerted to Edna’s strange disappearance. A prologue suggests Edna might be experiencing some kind of supernatural intruder, but James also supports the simpler possibility that Edna, now in her 80s, has reached a point where she can no longer take care of herself. Her otherwise well-appointed and spacious cottage will soon take on a sinister life of its own, but when Kay and Sam arrive, they are greeted by rotting fruit and several handwritten sticky-notes with Edna’s reminders to flush, turn off the tap, and take her pills. A more sinister one reads “Don’t follow it.”

Local authorities help Kay and Sam comb the surrounding woods. Not long after the search begins, Edna inexplicably shows up back in her own kitchen. She greets Kay with a nonchalance that strongly supports the theory that she became disoriented and wandered off, but the large and nasty bruise on her chest is harder to explain. Nevin, a veteran stage performer and director, fills Edna with all sorts of traits recognizable to families who have dealt with dementia, aging, and end-of-life care. On a good day, Edna showers her granddaughter with love. On a bad one, she calls Sam a thief, demanding the return of a ring she forgot she had just given.

As the events of “Relic”unfold, James entertains a few key subplots. In one, a rustic cabin on the family property appears to hold the secrets of Edna’s troubling behavior. In another, an incident involving the son of Edna’s neighbor leads Sam on a deeper investigation inside her grandma’s house. I like the way in which James handles the dualities of internal/external as a parallel to the lucid/foggy divisions in Edna’s personality. The gradual transformation of “Relic” into a haunted house movie begins with classic tropes, like the vibrating washer and dryer recalling similar appliance behavior in Peter Strickland’s wonderful “In Fabric.” Soon enough, it escalates to the unnerving architectural impossibilities, loops, and Mobius strips explored by Stanley Kubrick during his visit to the Overlook Hotel.

At first glance, the house-as-trap works in conjunction with the abundant symbols of decay. Together, the twin motifs grow and spread and reach toward a climax that balances revulsion with empathy. Reminiscent of an astonishing scene in Jonathan Glazer’s brilliant “Under the Skin,” James’ gutsy move is as emotionally stirring as it is unpleasant. As a memento mori, it shares something in common with Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” another movie, albeit one of a different genre, worried and concerned by what happens to us at the end.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Both Jim Jarmusch’s contemporary classic “Dead Man” and Kelly Reichardt’s newly released “First Cow” open with cosmic epigraphs. The former uses Henri Michaux’s idiosyncratic line, “It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.” The latter begins with “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship,” from William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell.” Reichardt’s choice of Blake, along with the presence of Gary Farmer in a small but key role, pays homage to Jarmusch’s Acid Western. “First Cow” will rhyme and echo with that great movie in several other pleasing ways, but perhaps the most prominent yoke is the mutual investigation of close male friendship and love.

Farmer was Nobody to Johnny Depp’s William Blake, and in “First Cow,” a parallel connection develops between Orion Lee’s King Lu, first seen naked and on the run, and John Magaro’s Otis “Cookie” Figowitz, a one-time baker’s apprentice from Maryland now seeking his fortune in the Pacific Northwest of the 1820s. “Dead Man” marked accountant Blake’s westward journey as a mortal metaphor; Nobody shepherds Blake in the direction of a sea canoe that will bear his friend out of this world and into the next. Cookie and King Lu, like Nobody and Blake, will come together again following a separation, and may also remain together until death parts them.

While the intertextual references to “Dead Man” are more plentiful and prominent, Reichardt’s cast is also joined by the late, great René Auberjonois in one of his final screen appearances. The lucky-charm presence of the frequent Robert Altman ensemble member calls to mind “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” another frontier film in which the veil between life and death, happiness and despair, and love and loneliness is delicate and gossamer. Reichardt, sharing screenplay credit with longtime writing collaborator Jon Raymond for this loose adaptation of Raymond’s first novel “The Half-Life,” builds a world as rich and unique as the ones imagined by Jarmusch and Altman.

Behold the elegance and oft-cited aesthetic minimalism with which Reichardt unfolds so many thoughts and ideas about race, representation, and gender. Like “Old Joy,” “Meek’s Cutoff” and so many of her other films, “First Cow” addresses feminism and femininity in ways both inspired and insightful — the title milk source happens to be this particular story’s most prominent female. A territorial pioneer who has survived a journey that claimed her mate and her offspring, the brown-eyed marvel produces the secret ingredient procured illegally in the dead of night by King Lu and Cookie. Her gift will launch the entrepreneurs.

The two protagonists are partners in crime, partners in business, partners in dreams, and partners in life. The explosive popularity of Cookie’s delicious oily cakes means they are often sold right back to the very Chief Factor (Toby Jones) from whom the milk is stolen. Reichardt laces the film with an exquisite and ever-building tension revolving around the potential discovery of the scheme. Appreciative viewers will recognize familiar precedents for our duo: Ishmael and Queequeg, Huck and Jim, Bromden and McMurphy. Like those unlikely partnerships, the union of Cookie and King Lu is a special bond certain to please the discerning and the patient.

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.