Movie review by Greg Carlson

As soon as 15-year-old Minnie Goetze announces “I had sex today” in Marielle Heller’s blistering adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner’s hybrid prose/graphic novel “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” one can sense all sorts of red alerts and red flags being raised by the (understandably) cautious and concerned. Heller, best known as an actor but now making a supremely confident debut as writer-director, knows this material: she previously collaborated on a successful stage version of the story, playing Minnie – and earning the trust of Gloeckner. In the film, Minnie is brought to vivid life by Bel Powley in an anchoring, heartbreaking performance that ranks among the year’s finest.

The movie is so aligned with its heroine’s worldview, nearly every adult, including Minnie’s troubled, narcissistic mom Charlotte (Kristen Wiig), appears to operate in some kind of responsibility-free parallel universe. Heller’s frankness, combined with the lurid subject matter, will remind some viewers of any number of stories examining the damage of age-inappropriate lust, but the sensibility of female identification is closer to “An Education” than “Lolita.” While the contemporary, real-world impulse is so often to scrutinize and shame, Heller forges her own path. As Rebecca Keegan notes, “It’s hard to overstate what a radical idea it is to show a teenage girl enjoying sex in a movie” (especially without being utterly destroyed or scarred for life as a consequence of that pleasure).

While Heller scales back some of the darkest, grimmest content from Gloeckner’s book, the primary romantic relationship concerns the young Minnie and her mother’s opportunistic, predatory boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard), a man old enough to be Minnie’s father. While the ongoing behavior between the two is statutory rape, Minnie’s point of view is the one honored by the filmmaker, lining the film with a level of complexity that recognizes a problematic double standard when compared to bildungsroman featuring the sexual awakenings and initiations of similarly aged male protagonists.

A sizable number of critics have argued that Heller deliberately withholds judgment, allowing viewers to make determinations about the agency of a young person surrounded by a culture of permissiveness. While the 1976 San Francisco setting arguably shields particular strains of critique via the period mythology of the city’s most liberal impulses, the director unfailingly renders Minnie as subject and not object. Manohla Dargis writes, “…it’s important that the one time you see Minnie fully naked is when she’s alone with her body and thoughts in her bedroom, gazing into a mirror,” going on to point out that Heller does not light or frame Minnie “for the viewer’s erotic contemplation.”

Minnie is an aspiring artist, and one of the greatest pleasures in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is the integration of lovely animated imagery that sometimes takes over the entire screen and sometimes shares space with the tangible objects photographed by Brandon Trost. Created by Sara Gunnarsdottir, the animation brings to life the contents of Minnie’s sketchbook and imagination, both of which draw inspiration from the distinctive illustrations of underground comics legend Aline Kominsky. The spirit of Kominsky inhabits the movie as a crucial symbol of stability and comfort to Minnie, and by extension, the audience. Whenever Kominsky shows up, it feels like everything will be OK.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Veteran journalist and hip-hop historian Sacha Jenkins delivers his first feature length documentary with “Fresh Dressed,” a chronological overview of urban fashion that closely parallels the music scene that rocketed from the New York underground to a global phenomenon packaged by mainstream media conglomerates. Blending a dizzying array of rappers, players and tastemakers with vibrant archival footage and photographs of evolving trends, “Fresh Dressed” struggles to cover too much territory, despite its apparent desire to be comprehensive. Any number of segments, sections, and personalities – from collectors obsessed with sneakers to the artistry of entrepreneurs like King Phade/Shirt Kings and the legendary Dapper Dan – might merit an entire movie.

Jenkins opens the film with a promising lesson that starts with the customization of “cut sleeves” – the denim jean jackets worn over black leather. The look was favored by gang and crew members inspired, according to interviewee Lorine Padilla, by “Easy Rider.” Adorned with hand-cut lettering, bead and studwork, graphic insignias, and assorted patches, the attire simultaneously announced one’s affiliation and one’s sense of individuality. From there, the viewer receives a primer on signature style items like Adidas with fat, starched laces to Kangols to Cazal eyewear that could, according to folks like designer April Walker, instantly identify one’s borough of residence.

“Fresh Dressed” shifts away from the early years of the 70s and 80s just when it seems to be warming up, focusing instead on the emergence of streetwear brands like Cross Colours that capitalized on trends and fads like super baggy, oversized silhouettes. The marketing relationship between Cross Colours and popular television shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “In Living Color” demonstrates the impact of mass media on hip-hop clothing and vice versa, but Jenkins opts to leave out the more controversial discussion on aspects of appropriation when affluent, suburban white kids started adopting looks seen on “Yo! MTV Raps.”

One of the film’s most glaring shortcomings is the pronounced lack of focus on women, both in terms of designers and fashionistas. Walker offers the most complete perspective as one of the movie’s only significant female interview subjects, and a few shout-outs are made to trendsetters like TLC and Kimora Lee Simmons, but the interviews and B-roll overwhelmingly feature men talking about other men. Jenkins certainly could have spent more quality time sharing the stories of the women who have been every bit as influential as the fellows.

The last half of the movie fails to match the excitement of the first, delving into the rise of vanity labels like Sean John that hastened the decline of powerhouses like FUBU and Karl Kani. A photomontage reminds viewers that practically every artist, from Eminem to the Wu-Tang Clan, launched personal lines that saturated an already crowded marketplace. Unlike Sean John, the hastily greenlit apparel privileged profit over earnest innovation and creativity, evaporating when sales tanked. Now that the Internet can communicate emerging style faster than the older media it continues to supplant, designers face the double-edged sword that combines immediacy with accelerated obsolescence, keeping a new generation of wannabe moguls on their toes.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker James Ponsoldt follows the success of “The Spectacular Now” with “The End of the Tour,” a fictionalized rendering of David Lipsky’s memoir “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself,” an account of Lipsky’s experiences traveling with writer David Foster Wallace over five days while the latter was promoting “Infinite Jest.” The conversational transcripts of Lipsky’s interactions with Wallace offer a dangerously tempting format for translation into a workable screenplay, and scripter Donald Margulies successfully navigates the potential pitfalls. In the wrong hands, the endeavor could have proved disastrous, but the finished film is vibrant, magnetic, and alive.

If for no other reason, “The End of the Tour” merits attention for its thoughtful and humane peek behind a dark curtain. Wallace’s 2008 suicide casts a long shadow on every word spoken and gesture made by Jason Segel’s impressively performed version, and many viewers will be listening closely for portents and clues that could offer some insight into Wallace’s mind. Segel imagines a complex Wallace, and his outward largesse (masking hidden contempt for many of the rules of the game being played) contrasts with the aching jealousy Jesse Eisenberg brings to his portrayal of Lipsky.

“The End of the Tour” doesn’t exactly unfold with the fierce erudition of Wallace’s writing, relying in a few instances on easy stereotype. Joan Cusack, wonderful even when saddled with a broad Coen-esque caricature of Minnesota nice, transcends the borderline condescension meted out to her chipper Patty Gunderson – a Minneapolis guide who offers to show Lipsky and Wallace the statue of Mary Tyler Moore. In general, women are used in the movie to cook up a motif of sexual competition between Lipsky and Wallace, a dubious choice made in the service of doubling down on the movie’s exploration of male-male rivalry.

A few critics have wondered whether “The End of the Tour” would have been a better film had it been able to capture something of the essence of Wallace’s writing. Ponsoldt very clearly makes the decision to omit any scene that might have allowed for extensive quotation – and one answer for this likely resides in the emphatic objections of Wallace’s family and publisher Little, Brown to the film. In a statement that ran in the Los Angeles Times, the trustees wrote, “For the avoidance of doubt, there is no circumstance under which the David Foster Wallace Literary Trust would have consented to the adaptation of this interview into a motion picture, and we do not consider it an homage.” Ouch.

The irony is that “The End of the Tour” burnishes Wallace’s myth in what might be the highest profile hagiography since Lipsky’s book in 2010, and will surely help sell plenty of copies of Wallace’s work. The filmmakers clearly take great pains to admire Wallace as subject, bending over backwards to retain a sense of awe and worshipfulness that keeps a halo floating over the literary god’s bandana. Lipsky gets to be the jerk, seething at the realization that he will never achieve the acclaim and devotion earned by Wallace’s monumental talent.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Lovers of bad cinema will marvel at Blue Underground co-founder and veteran “making of” and bonus feature producer David Gregory’s anatomy of a train wreck “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau.” Sharing war stories of the 1996 Marlon Brando/Val Kilmer debacle ultimately directed by John Frankenheimer, Gregory’s documentary is akin to more effective brethren like “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” “Lost in La Mancha,” and “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” the latter of which bears a unique connection to “The Island of Dr. Moreau” via a peculiar rivalry between authors H. G. Wells and Joseph Conrad, and filmmaker Richard Stanley’s familial connection to explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley, one purported inspiration for the character Kurtz.

The younger Stanley, who made his cinematic mark as the auteur behind 1990 cyberpunk cult item “Hardware,” takes center stage in “Lost Soul,” and the first half of the movie focuses on Stanley’s devotion to the source material that would painfully, frustratingly elude his grasp and control. A raconteur whose ability to speak effusively about his expansive cinematic visions recalls Alejandro Jodorowsky presenting his insanely detailed “Dune” pre-production book, Stanley also reveals enough about his own superstitions and belief in mysticism to explain at least in part how he might have been terminated by nervous, frustrated New Line executives.

Once Stanley is fired, Gregory shifts his focus to Brando’s erratic on-set behavior. The legendary actor, who had recently lost his daughter Cheyenne to suicide, reinforced most of his late-career stereotypes and invented a few more for good measure. Arriving long after he was due and showing nothing but contempt for the business practices of the movie industry, Brando — according to Fairuza Balk and others — deliberately sabotaged the production. Entirely unmanageable, Brando insisted on performing in whiteface, using an in-ear monitor to avoid the bother of learning his lines, and expanding the role of the 28-inch tall Nelson de la Rosa. Devotees of “The Island of Dr. Moreau” as a jewel of awful moviemaking will be relieved to know that Gregory includes some discussion of what is perhaps Brando’s finest bit of disobedience/tomfoolery to make the final cut: Dr. Moreau’s ice bucket hat.

Gregory also alludes to the ongoing discord between Brando and Kilmer, but “Lost Soul” unfortunately doesn’t recount the specific throwdown between the two in which Brando is supposed to have said to Kilmer, “You’re confusing your talents with the size of your paycheck.” While Brando’s antics are recalled with a sense of bemusement, nobody in Gregory’s film has a single nice thing to say about egomaniac Kilmer, who by every account behaved like an absolute ass from start to finish.

Unfortunately but not surprisingly, Kilmer does not speak on his own behalf, and neither does David Thewlis, who replaced an understandably skittish Rob Morrow when the movie started to fall apart. The most prominent actors on record are Balk, whose frank observations are among the movie’s highlights, and Marco Hofschneider, who describes several additional Brando shenanigans. Like the “Dune” that Jodorowsky never got to make, Stanley’s unrealized version of “The Island of Dr. Moreau” is surely more magnificent as a mirage, a myth, and a legend. Even though he did not get to fashion his dream into reality, Stanley pulled off one stunt that caps the stranger-than-fiction saga: the legally banished director managed to sneak back to the set, appearing incognito behind latex in the finished movie as one of the dog-like mutant experiments of Dr. Moreau.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Predictably, the critical reception of Woody Allen’s “Irrational Man” ranges across the spectrum, from haters like Lou Lumenick and Jessica Kiang to admirers including Richard Brody, David Rooney, and Amy Nicholson. The director’s films, even more polarizing in the grim aftermath of the highly publicized February, 2014 open letter by Dylan Farrow that revisited allegations of sexual abuse, continue to appear with clockwork regularity at the rate of one feature per year. While the auteur’s late career oeuvre – Allen is currently 79 – hasn’t been as consistent as his monster run in the 1970s and 1980s, Allen continues to attract A-list talent as well as the ongoing curiosity of cinephiles.

For the Allen faithful, tracking the critics is just as important as being able to say you’ve seen all the director’s movies, especially when the assessments contrast so radically from one another. For example, Lumenick’s disemboweling argues that “’Irrational Man’ is so clumsily staged and lethargically paced that it makes such clunkers as ‘Small Time Crooks’ and ‘Cassandra’s Dream’ look like minor classics.” David Rooney saw a different film entirely, claiming that Allen’s “plotting zings along with forward momentum in all the right places.” Beauty, certainly in the thematic ideas and stylistic concerns of Woody Allen, is in the eye of the beholder.

Revisiting the “Crime and Punishment”-inspired variations of murderous characters including Martin Landau’s Judah Rosenthal in “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ Chris Wilton in “Match Point,” Allen presents Joaquin Phoenix as Abe Lucas, a philosophy professor whose moribund academic trajectory brings him to the fictional Braylin College in Rhode Island. Despite the attentions of two beautiful women, unhappily married colleague Rita (Parker Posey) and vivacious student Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), Abe can’t snap out of his crippling torpor until an overheard conversation sparks in him the idea to kill a judge in an untraceable, “meaningful act.”

“Irrational Man” is more playful and relaxed than the dark and serious-minded “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Match Point,” a contrast that enhances, rather than detracts from, the similarities shared among the films. Undoubtedly, the previous two movies are superior, but Allen’s touches – including parallel voiceovers, flashes of wicked black humor, and visual rhymes sumptuously photographed by the terrific Darius Khondji – retain viewer enthusiasm from start to finish. The curious audio motif of the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s half-century old recording of “The ‘In’ Crowd,” placed prominently and deliberately in the narrative, further piques interest.

Stone, reteaming with Allen after the lackluster “Magic in the Moonlight,” fares much better as a contemporary undergraduate than as a conniving clairvoyant of the Roaring Twenties. She makes believable (if not palatable) Allen’s traditional fantasy of the carefree, wealthy elite, infusing Jill’s dialogue with a clear-eyed pragmatism certain to frustrate any audience member hoping she would exhibit fidelity to Jamie Blackley’s puppy dog of a boyfriend. Stone and Phoenix are so good together that not even the awkward blocking of a bizarre tussle near an open elevator shaft can spoil the party.

One final note: “Irrational Man” was longtime producer Jack Rollins’ final collaboration with Woody Allen. Rollins died in Manhattan on June 18, 2015 at the age of 100.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Is it possible to make a feature-length documentary chronicling the commercial success, historical context, and popular appeal of Lego (stylized as LEGO) building toys without coming across as a corporate shill? Maybe, but the question remains unanswered by Kief Davidson and Daniel Junge in “A Lego Brickumentary,” a geeky, gushing love letter that often feels like an extended television advertisement. Junge, who recently helmed the much better “Being Evel,” and Davidson have defended their choices, claiming that the toymaker had zero editorial input. Their filmmaking approach, however, is non-stop hagiography.

The film’s chatty narrator and guide is a relentlessly exuberant Jason Bateman, whose onscreen avatar is a Lego minifigure that causes one to wonder why the directors didn’t just employ the Chris Pratt/Emmet combo from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s 2014 smash “The Lego Movie.” Miller and Lord appear in the “brickumentary” along with a dizzying parade of artists, builders, collectors, moviemakers, designers, and dreamers sometimes categorized by acronyms like AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) popular within the Lego community. Sadly, Michel Gondry’s clip for the White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl” is not among the Lego achievements that made the cut.

Quick, breezy overviews of Lego’s origin story and the toy’s irresistible stud-and-tube coupling system and resulting “clutch power” flash by to carve out more time for the snapshots of various Lego maniacs and their specific pursuits. Coverage of the company’s near collapse in the early 2000s was handled more effectively in Bloomberg’s “Inside Lego.” The majority of the enthusiasts interviewed on camera are mostly affluent, male, and white, and the inclusion of celebrity fans/multimillionaires like Ed Sheeran (whose hits include “Lego House”), Dwight Howard, and Trey Parker only reinforces the notion that it takes a significant amount of money to really enjoy the Lego experience.

Women like Alice Finch, co-creator of a jaw-dropping Rivendell model, are few and far between. Finch’s comments encouraging more Lego build/play opportunities for girls are appreciated, but the moviemakers missed an important chance to critically engage with Lego’s address (or lack thereof) of gender. Accounts of the company’s recent public relations struggles over items like the maligned Friends line, the viral popularity of 7-year-old Charlotte Benjamin’s letter pointing out Lego’s absence of parity and egalitarianism, the classic Rachel Giordano print ad, and the variety of reactions to geoscientist Ellen Kooijman’s proposed and produced Research Institute collection featuring female scientists are completely missing from the movie.

While the skewed male-to-female ratio plaguing Lego minifigures goes unmentioned, the good news is that several of the film’s episodic sequences do provide some insight into aspects of the toy that operate at least partially outside of the purely consumerist (even if these scenes feature a lot of pale dudes). The use of Lego play by Daniel LeGoff in therapy for children with autism, the contributions of Adam Reed Tucker to Lego’s Architecture collection, the stop-motion work of David Pagano, and the synergy between company and end user through the Japan-originated Cuusoo (now Lego Ideas) project are every bit as cool as the movie’s gargantuan product placement featuring the full scale “Star Wars” X-wing starfighter unveiled near the end of the movie.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Employing the same skillful arrangement of archival resources that fueled his motorsports bio “Senna,” filmmaker Asif Kapadia assembles a heartfelt portrait of British soul-jazz-pop vocalist Amy Winehouse, the electrifying star who died at the age of 27 in 2011 of alcohol poisoning. Appearing only a few years after Winehouse’s death, the movie is both snapshot and obituary, celebrating the achievements of a unique voice and lamenting the toll of drug abuse, bulimia, and the pressures of fame on a young person. Whether one is a major fan or knows little about Winehouse, Kapadia’s work is expansive and respectful.

Kapadia’s straightforward style occasionally veers toward “Behind the Music” flourishes, and as a film, “Amy” is less artistically adventurous than Brett Morgen’s “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.” Both movies share intimate glimpses into the lives of their subjects and make public material that had originally intended to be private. From home video of a 14-year-old Winehouse singing at close friend’s Lauren Gilbert’s birthday party to audio recordings of cell phone voicemail, Kapadia fills out “Amy” without the need to resort to ponderous talking heads (although many interviews were collected for the film and a small number of figures do speak directly on camera).

The viewer’s regret at the loss of Winehouse’s prodigious talent is exacerbated by several of those closest to her professionally and personally, and Kapadia doesn’t need to do much for the audience to imagine Winehouse’s father Mitch, Winehouse’s husband Blake Fielder-Civil, and Winehouse’s manager Raye Cosbert as three predatory enablers who feasted on Winehouse’s success (the media mostly get a pass this round). While any number of press reports emerging at the time of Winehouse’s death exonerated Cosbert — like Adam Sherwin and Rob Sharp’s story in “The Independent” that claimed “Cosbert was regarded within the music industry as a stabilising influence on the singer” — Kapadia at least implies the rough charge that paychecks trump wellness when the stakes are high.

Even though “Amy” shares the unfortunate, wrenching spectacle of Winehouse’s disastrous appearance at what was to be the start of a European tour in Belgrade in June of 2011, Kapadia primarily uses music throughout the film to demonstrate his subject’s incredible gifts. And while the documentary focuses more on the trajectory of Winehouse’s short career in terms of her personal struggles than it does immersed in the details of her songcraft and recording sessions, there are a handful of impressive performance clips that show the singer at her finest and not at her nadir. Onscreen text highlighting Winehouse’s painfully personal lyrics illuminates the devastating parallels between life and art.

It is almost impossible not to read “Amy” on some level as a cautionary tale and an indictment of a system that exploits artists as commodities to be groomed and controlled, packaged and consumed. Kapadia cranks the volume whenever the flashes pop and the shutters click, underscoring the feeding frenzy of rapacious paparazzi hounding Winehouse any time she leaves her home. Interestingly, the director omits the anecdote that sees Winehouse awarded an injunction against harassing photographers, a small battle won in a war she ultimately lost.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York’s documentary “Tig” is a warmhearted paean to the gifted comic whose own health struggles and personal losses led to the now legendary August 3, 2012 show at L.A.’s Largo. Tig Notaro opened with a declaration of her breast cancer diagnosis and proceeded to deliver a confessional shot into the heart of darkness. In her essay on the events of that night, Kira Hesser wrote, “…for the first time in my life, as far as I can recall, I genuinely laughed and cried at the exact same time, bewildered at the tragedy and the remarkably calm, clever prism through which [Notaro] assessed her terrible set of circumstances.”

Online, the accounts of Notaro’s performance sparked intense interest, and Goolsby and York attempt to explain the surreal atmosphere via graphics of the tweets made by Ed Helms, Bill Burr, and Louis C.K., who wrote, “In 27 years doing this, I’ve seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo.” Notaro, who provides intimate access to the filmmakers (Goolsby is a longtime close friend) also tries to make some sense out of the reaction, but neither she nor the moviemakers can fully articulate the flashpoint that, in the midst of crisis, instantly transformed Notaro’s career.

“Tig” is not, strictly speaking, about the Largo set. Goolsby and York instead use the cumulative roadblocks and setbacks faced by Notaro prior to and following that night – the potentially fatal Clostridium difficile infection that hospitalized Notaro, the death of Notaro’s mother, a breakup, the cancer revelation – to say something less expected about the comedian’s ongoing personal and professional journey. Dylan Matthews points out that “Tig” is not about the “well-crafted public persona” but rather a look at an “actual person, flung into an unbearably difficult situation.” You get the feeling that the filmmakers could have included any number of earnest tributes from Notaro’s contemporaries (Sarah Silverman and Zach Galifianakis appear, but not as talking heads), and consciously chose another route.

Fans of standup won’t need to be convinced to seek out “Tig,” even though the latter sections of the movie focus less on Notaro’s brilliant comedy and more on two key developments in Notaro’s life: her relationship with Stephanie Allynne and her decision to risk her health by fertilizing eggs in the pursuit of motherhood. Even so, it is mildly frustrating that so few of Notaro’s professional accomplishments are placed in the foreground. We catch just a glimpse behind the scenes of the Professor Blastoff podcast, and we witness preparations for the anniversary show at Largo, for which all new material is being prepared.

When “Tig” does invite the viewer to witness some of Notaro’s powerful public performances, the movie lights up. A section of Notaro’s hysterical Taylor Dane routine leaves you wanting more, and in a clip from her April 17, 2013 appearance on “Conan,” she makes a perfectly timed phone call to Allynne on-air just as she and O’Brien discuss the importance of being present. Unfortunately, Notaro’s even more famous “Stool Movement” bit does not appear in the documentary. One thing Goolsby and York successfully communicate is Notaro’s work ethic, sharing the self-doubt that comes naturally to comics, and especially to comics expected to follow something groundbreaking with another seemingly impossible lightning strike. You get the feeling, though, that Tig Notaro is equipped to do just that.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Liz Garbus, Oscar nominee and 2002 Fargo Film Festival special guest, considers the icon in “What Happened, Miss Simone?” — an often thrilling and sometimes exasperating portrait of the singular singer/songwriter/activist/piano prodigy. Executive-produced by Nina Simone’s only child, Lisa Simone Kelly, Garbus’ film accesses a wealth of personal correspondence, family photographs, and archival artifacts along with more familiar audio and visual documentation of Simone throughout her storied career. In several ways, Kelly’s complex and contentious relationship to her famous mother shapes the arc of the movie, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of its availability on Netflix.

Even though Simone died in 2003 at the age of 70, protracted legal battles involving and often between Kelly and Andrew Stroud, Kelly’s father and Simone’s ex-husband and manager, raged beyond Stroud’s death in 2012. “What Happened, Miss Simone?” operates partially as a means of asserting control over the artist’s legacy, especially in light of the troubled and still unreleased biopic written and directed by Cynthia Mort and starring Zoe Saldana as Simone. Another nonfiction film titled “The Amazing Nina Simone,” like Mort’s “Nina,” is currently scheduled for a 2015 release.

Time will tell whether the other Simone movies will measure up to the power of their subject, but Garbus’ effort, by virtue of arriving first, intends to establish its preeminence. Passionate Simone disciples are likely to see in the movie the shortcomings of what Jordan Hoffman calls “Wikipedia-entry-as-cinema” highlights, and will be disappointed that any number of fascinating chapters in Simone’s biography — like her self-exile — are mentioned only in brief, and that others — such as Simone’s relationship with the first Prime Minister of Barbados Errol Barrow —  aren’t included at all. Expectedly, the film highlights Simone’s prominent place during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, a critical stage in her development as a musician and thinker.

Both Manohla Dargis and Tanya Steele have questioned the amount of onscreen time afforded to Simone’s onetime spouse Stroud, the former NYPD detective who raped and regularly beat Simone. Steele, apoplectic at Simone’s “abuser telling her story,” acknowledges the painful relationship between parent and child, writing, “Whereas, I understood her daughter’s recounting of the abuse that she experienced at the hands of her mother and I wanted to hear that, I felt that it was irresponsible to say that Nina Simone invited the abuse she received.” Additionally, Simone’s struggles with mental illness, while noted in the latter sections of the movie, remain a controversial, thorny and problematic component of her life, especially in terms of the temptation to link madness to creativity in the popular “tortured genius” narrative.

Fortunately, Garbus values the sonic authority of Simone’s music, and the best parts of the film share the sights and sounds of classics like “Mississippi Goddam,” “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” and “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” The movie opens with Simone’s infamous, legendary appearance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival. As indicated by the footage from that concert, in which Simone is testy, tempestuous, erratic, commanding, fierce, and heartbreaking, significantly more detailed discussions of both her live performances and her recordings are merited. Garbus intends to be comprehensive, however, treating the music as but one (albeit important) aspect of her story. The final report is a starting point for anyone curious about one of the most important figures in 20th century popular culture, although the episodic and chronological arrangement of the content sometimes feels safer and more staid than the innovative and unconventional habits of the High Priestess of Soul warrant.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s adaptation of Jesse Andrews’ popular novel “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” presents delights and dilemmas as it negotiates (and doesn’t negotiate) the rough terrain of terminal illness, race, class, and white male privilege via an irresistibly attractive package aimed squarely at the eye and ear of the cinephile. Like “The Wolfpack,” another movie in which imaginatively staged recreations of cult films are pasted together in DIY delirium, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” functions as a Brian Eno-infused clarion call to wannabe auteurs. It’s catnip for Criterion collectors, with onscreen tributes to Herzog, Scorsese, Godard, Lynch, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Bergman, and others. Notably, the work of Wes Anderson, to which Gomez-Rejon and cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung owe a sizable stylistic debt, is not among the 47 tributes created by animators Edward Bursch and Nathan Marsh, artists who have worked on Anderson films.

As first-time screenwriter, Andrews makes several shrewd alterations in translating his book, but he and Gomez-Rejon stick close to the principal content of the source material. Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) is a “good kid” who swedes movie parodies with catchy titles like “A Sockwork Orange,” “Pooping Tom,” and “2:48 p.m. Cowboy,” collaborating with his co-worker/best friend Earl Jackson (RJ Cyler). During his senior year of high school, Greg’s mother insists he spend time with Rachel Kushner (Olivia Cooke) following Rachel’s cancer diagnosis, and the awkward boy and doomed girl embark on an acutely self-aware, platonic friendship.

In a lengthy response to Scott Tobias’ negative review, David Ehrlich acknowledges several of the film’s most problematic issues while arguing that the subjectivity attending Greg’s narcissism is vital to the structure of the film and the aims of the narrative. Ehrlich writes, “While ‘Me and Earl’ is on its surface an uncomfortably proud celebration of stories in which enchanted dying girls and magical black men exist only to further the spiritual development of a vanilla white male hero, it’s also a rebuke to the self-absorption that makes those stories possible.” Additionally, Andrews has pointed out that Greg is someone “who hasn’t yet learned to pay attention.”

Even so, films that present the skewed worldview of a flawed or antiheroic protagonist might also include clear critique from supporting characters able to see through the shortcomings of the central personality. And despite Ehrlich’s convincing rationalization, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” would have been stronger and richer had the filmmakers made more room for Earl and Rachel. Those two, as well as several of the adults depicted in the movie, do take Greg to task for his selfish behavior. Indeed, two of the best scenes in the film revolve around calling out Greg on his bullshit: Earl delivers an earful along with a punch to the gut and later, in the longest unbroken shot in the movie, Rachel points out that Greg has based his entire experience of their relationship on how Rachel’s leukemia has affected him.

The closest contemporary of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” is “The Fault in Our Stars,” and the stories share a great deal of DNA. In my 2014 review of “The Fault in Our Stars,” I mentioned the gender inversion of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope embodied by Augustus Waters in John Green’s bestseller, but Rachel’s function in “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” (note the title’s reduction and diminishment, replacing her name with the bluntest descriptor) is, on the most basic level, business as usual. Cooke is lovely inside and out, and does all she can with the character, even as the Ebert-coined “Ali McGraw’s Disease,” de rigueur in the genre, intensifies and illuminates her physical beauty — particularly in a cinematic swan song that improves on the late events of the novel.