Movie review by Greg Carlson

Late in writer-director Damien Chazelle’s sophomore feature “Whiplash,” monstrous music teacher Terence Fletcher states, “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job.” By this point, the viewer will have formed a few troubled thoughts about Fletcher, who berates and belittles his students in much the same way R. Lee Ermey’s Parris Island drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman shouts down his U.S. Marine Corps recruits in “Full Metal Jacket.” As Fletcher, J.K. Simmons realizes he has the role of his career, and the veteran actor brings complexity to every scene in which he appears.

Ostensibly, the protagonist of “Whiplash” is jazz drummer Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), and award season chatter regarding Simmons identifies his work in the supporting category. Make no mistake, though, Teller and Simmons share the screen as two complementary leading men duking it out in a corrosive mentor/apprentice relationship that wonders whether cruelty and sadism might legitimately reveal a great artist. While Fletcher spews a torrent of ugly homophobic and misogynist slurs at Andrew and the other members of the competitive (and fictional) Shaffer Conservatory of Music in Manhattan, Chazelle sets the table for the movie’s bloodthirsty final movement, a relentlessly entertaining series of psychologically intense reversals.

Buddy Rich-hater Richard Brody’s curmudgeonly essay “Getting Jazz Right in the Movies” blasts “Whiplash” for having “no music in its soul” and “no music in its images.” The critic supports the former assertion by suggesting that Neiman’s obsessive, competitive drive dominates the narrative while Chazelle offers “no sense of a wide-ranging appreciation of jazz history.” The latter claim is accompanied by Brody’s unsupported and miscalculated jab that “There are ways of filming music that are themselves musical, that conjure a musical feeling above and beyond what’s on the soundtrack, but Chazelle’s images are nothing of the kind.”

For those who have seen Chazelle’s 2009 feature debut “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,” the methodological intersection of jazz and filmmaking in “Whiplash” feels like stylistic second nature for the young director. Chazelle constructs his movie with the rhythms, movements, tempo changes, and solos of a great piece of music. Shot in just 19 days, “Whiplash” capitalizes on Chazelle’s relationship to sound, and the sharp work of editor Tom Cross, cinematographer Sharone Meir, and production designer Melanie Jones mark the contributions of indispensable sidemen and sidewomen.

Although Chazelle’s intense focus on the bloody bond between Fletcher and Neiman takes up the largest share of “Whiplash,” the filmmaker does extend Andrew’s universe by including both a romance subplot and several scenes in which Andrew interacts with his father Jim (Paul Reiser). Dana Stevens has already made the claim that Andrew’s fragile flirtation with movie theatre concessionist Nicole (Melissa Benoist) is unnecessary because the film’s “love story is already there in the form of Fletcher and Andrew’s complex, enmeshed, fiercely adversarial relationship.” I won’t argue with that, although Benoist is terrific and makes the most of her limited screen time.

In fact, despite the firepower that juices every scene in which Simmons appears, Benoist and Teller end up sharing one of the film’s most wrenching moments, an agonizing split that echoes the dazzling interplay of the opening scene of “The Social Network.” Andrew’s foolish heart races hard at the thought of becoming a master and a legend; the girl never has a chance. As Anthony Lane puts it, Andrew “can’t both love and drum.” Chazelle uses this scene and several others to raise questions about the costs of performing at the elite level and the toll that ambition can exact on one’s humanity.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Birdman” gives Michael Keaton the “Being John Malkovich” treatment in a messy, noisy backstage drama enamored of its own ruminations about art and artifice, celebrity worship, self-respect, narcissism and several dozen additional Big Ideas. In 2000, “Amores perros,” the first installment of Inarritu’s “death trilogy,” divided audiences, a trait extending through “21 Grams,” “Babel,” and “Biutiful.” Those who share the filmmaker’s penchant for insane coincidence, exaggerated melodrama, and heart-on-sleeve emotional outpourings often praise the director’s visual intensity. Detractors, like Scott Tobias, pronounce Inarritu a “pretentious fraud” who is “incapable of modulation.”

Keaton plays the living daylights out of Hollywood has-been Riggan Thomson, an actor who walked away from the blockbuster “Birdman” franchise two decades ago and is now prepping a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” as writer, director, and star. Fragile, stressed, and nearly broke, Thomson replaces one of his principal performers with stage darling Mike Shiner (Edward Norton, volume knob cranked), a manipulative scene-thief. Meanwhile, Riggan tiptoes around his rightfully resentful daughter Sam (Emma Stone), a recovering addict now serving as her father’s assistant. Thomson’s relationship with co-star Laura (Andrea Riseborough) is hitting the skids. Oh yeah, he also hears voices, can levitate, and possesses the power to move objects with his mind.

Along with “Being John Malkovich,” “Birdman” recalls “Synecdoche, New York,” another Charlie Kaufman script that plays with the conundrum of honesty/dishonesty in film and theatre. Kaufman is a better hand than Inarritu at communicating the vicissitudes of the gossamer veil blurring reality and fantasy. Some of the movie’s side trips, like the blossoming romance between Sam and Mike, don’t fully pay off, and “Birdman” is at its best when focused on Riggan’s rapidly escalating crises. In one scene, Riggan struts through Times Square in his tighty whiteys after accidentally getting locked out of the St. James Theatre. At moments like this one, Keaton makes it difficult for the viewer to root against his shallow egomaniac – despite the character’s apparent addiction to attention-seeking behavior.

Inarritu, working with the phenomenal cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, constructs “Birdman” to look as though the majority of the action occurs as one continuous, unbroken take. Lubezki defends the technique by claiming that viewers can become “immersed in the movie” via the uninterrupted exchanges of dialogue. The gambit can be exhausting, but the wide-angle lenses and imaginative, ever-shifting compositions function as a reflection of Riggan’s hyperactive desperation. Lubezki’s vertiginous camera also swoops and soars from ledges and rooftops to street level. The film’s final shot, wholly dependent on camera position, cements the director’s commitment to this unorthodox shooting style.

“The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” is Inarritu’s subtitle, a reference to both the filmmaker’s hellzapoppin impetuousness and to the eventual headline of the New York Times review of Riggan’s play by theatre writer Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan). When critics show up in movies, chances are pretty good they will provide instant conflict for the performers who simultaneously fear and court them. It’s easy to read Dickinson as Inarritu’s straw woman, but in a terrific scene, she makes a powerful point about the value of championing original work over the adaptations and revivals that keep the cash registers ringing. Tabitha is Riggan’s bête noir, but she might just be the movie’s secret hero.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

One of the best films of 2014, Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler” is thrilling metafiction that simultaneously wallows in and critiques the lurid relationship between violent crime and broadcast/cable/Internet news. The writer-director also thoroughly explores the insatiable hunger of the viewing public to devour stories of death and mayhem, and does so with a jet-black comic touch. Additionally, Gilroy’s movie is clearly made by a film lover for film lovers, deliciously referencing several beloved titles. In particular, “Nightcrawler” is the twitchy offspring of two 1976 masterpieces: Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky’s “Network” and Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader’s “Taxi Driver.” Paying homage to the former’s satirical bite and the latter’s diary of madness, “Nightcrawler” shimmers and vibrates from start to finish.

We meet Jake Gyllenhaal’s hollow-eyed Lou Bloom in the middle of a late night theft of some chain link fencing that he sells to a shady scrapyard. When Lou opens his mouth to request a job from the dubious night manager, a torrent of fortune cookie wisdom, self-help platitudes, and motivational poster-speak (“My motto is, if you want to win the lottery, you have to make the money to buy a ticket”) sounds an alarm that Bloom is not entirely in balance. Lou’s chance encounter with a veteran “nightcrawler” – a crime scene videographer in the tradition of Weegee who prowls the streets for opportunities to document fresh disaster – inspires him to pick up a camera and start collecting his own footage.

Bloom blooms, and soon embarks on an odyssey decidedly more bloody than the one experienced by his Dublin-based namesake, although as a character, Lou has more in common with “God’s lonely man” Travis Bickle than with James Joyce’s famous peripatetic. Like the damaged cabbie, Lou is a volatile cocktail blending one part childlike naivete with two parts bad ideas. Bloom’s earnestness only escalates the creep factor, especially when he starts to deliberately blur the line between documenting and creating the “news” that he sells to Rene Russo’s Nina Romina.

As the unscrupulous, desperate TV veteran, Russo is dynamite in “Nightcrawler,” and her scenes with Gyllenhaal suggest that when people without morals or ethics form an alliance based on radical frankness, the results can be gonzo. Nina’s handling of Lou’s vile sexual blackmail is one of Gilroy’s nastiest surprises. Less surprising is the thanatotic impulse that drives these two creatures more than money and libido. Outside the station, Lou’s eager trainee Rick (Riz Ahmed, in a riveting performance) learns these lessons and then some.

Long before Lou trades his clunky beater for a shiny red Challenger to more quickly arrive at crime scenes, Gilroy has established his gutsy, cockeyed view of rapacious capitalism.  Crazy, untrustworthy, and feverish, Lou’s ambition is matched only by Nina’s merciless survival instinct, and their alliance is as toxic as it is absurd. Not everyone will accept Gilroy’s sense of humor, although the shot of Lou chuckling at a clip from “The Court Jester” is tough to deny. Writing in “Variety,” Scott Foundas makes the claim that “Touches of apocalyptic comedy run throughout ‘Nightcrawler,’ but the movie’s overriding tone is one of strident, finger-wagging self-seriousness.” Never for a second, however, did I read Gilroy’s intentions as didacticism.

“Nightcrawler” is a movie that could earn its own section in any update of Thom Andersen’s “Los Angeles Plays Itself.” From Venice Beach to the Capitol Records Building to the LAPD’s Hollywood Station, ace cinematographer Robert Elswit reimagines iconic landmarks for the umpteenth time. Lou’s scanner eavesdrops on the police band, guiding him like the Grim Reaper to locations in the Hollywood Hills and all over the sprawling San Fernando Valley, and many of the neon-lit rides call to mind the nocturnal automotive allure of films like “Collateral,” “Drive” and several dozen film noir classics from the mid-20^th century that led the way.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Like Herman Blume, the wealthy industrialist in Wes Anderson’s awesome “Rushmore,” Bill Murray’s Vincent MacKenna is a prickly, disillusioned Vietnam veteran with a taste for alcohol and cigarettes. MacKenna is poor and Blume is rich, but both men reassess their lives following unexpected and unorthodox friendships with much younger boys. The formula of the weary old grump and the precocious, inexperienced cadet learning lessons from one another works better in Anderson’s memorable film than it does in “St. Vincent,” but writer-director Theodore Melfi still manages to locate a number of opportunities for beloved headliner Murray to demonstrate why he’s a national treasure.

Murray is every bit as good in his mid 60s as he was decades ago in movies that established his cult bona fides. Before box office monsters like “Ghostbusters,” Murray consistently made lasting impressions as either lead or support in “Meatballs,” “Where the Buffalo Roam,” “Caddyshack,” “Stripes” and “Tootsie.” “St. Vincent” is another golden opportunity to see Murray break out his sly and ornery misanthropy, even though we all know the kindness and humanity are hiding just beneath the surface – and will certainly show up in time for the wet-eyed finale.

Newcomer Jaeden Liebeher plays Oliver, the introspective, considerate son of Melissa McCarthy’s struggling Maggie. They have the good and bad fortune to move in next door to Vincent, who soon becomes Oliver’s paid “babysitter” when Maggie is stuck at work. Vincent treats Oliver to something resembling an education, with trips to the horse track and meals taken at a local watering hole. The situations are all as formulaic as they sound, but Murray makes up for any predictability with his convincing flair for the celebration of vice.

One of the more provocative aspects of “St. Vincent” emerges in the complex relationships Vincent shares with the women in his life. Given the man’s host of socially frowned-upon behaviors, it’s no surprise to discover that Vincent scrapes together enough cash to regularly employ the sexual services of pregnant, gold-hearted stripper Daka (Naomi Watts). But when Melfi reveals that Vincent is also providing for his wife Sandy (Donna Mitchell), whose dementia confines her to a long-term care facility, it is left to the audience to determine the extent to which Vincent’s behavior is conscientious.

Melfi is blessed with a talented ensemble of actors. Somewhat surprisingly, however, several people expected to feature more prominently in the narrative take a back seat to the development of the central pairing of Murray and Lieberher. McCarthy rather convincingly demonstrates the same kind of skill handling serious dramatic material that has served co-star Murray so effectively in his career. Chris O’Dowd, as a wisecracking but warmhearted priest directly descended from Bing Crosby’s Father Chuck O’Malley, does his best to breathe life into his character. Terrence Howard’s role as a loan shark is so small that it is a bit surprising to see the Academy Award nominee in the part. “St. Vincent” is Murray’s party all the way, though, and audiences are staying through the credits just to see Murray’s spirited backyard sing-along to Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Trading the comic complications and satirical stingers of “Thank You for Smoking” and “Juno” for the more nakedly manipulative white whine and/or bathos of “Up in the Air,” “Young Adult,” and the critically ravaged “Labor Day,” filmmaker Jason Reitman adds another entry to his list of underwhelming missteps. The director’s sixth feature, “Men, Women & Children,” is based on the novel by Chad Kultgen, and aspires to examine the dark side of our fascination with smart phones and social networks. Good films about connectivity and disconnectedness are possible, but “Men, Women & Children” can only dream of being in the same class as “Me and You and Everyone We Know.”

Juggling a sprawling ensemble that includes a group of parents played by Adam Sandler, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer, and Dean Norris, Reitman devotes equal time to the lives of teenagers including Ansel Elgort, Kaitlyn Dever, Olivia Crocicchia, Travis Tope, and Elena Kampouris. These men, women, and children, slaves to a culture determined by the façade of identity construction and the relentless demands of online profile management, appear to fulfill the prophecy of diminishing face-to-face human contact. Reitman never misses an opportunity to remind us of their pain.

The extent to which the movie manages to accurately capture some, if any, of the rapidly changing uses of the Internet is debatable, and the most tech-savvy viewers will snort derisively at a few of the more outmoded references. “Men, Women & Children” continues the visually intriguing evolution of the onscreen display of electronically mediated content like text messages, and Tony Zhou’s “A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film” is a highly recommended primer for viewers either before or after they screen “Men, Women & Children.” Zhou’s short video effectively explores in five minutes several of the things Reitman struggles to do in just under two hours.

Zhou argues three key ideas regarding the dramatic increase of onscreen textual integration: it is more economical than the old manner of using close-up insert shots of phone screens, it is “artistically efficient” (in that “shot/reverse shot is slow”), and it “allows us to combine action and reaction in the same frame” via an uninterrupted view of an actor’s performance. Zhou praises “Sherlock” as the definitive exemplar of the technique’s “elegant design,” identifying several specific ways in which the BBC series has elevated the game: elimination of the display bubble containing the text, unified typeface and color – which further involves the audience by requiring the viewer to infer who is sending the message, and graphics that are (mostly) untethered to character or device. “Men, Women & Children” does not adhere to these practices.

In Reitman’s movie, the messages are indicative of a dispiriting isolationism that leads to a checklist of ills including adultery, eating disorders, bullying, sexual exploitation, fame worship, and misguided parental overprotectiveness. In case we miss the point(s), the plummy tones of Emma Thompson’s disembodied narration – accompanied by images of the Voyager space probe and Carl Sagan’s reflections on the “Pale Blue Dot” photograph – portentously interrupt the action in an effort to introduce philosophical gravitas. Thompson’s voice, deliberately or not, also recalls her similar role in “Stranger Than Fiction,” a far more thought-provoking examination of the existential crisis and moral values in the digital age.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

By fans, for fans, “Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys” covers the profitable marriage of George Lucas’ phenomenal movie and Kenner Products, the Cincinnati-based company that acquired the license to produce action figures, vehicles, and other playthings based on Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Darth Vader, and the many inhabitants of the “Star Wars” universe. Director Brian Stillman alternates between the super collectors who have devoted the majority of their spare time and money amassing private hordes and the onetime Kenner staff members responsible for the concepts and designs that would result in the sale of an estimated quarter of a billion action figures during the line’s 1978-1985 run.

Many of the best-known legends of the classic Kenner “Star Wars” toys, including double telescoping light sabers, the redesign of Snaggletooth, and the rocket-firing Boba Fett, receive their expected analysis. Several players from the Kenner team, including design manager Ed Schifman, talk about the impact of visionary Kenner president Bernie Loomis, the man who shepherded the company’s “Star Wars” license and coined the term “toyetic” as a descriptor of the importance of a product’s imaginative play value. Although Schifman claims credit in the movie, Loomis is often associated with the idea of the “Early Bird Certificate Package,” the empty box promise that sold more than 500,000 pre-orders for “Star Wars” toys that were not ready in time for the holiday season of 1977.

Despite the level of detail provided in the movie’s numerous anecdotes, Stillman leaves out several stories that are considered de rigueur within the lore. For example, discussions of figure variations such as the vinyl cape versus cloth cape Jawa and the “pinhead” versus big head Han Solo are omitted. Additionally, no information is given regarding the process of naming figures like Walrus Man and Hammerhead. “Plastic Galaxy” does, however, touch on the extent to which Lucas was involved with and protective of his brand, tracing the early days that saw Kenner employees taking snapshots during theatrical screenings of “Star Wars,” before Lucasfilm reference material and documentation was routinely provided to designers and sculptors.

Another of the great mysteries of Kenner’s “Star Wars” history that remains largely unexplored in the movie is the process by which characters were chosen to be immortalized. “Plastic Galaxy” includes some nice commentary on the appeal of offering figures based on minor personalities, background creatures, and fringe aliens and droids, but nothing is said concerning the absence of more prominent players like Grand Moff Tarkin, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Sure to set the hearts of the most devoted enthusiasts aflutter, those three, as well as the cantina musicians, General Dodonna, and assorted X-wing pilots, do appear on an early Jim Swearingen memo of proposed figures and ships.

Modestly budgeted (the movie was funded partially through a Kickstarter campaign), “Plastic Galaxy” makes hay under fair use exceptions to copyrighted material, incorporating a number of commercials and clips featuring scenes from “Star Wars” along with John Williams’ instantly recognizable score. Nearly all of the interviews are static, talking head compositions, and the documentary’s chief visual interest resides in both the archival material from Kenner and the many vintage photographs of kids and their toys. Crude animations and chapter-break title cards with banal statements like “The End of the Line?” and “Star Wars Is Forever” aren’t particularly inspired.

Unsurprisingly, “Plastic Galaxy” is male-centric. Then, as now, toy companies segregated properties into “boy toys” and “girl toys.” Of more than two-dozen interviews, only one woman, collector Lisa Stevens, is included in the movie, and even though Kenner employed several women who worked on the “Star Wars” account, none appear on camera. The aging fanboys eager to show off their stockpiles can be annoying and amusing in equal measure. Every so often, they manage to sound insightful. The recognition, for example, that Kenner TV ads deliberately suggested scenes that were not part of the movie underscores the importance of using one’s imagination and reminds us why we play with toys in the first place.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

WARNING: The following review reveals key plot information. Read only if you have seen “Gone Girl.”

Gillian Flynn, author of the bestselling novel “Gone Girl,” hit the Hollywood jackpot. She, A) Got to adapt her own screenplay without having to share any screen credit; B) Had the fortune of finding David Fincher at the directorial helm; C) Saw her characters brought to life by talent like Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike; D) All of the above. At its best, Flynn’s page-turner explores the domestic battle for control and the struggle for married partners to live up to and/or fulfill masculine and feminine expectations. At its worst, the book is a trashy, outlandish potboiler that embraces many of the clichés of the mystery thriller genre.

Flynn’s novel, which alternates between the voices of shitty husband Nick Dunne (Affleck) and psychotic wife Amy Elliott Dunne (Pike), recounts the variety of ways each spouse has been wronged by the other. When Amy disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary, Nick is – obviously, perfectly, absolutely – the principal suspect. Flynn borrows the twist from Hitchcock’s masterpiece “Vertigo,” revealing on page 219 (of 415) that Amy is alive, with the words “I’m so much happier now that I’m dead.” Turns out Amy meticulously planned the ruse, staged the crime scene, and planted overwhelming evidence against her husband before lamming it. At this point, some readers struggle with the placement of their allegiance.

Fincher’s movie retains Flynn’s shifting perspectives, but the faithful presentation of the events in the novel in the same order in which they occur on the page biases the viewer on behalf of Nick (I had hoped, like some readers, that Fincher might have taken the opportunity to mess around with the chronology). As a result, there is very little Pike can do to bring the inscrutable Amy to life as a thoroughly realized, recognizably human character. She’s as icy as Sharon Stone’s fellow writer Catherine Trammell and Kim Novak’s manipulative Madeleine Elster, just not as captivating. Even if Flynn and Fincher are suggesting we aren’t supposed to know Amy, the ploy doesn’t entirely pan out.

It’s no fair to compare Flynn’s dialogue to the wizardry of Aaron Sorkin, whose invented conversations in “The Social Network” make most of the chatter in “Gone Girl” sound like reheated leftovers from an old Lifetime movie. Fincher also had the good sense to limit the entire history of the origins of Facebook to two swiftly paced hours, while “Gone Girl” bobs along at a more leisurely 149 minutes. Fortunately, the late arrivals of Tyler Perry as a smooth defense attorney and Neil Patrick Harris as one of Amy’s old boyfriends inject a refreshing shot of winking “can you believe this?” mirth when it is most needed.

The most ardent defenders of “Gone Girl” will make claims about Fincher’s interest in exploring gender roles, the pressures brought to bear (on the upper class no less!) by the flaccid economy, and the ways in which the media distorts reality. My inclination is to focus instead on the things that really worked in the transfer of novel to movie: the ridiculous and over-the-top streaks of black comedy that threaten to align the film with the likes of lurid “erotic mystery thrillers” like “Fatal Attraction,” “Basic Instinct,” “Sliver,” “Color of Night,” and “Jade.” “Gone Girl” is better than most of those movies, but not as good as Fincher’s finest.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Challenging the viewer to discover points of engagement with its two ferociously solipsistic protagonists, “Fort Tilden” is a wickedly funny satire sustained by the comic writing of co-directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers and the deadpan performances of Bridie Elliott and Clare McNulty as codependent BFFs/roommates as clueless about humanity as they are passive-aggressive about their relationship. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at its South by Southwest world premiere, the movie observes the aimlessness and awfulness of its privileged millennials as they navigate a series of obstacles that can only be described as first-world problems.

For all of its inside jokes and Williamsburg-specific, hipster cred (including a Reggie Watts as Reggie Watts cameo) “Fort Tilden” relies on the sturdy, universal, and instantly recognizable naïveté associated with twenty-somethings struggling to accept grown-up lives and the grown-up decisions that come with maturity. Elliott’s Harper, a self-styled artist in regular phone contact with her distracted, check-writing father, and McNulty’s Allie, uncertain about her imminent Peace Corps service in Liberia, operate exclusively in the moment. That moment, such as it is, revolves around a decision to rendezvous at the title location with two guys they meet at a rooftop party that opens the film.

Bliss and Rogers set up one hilarious conundrum after another as Harper and Allie slowly make their way to the Rockaways. The pals purchase a shabby chic barrel (perfect for the collection of umbrellas they don’t yet own) but can’t muster the energy to wrestle it up the stairs to their apartment. A minor bicycle accident involving a baby stroller and alarmist parents turns into a farce of false remorse. The women stand paralyzed and incredulous as a thief steals their property. A litter of kittens is deemed worthy of rescue until the act requires patience and effort.

Elliott and McNulty are terrific at conveying the fragile insecurity and withering snark of their characters, but Bliss and Rogers show a flair for teasing terrific comic performances from their supporting cast members as well. Peter Vack steals his big scene as Harper’s bisexual boyfriend. Desiree Nash and Becky Yamamoto earn plenty of laughs as smug Teach for America acquaintances of Allie being used for their access to a car. Best of all is veteran Upright Citizens Brigade improviser and onetime SNL writer Neil Casey as neighbor Ebb, who makes the very regrettable decision to loan his bike to Allie.

Even Bliss and Rogers appear in a quick scene as a couple offering directions to Harper and Allie, and their inability to share any helpful information earns the derisive contempt of our heroines (nice touch that the filmmakers are listed in the end credits as Fucking Idiot 1 and Fucking Idiot 2). The directors refuse to take anything too seriously, but they also show enough affection for Harper and Allie that the viewer can comfortably laugh with the young women as much as at them. A look past the movie’s onslaught of absurd interactions reveals that Harper and Allie need and depend on each other just as much as they deserve what they get.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Co-directed and co-written by Martha Stephens (age 30) and Aaron Katz (age 32), “Land Ho!” premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics for theatrical distribution. A modest but picturesque blend of road movie, buddy comedy, and seize-the-day philosophizing, “Land Ho!” might be described as mumblecore for retirees, especially given the filmographies of its directors. Stephens and Katz may be youthful, but their decision to craft a story of two older men winding their way through Iceland on a pleasure vacation elevates the often couchbound parameters of mumblecore beyond the purely conversational.

“Land Ho!” is also the first movie released under the Gamechanger Films banner, a “for-profit film fund dedicated exclusively to financing narrative features directed by women,” and even though Stephens and Katz train their eyes on the fraternal bond of the two main male characters played by Paul Eenhoorn and Earl Lynn Nelson, the movie comments on the mysteries of male/female relationships amidst all the homosocial bonding. Eenhoorn’s Colin and Nelson’s Mitch were once married to sisters, and the men have remained friends beyond the lifespans of their marriages.

Colin’s reserved politeness positions him as the straight man to Mitch’s no-filter frankness. Much of the humor in “Land Ho!” is derived from the inappropriate comments uttered by Mitch, a libidinous epicure of the “dirty old man” variety. In one extended sequence that shapes a significant early section of the film, the fellows host Mitch’s young relative Ellen (Karrie Crouse, who previously worked with Katz in “Quiet City” and Stephens in “Passenger Pigeons” and “Pilgrim Song”) and her friend Janet (the warm and winsome Elizabeth McKee, who served as the production designer of “Pilgrim Song”). The filmmakers unravel the meeting of the unlikely quartet with enough tension to keep the audience slightly off-balance, and when Crouse and McKee exit the film, you’re sad to see them go.

While Katz and Stephens take complete advantage of the gorgeous Icelandic locations, the filmmakers weirdly, almost shockingly, overlook the residents. Nearly faceless rental car employees and restaurant staff are given a few inconsequential lines, and the only significant scene played by an Icelander involves a brief exchange in a club. Credited under his hip-hop moniker Emmsje Gauti, Gauti Peyr Masson plays Glow Stick Guy, a laidback fellow whose presumable altered state lends a humorous touch to a very short interaction that serves to set up a later visual callback to Glow Stick Guy’s chemiluminescent party favors.

Despite the dearth of native Icelanders, a few of the people met by Colin and Mitch on the road add some flavor to the proceedings. David Ehrlich’s claim that “The people Mitch and Colin encounter along the way are too perfectly premeditated, and the moments they share with them are never surprising” doesn’t account for Alice Olivia Clarke’s Nadine, a Canadian whose interest in Colin provides “Land Ho!” with one of its most rewarding and welcome exchanges. The finely tuned non-verbal communication shared by Colin, Nadine, and Mitch – who gallantly knows when three is a crowd – is one of the movie’s small joys.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Lovers of “instant” photography can vividly recall their whereabouts in 2008 when Polaroid announced the end of integral film production. Integral film, the description commonly applied to the white-bordered prints that sandwiched all the chemicals necessary for development in layers, is synonymous with both inventor Edwin Land and the once powerful company he originally founded in 1937. Filmmaker Grant Hamilton’s “Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film,” artfully frames the digital versus analog struggle in clear and persuasive arguments about the things we lose when established processes are replaced by promises of the new and improved.

The first sections of the movie recount the monumental innovations of Land, and a number of the man’s colleagues share recollections of the inventor’s remarkable work habits. While a different story could have been told solely about Land, “Time Zero” avoids outright hagiography by broadening its scope to engage the art as well as the science behind Polaroid’s legendary history. Hamilton uses Arthur C. Clarke’s line that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and photographer Lou Noble, who has by his own estimate taken between four and five thousand Polaroid images, reiterates the oft-stated claim that Polaroid photography is akin to wizardry.

A significant portion of “Time Zero” explores the aesthetic and psychological appeal of Polaroid’s tactile, physical process, and some of the movie’s best moments belong to photographers like Tod Brilliant, who talks about how instant photography “transcends cultural boundaries.” Brilliant’s anecdote about presenting a Paris couple with the only photo they were going to see of themselves on the night of their wedding is one of several quicksilver illustrations of Polaroid’s unique immediacy and intimacy. Brilliant, Kim Van Groos, and many others make a mantra out of the power that resides in producing a physical artifact you can give to the subject just moments after exposure.

Graphic and industrial designers will salivate at any number of Hamilton’s sidebars. An interview with Polaroid art director Paul Giambarba, whose gorgeous, clean package design became one of the most distinctive brand identifiers during the company’s glory days, is a highlight. So too is the explanation by Barbara Hitchcock that Polaroid photography functions as a communication tool that “would make it easier for you, and everyone, to become an artist.” Not everyone, of course, likes the recognizable properties of a Polaroid photograph, but you won’t find any of those critics in Hamilton’s movie.

The final act of the film focuses on the efforts of the scientists and entrepreneurs affiliated with the Impossible Project, a labor of love undertaken by Florian Kaps and a few other dreamers who believed in a future for instant photography after Polaroid turned off their machines. Polaroid fanatics know that the Impossible Project is the only company in the world currently producing new film for the SX-70 and other automatic eject camera models, so the movie’s conclusion may be somewhat anticlimactic. That manufactured suspense, along with Hamilton’s decision to omit all but a passing mention of the still-popular-among-enthusiasts Land cameras that use peel-apart pack film, are minor complaints.