Movie review by Greg Carlson

An exuberant and emotionally involving portrait of rock star Kathleen Hanna sure to please longtime fans while making plenty of new ones, Sini Anderson’s “The Punk Singer” joins a crowded slate of terrific music-oriented documentaries released in 2013. The filmmaker’s friendship with the outspoken leader of Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and, more recently, the Julie Ruin allows for unprecedented access to Hanna and her circle of colleagues and collaborators, resulting in a kind of mid-career retrospective that makes a compelling argument for Hanna’s future induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – or if that institution isn’t cool enough, perhaps a Punk Rock Hall of Fame.

Hanna’s energy is apparent from her first spoken word performances, and Anderson includes a clip from a 1991 Wordcore event in Olympia that will stop you in your tracks. Swinging her arms and rocking back and forth while she stamps her shoes in rhythm, Hanna says, “I am your worst nightmare come to life. I’m a girl who you can’t shut up. There’s not a guy big enough can handle this mouth. I’m going to tell everyone what you did to me. It was the middle of the night in my house. It was the middle of the night in my house. It was the middle of the night in my house…” It’s the perfect introduction to Kathleen Hanna’s unmistakable self-expression.

For those lucky enough to have witnessed Bikini Kill in their prime, “The Punk Singer” inspires plenty of nostalgia and reflection. The particular way that Hanna used her voice to articulate feminist ideals with a blunt clarity that cut through so much noise is displayed in both the vintage footage and the recent interviews. Many devotees will want to hurry back to Lucy Thane’s indispensable tour doc “It Changed My Life: Bikini Kill in the U.K.,” a valuable companion piece to Anderson’s film. The filmmaker also includes a bit of Hanna’s red ski mask interview from Tamra Davis’s “No Alternative Girls,” the short that brought riot grrrl to the attention of many suburban Midwesterners after guest-host Thurston Moore programmed it on an episode of “120 Minutes.”

Fueled by archival footage of Hanna performing solo and as a frontwoman, “The Punk Singer” is an essential record of one crucial facet of the riot grrrl movement. Anderson arranges the content of “The Punk Singer” principally in chronological order, although a tease in which interview subjects wonder aloud why Hanna just seemed to drop off the radar in 2005 sets up the revelation of Hanna’s ongoing struggle with Lyme disease, an affliction that temporarily derailed her recording and performing career.

All the historical bullet points are touched, including the DIY philosophy, the title origin of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the “girls to the front” ethos of Bikini Kill shows, the distribution of fanzines, the “Bull in the Heather” cameo, the assault by Courtney Love, and the unlikely courtship of Adam Horovitz, but the scenes directly addressing Hanna’s debilitating illness are among the film’s most memorable, particularly because her admirers can hardly imagine seeing that kind of vulnerability revealed by their fierce heroine and champion.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, working with co-directors Christine Cynn and an anonymous Indonesian who, like so many other of the unnamed collaborators listed in the credits, elected to withhold identity out of personal fear, labored for half a decade on the brutal and brilliant “The Act of Killing.” A singular non-fiction that Oppenheimer has described as a “documentary of the imagination,” the movie addresses the mid-1960s genocide of an alleged million victims, including communists, intellectuals, and ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia, through the eyes of the death squad executioners who carried out the murders firsthand.

Applying the controversial conceit of working with the killers to reconstruct their atrocities as re-imagined movie scenes done in candy-colored genre styles including musicals, Westerns, and gangster pictures, Oppenheimer arrives at a surreal crossroads of truth and memory. In a terrific interview with Pamela Cohn, the filmmaker defended the unorthodox approach, saying “[The] thought was to look not only at the characters, but the whole regime, through a prism where we see the stories and are also able to create the second- and third-hand stories in which they imagine themselves – and fail to know themselves.”

While the film introduces a ghoulish gallery of seemingly soulless thugs, a grandfather named Anwar Congo soon emerges as the movie’s central character. Attended to by the flamboyant, younger, paramilitary-affiliated Herman Koto, Congo surprises the viewer via his weird identification with the people he put to death nearly fifty years ago, even electing to appear as the condemned in some of the movie-in-the-movie productions. In scene after astonishing scene, Congo discusses his methods and techniques in the very places where he took away lives, at one point demonstrating the effectiveness of asphyxiation by garrote and its superiority to beheading.

A number of critics have complained that “The Act of Killing” fails by omitting or ignoring the deceased in favor of their assassins (Oppenheimer is working on another film that follows family members of a victim), but I think the casualties reside in each and every frame, from the heartbreaking anecdote told by a man whose stepfather was dragged from bed in the middle of the night to Congo’s final interaction with Oppenheimer. As the story unfolds, the viewer can begin to experience a sense of profound intellectual and emotional dysphoria, wondering when, or even if, Congo will recognize the magnitude of his transgressions. Oppenheimer’s visual answer does not disappoint, and the hallucinatory conclusion of “The Act of Killing” results in cinema’s most accomplished ending of 2013.

What then should we make of our brief, and hopefully only, acquaintance with Anwar Congo? At the risk of sounding like one of those “shallow thinkers attempting to seem intellectually sophisticated” described by Ron Rosenbaum in his 2009 essay on Hannah Arendt’s famous construction “the banality of evil,” I could not help but be astonished by the layers of Anwar’s psychic armor and the depths of his denial. Rosenbaum, citing scholar Bernard Wasserstein, mentions Arendt’s original concept of “radical evil” and the irreconcilable contradiction between “radical” and “banal” as descriptors. In “The Act of Killing,” Oppenheimer gets as close as anyone to bringing those poles into proximity.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Inside Llewyn Davis” echoes several pet concerns previously explored by Joel and Ethan Coen in their impressive body of work. Exquisite period detail evocative of a romanticized past, the struggle for some degree of personal integrity in a marketplace geared toward the lowest common denominator, and a trippy Homeric odyssey infused with highly specific musical annotations are a trio of the new movie’s thematic interests that could be applied to “Miller’s Crossing,” “Barton Fink,” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” respectively. Oscar Isaac’s title character, the stubborn and unlucky singer modeled in part on Dave Van Ronk, is, like the Coens’ Tom Reagan and Larry Gopnik, a man out of time and a man out of time.

And just like the double meaning in that repetition, “Inside Llewyn Davis” is bookended by scenes depicting a night very much like September 29, 1961, when Robert Shelton listened to Bob Dylan at Gerde’s Folk City and sent the young singer on his way in a legendary “New York Times” write-up (“All the ‘husk and bark’ are left on his notes and a searing intensity pervades his songs”). Those impossibilities of fate lead us to wonder how many thousands of other voices just missed the opportunity to be discovered and embraced by the masses, but very probably, the Coens are suggesting that unlike Dylan, Llewyn is merely good. But not great. And not a genius.

Writing for “Tablet,” J. Hoberman reiterated his contempt for the Coens in a scathing essay arguing that for the filmmakers, “a robust disdain for their creatures is a given,” but I think the great critic is not entirely on the mark. Llewyn Davis is the sort of character cinephiles dream about: a thoroughly complex human being capable of earning, by turns, both the sympathy and the scorn of the viewer. Carey Mulligan’s Jean heaps the latter on Llewyn in a colorful, profanity-laced tirade attesting to her ex-lover’s fecklessness and irresponsibility. She’s right. But the filmmakers surely admire and relate to their protagonist’s restlessness, artistic curiosity, and talent.

The Coens have often demonstrated a keen ear for recorded music, and with the sterling skills of frequent collaborator T Bone Burnett, “Inside Llewyn Davis” boasts a beautiful set of songs. Burnett worked with Marcus Mumford on a couple tracks, and Mumford’s duet with Isaac on “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)” emerges as one of the movie’s most resonant motifs. Mumford voices Llewyn’s deceased partner Mike Timlin, a man very much present in his absence. The film is filled with memorable musical performances, ranging from a Columbia session for a novelty titled “Please Mr. Kennedy” to Llewyn singing “The Shoals of Herring” to his fading, silent, retired merchant marine father in what may be the movie’s purest, saddest scene.

Being beaten in an alley isn’t likely the first meaning of the aphorism “failure is the greatest teacher” that springs to mind, but at the beginning and again at the end of the journey, we see that Llewyn Davis is his own worst enemy. An orange and protean tabby named Ulysses comes to symbolize the very inscrutability of Llewyn’s against-all-odds commitment to the pursuit of fortune as a folksinger. “Inside Llewyn Davis” is filled with the great lines only the Coens write – many of them spoken by John Goodman – but one of the toughest and most nuanced belongs to F. Murray Abraham as Gate of Horn kingmaker Bud Grossman. After listening to Llewyn’s striking rendition of “The Death of Queen Jane,” he says, “I don’t see a lot of money here.” How can you respond to a pronouncement like that?

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The monochromatic landscapes of Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska” capture the open fields of America during a quixotic father-son road trip in which nothing and everything happens all at once. Bob Nelson’s screenplay introduces Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) shambling along the side of the road in Billings, Montana. Armed with a sweepstakes letter and convinced he is to be the recipient of a million dollars, Woody either can’t or won’t accept the reality that there is no cash waiting for him in Lincoln. Soft-hearted son David (Will Forte), whose own life as a recently dumped stereo salesman is as static as his father’s, agrees to drive Woody to Nebraska even though David recognizes the prize offer as bogus.

Once Woody and David arrive in Hawthorne, the small town where Woody grew up and where many of his old acquaintances, flames, and relatives still reside, word gets out about the million dollar windfall. At this point, Payne shifts a great deal of attention to the avarice of Woody’s extended family, many quick to claim that Woody owes them money. David especially dislikes Woody’s old partner Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach), an unctuous bully who wants Woody to “make things right.” With echoes of stories like Mark Twain’s “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” “Nebraska” brings out the worst human nature. One wonders why, despite David’s protests, seemingly everyone in Hawthorne refuses to accept that Woody is no millionaire.

Like “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “Nebraska” was also prepared in a color version to meet contractual requirements for particular international outlets, but articles posted by “Yahoo! News Canada” and “Variety” describe Payne’s longtime desire to make a black and white movie along with his hope that “no one ever sees” the color version of the film. The black and white is a perfect choice, and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael’s anamorphic widescreen images turn the establishing shots of broad, traffic-free main streets and proud old farmsteads into additional characters.

Walking the tightrope between serious and silly inevitably strains consistency in tone, and where Woody’s foggy reticence is often played for unspoken longing and regret (during, for example, the tour of his now-abandoned boyhood house), wife Kate (June Squibb) is a fountain of unfiltered and occasionally foul gossip about all manner of vice among her friends and neighbors. Squibb is very funny, even if her dialogue is not as entirely believable as the group of old men watching football and chatting about the makes of cars they used to own.

In many of Payne’s sharp-eyed films, from “Citizen Ruth” to “Election,” the filmmaker has skewered misguided power grabs and the sort of small stakes self-importance that makes for easily bruised thin skin. “Nebraska” offers up provincial yokels that run the gamut from big-hearted to greedy-eyed, and open for some debate is the extent to which Payne sympathizes with the folks who populate Hawthorne. At the center of it all is Woody, quite possibly exhibiting the early signs of dementia. Not everyone will accept or appreciate Woody’s uncommunicative, blank slate status (reliably performed by a tremendous Dern), but Payne delivers an earnest payoff that allows the old man to briefly transcend the simultaneous presence/absence of his impenetrable and unknowable character.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In the opening scene of Ulrich Seidl’s “Paradise: Love,” the Austrian filmmaker presents a series of vehicle-mounted shots focused on the faces of people with developmental disabilities as they careen around in bumper cars. Smashing into one another, their expressions run the gamut of highly intensified human emotion as Seidl makes note of the fine line between pleasure and pain. The sequence suggests an entire universe or the makings of another movie, but it ends quickly and without additional comment. Among the group is teacher Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel), who subsequently packs for a Kenyan vacation that will serve as the movie’s central concern.

The topic of international sex tourism, especially from the vantage point of the middle class female consumer, is rare in mainstream narrative cinema, and the curiosity factor accompanying Teresa’s quest to locate a partner will invite contemplation from many viewers. Seidl sets the stage with economy, revealing that certain European women spend their holiday as “sugar mamas” who pursue young “beach boys” willing to provide companionship in exchange for varying degrees of compensation. Some of the transactional mechanics are filled in by the racially insensitive Inge (Inge Maux), but more memorable is the long take of sunbathing vacationers lounging on the beach while local candidates stand patient and silent behind a rope, waiting to be chosen.

The closest Seidl comes to constructing any degree of viewer sympathy for Teresa occurs when her initial partner Gabriel (Gabriel Nguma Mwarua) moves too quickly, resulting in Teresa’s sobs over the lack of emotional connection. We all know that money can’t buy love, and Seidl drives home the point as Teresa settles on Munga (Peter Kuzungu), a seemingly more sensitive lover who nonetheless expects that Teresa will open her wallet to all kinds of pressing financial matters, from medical bills to school supplies. “Paradise: Love” is at its best during these scenes, principally due to Seidl’s fogging of user and used.

One of the movie’s most provocative and dispiriting exchanges involves an aborted bacchanal in Teresa’s hotel room with a trio of friends and a hired “stripper.” Seidl escalates the humiliation, as the hapless prey is presented to Teresa as a birthday gift. What follows is a nightmarish display of soulless exploitation, as the women initiate a contest to see who can coax an erection from the young man. By this point, Seidl has made clear the irony of both words in the film’s title, reiterating that the gloomy realities of prostitution reside far from the sun-drenched and farfetched fantasies of happiness and fulfillment.

A number of critics have taken Seidl to task for withholding any degree of commiseration or understanding that might come with an exploration of the inner lives of either Teresa or the men with whom she interacts. The filmmaker deliberately distances himself and the viewer, drawing on his work as a documentarian to indicate the ways in which the exchange of money for sexual gratification parallels the socioeconomics of the global travel industry. While many would quickly describe the system in which Teresa and Munga operate as miserable, deplorable, or even morally repugnant, Seidl details the minutiae of their polluted dance. Hakuna matata.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Things move so quickly in the digital age that documentaries on contemporary Internet politics are risky business for diligent filmmakers committed to quality research. Alex Gibney, whose “Taxi to the Dark Side” earned the 2007 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, is as good as any non-fiction storyteller working today, and “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks” joins “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and a number of other features as a moment-in-time snapshot of a lightning rod topic. What has surprised some critics on the left is the possibility that Gibney has ideologically sided with an establishment committed to silencing those who would leak privileged information, but one should see the film before labeling Gibney pro- or anti-transparency.

Tracing the intense media scrutiny of the “hacktivist” organization fronted by Australian radical Julian Assange, “We Steal Secrets” follows one of Gibney’s common templates: the unraveling of a powerful, seemingly principled person or group whose off-camera behavior contradicts the on-camera perception. Gibney is particularly adroit in the arrangement of his information surrounding Assange, framing the WikiLeaks founder first as a truth-telling provocateur committed to “crushing bastards” and later as a paranoid egomaniac whose once far-reaching influence already appears to have run its course.

One of the central questions of Gibney’s narrative asks us to consider the role of the whistleblower. On this count, “We Steal Secrets” presents the case of United States Army PFC Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst and computer specialist whose release of one of the single largest collections of classified documents in U.S. history resulted in Manning’s July 2013 conviction. Gibney’s film was completed and released several months prior to the conclusion of Manning’s trial, but the movie does attempt to address the complex gender identity issues that played a central psychological role in the media’s effort to understand Manning’s motivations. The onscreen text display of Manning’s confessional instant message conversations with eventual betrayer Adrian Lamo contributes to the film’s arresting visual design.

In the latter part of “We Steal Secrets,” Gibney returns to the question of Assange’s actions during August of 2010, while the WikiLeaks leader was in Sweden. In what has become a muddy and confusing report of sexual misconduct fraught with conspiratorial charges and countercharges, the Swedish government investigated the complaints of two women who accused Assange of coercive or non-consensual sexual activity. Gibney includes clips of several pundits and talking heads quick to label the allegations as a “honey trap” meant to smear and discredit Assange, but the filmmaker’s curiosity leads to an unexpected turnabout that will surprise many Assange sympathizers.

Some of the most interesting commentary on “We Steal Secrets” has played out in back-and-forth disagreements between Gibney and his critics – including Assange. Robert Manne published a response from Gibney in his column in Australia’s “The Monthly,” along with Manne’s rebuttals, and their beef rests in part with the seriousness of the U.S. grand jury investigation of Assange and the possibility of his extradition to America to face charges. In his original review, Manne also argues that the presence in the film of two former Assange associates, Daniel Domscheit-Berg and James Ball, skew away from objectivity. In Gibney’s defense, Assange refused to participate in the film without compensation. Like any good documentary, “We Steal Secrets” will leave most viewers with a desire to learn more about its subject.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Following its Palme d’Or win at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the discourse around Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Blue Is the Warmest Color” has addressed the off-screen drama between the filmmaker and stars Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux as much or more than the onscreen story of a doomed love affair in Lille, France. Claims of Kechiche’s bullying, abusive on-set behavior led the moviemaker to respond with thinly-veiled legal threats. Additionally, author Julie Maroh, whose 2010 graphic novel is the basis for the film, expressed her own disappointments with the adaptation, writing that the filmmaker’s vision “turned into porn and [made] me feel very ill at ease.”

Subsequently, a number of writers have taken positions on the movie’s sexual and emotional politics. Michelle Juergen’s “PolicyMic” essay “’Blue Is the Warmest Color’ Gets Lesbian Sex Wrong” was reposted on “Salon” and frames an attack on Kechiche’s dominant male gaze. Juergen argues that the director failed to uphold the “responsibility that comes with representing both another gender and sexual preference.” Writing for “Jezebel” and taking the opposite side, Ashton Cooper notes, “I have never seen a portrayal of a lesbian relationship on screen that captures the experience as truthfully as this film has.” Somewhere in between is the valuable October 25 “New York Times” critique by Manohla Dargis, perhaps the best thing about the film written so far.

The movie’s three hour running time suggests an epic of sorts, and Kechiche makes a convincing argument on behalf of the protracted character study. The erotically charged bildungsroman is so close to the heart of Gallic moviemaking that Molly Haskell, in an essay on Maurice Pialat’s “A nos amours” wrote that the “teenage girl on the cusp of sexual awakening is a beloved icon of French cinema.” Haskell went on to say, “Painful, beautiful, and discomfiting, ‘A nos amours’ remains… startling in its honesty, its unique mix of savagery and delicacy,” a description that could just as easily be applied to “Blue Is the Warmest Color.”

The relationship between Exarchopoulos’s Adele and Seydoux’s Emma provides the platform for the movie’s explorations of domestic and interpersonal conflict, but without question, the fullness of the story belongs to Adele and Adele alone (the French title of the film is the less colorful but more appropriate “La Vie d’Adele – Chapitres 1 & 2). Assisted by cinematographer Sofian El Fani, Kechiche stays in close, framing Exarchopoulos in tight shots that regard the range of emotions on Adele’s face. Kechiche’s relentlessness forms a perfect illustration of the phenomenon of the “polyphonic play of features” described by Bela Balasz in his groundbreaking “Theory of Film” in 1948.

“Blue Is the Warmest Color” is filled with richly detailed moments, many of which could stop a clock: a commentative assist from Louise Brooks in “Pandora’s Box” during a backyard celebration party; the volcanic and physical post-confession brawl that leaves Adele a sobbing mess; the way Adele labors to keep it together at a preschool dance program; Adele and Emma’s brief, wrenching reunion at a café. “Blue Is the Warmest Color” is not perfect, but the collaboration between Kechiche, Exarchopoulos, and Seydoux demands attention. The expression of Adele’s neediness, desperation, and anguish at love lost should move anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of a brutal breakup.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

For any number of reasons, including the ones framed by Richard Brody in his New Yorker essay “Should a Film Try to Depict Slavery?,” fictional and fictionalized movies about the topic are relatively few in number. David Denby’s claim that Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” is “easily the greatest feature film made about American slavery” maybe suggests as much about the smallish category and our collective attitude and appetite for slavery movies as it does about the director’s achievement. While this is not to say that McQueen comes up short in any significant way, “12 Years a Slave” should be considered a thread in an ongoing conversation and not the final word.

Based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir “Twelve Years a Slave,” McQueen’s version was preceded by the Gordon Parks adaptation “Solomon Northup’s Odyssey,” which debuted on PBS in 1984. Northup, a free black man from Saratoga Springs, New York, was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. in 1841 and then sold to a series of slaveholders. Working from John Ridley’s episodic screenplay, McQueen does not intend Northup to morph into a synecdochic representative of all slaves, but there are instances in which the character, in relation to all victims of American slavery, becomes, to use Kenneth Burke’s conceptualization, “part of the whole, whole for the part, container for the contained, sign for the thing signified, material for the thing made.”

The new version of Northup’s story, anchored by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s tremendous performance, also features recognizable faces like Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti, Alfre Woodard, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Paul Dano in parts of various size. Aside from Ejiofor, the largely unknown Kenyan filmmaker and performer Lupita Nyong’o leaves the deepest impression as the tragic, victimized slave Patsey. Unencumbered by the reflexive associations that accompany the better-known actors, Nyong’o’s relative anonymity establishes Patsey as a tabula rasa, adding many surprises to the young woman whose superhuman abilities in the fields cannot protect her from rape and the lash.

With “12 Years a Slave,” McQueen continues a gradual move away from the lower-budget austerity of feature debut “Hunger” and follow-up “Shame” to arrive at a recognizably traditional “Hollywood” filmmaking style marked by polished production and sound design, smooth camera glides, and Hans Zimmer’s score. Both Melissa Anderson and Ed Gonzalez recognize McQueen’s continued interest in the physical and psychological contours of the human body, and while neither Anderson nor Gonzalez ultimately share the positivity of the critical majority, the carefully considered pieces they wrote provide much food for thought.

Aside from the score, on multiple occasions the use of music in the movie furnishes the most evocative complement to the gallery of visual horrors visited by McQueen. Ann Powers identifies the way in which two particular songs, the grisly “Run…” and the spiritual “Roll Jordan Roll,” work in tandem to illuminate the film with period detail and comment potently on two facets of antebellum music culture. The scenes featuring these songs are memorable, and the one in which Northup adds his voice – first tentatively and then in full throat – to a funeral chorus is a stirring moment almost stupefying in its intermixture of hope, resignation, acceptance, and despair.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

On his 21^st birthday, slightly awkward wallflower Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) receives the unlikely news that he has the ability to travel backward in time. Dad (Bill Nighy) explains the miraculous capability to his son, noting that the trait is enjoyed exclusively by the male offspring in the family line. Like most time jumping narratives, “About Time” exercises the science-fiction device to coincide with some kind of moral affirmation, even if filmmaker Richard Curtis normally makes his bones with material decidedly less bleak than Star Trek’s “The City on the Edge of Forever,” Richard Kelly’s “Donnie Darko,” or Rian Johnson’s “Looper.”

Arguably the most common theme explored in time travel fiction is the idea that going back to “fix” – or, such as Ray Bradbury’s legendary 1952 story “A Sound of Thunder,” even just observe – something in the past will establish an alternate history/future. “About Time” is not at all interested in or concerned with the Butterfly Effect, and Tim opts to use his power to woo the woman of his dreams, the charming Mary (Rachel McAdams) – even if he has to repeat situations until he gets them just right. “About Time” does not invest in its premise with the kind of care taken by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis in the exceptional “Groundhog Day,” still the summit of time-fracturing romantic comedies.

The rules of the temporal paradox are conveniently obliterated to suit the heartwarming, completely predictable outcomes for which Curtis is known, and the writer-director busies himself with familiar tasks, especially in a plot trajectory where Tim labors to undo the misery of his sister Kit Kat’s (Lydia Wilson) bad luck and poor choices. Another thread involving grouchy playwright Harry (Tom Hollander) provides the initial complication to Tim’s conquest of Mary, leading to the movie’s most sustained consideration of time travel’s amorous benefits via the potentially endless variations of Tim and Mary getting it on for the “first” time.

A.O. Scott, Andrew O’Hehir, and Gabe Toro are just three of the critics who recognized the problematic male fantasy creep factor in Tim’s seduction of Mary. Unfortunately, Mary remains duped by Tim’s time manipulations for the film’s duration, and Curtis misses what might have been an important opportunity to engage with ideas surrounding the ethics of Tim’s superhuman ability. McAdams does the very best she can, but her character is never Tim’s equal, and their partnership is founded at least in part on a deception, no matter how much Curtis insists that time travel cannot guarantee love.

The irritating voiceover narration seems engineered to make certain the audience knows that the power to travel in time means nothing next to an appreciation of a life well-lived. Dad admits that he used his time-travel powers to read every book that caught his interest, Dickens twice (the pursuit of riches is quickly dismissed as an option by both Dad and Curtis). As “About Time” wears on, Tim’s relationship with Dad supersedes the comfortable, content existence Tim shares with his wife, and the father-son spotlight contains strong echoes of the classic Twilight Zone episode “Walking Distance,” which featured a powerful expression of paternal love and a more poignant argument that in the end, we really only get one chance.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Like fellow Detroiter Sixto Rodriguez, Bobby, Dannis, and David Hackney’s trio Death recorded stunning music embraced and appreciated by its largest audience decades following the original production. A little Motor City magic connects “Searching for Sugar Man” to “A Band Called Death,” another compelling movie version of an almost too-weird-to-be-true tale of unrecognized brilliance and second chances. Made by first-time feature documentarians Jeff Howlett and Mark Christopher Covino, “A Band Called Death” is a great underdog story backed by giddy bursts of rock and roll firepower. It’s also a moving portrait of looking back, moving forward, and family love.

Hard-liners will say it’s a stretch to claim that Death was, as the New York Times headline of Mike Rubin’s profile claimed, “punk before punk was punk,” but only the worst kind of snobs would dismiss the strange beauty and punchy immediacy of garage tracks like “Politicians in My Eyes,” “Freakin Out,” and “Keep on Knocking.” Rubin appears in the film, and his terrific 2009 feature article established the blueprint used by the filmmakers: a tapestry of blood brothers, crate-diggers, and resurrections, the latter partially embodied by Bobby’s children in Rough Francis, a group formed in tribute to Death.

When the movie gets to the details of the 1975 United Sound Systems studio recording session and the subsequent major label flirtation, Howlett and Covino really find their stride, collecting interviews from Groovesville director of publishing Brian Spears – who recognized immediately that Death was something special – and producer/mogul/Groovesville CEO Don Davis, who initially thought his colleague had lost his mind. Following multiple rejections by label after label, Death catches the ear of Clive Davis, who offers a deal contingent on a name change.

Then, in a pure expression of the “corporate rock sucks” mentality championed by punk heroes large and small, David more or less tells Davis to go to hell and the brothers walk away, managing to take the master recordings of their work with them. Pressing 500 45s independently on their own Tryangle imprint, Death further embodies the fierce DIY credo of self-sufficiency, but neither the single nor its B-side get enough airplay to make a difference. The tapes would collect dust in an attic for years, until the inclusion of Death tracks on rarities compilations and interest from record collectors like Robert Manis, Ben Blackwell, and Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra eventually closed a circuit through Bobby’s son Julian.

The movie constantly reminds us that David Hackney was the soul of the group. Some delightful prank phone calls hint at David’s frequency on an unexpected wavelength, and the movie makes clear that the young musician took inspiration from sources like the Who and Alice Cooper. In part because David died of lung cancer in 2000, the visionary bandleader’s absence weighs mightily on the emotional scales of the movie. David, whose conceptual acumen guided the entirety of the Death endeavor, assumes a kind of mythical prominence as an ahead-of-his-time prophet. Howlett and Covino surely play up this status, but both Bobby and Dannis take seriously the spirit of their brother forecasting that eventually, the rest of the world would catch up to Death.