BIG EASY LISTENING

For many years my friend Steve Weiss has been the impresario behind the No Festival Required film series in the Valley; in these times he's trying to prove that No Venue is Required, either. Available for at least a week, starting today, at the NFR "virtual cinema" is...

Up From the Streets: New Orleans: The City of Music--Trying to cram the story of music in New Orleans into slightly over an hour and a half is the sort of thing that could make the head of Ken Burns explode. But producer-director Michael Murphy (not the actor) follows the great trumpeter and jazz composer Terence Blanchard as he wanders the streets of his beloved home town and gushes about the African-American, Cuban, Native American and even classical roots of jazz, blues, rock, funk and hip-hop, and the NOLA giants who guided these styles.

Fellow talking-head gushers include Wynton Marsalis, Irma Thomas, the Nevilles, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Harry Connick, Jr., Keith Richard, Robert Plant and Sting, among many others. The movie is at most a quick overview, of course, but it's slickly made, the enthusiasm of the participants is infectious, and the music is obviously irresistible. Indeed, as with many music documentaries, there are times when you may want to say to the interviewees "Shut up so I can listen."

Also playing, in the virtual sense, at Tucson's The Loft Cinema...

Clementine--The beautiful Cuban-American actress Otmara Morrero plays L.A. artist Karen, who, dumped by her older artist lover, impulsively travels to Oregon and breaks into the woman's lovely lake house. While staying there, she gets involved with a mysterious, much younger woman (Sydney Sweeney)--a girl, really--from across the lake.

This very quiet, laconic, subtly tense drama, the feature debut of writer-director Lara Gallagher, seems like an idyll about emotional resiliency and renewal after heartbreak. Then, in its last quarter, it takes a turn into thriller territory. The major theme seems to be that age and experience offer little protection from the stings and bruises and social awkwardness of love and attraction. This won't come as breaking news for most of us; still the performances are touching, Gallagher's direction is assured, and it's hard not to like a film that so clearly recognizes the healing power of dogs.

BRONX CHEER

Now available on YouTube, VUDU, etc:

Angelfish--This drama is set in the Bronx in the early '90s; long enough ago that people still called each other on push-button phones and didn't have Facebook profiles. This would give it some nostalgic value even if it weren't a sweet, tender and convincing teen romance, which it is.

Brendan (Jimi Stanton) is a tough but deeply decent and responsible teenage Irish-American kid who works in a grocery deli to support, just barely, his drunk young single Mom (Erin Davie) and his younger brother Conor (Stanley Simons), who's starting to hang with a bad crowd. When Eva, from a Puerto Rican family with a strict mother (Rosie Berrido) and mentally challenged brother (Ivan Mendez), comes into the store, Brendan understandably falls in love at first sight with her. Soon after, in response to his gentle attentions, she reciprocates.

Eva is played by a rapper known as Princess Nokia (aka Destiny Nicole Frasqueri), heartbreakingly lovely and a natural, open-hearted actress. Stanton is equally endearing, and before long we're invested in the fate of their love, and, if we're experienced moviegoers, anxious that something dreadful might be in store for us.

But writer-directed Peter Lee, supposedly inspired by a true story, doesn't punish us too much; trouble arises from the conflict between what these two kids want and the duty they feel toward their families, but nothing lurid or horrible is visited upon them, and by extension on us. Indeed the movie is simple and modest to the point of being slight, but it's so confidently made, and the actors, especially the leads, are so directly and guilelessly charming that it's a pleasure.

HARPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

Now streaming...

The Wretched—A troubled teen, Ben (John-Paul Howard), goes to stay with his Dad and work at a marina in the wake of his parents’ separation. He begins to suspect that the Mom of the nice young family next door is a witch—not a nice, New-Agey Wiccan, but a taloned, skin-stealing, kid-abducting elemental forest crone; something akin to the “Boo Hag” of South Carolina folklore.

There are hair-raising moments and an agreeable Stephen-King-ish flavor to this shocker, written and directed by the Pierce Brothers (Brett and Drew). Ben, a flawed but decent, courageous kid, is easy to root for; the gore and splatter effects, though potently gruesome, don’t feel gratuitous, and there’s an ingenious plot twist. Some sort of subtext about how kids get forgotten during parental drama is rattling around under the movie’s surface, but this isn’t allowed to interfere with the thrills. Despite a misstep here and there, this is one of the more entertainingly straightforward horror pictures in a while.

LA LA LIVE STREAM

Streaming this evening as part of the Lionsgate Live: A Night at the Movies! series is 2016's La La Land. Here's what I said about it then:

La La Land—Mia (Emma Stone) is a struggling actress, working as a barista on the Warner Brothers lot in the title town. Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a struggling jazz pianist who wants to open his own club. The story of how they meet, fall in love, drift apart and so forth unfolds via original songs staged as elaborate production numbers.

There’s a lot that’s really good about this picture, and it’s hard not to admire its ambitiousness. Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, with music by Justin Hurwitz, and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, it’s a serious, un-ironic attempt to do something that seems to me very much worth doing—reinvent the old-school movie musical as a fully contemporary form. So I feel like a bit of a bum not being able to join in the general critical rapture. But I don’t think La La Land entirely comes off.

It’s possible that Chazelle has succeeded in creating a sort of neoclassical style for musicals that can be built on. But La La Land’s jazz tunes, though pretty, are a little tame and unvaried, and the large-scale dances have the feel of flash-mob cavorting—they don’t bristle with the intensity and insolent precision of the numbers in, say, a ‘50s-era MGM musical, or, for that matter, of the average "Bollywood" musical.

More problematically, the leads aren’t natural musical performers. Gosling and Stone have a touching rapport as actors—you believe they’re in love—and they dance well. But their voices seem featureless and slight. They’re vivid screen presences until they start singing. As soon as they do, their personalities recede.

For many of us, there are few forms of entertainment that have the potential to generate the sheer excitement of the musical, both on stage and screen. If La La Land brings the genre back to vitality, I’ll rejoice. But while much of this movie is clever and enjoyable, I can’t say I found it exciting.

IT'S NOT THAT EASY BEING GREEN

Now available, free of charge, on YouTube:

Planet of the Humans--Executive-produced by Michael Moore, this documentary was written and directed by Moore's crony Jeff Gibbs, who also stars. A longtime self-described tree-hugger, Gibbs arrives at some discouraging conclusions as he schleps around to environmental rallies and alternative energy sites, and explores the way corporations have co-opted his beloved movement. The film seeks to debunk the idea of "green energy" as a solution to climate change, and even to debunk the focus on mitigating climate change, rather than on modifying human behavior, as a solution to ecological catastrophe. Gibbs also runs biomass through the wood chipper, and sends such Green sacred cows as Michael Brune, Bill McKibben and even Al Gore to the figurative slaughterhouse.

It's structured much like one of Moore's snarky picaresques, but without Moore's self-deprecating, facetious persona or his eye for eccentricity. As a result of the earnest, plodding, monotone, hangdog manner of Gibbs, Planet of the Humans is often convincing and almost always wretchedly depressing. This may be just the sort of disillusioning we need if we want to rescue ourselves, but brace yourself: this movie, which includes footage of animals being butchered and otherwise in distress, isn't a lot of laughs, and the message of hope with which Gibbs concludes it feels half-hearted.

CLIQUE BAIT

At this writing, my “Friday Flicks” column, online at Phoenix Magazine, has been put on pause until further notice. Before the pause, however, I had already seen…

Selah and the Spades—A near-obligatory element of high school comedies and dramas is the breakdown, by a veteran student to a newcomer, of the school’s various cliques and factions. This visually polished, well-acted drama, the feature debut of writer-director Tayarisha Poe, doesn’t bother to try to incorporate this scene into the fabric of the film; it opens with narration breaking down the various groups that supply the illicit needs of students at Haldwell, an elite Pennsylvania prep school.

The title crew, led by tiny, beautiful, iron-willed Selah (Lovie Simone), peddles drugs, especially pills, to the students. The film involves her shifting relations with her sidekick Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome) and new girl Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), who Selah presses into service as her protégé. Poe imbues the film with an ominous, oppressive atmosphere and an almost dreamlike stylization.

The actors play it very earnestly—especially Simone, who touchingly lets us see the vulnerability and terror that underlie Selah's steeliness—and I couldn't decide whether the movie, available today on Amazon Prime, was taking itself seriously or doing a deadpan spoof of the standard teen-movie tropes. But the final moments gave it an unexpected emotional payoff by avoiding either obvious melodrama or unconvincing platitude. Selah and the Spades is a chilly, slightly uneven, ultimately impressive piece of work.

GIMME SHELTER IN PLACE

Hope everybody is having a happy, healthy, socially distant April. Check out my account, online at Phoenix Magazine, of going to the movies in just about the only way that you still can here in the Valley, at West Wind Drive-In in Glendale...

...to see Sonic the Hedgehog.

You can also check out my April "Four Corners" column, though I can't say whether any of the eateries discussed therein is currently open for carry out or delivery.

Stay well everybody!