These reviews, written for Video Librarian between 2018-2019, fell between the cracks when the publication was between owners, and I believe that the three documentaries deserve attention, so I've recreated them here with a few minor updates, revisions, and images.
BEI BEI (Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, USA, 2019, 88 minutes)
By 2011, Bei Bei Shuai, a 35-year-old Chinese national, had been living in the United States for 10 years when she attempted to kill herself after a traumatic breakup. Her 53-year-old boyfriend, a married coworker, had promised to help raise their child, but then changed his mind at the last minute. She survived the suicide attempt, but her newborn daughter died shortly after birth, and Indianapolis authorities charged her with feticide.
Co-directors Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt (The Education of Shelby Knox) catch up with Bei Bei after she has served 435 days in jail. Initially, she didn't seek a plea agreement for fear of deportation. With the pro bono assistance of trial attorney Linda Pence, she is released on bail.
Though the filmmakers don't provide any details about Pence's background, it's clear this isn't just another job for the longtime litigator, but a case that could have significant repercussions for other women in similar predicaments.
Pence sees it as the culmination of the personhood laws that sprung up in the wake of Laci Peterson's murder. Republican Senator Mike Murphy explains to the filmmakers why he co-authored such a law, while VP Mike Pence (no relation to Linda) features in archival footage, during his tenure in Congress, arguing that a fetus should have full legal protections.
Upon her release until trial, Bei Bei returns to the restaurant she managed. She says she used to think she was weak, but now realizes she was suffering from depression. There were also cultural factors at play, like the shame in raising a child by herself. With Linda Pence's help, Bei Bei beats the legal odds, but a dispiriting postscript notes that the fight continues as over 1,000 US women have been arrested under fetal harm laws.
THE ISSUE OF MR. O'DELL (Rami Katz, 2018, Canada, 35 minutes)
Jack O’Dell, a 95-year-old civil rights activist, looks back at his momentous life in Canadian filmmaker Rami Katz's illuminating documentary. Katz, who shot the film primarily in black and white, constructs it around an interview with O'Dell, an insightful speaker, now based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
O'Dell recalls that he grew up in Detroit with family members who weren't afraid to speak out about injustice, like his father, uncle, and cousin, who all sued a segregated golf club in Florida. If life in prewar Detroit wasn't perfect, he felt like he was part of a community. Once he left to attend college in the South, however, he experienced segregation for the first time.
From there, he went on to the US Merchant Marine through which he became involved with the NMU (National Maritime Union) and the Communist Party, sparking his interest in non-violent direct action.
While working in New Orleans in 1956, he received a summons to testify at the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. At that point, he decided that he would rather concentrate on activism than politics, since he felt that civil rights had a better chance of catching on in the United States than socialism.
In the 1960s, he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to assist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with his efforts on behalf of voter registration. "We were all working," he says, "for the elimination of the insult of segregation." His communist past, however, caught the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, leading President John F. Kennedy to recommend that King cut ties with O'Dell, which he did.
The documentary ends with a recap of O'Dell's post-SCLC activities in addition to his thoughts about direct action today. This is a short, but potent documentary. According to the Cinema Guild website, "Jack O’Dell passed away in 2019 at the age of 96, after this film was completed."
WARRIOR WOMEN (Christina D. King and Elizabeth A. Castle, 2019, USA, 64 minutes)
Filmmakers and producers Christina D. King and Elizabeth A. Castle profile two generations of Native American activists in Warrior Women, which aired on PBS stations (the documentary draws from Castle's book, Women Were the Backbone and Men Were the Jawbone: Native American Activism During the Red Power Movement).
Throughout the film, the directors alternate between archival footage, present-day appearances, and a round table with Madonna Thunder Hawk, her daughter Marcella, her sister Mabel Ann, and her niece Lakota.
Madonna grew up on a Lakota reservation in South Dakota. When the government built a series of dams along the Missouri River, her family had to move 50 miles away. Their people lost millions of acres of land in the process. She also attended an Indian boarding school, which discouraged cultural traditions, but the experience only served to embolden her.
When the government relocated her to the Bay Area in the 1960s, she learned about organizing from the Black Panthers and the United Farm Workers, and participated in the AIM (American Indian Movement) occupations of Mount Rushmore and Alcatraz before returning to South Dakota to advocate for civil rights, inspiring Marcy to do the same. Since her mother wasn't always there for her emotionally, Marcy reflects, "It's easier for me to think of her as Madonna, the activist, rather than as my mom."
Now Marcy also balances activism with motherhood, while Madonna continues to encourage Native American self-reliance through education, land ownership, and food production.
Just as Madonna oversaw a survival school in the 1970s, Marcy has launched one of her own. Concludes her mother, "That's what we really need; we need the younger generation to pick up the reins." Warrior Women is an encouraging look at a necessary and enduring movement.
Bei Bei is available to stream through Kanopy and Vimeo, The Issue of Mr. O'Dell is available to stream through YouTube and Kanopy and on Blu-ray and DVD for educational use through Cinema Guild, and Warrior Women is available on DVD and streaming for educational use through Good Docs.
Images from DOC NYC (Bei Bei), the IMDb (Bei Bei poster), Cinema Guild (Jack O'Dell), AP / The New York Times (O'Dell in 1956), ITVS (Madonna Thunder Hawk and Marcy Gilbert), and Good Docs (Warrior Women poster).
This is a revived and revised version of a 2007 Amazon film review that dropped off the site over the years. This tends to happen when a home video release keeps appearing in new forms, like a standard release in 2008 or a Blu-ray/DVD edition in 2019.
CONTROL
(Anton Corbijn, UK, 2007, 122 minutes)
In his elegiac directorial debut, photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn combines the music film with the social drama to stunning success.
Adapted by Matt Greenalgh (Sam Taylor-Johnson's early-Lennon portrait Nowhere Boy) from Deborah Curtis's clear-eyed 1995 memoir, Touching from a Distance, Control recounts the tale of a working-class lad about to hit the highest highs only to be waylaid by the lowest lows.
Born and raised in Macclesfield, a suburban community outside Manchester, Ian Curtis (newcomer Sam Riley in a remarkable performance) dreams of fronting a rock band. Just out of high school in the mid-1970s, and besotted by the proto-punk coming out of New York and the art rock coming out of London, he finds three like-minded musicians, Peter Hook (Joe Anderson), Bernard Sumner (James Anthony Pearson), and Stephen Morris (Harry Treadaway), with whom he forms post-punk quartet Warsaw, aka Joy Division. Riley and cast mates ably recreate their somber sound.
All the while, in between shifts at various employment agencies, he falls in love, marries, and fathers a daughter with Deborah (Samantha Morton, turning a thankless role into a triumph). While Curtis should be enjoying parenthood and newfound fame, he's plagued by seizures. A diagnosis of epilepsy leads to powerful medications with unpredictable side effects.
Then, while on tour, Ian falls in love with another woman, Belgian journalist Annik Honoré (Alexandra Maria Lara). His solution to these problems is a matter of public record, but Corbijn concentrates on Curtis's brief, eventful life rather than his tragic death, unlike Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, which also focused on the Manchester music scene of the 1970s and '80s.
Just as Control establishes a link between such disparate black-and-white pictures as fellow photographer Bruce Weber's 1988 Chet Baker elegy Let's Get Lost and kitchen-sink classics like Tony Richardson's 1962 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner with Tom Courtenay, the Dutch-born, UK-based director presents his subject not as some iconic t-shirt image, but as a deeply flawed--if massively talented--human being.
An impressive debut from a filmmaker who knew the band, the geographic and cultural milieu, and most of all: the man at the center of the maelstrom.
Control is available on home video and on numerous streaming platforms, including free services, like Tubi and Plex (with ads). Images from Hanway Films (Sam Riley), The New York Times via The Weinstein Company (Riley with Joe Anderson), and The Guardian (Riley with Samantha Morton).
This is a revived and revised version of a 2007 Amazon film review that dropped off the site over the years. This tends to happen when a home video release keeps appearing in new forms, like a special edition in 2008 or a two-disc collector's edition in 2019.
I'M NOT THERE
(Todd Haynes, 2007, USA, 135 minutes)
Unapologetically audacious, I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' fifth narrative feature, is more postmodern puzzle than by-the-numbers biopic. A title card sets the scene: "Inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan."
The film features no figure by that name. Instead, Haynes, in conjunction with cowriter Oren Moverman, presents six characters, each incarnating different stages in the artist's shape-shifting career. Perfume's Ben Whishaw, cast as black-clad poet Arthur Rimbaud, serves as the slippery narrator.
The action begins with the wanderings of an 11-year-old Black runaway named "Woody Guthrie" (Marcus Carl Franklin)--his raucous duet with Richie Havens on 1965's "Tombstone Blues" is a highlight--and ends with a silver-haired Billy the Kid (Richard Gere) watching the Old West die before his very eyes.
In the interim, there's the folk singer-turned-preacher (Christian Bale), the self-centered actor (Heath Ledger), and the puckish rock star (Cate Blanchett, who has Don't Look Back-era Dylan down to a science).
The chronology is purposefully non-linear, and editor Jay Rabinowitz (8 Mile, Requiem for a Dream) cuts rapidly, Godard-style, between cinéma vérité B&W and saturated color, Richard Lester-like slapstick, and Fellini-inspired surrealism (Haynes regular Ed Lachman served as cinematographer).
What makes the picture fun for adventurous Dylan fans--and potentially frustrating for neophytes--is that every album and movie bears an alternate title. Ledger's Robbie, for instance, stars in "Grain of Sand," either or both a reference to Pete Seeger's lullaby "One Grain of Sand" from 1956 or (more likely) to Dylan's gospel-inspired "Every Grain of Sand" from 1981, a Shot of Love selection championed by admiring artists from Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash--it was performed at his funeral--to Patti Smith and Elvis Costello.
As in Todd Haynes' 1998 glam rock reverie Velvet Goldmine, which also starred Christian Bale, the trickery involves the entire cast. While Julianne Moore plays former lover Alice, a dead ringer for Joan Baez; Michelle Williams embodies elusive scenester Coco, i.e. Edie Sedgwick.
Just as the film brings together experienced actors and newcomers, the soundtrack mixes originals with covers and veterans with younger players, like Jim James's heartfelt "Goin' to Acapulco" from 1975's The Basement Tapes and Willie Nelson's tender "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)" from 1978's Street Legal. In both cases, Calexico provides sympathetic backing.
If I'm Not There is less affecting than Anton Corbijn's cool-headed, chronological Ian Curtis biopic Control, the year's other notable musician portrait, it rewards repeat viewing like few previous biographical features.
I'm Not There is available on numerous streaming platforms, including free services, like Tubi and Plex (with ads). Near as I can tell, the various home video versions are all out of print, though used copies abound, sometimes for ridiculous prices. Images from Ty Burr's Watch List (the six Dylans), SensCritique (Ben Whishaw), and The Metrograph (Cate Blanchett).
SCALA!!! or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits
(Jane Giles and Ali Catterall, UK, 2023 96 minutes)
When I first read a description of Jane Giles' and Ali Catterall's 2023 documentary Scala!!! in last year's Cucalorus Film Festival guide (below), I thought, "That sounds like fun," and I added it to my itinerary. Better yet, Giles, a former Scala Cinema programmer, would be in attendance with Vic Roberts, a former usher at the London movie palace, who had since relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina, where Cucalorus takes place.
During Britain's post-punk Thatcher years, London's legendary Scala cinema offered community refuge with a programme ranging from established classics and offbeat cult hits to sexploitation, horror, Kung Fu and LGBTQIA+ titles. Nudging the boundaries of convention, the cavernous picture palace acted as a source of inspiration for movie lovers and creatives. Featuring a cornucopia of interviews, archive and film clips, this is an engrossing tribute to an indelible legacy.
My biggest fear wasn't that I wouldn't enjoy Scala!!!, since I was certain that a film about a London repertory house that specialized in the odd, the offbeat, and the transgressive would be right up my alley. I mean, what's not to love? In their first go-round as documentarians, Giles, the programmer and former acquisitions head, and Catterall, the cultural critic and author, might have cocked things up, but they would've had to work pretty hard to make something dull out of the materials at their disposal.
No, my biggest fear is that the whole thing would play like a party that I had missed or to which I hadn't been invited. Giles had fun as a programmer, Roberts had fun as an usher, and Catterall had fun as an attendee–though the film doesn't stint on any of the cinema's hilarious and hair-raising challenges–but I never made it to the Scala when I lived in London in the mid-1980s. In fact, I don't remember hearing about it, and I thought I was pretty plugged in by reading NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds.
Notably, NME writer Nick Kent puts in an appearance, mostly to talk about the time David Bowie arranged for Lou Reed and Iggy & the Stooges to play the Scala in 1972, six years before it became a cinema (he goes into detail in the extended interview).
In case you're experiencing FOMO, Kent claims that Lou wasn't all that, but Iggy knocked his socks clean off. Until I watched Scala!!!, I had no idea that Mick Rock's iconic cover shots for Reed's 1972 Transformer and the Stooges' 1973 Raw Power emerged from the two-night London engagement.
During its run from 1978 to 1993, the King's Cross cinema, which started out on Tottenham Street, wasn't exactly a secret--John Waters and other Americans were aware of it--but I was spending so much time immersed in the city's music scene that I missed out on a lot of its cinematic happenings. Before the Cucalorus screening began, I told Giles I regretted that I didn't make it to the Scala when I had the chance, and she assured me the film would make me feel as if I had. It's a bold claim, but she was right.
I'm not sure exactly how she and Catterall pulled it off, but they did. On the surface, they aren't doing anything that hasn't been done before.
They interviewed actors, musicians, and filmmakers who attended screenings, programmed series, like the Shock Around the Clock horror all-nighters, or had their work shown at the Scala, and gathered up all the calendars, photographs, and video clips they could find. All of those things might have been sufficient, except they also hired animator Osbert Parker to recreate incidents that weren't otherwise documented or documentable and musician and graphic designer Luke Insect to add buzzy snap, crackle and pop to the inter-titles.
Then, they hired solo player Barry Adamson, a former member of Magazine and the Bad Seeds, to compose the finger-snapping, Elmer Bernstein-like score (Giles and Adamson also appear in the documentary as subjects).
In writing about Scala!!!, it's hard not to emulate the film's discursive nature, because the interpersonal connections are endless, but filmmakers Ben Wheatley and Peter Strickland, who both put in appearances, were Scala attendees (Wheatley's interview is audio-only). Luke Insect worked on the former's 2013 historical horror A Field in England and Adamson appeared, as an actor, in the latter's 2018 haute couture horror In Fabric.
I've always been drawn to documentaries that don't just depict a person or a phenomenon, but recapture the look or feel of the thing being depicted, and that's what they've done. The breakneck pace and staticky graphics emulate the punk, post punk, and new wave styles of the films screened at the Scala, in addition to the music attendees were buying and/or making and the calendars, which doubled as eye-catching posters for punters to tack up on walls and refrigerators, as I'm sure many did. If you lived in a hip college town or plugged-in metropolis at the time, you probably did something similar.
Five years before Giles became a filmmaker, she compiled all of the two-dimensional artifacts mentioned above plus written text into SCALA CINEMA 1978-1993, a large-format book through FAB Press. The reissue is available through Severin Films, which released a fabulous three-disc version of the film earlier this month, complete with commentary tracks, festival footage, featurettes, extended interviews, outtakes, short films screened at the Scala, and much more. Details on some of the special features below.
Intentionally or otherwise, it's as if Giles and Catterall had been rehearsing for the documentary, since he edited the book, except not all authors, editors, and programmers make a successful transition to filmmaking.
If I haven't said much about the films they cite or subjects they interviewed, it's because I would prefer for viewers to be as surprised and delighted as I was. I'll just say that a few of my favorite film writers, like Kim Newman and Alan Jones, and filmmakers, like Strickland and Mary Harron, put in appearances. Plenty of comedians, too, which adds some laughs.
They also roped in people with whom I was previously unfamiliar, like Roberts, a very engaging raconteur. Since Cucalorus, I've been following her, Giles, and Catterall on Instagram, and Roberts' posts about LGBTQ history, her British heritage, and her years as a London bus mechanic can't be beat. If she wrote a book, I'd read it–and she should. As she says in the film, "For a lot of queers and a lot of weirdos generally this cinema was somewhere to go where we were with our own people." At the Cucalorus screening, she handed me a Scala!!! pin, which I've worn on my jacket ever since. I also learned through her account that Giles makes a mean meat pie.
As for the Scala-screened shorts, all were new to me. I didn't enjoy them equally, though I wouldn't consider that a failing, especially since each one has something of interest or import to offer. Chris Newby's 1991 film Relax, for instance, makes extensive use of textural, high-contrast close-ups to depict the fear of AIDS, while the 41-minute collective-made Divide and Rule - Never! incorporates reggae and post punk music alongside unfiltered commentary from the youth population to reflect on racism in the UK.
The set also includes an exclusive Kier-La Janisse documentary about US rep houses, including the Fox Venice Theater featured in Messiah of Evil, and Michael Clifford's 1990 documentary short Scala from which the filmmakers extracted archival footage of S’Express's Mark Moore in his younger years, in addition to Scala cats Huston and Roy, who would slink around legs in the dark, leading unsuspecting punters to think the place had rats. And maybe it did, based on its location above a rumbling, bustling tube station.
Right: Huston manning the box office
Speaking of which, if I wasn't as thrilled by David Lewis's 1989 B&W Dead Cat, which lives up to its title, at least it eschews any cat torture, thank goodness--unlike Harmony Korine's Gummo eight years later–just a lot of maggot action. Love or loathe it, the inclusion is fitting in light of the participation of musician Genesis P-Orridge and Scala favorite Derek Jarman (Lewis's friend and mentor), an ominous score from GPO's Psychic TV, and Lewis's contextually rich commentary.
Severin Films' home video release comes complete with a classy, semi-gloss dust cover to hold the Blu-ray case, a fold-out Scala calendar-style listing of the special features, and even a numbered membership card.
The low-cost membership model allowed the cinema to screen films other UK cinemas couldn't, though not all kinds as their legal tussle over a screening of the banned-in-Britain A Clockwork Orange would prove. I doubt Stanley Kubrick intended his controversial film to strangle a cinema famed for screening controversial films, but it contributed to that very outcome.
In the end, though, the documentary isn't just about a cinema that flew too close to the sun. It gains in stature as a tribute to all cinemas and all programmers throughout the world who looked beyond the mainstream to entertain, to enlighten, and to shake up open-minded audience members.
In my case, as a Seattle film goer, that meant the University District's Neptune Theatre. Though relatively tame by comparison, it served as a much-loved rep house before transitioning to a music venue in the 2000s–and also produced a fold-out calendar–much as the Scala would in 1999.
Fortunately, eclectic rep houses, like the U District's all-volunteer Grand Illusion Cinema, which is raising funds for an unavoidable move, and Columbia City's Beacon Cinema, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, are still out there, though they're an endangered species due to the rise of home video in the 1980s and 1990s–which now seems almost quaint–and the monopolization of streaming nowadays–which relies on artistically-compromised cost-cutting, rapidly rising prices, and ever-decreasing attention spans. Along with the corporatization of everything that can possibly be corporatized.
If you find yourself reflecting on any of these things, Scala!!! could make you pretty despondent, but probably not while actually watching the documentary, since it's mostly a celebration–to which newcomers have been invited–of the kind of programming that allowed audience members to feel less alone and to find friends and collaborators who were also looking to be scared, to be surprised, to be turned-on, and even to be transformed, especially queer audience members during the height of the Thatcher era.
In other words, it's inspiring. It's inspiring that filmmakers with minimal experience--but invaluable knowledge and connections--made such a fantastic film, but it's also inspiring to hear from those who found the strength to live as their authentic selves from the films and folks they encountered, in addition to those encouraged to make art of their own.
I've lived with the film for two years now, having seen it in a theater last November and having revisited it on home video more recently, though even before I watched it for a second time, or even a third with commentary from the co-directors, I had come to the conclusion that Scala!!! is an all-timer.
I'm thrilled that it played at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, and I'm just as thrilled that it will be playing at The Beacon later this month. I only wish that any of its makers or contributors could be in attendance.
Beyond the pin and the conversation, Giles also set me up with a signed Davey Jones poster, which I had framed. It now hangs on my wall. The Viz artist's full-color poster plays an important part in the film, because he also depicted that which couldn't otherwise be depicted, like the time usher JoAnne Sellar, who would become PT Anderson's longtime producer, stumbled upon the body of an audience member who expired during one of the all-nighters or the time Shane McGowan took a whiz from the stands.
Just as veteran non-fiction filmmaker Thom Anderson's epic, essential 2003 essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself made me want to see every one of the 200 or so films he cites–and I've seen dozens since–Jane Giles and Ali Catterall's clip-filled documentary has made me want to see every one of the films they cite–yes, even the Curt McDowell/George Kuchar 1975 messterpiece Thundercrack!, a scandalous film the Scala screened almost as often as the Neptune screened midnight perennial The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
If inclined, you can now buy Thundercrack! or The Rocky Horror Picture Show on home video–though the former isn't available on streaming–but there's nothing quite like seeing an unhinged film with an unhinged audience. Scala!!! is the next best thing to having that exact experience.
Click here for my shorter 2023 review of the film (with shorter trailer).
Scala!!! plays The Beacon Cinema on Fri, Dec 27, and Sat, Dec 28, at 10pm. The film is available on home video in the UK through BFI and in the US through Severin. Images from me (Quinault wrapped around the Blu-ray set), Wikipedia (By No Swan So Fine - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0), Amazon (Transformer cover), Evening Standard (the Scala lobby), Severin Films (Graham Humphreys' cover design for the collector's edition Scala Book), Londonist (Huston the cat in 1990), The Stranger's EverOut (the Neptune Theatre marquee), and Scalarama (an assortment of programs).
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT (Johan Grimonprez, 2024, Belgium, 150 minutes)
In 1960, the same year the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained its independence from colonial rule and joined the United Nations, thanks largely to newly-elected Premier Patrice Lumumba, Louis Armstrong brought New Orleans-style jazz to the country. Starting in 1956, the US State Department had been flying jazz ambassadors around the world in order to promote diplomacy. That was the claim, at any rate.
If the Congolese appreciated what Louis and his band were putting down, Russian Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev failed to see the appeal of jazz, which he found cacophonous--he went so far as to compare it to gastrointestinal distress. More significantly, though, Belgium wasn't prepared to let the Congo go without a fight--not with all its uranium and other valuable resources--and just after Independence Day on June 30, 1960, when everyone should have been celebrating, things got ugly.
There's nothing quite as volatile as the combination of white supremacy and greed, and the UN and the US, especially the wealthy industrialist sector, sided with Belgium over the people of the Congo, who had democratically elected Lumumba. Systematically, the premier and select associates were ostracized, neutralized, replaced--and eventually killed.
When Louis learned that his concert was arranged as a distraction by anti-Lumumba forces, rather than the goodwill gesture he had been promised, he was so incensed he threatened to renounce his US citizenship and move to Ghana, one of several nations that supported Congolese independence.
Khrushchev, another Congolese supporter, may have been wrong about jazz, but he wasn't wrong about colonialism and imperialism (which makes Putin's recent actions vis-a-vis the Ukraine seem uglier than ever).
Using archival footage combined with interviews and readings and on-screen extracts from several non-fiction texts about the era, including Andrée Blouin's 1983 memoir My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria, Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez examines the politics of Belgium, the Congo, Russia, Ghana, Guinea, Cuba, and the US to show why a coup d'etat took place–and how jazz was involved.
The African and American music in the film, from Louis, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, and others can't be beat. If the leaders of the Western world abandoned the Congo in its hour of need, the jazz world, combined with literary luminaries like Maya Angelou, did everything they could to call out the injustice and show their support.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Grimonprez's highest-profile documentary to date,is one of the year's finest—and fiercest—documentaries.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat opens at Northwest Film Forum on Wed, Dec 4. Images from Kino Lorber (Congo speechwriter/chief of protocol Andrée Blouin) and ABC (Louis Armstrong / Getty Images: Universal Images Group). Kino Lorber releases the film on home video on Jan 7, 2025.
I had heard, anecdotally, that Pamela Anderson is better than Gia Coppola's film, but I beg to differ (the script was written by Kate Gersten of Mozart in the Jungle and The Good Place).
That equation oversells Anderson's acting abilities, which are just fine, and undersells Coppola's directing abilities, which don't exactly fall short.
At its worst, Coppola's third feature, after 2013's Palo Alto and 2020's Mainstream, feels a little unfinished, and Anderson's self-sabotaging showgirl character, Shelly--and not her performance--is frustrating and occasionally off-putting. Then again, she landed the role in the wake of her well received turn as vaudevillian entertainer-turned murderer Roxie in the 2022 Broadway revival of Chicago. It's a segue that makes perfect sense, even if Shelly is no murderer.
Blade Runner 2049's Dave Bautista, who plays the producer of Le Razzle Dazzle revue in which Shelly has plied her trade since the 1980s, is particularly strong in a restrained performance. The former wrestler could have been just another muscleman actor/comedian, but Bautista shows up in roles, like Eddie, where musculature doesn't matter. Love that about him.
Anderson, quite good in a role tailor-made for her talents, receives backing from a solid supporting cast, especially Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song, and Billie Lourd--Lourd and Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays a former showgirl with frosted tips, previously worked together in Ryan Murphy's horror comedy Scream Queens--though the writing around Lourd's bitter college student, Shelly's estranged daughter Hannah, seems a little unfocused at times.
It may seem impolitic to say about a venture both female-made and female-centered, but I felt that Bautista, virtually unrecognizable in Kurt Russell hair and salt-and-pepper beard, was the MVP.
In a different film that could've proven destabilizing, but not this one. He gives Coppola's heightened scenario the down-to-earth ballast it needs; if only Shelly appreciated this decent man more, but then she has a shallow view of men, possibly because they've often had a shallow view of her.
There's no body horror, but still...I wasn't expecting the parallels with Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and, especially, Coralie Fargeat's The Substance. At times, Shelly makes Demi Moore's fading TV star Elisabeth Sparkle seem downright stable, not least since Elisabeth is a more isolated character.
Shelly, by contrast, has people in her life who try to help, but she's convinced her beauty and--very modest--talent will see her through, except she's in her late-50s competing against women in their teens, like Shipka's 19-year-old Jodie, or in their 20s, like most of the other performers (Curtis's Annette works as a cocktail waitress).
It's a minor matter and doesn't harm the film, but I was amused by Coppola's inclusion of not one, but two Rooney songs. Then again, Rooney member Robert Schwartzman, Gia's cousin, produced the film, and his brother and bandmate, Jason Schwartzman, has a small role as a director.
It's the power ballads, though, like Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," that truly define the film--and Anderson's Shelly, who isn't exactly living in the present. She's an '80s lady living in a postmillennial world.
I always suspected that Pamela Anderson was capable of more than the one-dimensional roles she's played to date, and she proves it in The Last Showgirl. As Manohla Dargis puts it in her New York Times review, "Her range may be narrow, but her ability to be wholly vulnerable onscreen is rare and wonderful." I wouldn't say that Anderson surprised me or surpassed my expectations, but then: I expected her to be good, and she is.
The Last Showgirl opens at Los Angeles's AMC Century City on Fri, Dec 13, for one (Oscar-qualifying) week only; nationwide on Fri, Jan 10, 2025.
Fargo filmmaker and animator Toby Jones directs a straight-faced gentleman named AJ Thompson (a real-life IT guy) in the absurdist story of a regular schmo with a perfect life who faces the sudden loss of that perfection.
First, it's the dog park, which the mayor (Crystal Cossette Knight) turns into a blog park, even though everybody know blogging isn't really a thing anymore–except for me and the bloggers in the film.
Then, his best friends, a married couple, move away, and it's just AJ and his dad (Greg Carlson), who is also his boss, and chihuahuas Diddy and Biff, who no longer have a dog park in which to run around and do their business, so this complacent fellow has to get creative, and so he does, as does the filmmaker.
As producer Ben Hanson said at the second screening, the funny business, which involves literal-minded wordplay and goofy props, moves so quickly that if one gag doesn't make you laugh, the next should do the trick.
I met both gentlemen the following evening, and we chatted about the closing sequence, which involved shooting in 40°F weather. That's unreal to me, and I grew up in Alaska. Fun film, nice guys, and the audience had a blast with their loopy tale of an ordinary guy who fights City Hall--and wins.
ANNA COMES HOME
(Amber Suzor, USA, 2024, 95 minutes)
I was on the screening panel for Cucalorus this year, and Anna Came Home was one of the films I ranked the highest. I was thrilled when it made the cut, because this is a five-day festival, and they can't program everything.
When Alex, the programming director, asked if I would like to moderate any of the films, I requested those that I had already seen and recommended, and that's how I ended up chatting with producers Jennifer Downes and Frederic Winkler at the screening. I wish writer/director Amber Suzor could have been there, but Jennifer answered my questions in detail.
Amber, 26, wasn't able to make it, because she recently had a baby with actor Mason Webber, now her husband, who plays the easygoing Louie in the film.
Anna is a remarkably assured debut, set in leafy Marin County, about a Berkeley student going through an early-life crisis (I'm not familiar with Marin, but my dad worked at Berkeley, so that part resonated with me).
If it isn't a cringe comedy, there are moments of intense cringe, which Jennifer said were inspired by things Amber, 24 when she made the film, experienced in her younger years--the audience gasped at one particularly humiliating moment.
Isabella Newman, who Amber met at NYU, is perfection in the tricky title role, and Bella's own parents play Anna's parents--Amber's father, Olivier, also has a small role–which adds to the verisimilitude.
DUINO
(Juan Pablo Di Pace, Andrés Pepe Estrada, Argentina, 2024, 107 minutes)
I have mixed feelings about this film, though I enjoyed it for the most part. It's a gay love story in which no one ever says the word gay, and one character never even acknowledges an attraction to men.
It's an open question, however, whether the film is too coy for it's own good, whether it's meant to reflect Argentina's discomfort with homosexuality, or whether it's simply intended to depict a very particular kind of relationship involving a high-strung Swiss teenager and a low-key Argentinian who meet at an international arts school on Italy's Adriatic Coast and fall in love, except there's no sex, and not even a kiss.
Matias (Santiago Madrussan, very good) is mad about Alexander (Oscar Morgan), who is prone to dark moods, and might even be bipolar.
The feelings are mutual, except the upper-class Alex either isn't gay or hasn't acknowledged it to himself the way closeted, middle-class Matias has.
The framing story, in which the Argentinian makes a film about the relationship, isn't as compelling as the more emotionally-involving sequences that take place in 1997, but it's also necessary, since the project allows Matias to let go of the feelings of frustration and regret that have haunted him ever since.
Di Pace, who co-directed and appears as the older Matias, never definitely answers the question of Alex's sexual orientation, and if you accept the film on its narratively ambiguous terms, he doesn't have to, because the film is more about Matias' development than his.
FAMILIAR TOUCH
(Sarah Friedland, USA, 2024,
90 minutes)
Choreographer and filmmaker Sarah Friedland's directorial debut is among the three Cucalorus films I saw twice, along with Anna Comes Home and Rowdy Friends; first at home on the small screen as part of the screening process and then on the big screen with the filmmakers in attendance.
All three, which don't have much in common–though Anna Comes Home also takes place in California–played like gangbusters the second time around, and that's always a good sign in terms of their future prospects.
That said, Familiar Touch may be a harder sell. It shouldn't be, not least since it's a brilliant film and the audience--including Color Book filmmaker David Fortune--responded with enthusiasm, but some people won't want to see a film about an octogenarian with Alzheimer's disease, no matter how rapturous the praise. I'm not suggesting that it won't continue to attract admirers as it appears on more screens, though, because it definitely will.
I spoke with cinematographer Gabe Elder, both on and off the stage, and he hopes that Kathleen Chalfant, an award-winning theater actress (Angels in America, Wit), gets all the credit she deserves for her delicately-shaded performance. He found her a joy to work with. When I mentioned her husband, photographer and Style Wars filmmaker Henry Chalfant, Gabe had praise for him, too, saying that Henry was brought to tears by his wife's performance both of the times he saw it at the Venice Film Festival.
For me, Familiar Touch really hit home, because my mom was diagnosed with dementia in 2019, and the following year she moved to an assisted living facility, just as Kathleen's Ruth does in the film, but it's an impressive achievement beyond any personal resonances, bolstered by an elegant screenplay, authentic locations, sensitive direction, and Gabe's intimate cinematography.
It's also absolutely not depressing, but nor does it offer any false uplift. No one ever recovers from Alzheimer's, but writer/director Sarah Friedland, in concert with Kathleen Chalfant and the excellent supporting cast, finds moments of humor and tenderness where you least expect them.
As David Milch writes in his memoir, Life's Work, "There's nothing to be done. The disease must simply progress. The reverend has to live through the changes. Everyone around him has to live into their inability to do anything to change the outcome." Ironically, Milch was writing about a character on Deadwood with an inoperable brain tumor, Ray McKinnon's Rev. Smith, but in 2019, Milch would also be diagnosed with dementia.
Familiar Touch may be the finest film I've seen on the subject, and there's been a lot of competition as Americans are living longer and cognitive decline among seniors has become more prevalent. In its avoidance of melodrama and heavy-handedness, it bears comparison with Sarah Polley's 2006 Alice Munro adaptation Away From Her and Natalie Erika James' uniquely touching 2020 horror film The Relic–and that's a pretty high bar.
Gabe wasn't able to go into much detail since nothing has been announced yet, but at the screening he mentioned that the film secured distribution prior to the festival and will be more widely available in the coming months.
I saw other films at Cucalorus, including Ick, It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, Operation Taco Gary's, Universal Language, Welcome to Jay, and the nine animated "Bluepoint Shorts" films, but ran out of time to write about them all. I'll update this post as the features make their way to Seattle.
Beyond the films and filmmakers, Cucalorus is about the town of Wilmington, so shout-out to filmgoers Pat, Fran, and John O'Callahan, a restoration specialist who lucked into a part on The Righteous Gemstones, which films in Charleston, thanks to Tallulah, his 19-year old daughter, who submitted a head shot on his behalf.
I enjoyed chatting with all three before and after screenings. Thegracious Rocky Horror Picture Show enthusiast working the counter at Mexican diner Capricho was also a firm favorite. Nothing unites East and West, South and North quite like Tim Curry.
12/9/2024: Music Box Films will be releasing Familiar Touch in 2025.
Images: Horror Revolution (AJ Thompson), IMDb (Bella Newman), Frameline (Santiago Madrussan and Oscar Morgan), Wikipedia (Kathleen Chalfant).
COLOR BOOK (David Fritz Fortune, USA, 2024, 115 minutes)
Every once in a great while I'll see a festival selection so accomplished that afterward I'll find myself shifting from elation to doubt. Instead of trusting my instincts, I'll wonder if it was really that good or if I was just caught up in the festival haze that makes everything seem better than it will in the cold light of day outside a homey venue like Jengo's Playhouse. Cucalorus, after all, is about good vibes.
I've had a few days to think about it--and to see other films--and Atlanta filmmaker David Fortune's directorial debut, Color Book, is just that good.
The film started out as Us, a 2022 black and white short funded by Netflix. At the Q&A with poet and community organizer Omari Fox, Fortune said that after he wrapped the short, he wasn't finished with the two characters and their relationship, and wanted to develop the premise in more depth.
Color Book focuses on a day in the life of a suddenly-widowed father and his 11-year-old son who has Down syndrome, but we get to know them better in the feature, which was recast in a way that lifts the film from good to great, and not because there was anything wrong with the original cast.
In the short, a father teaches his son how to play baseball and in the feature, a father tries to get his son to a baseball game, but Lucky (A Thousand and One's Will Catlett) finds himself facing every kind of obstacle in trying to do a simple kindness for Mason (newcomer Jeremiah Daniels).
Lucky is a regular guy, and not a hero, and yet it becomes a kind of hero's quest. While watching the film, I found myself so invested in the world Fortune constructed that I didn't think about other films, which is the ideal situation. Not until it was over did I realize that the story, bolstered by the black and white stock, plays a bit like 1948's Bicycle Thieves.
Fortune didn't mention it as an inspiration, but he has created a work of lyrical neo-realism as sure as the pioneering Vittorio De Sica; one specific to the post-millennial United States, particularly the South, rather than postwar Italy.
The sense of place is as strong as the development of the characters, including the people they meet along the way.
It is, in other words, a love letter to Atlanta, specifically Black Atlanta. Fortune doesn't glamorize his city, but everyone Lucky and Mason meet is Black. When they act in ways that threaten to derail Lucky's quest–let alone his very guardianship--it isn't out of meanness or spite. They're trying to do the right thing as they see it, just as he is, but during one unguarded moment on the train, he closes his eyes for some much-needed rest only to open them and find Mason gone.
I won't say much more, but even if you think you know how Fortune is going resolve things, he directs the sequence as masterfully as the most nerve-wracking thriller, but without the aid of rapid-fire cuts or a booming score.
Though the film isn't slow per se, the director creates several opportunities for audiences to breathe. In that sense, I was reminded of Barry Jenkins's Oscar-winning Midnight; a different film in many respects, except for the focus on Black manhood, but Fortune also provides space for contemplation with brief abstract sequences--the way Lucky might see movement out of the corner of his eyes--and closeups on objects invested with meaning, like the beads Mason used to string into necklaces with his mom.
Dialogue is there as it needs to be, but never as exposition. Catlett, therefore, has to do a lot with his face and his body, and he has a very expressive face.
He reminds me, in some ways, of actor/director Vondie Curtis-Hall, and I mean that as a compliment. Catlett always shows what's going on, and the reasons are never hard to discern, but Lucky offers no explanations, and nor are they necessary. Form follows function since he's a soft-spoken man, except when he's angry, and he never says any more than he needs to.
If Lucky's sense of humor is in short supply, he isn't without one, and he does enjoy moments of joy, like in a tooth-brushing scene with his truculent son, but then he's in mourning, even if he never says so. The trick for both actor and director was to make him into someone we would want to spend time with rather than someone for whom we feel pity or someone with an aura so dark that it becomes off-putting, no matter how understandable.
Lucky hasn't just lost his wife–and Mason hasn't just lost his mother–but he has to figure out how to be a single father, and that isn't something for which happily married people plan, especially when the loss is unexpected.
Securing transportation is at the crux of Lucky's quest. With no workable vehicle, he meets with an under-the-table dealer who has two cars on offer, a beater for $1,500 and another in better repair, but for $2,400. Plus, the latter isn’t available at the moment, and Lucky has a baseball game to get to in a limited span of time, so he goes for the beater, which results in one of the film's lovelier moments: a father driving his son while Roy Ayers' 1976 vibraphone-saturated single "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" wraps the duo in its warm embrace. Dabney Morris's subtle score, as a whole, blends in well with the mood of the film, in addition to the song's jazz-inflected flavor.
Somewhat off-topic, but when I think about Roy Ayers, I think about his son, Nabil Ayers, a former Seattle citizen and music industry player, who was largely estranged from his father while growing up, and wrote about it in his 2022 memoir, Everybody Loves the Sunshine. Knowing that backstory makes the song more meaningful, whether intentional or otherwise. With all due respect to the jazz-funk pioneer, Lucky is not that father. He's present.
Color Book, as a whole, is both surprising and not. I wasn't surprised when the beater breaks down; it's also one of the few times Lucky gets angry. Not in an abusive way, but the anger that he releases isn't just because he wasted $1,500 and might not get to the ballpark on time, but because he lost his wife. You can see from the look on his face, especially whenever he turns away from Mason, the fear and anger lying beneath the surface.
Around this point Fortune reveals how Tameeka died, and it connects with what he has already shown in ways I didn't anticipate. Previously, he had included a sequence in which her friends remember her at the grave site, so he allows us to get to know her more through their thoughts and remembrances than through Lucky's, and we learn that her giving, affectionate nature was a blessing to all her knew her, and not just to her immediate family.
The ending is also unexpected, not so much because of the game, but because of a dinner Lucky and Mason share in a diner. Beyond the beads, which we see Tameeka and Mason stringing together in the prologue, other totems for father and son include waffles, which they make in the opening sequence; white balloons, which they bring to her grave; and Mason’s crayons and coloring book, which gives the film its title. Two of these things converge at the diner as Lucky and Mason put their worries aside for an hour to enjoy a good meal and the company of a warm-hearted waitress who provides, temporarily, the mothering the men have been missing.
I haven't mentioned it until now, but Color Book never uses the term Down syndrome. We know what we know; Fortune doesn't need to spell it out.
He doesn't define Mason by his characteristics but by his character; who he is as a unique individual, rather than the representative of a genetic condition, and it's how his father sees him: as a person and not as a problem.
The people they meet also accept Mason for who he is; conflict arises at the Marta station when it appears that Lucky isn't an adequate father–or might not be the boy's father at all.
At the Q&A, Fortune says he spent time with the families of children with Down syndrome. He put in the work, and he found a fine foil for Will Catlett in Jeremiah Daniels, who at times missed his sister as much as his character misses his mom.
If Catlett has to act, which he does beautifully, Daniels had to be in the moment with him at all times. I wouldn't say that that isn't acting, but Fortune directed him in a different way, and let him have moments to himself when he needed them, no matter how much it stressed the rapidly-shrinking budget--in a sense, he guided more than directed the boy.
On the surface, Color Book is built around a simple premise. Anyone could follow the story line, but the complicating factors make it a richer, more resonant experience, and without Fortune's sure hand it could have veered into sentimentality or worse. It's a love letter to Atlanta, to fathers (single or otherwise), to children with (and without) disabilities getting the love and care they need, and for Black people everywhere looking out for each other--in ways the government and white society have frequently failed to do--but it isn't a problem picture any more than Mason is a problem child.
The film doesn't currently have distribution, but I have faith it will find a good home before too long. There are important films–films that can literally change lives–and then there are entertaining or moving films, but these things don't always come together as well as they could. Color Book covers all three bases.
For all the praise due Fortune and his collaborators, including DP Nikolaus Summerer, the film come down to the relationship between actor and director, and not just to actor and actor, and Will Catlett's performance is so lived-in at every turn that I was reminded of the great Black films to which this one bears comparison: Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man with Ivan Dixon and Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep with Henry Gayle Sanders.
Times have changed since the 1960s and 1970s, and Fortune's film is more technically adept--Killer of Sheep started out as a student film, after all--even as he made it on a very modest budget. I mean no disrespect to the fine filmmakers that came before him, but it's a noticeable difference.
What matters most is that he has made a film that's just as powerful.
I rarely describe anything as perfect, especially anything as subjective as film, but Color Book is as close as I can imagine. It works on every level, and it's as uplifting as it is heartbreaking. Only time will tell for sure, but I believe David Fortune has made a classic–and possibly even a masterpiece.
I'll add the trailer as soon as it becomes available. Fortunately, it's easy to catch up with David Fortune's short, which you can find above. I'll also update as more opportunities to see the film arise, especially in Seattle.
Images from The Atlanta Voice (Will Catlett and Jeremiah Daniels / photo credit: Nikolaus Summerer), Netflix (Jarvis W. George and Dylan Fox in Us), Mubi (Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola in Bicycle Thieves), the IMDb (Mahershala Ali and Alex Hibbert in Moonlight and Catlett and Daniels), and the Tribeca Film Festival (Lucky in an unguarded moment).
I attended Cucalorus, the adventurous independent film festival in Wilmington, NC, for the first time in 2023, and had a great time, but didn’t make a decision then and there to attend the following year, but when I realized 2024 represented their 30th anniversary, I knew I had to, and so here I am, 2,972.9 miles away from Seattle.
If I appreciate an organization or an event, and they're celebrating a major milestone, I can't resist recognizing or celebrating with them in some way.
To that end, Northwest Film Forum will be celebrating their 30th anniversary in 2025 (I'm on the board). It's hard to keep an arts non-profit going for that long, and this was definitely a rebuilding year for NWFF, so kudos to both organizations for staying hyper-focused and sufficiently passionate about personal projects from a diverse array of voices to withstand the headwinds of the pandemic, the streaming revolution, and other obstacles.
MESSY (Alexi Wasser, USA, 2024, 90 minutes)
The first film I saw was Alexi Wasser's Messy, the opening night selection. Wasser, 43, who worked as an actor in Los Angeles for over 20 years, moved to New York in the wake of the pandemic, got involved with a series of highly problematic men, and made a sex comedy about her experiences. She was on hand to introduce and answer questions about the film.
In her directorial debut, Wasser's Stella ends up working on an essay about her experiences for editor Mario Cantone, so art imitates life twice over.
Considering that she was operating on a tiny budget, Wasser managed to cajole a number of notable comedic actors to appear in the film beyond Cantone--who fully engages with the madcap spirit of the thing--including Thomas Middleditch, Adam Goldberg, and Ione Skye. I would imagine that they all worked for scale, so I appreciate their willingness to lend a hand, and they're all quite game.
Unlike, say, Luca Guadagnino's Challengers, which I just watched the night before, Messy isn't timid about sexuality and nudity (you only see Josh O'Connor's backside in the former). The talk is quite frank, and Wasser is frequently quite nude. The film could've used a little male nudity, though I feel that way about many films; especially sex comedies and erotic thrillers.
I'm not alone. As Zola filmmaker Janicza Bravo explained during a conversation with Wasser for Interview, "I just have a rule that if you're going to show me ladies, I want to see boys... I want nude parity because a man's chest is not a woman's breast, right? So I want nude parity."
Messy is currently seeking distribution, and I'm certain it will find it--an opening night berth at Cucalorus can't hurt. Comedies, independent or otherwise, are a tough sell for me, but this one has a lot of laughs and the audience had a fine time and asked a lot of questions. Some viewers are sure to find the self-absorbed Stella a bit much–she's "messy," after all–but Wasser is a very engaging performer with a facility for rapid-fire dialogue.
Her inspirations were all over the map, and if you like any of these films or TV shows, Messy might be up your alley: Sex and the City, episode 1.3 of Horace and Pete for the Laurie Metcalf monologue, since she begins her film the same way–she apologized for citing a Louis CK production–An Unmarried Woman, Party Girl with Parker Posey, and Richard Brooks' 1977 Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
The latter was definitely a surprise, since it’s a cautionary tale about a woman (Diane Keaton) seeking male companionship in all the wrong places–I read Judith Rossner’s 1975 potboiler in junior high–but like Theresa, Stella does end up sleeping with several of the men she meets in bars, so I get it.
Cucalorus runs from Nov 20-25, 2024; most screenings at Thalian Hall, Thalian Black (on the upper level), and Jengo's Playhouse, with a variety of colorful happenings taking place around downtown Wilmington. As these films start making the rounds and/or hit streaming, I'll update this post.
Coverage of the Seattle International Film Festival and year-round art house programming in the Pacific Northwest.
Kathy Fennessy is President of the Seattle Film Critics Society, a Northwest Film Forum board member, and a Tomatometer-approved critic. She writes or has written for Amazon, Minneapolis's City Pages, Resonance, Rock and Roll Globe, Seattle Sound, and The Stranger.
