Movies

SEW TORN: a thriller like none you’ve seen before

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Photo caption: Eve Connolly in SEW TORN. Courtesy of Vertigo Releasing.

Sew Torn is the first thriller (or movie) I’ve seen where the main character’s day job isn’t detective or writer or architect, but mobile seamstress. Barbara (Eve Connolly) is a seamstress and her super power is rigging Rube Goldberg solutions with needle and thread to face any emergency situation. It doesn’t take long before she’s entangled in a fight to the death between two gangs of crooks, and we’re asking just what are we watching here?

We’re watching a compelling thriller, a genre film with a gimmick, albeit a sui generis gimmick, and it’s the calling card of its talented auteur. Writer-director Freddy MacDonald made the first version of Sew Torn as a 6-minute short while in high school, which led him to being accepted as the youngest ever Directing Fellow at the AFI Conservatory. After winning a student academy award, he and his father Fred MacDonald worked the screenplay of Sew Torn into a feature. Freddy MacDonald has yet to turn 25.

Both Barbara and Joshua (Caleb Worthy), a young hood embroiled in the gangland shootout, need to escape from the domination of their parents. Barbara’s mother is dead, but Barbara, struggling with depression, is trapped living her mother’s life. Joshua’s father (a bloodcurdling John Lynch) is very much alive and threatening the survival of everyone he encounters.

Barbara is glum and passive, and sure doesn’t look like the hero of a thriller, until she whips out a spool and a thimble to MacGyver herself out of a lethal jam.

There’s a surprise in the construction of the story, which I won’t spoil, except to say that it involves the reimagining of outcomes. You’ve certainly never seen this movie before.

I saw Sew Torn at the SLO Film Fest, where it won the Best Narrative Feature. After a successful festival run that began with a debut at SXSW, Sew Torn is available to stream on Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.

JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE: she stepped onto the roller coaster at 16

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Photo caption: Janis Ian in JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE. Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

In Janis Ian, Breaking Silence, the biodoc of the earnest pop-folk singer-songwriter, a teen prodigy steps onto the roller coaster of the music industry at a tender age and experiences the highest highs and the lowest lows. And, it turns out that there’s more to Janis Ian than Society’s Child and At Seventeen.

The word prodigy is overused, but accurately describes Ian, who was doing professional-level song-writing at age 14. Her dad answers a booking request on the home phone with with, “You know she’s only 15, right?“

We’re not surprised that Ian experiences the shock of instant national stardom, the vicissitudes of record companies, the proverbial crooked business managers, (but not as MANY drugs as in most music biodocs).  But it’s insightful to hear from Ian herself about how all this seemed and felt as it happened. Ian recounts her relationships while touring, with both men and women, and the impact of being outed involuntarily.

When Ian is unexpectedly confronted by someone who broke her heart years before, she blurts out the perfect last laugh.

Janis Ian: Breaking Silence was made with Janis Ian’s cooperation, and takes a very sympathetic point of view; that’s okay because Ian herself is clear-eyed, self-deprecating and maintains a solid, often wry, perspective on her experience. Janis Ian herself testifies, along with others close to her (including old pals Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez). 

This is the third feature for director Varda Bar-Kar, who is aided by excellent editing from Ryan Larkin in his first feature.

I originally reviewed Janis Ian: Breaking Silence for its brief thetricl release earlier this year. It’s now playing on PBS American Masters; you can find American Masters on your PBS channel or watch the film on the American Masters website.

Coming up on TV – the bracing neo-noir PALE FLOWER

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Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

Coming up this Saturday and Sunday on Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley with Eddie Muller, the Japanese neo-noir Pale Flower is a slow burn that erupts into thrilling set pieces. This is pioneering neo-noir. Pale Flower is writer-director Masahiro Shinoda’s masterpiece; its look and feel is as different from classic noir as are Elevator to the Gallows and Blast of Silence.

Maraki (Ryô Ikebe) is a fortyish Yazuka hit man, just released from loyally serving a prison term. He went away for offing a gangland rival, but now the two gangs have become allies. Out gambling with fellow Yakuza, he encounters the much younger woman Saeko (Mariko Kaga). The stoic and completely self-contained Maraki becomes fascinated by – and then obsessed with – Saeko, who lives her life seeking thrill after thrill.

PALE FLOWER

Maraki and Saeko meet gambling on the Japanese card game of hanafuda (flower cards). She is the only woman at a table surrounded by male gangsters. Shinoda makes the tension of card games resemble that of walking into a hostile bar or waiting an Old West quick draw gunfight. The card games are silent but for the ritual betting and the players clicking their cards. The film’s title refers to both hanafuda and Saeko.

Mariko Kaga in PALE FLOWER

Just who is this mystery woman? Muraki is snagged, but he is too cool to search out her background. His obsession is more complicated than sexual passion alone, although there is a sexual element (watch whether he acts on it when he can). The mystery makes Saeko (the then 20-year-old Mariko Kaga in only her fourth movie) all the more captivating.

In another gripping set piece, Saeko races her sports car through Tokyo’s tunnels and overpasses at 2:30 AM. In the passenger seat, Muraki is transfixed by her recklessness. He’s not thrilled by the careening wild ride, he’s thrilled by Saeko’s compulsion to seek the thrill.

Mariko Kaga and Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

The ultimate thrill might be to accompany a hit man on the job. The climactic three-minute scene is a mob hit in a church, set to an aria, Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament. It is operatic – and remarkably similar to Francis Ford Coppola’s later montage in The Godfather where Michael Corleone’s assassins kills all his enemies while he is standing in church at the christening of his sister’s baby. Muarki’s murder-for-hire is up-close-and-personal.

When Maraki and Saeko are on-screen, Pale Flower is dramatically and stylistic Stylistic – the card games, the car race, the final killing, In contrast, we see the mundane plotting of the Yazuka bosses (but not their crimes) as they kibbitz at the horse races. Their underlings go bowling.

Does it all matter? is a central theme in film noir. Pale Flower’s powerful final prison scene is the the ultimate neo-noir ending.

Pale Flower is included in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies. Pale Flower is challenging to find; it can be streamed with a subscription to Criterion Collection or kanopy, and it plays occasionally on TCM, including on June 21-22.

Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

BONJOUR TRISTESSE: not the life lesson she was expecting

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Photo caption: Claes Bang and Chloe Sevigny in in BONJOUR TRISTESSE. Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

In the coming-of-age drama Bonjour Tristesse, Cécile (Lily McInerny) is on the cusp of adulthood and enjoying a languid summer holiday in a villa on the French Riviera (Bonjour Tristesse was shot in Cassis). She is accompanying her father Raymond (Claes Bang) and his girlfriend Elsa (Nailia Harzoune), who allow her to sneak off for make-out sessions on the beach with the young guy in the neighboring villa.

Cécile has a comfortable and playful relationship with Raymond, a charming lightweight. To his face, she describes him as often reckless and selfish, which he doesn’t dispute.  At one point, Raymond offer, “I don’t know why luck is so easily dismissed. I’ve always found it dependable.” Raymond’s attractive girlfriend Elsa is also fun-loving, with a healthy libido and unfounded self-confidence.

Cécile’s mother died when she was a young child. So, when Cécile’s mother’s best friend Anne (Chloe Sevigny) shows up at the villa for visit, Cécile wants to learn about her mom. What were her parents like back in the day? Anne has also forged impressive achievements as a designer and is reserved and guarded, with a serious demeanor. The adults that Cécile is used to, Raymond and Elsa, are shallow and hedonistic, so Anne is a fascinating contrast.

Claes Bang, Lily McInerny and Chloe Sevigny in in BONJOUR TRISTESSE. Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

Just as Cécile is glomming on to Anne as a model, Anne does something which upends the household. Soon, Cécile is learning life lessons that she didn’t sign up for. This is a character-driven story, and Cécile is forming her own persona as Raymong and Anne reveal who they are, down deep.

Bonjour Tristesse is the directorial debut for Durga Chew-Bose, who adapted the Francois Sagan novel.

After premiering at Toronto, Bonjour Tristesse became a NYT Critic’s Pick on its theatrical run. Bonjour Tristesse releases digitally this Friday on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES: groundbreaking, humane and funny

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Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault in LA CAGE AUX FOLLES

On June 13, Turner Classic Movies will present the groundbreaking French comedy La Cage Aux Folles – a daring film in 1978, when few were thinking publicly about same-sex marriage. A gay guy runs a nightclub on the Riviera, and his partner is the star drag queen. The nightclub owner’s beloved son wants him to meet the parents of his intended.  But the bride-to-be’s father is a conservative politician who practices the most severe and judgmental version of Roman Catholicism, so father and son decide to conceal aspects of dad’s lifestyle. Madcap comedy ensues, and La Cage proves that broad farce can be heartfelt. Michel Serrault is unforgettable as Albin/Zaza – one of the all-time great comic performances. (La Cage was tepidly remade in 1996 as The Birdcage with Robin Williams, but you want to see the French original.)

I’m currently watching my way through the program of this year’s Frameline LGBTQ film fest, which I just previewed. I don’t think you can overestimate the cultural impact of La Cage Aux Folles, which charmed straight audiences into relating to sympathetic portrayals of LGBTQ people.

PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF: a man hidden in his own invention

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Photo caption: Paul Reubens in PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF. Courtesy of HBP Max.

The delightfully wacky character Pee-Wee Herman sprang on the scene, seemingly from nowhere, sweetly celebrating his own weirdness. Pee-Wee was the creation of actor Paul Reubens. Reubens, of course, had a life before Pee-Wee, and he had a very private personal life distinct from his invented persona. Sadly, Reubens lost his privacy in, not one, but two career-killing tabloid scandals.

HBO Max is airing the bio-doc Pee-Wee as Himself, from the acclaimed Silicon Valley native, New York-based documentarian Matt Wolf. Wolf has an uncanny gift for finding compelling stories that everyone else has overlooked: Teenage, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Spaceship Earth and Rustin. Here, Wolf reveals three stories, each in itself worthy of a documentary.

The first is Paul Reubens’ origin story – his childhood, his self-confidence as an avant garde art student and his comfort in an out gay lifestyle. Reubens was failing as an actor, and his overweening drive to be successful as an actor led him to leave his partner and go back in the closet.

The second is Pee-Wee’s creation story – how Reubens joined the famed The Groundlings improv group, working with the likes of Laraine Newman, Phil Hartman and Elvira, and originated several characters, one of which was Pee-Wee. Amazingly, Reubens, as Pee-Wee, was a winning contestant on The Gong Show and even The Dating Game. When Reubens failed to be selected for Saturday Night Live, he determined to produce his own TV show – and the sui generis Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was born. Another helluva story.

Finally, we come to the tabloid scandal, an unexpected comeback and then a second scandal. As Reubens himself ruefully notes, by the time he realized the privacy tradeoffs that come with fame, “the ink had dried on my pact with the devil”. 

Wolf had elicited permission from Reubens to make a film about Reubens’ life, and secured 40 hours of on-camera interview footage. But the mercurial Reubens, highly ambivalent to sharing his personal story, kept pulling the plug on the project. In the interviews, Reubens often brings up that ambivalence and repeatedly jerks Wolf’s chain. When Reubens fell ill, Wolf was in a race against mortality to get Reubens back on board. Fortunately, Wolf succeeded.

We also hear from Reubens’ sister and his longtime personal assistant, along with old pals like Laraine Newman, Elvira and Natasha Lyonne. We see an archival interview of Phil Hartman, reflecting on what he saw as a betrayal by Reubens.

I’m not sure that I’ve seen another biodoc where the subject himself, so wounded and humbled, stiffens his dignity to reflect on his own brilliance and his suffering from both injustices and his own mistakes. Pee-Wee as Himself runs three hours and twenty-five minutes and is airing on two parts on HBO Max.

FRIENDSHIP: the loser isn’t lovable

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Photo caption Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd in FRIENDSHIP. Courtesy of A24.

The disappointing comedy Friendship has a promising premise: what happens when a very uncool guy is invited into friendship by a very cool guy.

Craig (Tim Robinson) is socially tone deaf and has a gift for turning every situation into a gaffe. He meets his new neighbor Austin (Paul Rudd), who brims with savoir faire and has the cheeky grin of, say, Paul Rudd. Paul invites Craig along on a mischievous adventure and over for beers with Austin’s bro friends. In fact, Austin seems to live inside a guy-fantasy beer commercial. Craig has been a stick in the mud but is now intoxicated by the possibilities of being a popular kid.

Of course, Craig, devoid of charm and emotional intelligence, just can’t keep up, and his clumsiness – and his insistence on doubling down on his gaffes – sabotage his social aspirations. When he tries to hang with Austin’s friends, a social disaster results. When he tris to impress his wife Tami (an excellent Kate Mara) by duplicating his adventure with Austin, it’s a real disaster, not just a social one.

The situation is grist for a very smart story. Every one of us has felt socially inadequate or left out at some point. Every one of us has done something dorky in public. So the audience is ready to identify with a movie character who is suffering from embarrassment and lack of social confidence.

The problem here is that Craig isn’t a well-meaning, lovable loser that we can root for. As created by writer-director Andrew DeYoung and played by Tim Robinson, he’s a jerk. And the screenplay misses the easy opportunities to explore the male fantasy of the perfect buddy.

There some LOL moments in Friendship, the best being when Tami reports on what occurred when she was stuck in a municipal sewer. And it develops that even Austin is hiding an uncool secret.

After a while, we stop cringing for Craig, because we no longer care about him. Friendship is a swing-and-a-miss.

CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: China evolves, she persists

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Photo caption: Tao Zhao in CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: Photo courtesy of Janus Films.

Sweeping over decades of modern Chinese history, the auteur Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides reveals profound changes in Chinese society by implanting a personal story within an epic sweep. Writer-director Jia has built Caught by the Tides from footage shot over the 21 years as he made other movies. In a tour de force, actress Tao Zhao delivers an exquisite portrait of resilience.

The plot is deceptively straight-forward, tracing the 21-year arc of the relationship between Qiaoqiao (Tao Zhao) and her shady boyfriend Bin (Zhubin Li). He moves away to find a better financial opportunity, promising to send for her when he’s settled. But he ghosts her, and she heads off to track him down. This simple story is embedded in a portrait of a changing China over the 21-years, with Jia’s clear-eyed observation of the changes and their impacts on regular people.

Neither Qiaoqiao or Bin can affect the course of China’s evolution (they are caught by the tides), but both seek to find their place it in.

Tao Zhao and Zhubin Li in CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: Photo courtesy of Janus Films.

This is a China that we rarely see, real Chinese (and I mean hundreds of non-professional actors) doing their jobs and entertaining themselves, in cities most of us Westerners haven’t heard of. In what amounts to one dreamy 111-minute montage, Jia presents scores of vignettes . We see retired miners tipping female singers, river travel on boats large and small, a small Christian worship service, mass jogging, an adage-spouting supermarket robot, and a most unlikely TikTok star. The stream of scenes never feels disjointed or boring because the continuity of human experience is so authentic and so novel.

The story begins in 2001 in Datong, a dreary coal mining city in Northern China, a gritty place where no building seems to have been repainted for decades. By 2006, when the story moves to Fenjie City, China is ALL IN on economic development, and corruption is rampart, as everybody seeks a slice of the action; the Chinese government relocated 1.1 million people, sacrificing their homes for the economic payoff of the Three Gorges dam. and Jia shows us the human impact. In 2022, the story moves to Zuhai City near Guadong and back to Datong; despite the COVID pandemic, the new widespread prosperity is jarring, and even Datong has become vibrant.

Tao Zhao in CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: Photo courtesy of Janus Films.

Jia is one of the world’s best filmmakers; I rated his Ash Is the Purest White as one of the best films of 2019. In Caught by the Tides, as in most of his films, he benefits from the collaboration with one of the world’s most compelling screen actresses, his wife Tao Zhao. Remarkably, Tao dominates Caught by the Tides without speaking any dialogue. Her character Qiaoqiao isn’t mute or even passive; she has plenty to say but she’s able to communicate, even forcefully, with her face. Qiaoqiao isn’t able to get everything to go her way, but the sound she makes in the final second of Caught by the Tides makes it clear that she’s living life on her terms. It’s an indelible performance.

Caught by the Tides is the best movie of 2025 so far and the best Chinese art film I’ve ever seen.

THE FRIEND: grieving with an enormous dog

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Photo caption: Naomi Watts and Bing (as Apollo) in THE FRIEND. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

We don’t see much of the womanizing writer Walter (Bill Murray) in the The Friend, but it doesn’t take long to see how selfish he was before his death by suicide. He leaves behind unfinished projects, a wife and two ex-wives, a neglected adult daughter and the deep, longtime friendship with his editor Iris (Naomi Watts). He was seemingly indifferent to suicide’s impact on the people in his life, but he has saddled Iris with the care of his surviving pet dog, Apollo. Apollo, while sweet-tempered, is an enormous Great Dane, and Iris’ apartment building does not allow dogs.

For all their qualities, Great Danes are not easy to care for, especially in Manhattan, and Iris must hustle to find a placement for Apollo while she is scrambling to save her final project with Walter and profoundly grieving. Iris is really angry at Walter, but the Apollo situation is so consuming that expressing that anger doesn’t occur to her. Will Iris be able to navigate her grief? Will she be able to keep her apartment? And what will happen to Apollo?

Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel make very few films, but they’re superb (The Deep End, Montana Story); The Friend is one of their lesser works, but it’s well-crafted and satisfying. They are able to keep the material sentimental, but not overly sentimental. This is a weeper, and The Wife and her friend liked it more than I did.

The soundtrack elevates the other elements of the film, especially a cover of Fred Neil’s Everybody’s Talkin’ by Iggy Pop.

Apollo is a dog of uncommonly sensitive eyes, who can express a wide range of emotions with a still gaze. He is played by Bing, also a Great Dane.

The Friend was the opening night film at this year’s Cinequest, but I missed it there. It’s now streaming on Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.

PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF: a man hidden in his own invention

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Photo caption: Paul Reubens in PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF. Courtesy of HBP Max.

Tomorrow, HBO Max begins airing the bio-doc Pee-Wee as Himself, from the acclaimed Silicon Valley native, New York-based documentarian Matt Wolf. Wolf has an uncanny gift for finding compelling stories that everyone else has overlooked: Teenage, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Spaceship Earth and Rustin.

The delightfully wacky character Pee-Wee Herman sprang on the scene, seemingly from nowhere, sweetly celebrating his own weirdness. Pee-Wee was the creation of actor Paul Reubens. Reubens, of course, had a life before Pee-Wee, and he had a very private personal life distinct from his invented persona. Sadly, Reubens lost his privacy in a career-killing tabloid scandal.

Wolf had elicited permission from Reubens to make a film about Reubens’ life, and secured hours of on-camera interview footage. But the mercurial Reubens, highly ambivalent to sharing his personal story, kept pulling the plug on the project. When Reubens fell ill, Wolf was in a race against mortality to get Reubens back on board. Fortunately, Wolf succeeded.

Pee-Wee as Himself runs three hours and twenty-five minutes and will be aired in two parts on HBO Max, beginning tomorrow.