Movies

BEING MARY TYLER MOORE: you might just make it after all

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Photo caption: BEING MARY TYLER MOORE. Courtesy of HBO.

The showbiz biodoc Being Mary Tyler Moore traces the career and life of an important trailblazer who captivated American TV audiences for decades. The ever-relatable Mary Tyler Moore pioneered the fictional single woman on TV, an important cultural moment.

While she was playing the archetypal single career woman, Moore was a wife and mother. She and husband Grant Tinker created some of the best TV ever – The Bob Newhart Show, WKRP in Cincinnati, Hill Street Blues, and St. Elsewhere – and pioneered the TV spinoff with Rhoda. It bears remembering that CBS’ Saturday evening 8-11 pm slate in the fall of 1973 was the best nightly TV lineup ever: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show and The Carol Burnett Show. 

Being Mary Tyler Moore traces the lesser known aspects of Moore’s life, including her childhood and retirement years. Of course, there’s a clip from the Mary Tyer Moore Show’s unforgettable Chuckles the Clown episode.

Incidentally, I highly recommend Joan Jett’s version of the MTM Show theme Love Is All Around, which you can find on YouTube.

Being Mary Tyler Moore is streaming on HBO, beginning May 26. I screened it for the SFFILM in April.

is in the Air.

THE BLIND MAN WHO DID NOT WANT TO SEE TITANIC: wow – laughs, thrills, love

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Photo caption: Petri Poikolainen in THE MAN WHO DID NOT WANT TO SEE TITANIC. Courtesy of Cinedigm Entertainment Group.

Wow. The Finnish indie The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic is a rare nugget of complete originality that takes us into a unfamiliar world filled with unexpected laughs, suddenly turns into a thriller, and finishes as a moving love story. It’s unlike any movie I’ve seen.

Our protagonist, Jaako (Petri Poikolainen), is blind and confined to a wheelchair. Writer-director Teemu Nikki tells his story, in that most visual of media – cinema, from the perspective of a blind person. We either see Jaako’s face or the blurs that Jaako sees.

Jaako is a movie nerd, secure in his cultural taste. He rejects pity and strives to maintain his dignity with his sarcastic humor. (He has renamed his caregiver after two sadistic movie nurses – Annie Wilkes and Nurse Rached.) He’s a very, very funny guy.

Jaako has a girlfriend, Sirpa (Marjaana Maijala), that he’s never met. She is also housebound with a disability, but in another city. Sirpa has a sense of humor that can match his, and the two bond on the telephone, each bringing the other some delight each day. One day, Sirpa is devastated by some bad medical news, and Jaako resolves to travel by himself, unaided, across Finland to comfort her. Jaako and we go forth on an eventful journey. I don’t think that a person can display real courage until they are really afraid, and Jaako learns this. too.

Like Jaako, lead actor Petri Poikolainen is also a blind man with multiple sclerosis.

What Teemu Nikki has created here is astounding. There are layers upon layers of newness and originality in The Blind Man, etc: the character of Jaako, the procedural of living independently with both MS and blindness, and cinema from the POV of the blind person. The film’s overriding achievement is empathy.

The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic won an audience award at Venice Film Festival. It’s one of the Best Movies of 2023 – So Far. The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic is available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

RODEO: roller coaster on two wheels

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Photo caption: Julie Ledru in RODEO. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

In the ever-kinetic Rodeo, a remarkably fierce young woman invites herself into a crew of dirt riders. Rodeo is set with remarkable verisimilitude in a subculture of young bikers from France’s hardscrabble immigrant communities. It’s an edgy scene, and Julia (newcomer Julie Ledru) penetrates it only because she’s a little scary herself.

Julia is a force of nature, and she is able to back off guys with an explosive hostility. When she is ready to adopt a dangerous new passion on two wheels, no one can stand in her way. Off she rides, on a journey with life-and-death stakes.

Rodeo is the first feature for French director Lola Quivoron, who is the real star of this roller coaster of a movie. If she wants to, Quivoron will be making big Hollywood action films like The Fast and the Furious.

Rodeo won the Un Certain Regard coup de coeur prize at Cannes, and I screened it for the SLO Film Fest. Rodeo is now available to stream from Amazon, Apple TV and Vudu.

FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK: triple-threat trailblazers

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Photo caption: Fanny in FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK. Courtesy of PBS.

Fanny: The Right to Rock documents the first all-female rock band to get signed by a major record label and churn out five albums. Fifty years ago, the band Fanny was breaking ground for women musicians – and for lesbians and Filipinas. Women rockers were a novelty in the early 1970; imagine layering on LGBTQ identity and Asian-American heritage.

Although you probably haven’t heard of them, this was no garage band. They had a major label record deal, European tours, and hung out with big name peers. Unlike many male bands of the period, Fanny didn’t crash and burn due to drug use or clashing egos. They just never caught on with record-buyers.

FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK. Courtesy of PBS.

It’s pretty clear that sexism in the music industry and media, combined with maybe being a little ahead of their time to deny Fanny stardom. Too bad – I would have loved to listen to them in their heyday.

Their music fits right into the stuff I was listening to in the 1970s. I’m guessing that the reason why I hadn’t heard of them is that they didn’t get played on FM radio in the Bay Area.

These women can still really rock in their 70s, and they’re a hoot. Tomorrow night, May 17, they’ll perform for one time at the Whisky A-Go-Go to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of their now infamous club performance at the Whisky.

Fanny in FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK. Courtesy of PBS.

Fanny: The Right to Rock is filled with colorful anecdotes from back in the day. Todd Rundgren, an important early associate of Fanny, and Bonnie Raitt appear as eyewitnesses. Cherie Curry of the Runaways, Cathy Valentine of the Go-Go’s and Kate Pierson of the B-52s testify to Fanny’s trailblazing status.

I screened Fanny: The Right to Rock last year at the Nashville Film Festival. On May 22, you can watch it on your very own television when It will be broadcast on PBS and begin streaming on on PBS.ORG and the PBS APP.

LAND OF GOLD: the kid is very good, anyway

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Caroline Valencia and Nardeep Khurmi in LAND OF GOLD. Courtesy of Land of Gold.
Caroline Valencia and Nardeep Khurmi in LAND OF GOLD. Courtesy of Land of Gold.

In the indie drama Land of Gold, Kiran (Nardeep Khurmi, also the film’s writer and director) is a Punjabi truck driver in Southern California who is mere days away from becoming a father for the first time – and he’s panicking. To the dismay of his wife, he decides to take on a long haul to the East Coast (and risks not being present for the birth). Of course, he’s really running away from the pressure. Part way across the country, he discovers that there’s a stowaway in his truck – a ten-year-old girl, whom he deduces is undocumented.

Kiran’s family are also immigrants, so he understands that presenting her to the authorities would have consequences. It turns out that she is on the run, too, but toward a family connection. The two continue their road trip, and Kiran learns enough from her to address his personal crisis.

The girl is played by Caroline Valencia, and she’s exceptional. Khurmi’s screenplay handles the kindling of their relationship and the girl’s determination adeptly and with authenticity.

Land of Gold is certainly not a bad movie, but it didn’t engage me when Caroline Valencia was off-screen. That’s because I never bought into Kiran’s own angst.

I screened Land of Gold for the SLO Film Fest, where it won the audience award for Best Narrative Feature. It begins streaming on HBO on May 15th.

BLACKBERRY: woulda, coulda, shoulda

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Photo caption: Jay Baruchal in BLACKBERRY. Courtesy of IFC Films.

BlackBerry is the funny true story of Canadian geeks who find themselves suddenly dominating the nascent smartphone market…but not for long. The improbable rise of BlackBerry’s parent company is a tale of the Odd Couple partnership co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchal), who ran the engineering side, and Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), who managed finance and sales.

Mike Lazaridis solved the technical challenge that had kept cell phones from becoming the email machines that they have been since. As played by Baruchal, Lazaridis is reserved, even shy, supremely confident in all things tech and not all confidant with other humans.

Lazaridis needed a pitchman, and that was the hard charging Balsillie, who, as played by Howerton ranged between hard-charging and abusive. A tech exec I knew in Silicon Valley was described to me as having “too much testosterone” and that’s Howerton’s Balsillie.

Lazaridis’ engineering brilliance, combined with Balsillie’s sheer will and audacity, allowed the company to nimbly pivot through various product cycles. Balsillie’s hubris even began to leak into Lazaridis. But then came an advance in product design that Lazaridis hadn’t anticipated, and Balsillie had cut one too many corners in finance.

I’ve mostly seen Baruchal in much more broadly funny roles (Tropic Thunder, This Is the End). Here, Baruchal successfully carries the leading role with a much more subtle and textured performance. One nice (and slyly underplayed) touch is that when Baruchal’s character transitions from the CEO of a start-up to the CEO of a company with a massive market cap, his haircut transitions, too.

For much of the movie, we see Howerton playing Balsillie as a one-note, hard charger. He refuses to acknowledge any obstacle, until, in a wonderful moment of performance, his face shows when knows he’s finally been had.

BlackBerry was directed by Matt Johnson, who also co-adapted the screenplay and plays one of company co-founders.

Make sure you watch the end credits to see what happened to the real guys.

I screened BlackBerry for the San Luis Obispo Film Festival, where it won the audience award for Best of Fest. BlackBerry opens in theaters tomorrow, and it’s a surefire audience-pleaser.

THE LAST LULLABY: backing out of a contract hit

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Photo caption: Tom Sizemore and Sasha Alexander in THE LAST LULLABY. Courtesy of Chaillot Films.

The Last Lullaby is a surprisingly brilliant contemporary noir film from 2008 (that I KNOW that you haven’t seen).  Tom Sizemore plays a retired hit man, a professional loner now living what would be a comfortable loner life (except for his chronic insomnia).  He is offered a very large sum to take out a librarian (Sasha Alexander), but he is attracted to her and wonders why someone wants her dead?  And we ask, as in any noir film, is she the innocent that she seems? 

Sizemore, who just died this March,  is most remembered for his Oscar-nominated performance as Tom Hank’s sergeant in Saving Private Ryan. Sizemore was intense and charismatic and hugely talented, but his longtime cocaine addiction kept him off the screen and in the tabloids, rehab and jail. The Last Lullaby was a rare leading role for Sizemore, and showcased his magnetism.

Tom Sizemore in THE LAST LULLABY. Courtesy of Chaillot Films.

The Last Lullaby is the only feature directed by Jeffrey Goodman, and he adds the appropriate level of neo-noir dread to the suspense. Sizemore’s performance and a smart screenplay by Peter Biegen and Max Alan Collins carry this film, and Alexander is good, too.

Ray McKinnon, who played the heartbreakingly unhinged Reverend H.W. Smith in Deadwood and created the TV series Rectify, is credited here as Ominous figure.

The Last Lullaby is available to stream from Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu and redbox. 

BEST WORST MOVIE: a romp through cinematic awfulness

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The notorious “O My God” TROLL 2 scene in BEST BAD MOVIE

Troll 2 was so bad that it earned its very own documentary, Best Worst Movie. Despite its title, Troll 2 was completely unrelated to the earlier movie Troll – and has no trolls in it.

Troll 2 is about a white bread suburban family that vacations in the mountain village of Nilbog (“Goblin” spelled backwards, get it?). The family doesn’t know that all of the locals are vegetarian predator goblins who can take the form of regular humans. The goblins are able to turn humans into vegetative matter (a green slime) that the goblins can ingest.

TROLL 2 scene in BEST WORST MOVIE

Troll 2 was made in 1990 with very primitive production values – and by a non-English speaking Italian crew and a non-Italian speaking Z-list American cast. Best Worst Movie showcases the inept acting and directing aside, but Troll 2’s screenplay is probably the source of the most laughs:

  • Dead Grandpa Seth keeps appearing to the boy.
  • The boy saves his family by urinating on the family dinner.
  • There’s a teen make out scene so “hot” that it literally pops popcorn.

You can see some of the finer bits by doing a YouTube search for “You can’t piss on hospitality” and “Troll 2 O my God”.

Best Worst Movie contains some squirmy scenes with cast members whose mental health issues have since worsened. And the Italian director is a jerk who is narcissistically unwilling to acknowledge its badness, but is all to happy to bask in Troll 2‘s new found cult status. But the goodhearted goofiness of star George Hardy, a cast of good sports and Troll 2‘s cult following dominates.

George Hardy in a TROLL 2 scene in BEST WORST MOVIE

Troll 2 is one of the films in my Bad Movie Festival. Best Worst Movie can be streamed from Amazon (included with Prime) and AppleTV.

JEWS OF THE WILD WEST: desperadoes, cowpunchers…and Jews

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Okay, so this is one of those rare movies that had me at the title. One doesn’t automatically think of Jews among the wagon trains, desperadoes and cowpunchers of the Wild West. But, in Jews of the Wild West, documentarian Amanda Kinsey brings us an anthology of impressively well-researched Jewish experiences on the Western frontier.

Kinsey starts off with a saloon girl who married an iconic gunslinger (and buried him in Colma’s Jewish cemetery) and the marketer of the clothing item most identified with the American West (hint – not Wranglers). As a Western history buff, I was familiar with those first two stories, but then I started learning a lot:

  • Why many of the first mayors of frontier towns were Jewish;
  • How Eastern European occupational restrictions on Jews prepared them for a pivotal role in the development of the great Denver and Greeley, Colorado, cattle stockyards;
  • That most Jews found markedly less antisemitism in the West than in the East;
  • That teenage Golda Meir ran away to high school in Denver.

My jaw dropped at the shocking story of the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, which in 1881-84, until taken over by the reputable United Hebrew Charities, was helping new Jewish emigrants resettle in the remote West. The seeming benevolence, it turns out, was motivated by an earlier wave of now prosperous Jews who didn’t want the impoverished Orthodox arrivals from Eastern Europe to challenge capitalism and make them look bad.

Interestingly, filmmaker Kinsey, a longtime NBC News producer and five-time Emmy winner, is NOT herself Jewish.

I attended a screening of Jews of the Wild West at the San Luis Obispo Jewish Film Festival that included a Q&A with Kinsey and local historians. Jews of the Wild West is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

HALLELUJAH: LEONARD COHEN, A JOURNEY, A SONG: a reflective artist, a reflective movie

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Photo caption. Leonard Cohen in HALLELUJAH: LEONARD COHEN, A JOURNEY, A SONG. Courtesy of Leonard Cohen Family Trust.

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song is a biodoc as reflective as the subject himself. That subject is poet/singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, creator of profound verse and ear-worm melodies. Cohen was such a seeker that he secluded himself for five years at a Buddhist monastery on Mount Baldy. I’m reposting about this film because it is finally widely available to stream.

Co-writers and co-directors Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine have comprehensively sourced the film with Cohen intimates and a substantial dose of Cohen himself. Geller and Goldfine have braided together Cohen’s journey with that of his most sublime song, Hallelujah.

One doesn’t think of a song even HAVING a journey, but Cohen wrote Hallelujah over years and years, possibly composing over 150 verses, only to have Columbia refuse to issue the album that it had commissioned. Then the song was rescued by John Cale, rejuvenated in the animated movie Shrek, and became iconic with the spectacular cover by Jeff Buckley. Along the way, Cohen himself would reveal alternative lyrics in live performance. Helluva story.

I’ve seen splashier documentaries – this is, after all, about a poet. The one forehead-slapping shocker for me was the initial rejection of Hallelujah. At almost two hours, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song is a settle-in-and-be-mesmerized experience.

(BTW, could there be a bigger producer/artist mismatch than Phil Spector and Leonard Cohen?)

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song is now available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.