Movies

SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD: immune from shame

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SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. Courtesy of Vanessa Lapa.

In her absorbing documentary Speer Goes to Hollywood, filmmaker Vanessa Lapa takes us inside a Nazi war criminal’s brazen attempt to rehabilitate his image into “the Good Nazi”. Previously unheard private audio recordings of Albert Speer himself reveal him to be one of history’s most audacious spin doctors.

Speer, the highest ranking Nazi to escape execution at the Nuremberg Trials, was the master of the Nazis’ wartime production efforts. A trained architect, any ability Speer had to design structures was surpassed by his genius in logistics. In Speer Goes to Hollywood, Speer displays an ever greater gift for dissembling.

After being released from prison in the mid 1960’s, Speer published a bestselling (and self-serving) memoir, Inside the Third Reich, to perpetuate what is known as The Speer Myth. Speer would have us believe that the worst crimes in history occurred – right under his nose and to his benefit – without any participation on his part. Speer’s defense was essentially, “Hey, it was the OTHER Nazis“.

(Note: not even a liar as bald-faced as Speer denied that the Holocaust happened.)

To supply the German war machine, Speer exploited the nearly limitless pool of those conquered, persecuted and to be exterminated by the Nazis. Powering his production with forced labor, Speer enslaved 12.5 million victims and worked many of them to death, all to perpetrate a war of aggression.

In the tapes, we hear Speer collaborating with Andrew Birkin, a Stanley Kubrick protege, on the script for a film to further Speer’s version of history. In the face of damning evidence, Speer never wavered in his deflections, dodges and denials. Speer Goes to Hollywood reveals Albert Speer to stay on message with unmatched relentlessness, discipline and audacity.

Andrew Birkin was trying to cash in on the popularity of Inside the Thrd Reich. The tapes show Birkin to be stunningly enabling in the attempted whitewash. Once Birkin slips and blames a kerfuffle on “the Jewish machine”.

Another Birkin mentor, Carol Reed is the truth teller. Reed, the director of The Third Man, gives Birkin a reality check – this IS a whitewash, pure and simple.

A prime example of the banality of evil, Speer doesn’t seem to be a fanatic hater, but an amoral grasper/climber, willing to swallow even genocide as an acceptable price for getting ahead. He does display an ingrained antisemitism, once tossing off “Of course, we resented the Jews“, as if, who wouldn’t?

Here’s a tantalizing nugget from Speer Goes to Hollywood. We hear Speer claim to have written the top Nuremberg prosecutor, American Robert Jackson, to claim important knowledge of Germany’s neurological warfare research, using it as leverage to avoid being turned over to the Soviets. Speer hints at an implied quid pro quo, but given Speer’s credibility, who knows if any of it is true.

The ever-watchable Speer Going to Hollywood chronicles unashamedness on a mass scale.

OFFICIAL COMPETITION: egos, power and a perfect ending

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Photo caption: Oscar Martínez, Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas in OFFICIAL COMPETITION. Courtesy of IFC Films.

The smart and biting satire Official Competition uses the world of filmmaking (where better?) to send up professional jealousies. A billionaire wants to produce a great movie as his legacy, so he assembles a filmmaking Dream Team: the famed director Lola (Penélope Cruz), the global movie star Félix (Antonio Banderas) and the renowned sage actor Iván (Oscar Martínez). Their egos come along, too.

Ivan, a leading acting teacher who pioneers new and challenging theater, is the critical and academic world’s most esteemed actor. There’s a wonderful scene where Ivan and his wife (a children’s’ author) sit in their boho apartment listening to an avant garde audio performance.

Felix, in contrast, has become a world-wide celebrity by starring in what Martin Scorsese calls global audio-visual entertainment to distinguish these movies from cinema. Adored by millions of fans and used to having his whims and appetites satisfied by toadies, Felix is convinced that he has earned his reputation as a great actor. (And he shows up to every event with a different bimbo on his arm.)

The tycoon has purchased a Nobel Prize-winning novel (that he hasn’t read) to be adapted into a screenplay. It’s about a rivalry between brothers. (In one of Official Competition’s many delicious ironies, this source material is very pedestrian, several rungs below East of Eden, for example.)

Lola (Cruz wears a wig that is a mountain of reddish tangles) is a piece of work herself. She enjoys abusing her power as director and is devoid of personal boundaries.

Felix and Ivan are oil and water,and Lola, for artistic reasons (and more than a touch of sadism), provokes their latent rivalry, seeking to enhance what will be the tension in their on-screen rivalry. In nine days of rehearsals before the shoot, Lola plunges Ivan and Felix into a series of evermore ridiculous, intrusive and degrading acting exercises. She has them read lines under a huge, suspended rock, binds their bodies together in cling wrap, and overamplifies their kissing noises.

Lola’s caprices accomplish two things with Ivan and Felix. She turns their passive contempt for each other into open hatred. And she makes them hate her, too.

Each actor (and Lola, too) has a massive ego begging to be deflated, and the battles between them in Official Competition are very, very funny.

The ending of Official Competition is perfect – one of the cleverest and most satisfying that I’ve seen in a good long while.

The Argentines Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat co-directed Official Competition, which they co-wrote with Andrés Duprat. Official Competition is being described as an arch takedown of the movie industry, but the egos parodied here are present in many walks of life.

Cruz, Banderas and Oscar Martínez (the hilariously dark Wild Tales) each deliver dynamite performances. Irene Escolar is very good in a deadpan and essentially silent role as the billionaire’s daughter cast in the movie.

[Note: Prior to Official Competition, the Spanish stars Cruz and Banderas had only shared the screen for about two minutes in I’m So Excited; they did not work together in Pain and Glory, in which they both appeared in different segments.]

Official Competition, so far the wittiest film of 2022, is in theaters.

MY DONKEY, MY LOVER & I: it had me at the title

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Laure Calamy in MY DONKEY, MY LOVER AND I

In the intriguingly titled French comedy My Donkey, My Lover & I, Antoinette (Laure Calamy) is a vivacious and goofy schoolteacher in a French provincial town.  She’s single, but she’s head over heels into a fling with a married man.  She’s excited that’s he’s taking her away to a resort at the upcoming school holiday, but – at the very last minute – he instead submits to a mountain hiking trip with his family.

Antoinette’s distraught and angry disappointment soon transforms into determination and lunacy – she decides to go to the same network of mountain trails, rent a donkey and encounter him in the mountains.

Here’s what I didn’t know before I stumbled on this film at the Mill Valley Film Festival.  In 1879, a lovelorn Robert Louis Stevenson, with only a donkey companion, took a solitary hike in Southern France and penned his travel memoir Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. It’s common for today’s French to spend a week of their vacations re-creating Stevenson’s experience.  It’s a thing, and it’s spawned a cottage industry of donkey rentals and mountain hostels.

Antoinette can be an over-sharer, and when she blurts her mission to another hiker, it goes viral, and soon everyone else in the mountains knows.  Having prepared for a lie-by-the-pool vacation, she is ill-equipped, especially in the footwear department, to trudge over mountains,.  And, of course, she gets the very most uncooperative donkey.  How is she going to find her lover – and, if she does,  what is she going to do with him?

Laure Calamy is a brilliant comic actress (and one of the highlights of last summer’s Sibyl). She knows that the key to comedy is for an actor to be absolutely committed (with no hint of winking at the audience) to an absurd course of action.  This is why Buster Keaton, Lucille Ball and Gene Wilder were performance geniuses.  And it is why Will Ferrell isn’t as funny as Bill Hader or Kristen Wiig.

In My Lover, My Donkey & I, Calamy is all in on Antoinette, a woman who can be both alarmingly unself-conscious and cringingly self-conscious, and both pathetic and empowered.  Antoinette endures indignity after indignity, but Calamy’s radiance shines through.

The premise of this film seems utterly unbelievable, but the story is based on actual events which are well-known in France, hence the French title Antoinette dans les Cévennes.

My Lover, My Donkey & I may not be Annie Hall or even There’s Something About Mary, but there are worse ways to spend 97 minutes than with the delightful Laure Calamy. It’s opening July 22, including in the Bay Area at the Opera Plaza and the Rafael.

BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE: not your conventional love triangle

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Photo caption: Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon in Claire Denis’ BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE (FIRE). Courtesy of SFFILM.

With some of Frances’s top filmmakers on the job – Both Sides of the Blade is not your conventional love triangle.

Sara (the ever rapturous Juliette Binoche) has built a ten-year relationship with Jean (Vincent Lindon), that has survived his prison sentence. Sara had previously been with François (Grégoire Colin), but left him because she valued Jean’s reliability, loyalty and decency. When François shows up again in their lives, Sara is drawn to him again.

Both Sides of the Blade is the work of French auteur Claire Denis (35 Shots of Rum, Let the Sunshine In). With Denis, Binoche and Lindon layering in all the complexities of these characters, the result is unexpected.

I screened Both Sides of the Blade (also known as Fire) earlier this year for this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It opens in Bay Area theaters this week.

BITTERBRUSH: two women at work

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Photo caption: Colie Moline and Hollyn Patterson in BITTERBRUSH. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In the cinéma vérité documentary Bitterbrush, Hollyn and Colie, two women in their early twenties do their jobs. Because they are range riders, their job is to move into a spartan cabin high in the remote mountains of eastern Idaho and collect cattle pasturing in the heights. Over several months, the two of them, on horseback and aided by a few trained dogs, find and herd 500-600 head of cattle.

This is LITERALLY not their first rodeo, and we quickly see that Hollyn and Colie are already seasoned, skilled and resourceful. These are two very young women alone on an isolated mountain and responsible for hundreds of valuable animals – and they face no situation that confounds them. We also see that range riding is hard, hard work. And it’s even harder in a snow storm.

As do any co-workers, Hollyn and Colie shoot the breeze. Their hopes and dreams and future plans are vague, along the lines of “If I won the lottery“, until one development forces more focus.

For those of us not in the cattle industry, the cattle-herding ability of the dogs is a revelation.

Technically, this is a workplace documentary. All the gals do on camera is go about their daily work, but the novelty of that work and the rapturous setting make the leisurely pace of Bitterbrush surprisingly riveting. This is director Emelie Mahdavian’s second feature, and it’s damn good.

The location, in high Rocky Mountain valleys, is stunning. Cinematographers Derek Howard and Alejandro Mejia take full advantage.

Sensibility alert: this film is about the livestock industry, and horses and cows are not treated as suburban pets.

Bitterbrush is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and redbox.

Colie Moline and Hollyn Patterson in BITTERBRUSH. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

POSER: personal plagiarism

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Photo caption: Sylvie Mix in POSER. Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Films.

Poser, a deeply psychological portrait of an artistic wannabe among real artists, was the Must See at the 2021 Nashville Film Festival and it’s in theaters now (albeit hard to find). It is worth seeking out.

Lennon (Sylvie Mix) reveres the underground music scene of Columbus, Ohio’s Old North (which she compares to the cultural achievements of Renaissance Florence). Her entrée is a podcast, which allows her to meet a panoply of local artists, including Bobbi Kitten, the charismatic front woman of the real life band Damn the Witch Siren. At first, we chuckle and cringe at Lennon, until it becomes apparent that a much darker personal plagiarism is afoot and Poser evolves into a thriller.

Poser is the first narrative feature for directors Ori Segev and Noah Dixon (Dixon wrote the screenplay), Mix, Kitten and damn near the entire cast and crew, and it’s packed with original music. Segev and Dixon are Columbus filmmakers who work in music, and they wanted to set a story in that music scene with their favorite bands; they could have done that with a banal premise, but instead their story is super original

There is so much in here about identity and the creative process, lots of original music and some cultural tourism, too. A shot of the recording of train sounds is indelibly chilling.

The podcast lets Lennon invite herself into the world she worships. When Lennon is invited up on a rooftop by two actual artists, she can barely contain her excitement. We find Lennon amusing until she practices aping an artist in front of her mirror, and we sense something much darker is afoot. Stealing the creative work of someone else is plagiarism – but what is stealing someone else’s identity?

It’s easy to mock self-invention, but every achiever begins with the ambition to be something he/she is not yet. (And it doesn’t escape me that no one but me decided that I would become a movie blogger.)

Sylvie Mix and Bobbi Kitten in POSER. Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Films.

Be prepared to be creeped out by Mix’s performance and to be dazzled by Bobbi Kitten’s magnetism. This is the first feature film for Sylvie Mix, and she is able to turn the role of a passive, unaccomplished, initially silly character into something powerful.

Poser is the first screen credit for the exuberantly confident Bobbi Kitten, who commands our attention whenever she is onscreen. Damn the Witch Siren is the premiere electronic act in Columbus, Ohio, and five of her songs are on the soundtrack.

Z Wolf in POSER. Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Films.

Kitten’s colleague Z Wolf is also a presence in Poser. Z Wolf always wears a full wolf mask on his head, sipping a fountain drink through a straw with great practicality.

The audience gets to visit the Old North, Columbus Ohio’s local arts neighborhood. There’s a very funny montage where we hear from real artists and aspiring artists. It reminded me of a code that The Wife and our niece Sarah devised when strolling through an art show – BA for Bad Art, NA for Not Art and KA for Kid Art. One very stoned guy marvels over the secret of the doubled-over potato chip.

Poser is rolling out in theaters and is playing Landmark’s Opera Plaza beginning July 8. My favorite film at last year’s Nashville Film Festival, Poser is one of the Best Movies of 2022 – So Far.

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.

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 opening July 8 in some Bay Area theaters (including the Roxie, the Opera Plaza, the Rafael and the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood), and will expand into more theaters on July 15 and 22.

CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH: decent people and their foibles, navigating life

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Photo caption: Cooper Raiff and Dakota Johnson in CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH. Courtesy of AppleTV.

The engaging and satisfying Cha Cha Real Smooth, an adult-coming-of-age romantic dramedy, is surprisingly textured. The charming but feckless Andrew (Cooper Riff) has emerged from a fun college experience that has not prepared him for the grown up world. His high-achieving college girlfriend has correctly assessed that he has no plan for life after college and, hence, doesn’t have a future. Andrew’s only alternative is moving back with his mom (Leslie Mann), Stepdad Greg (Brad Garret) and his little brother (Evan Assante) and taking a humiliating job at the mall.

Andrew stumbles into a new gig that leverages his one true skill – he becomes a bar/bat mitzvah party starter, the guy who can get everyone (including 13-year-olds and their parents) on to the dance floor. On the job he meets the autistic girl Lola (Vanessa Burghard) and her young mom Domino (Dakota Johnson). (She’s not a stripper although Domino is a stripper name if there ever was one).

Andrew and Domino bond over Andrew’s compassionate treatment of Lola. The 32-year-old Domino, however, is a damaged soul, having married very young, only to have been left immediately by Lola’s dad to raise an autistic kid on her own. Domino now has a high-achieving fiance (Raul Castillo), who travels a lot.

This premise is ripe for for a conventional rom com or a sex comedy or a bawdy, low-brow teen comedy. However, Cha Cha Real Smooth departs from the predictable and heads into unexpected directions driven by its characters. Every character struggles with something – Andrew’s mom is bipolar, Stepdad Greg is wooden and tonedeaf, the little brother is awkwardly stumbling into adolescence, and Andrew, of course is immature and aimless. Even the girl who was All That at Andrew’s high school is also drifting and wondering if she “peaked in high school”.

But, with the exception of a couple middle school bullies and their enabling dad, everybody in Cha Cha Real Smooth is a decent person. In this era of Snark, here are good people, with their foibles and eccentricities just trying to navigate life.

This refreshing aspect of Cha Cha Real Smooth comes from the characters written by Cooper Raiff, who also directed and, of course, stars as Andrew. This is Raiff’s second feature as a writer-director (following Shithouse), and, at age 25, he has proved that he is a promising talent. Especially as a writer.

Dakota Johnson’s performance is one of her best. Her Domino is so invested in her daughter that the rest of her life is chaotic; she’s well-schooled in hard knocks, leaving her much wiser than Andrew, but fearful of accepting good developments in her life.

The rest of the cast is very good, too. Leslie Mann continues to be a comedic treasure.

Cha Cha Real Smooth is streaming on AppleTV.

JOCKEY: he finally grapples with himself

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Photo caption: Clifton Collins, Jr. in JOCKEY. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

In Jockey, Clifton Collins, Jr., plays Jackson Silva, a seasoned professional jockey – perhaps now too seasoned. His skills are undiminished but his body’s capacity to employ those skills is in serious decline. Just as he’s facing professional mortality, a promising young jockey-wannabe (Moises Arias – very good) appears and says that he is Jackson’s son.

Jackson has led a life free of introspection. He has only focused on training and riding and partying afterward. Now he must ask himself who is he, if not a jockey? Is he a man who has left relationship carnage in his wake? Is he completely alone? Can he reinvent himself?

Clifton Collins, Jr. and Moises Arias in JOCKEY. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

The life of a jockey is grinding and dangerous, and Jockey is a behind-the-scenes horse-racing procedural. In one scene, Jackson and his peers (played by non-actor real-life jockeys) take turns recounting their injuries; the litany of wear-and-tear and outright catastrophes is grimly impressive.

Molly Parker and Clifton Collins Jr. in JOCKEY. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Molly Parker plays Jackson’s longtime boss and collaborator. Since her turn as the unforgettable Alma Garret in Deadwood, she has shone in episodic TV (Shattered, The Firm, House of Cards, Lost in Space). Here she credibly plays a woman utterly comfortable in a male world, respected by her peers. She is always supportive of Jackson, and she is resisting giving him a needed reality check.

Jockey is a showcase for Clifton Collins, a brilliant character actor who rarely gets lead roles. Collins is best known for his portrayal of killer Perry Smith, the subject of In Cold Blood, in 2005’s Capote with Philip Seymour Hoffman. His performance as Jackson is deeply interior, as he faces troubling realities that can no longer be deferred and which rock his very identity.

JOCKEY. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Jockey is the first feature for co-writer and director Clint Bentley. Bentley had also co-written Transpecos, directed by Jockey co-writer Greg Kwedar; Transpecos also starred Collins. In Jockey, Bentley demonstrates effective use of non-actors, a remarkable caoacity for delivering verisimilitude, and a beautiful eye for framing exterior shots.

This is an excellent film with a great performance. Jockey can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

JAMES STEWART, ROBERT MITCHUM: THE TWO FACES OF AMERICA: is “hero/anti-hero” too simplistic?

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The 2017 documentary James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America traces the mostly parallel and mostly contrasting Hollywood careers of icons James Stewart and Robert Mitchum.

Hero and anti-hero. James Stewart became perhaps American cinema’s greatest screen actor by portraying earnest, well-meaning,, play-by-the-rules types like George Bailey and Jefferson Smith. Mitchum, so identified with film noir, is known as an insolent rebel with no pretense of following anybody else’s rules. (Of course, it’s more complicated than that – among Stewart’s greatest performances are his darkest, in Hitchcock classics like Vertigo and Rear Window and in Anthony Mann’s psychological Westerns like Winchester ’73.)

James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America is not a deep dive into this optimism/cynicism theme of American postwar psychology. Instead, it’s more of a marriage of two showbiz biodocs.

That being said, fans of the actors (and I am a big fan of both) get some insights. Both actors reflect on their own work (see trailers below). The most evocative segment is about Stewart’s grief at the loss of his son, a marine killed in the Vietnam War that Jimmy himself supported politically.

Stewart and Mitchum did not socialize, despite their daughters knowing each other in high school. They only worked together once, late in their careers, in the 1978 remake of The Big Sleep. James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America highlights a remarkable coincidence in their deaths.

I watched James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America on Turner Classic Movies, where it will be replayed on June 25. It is also streaming on the subscription services WATCH TCM and DIrecTV.