Michael Apted. Photo credit: First Run Features courtesy Everett Collection
In 2021, we lost writers, directors, cinematographers and composers who produced classic of cinema:
Director Michael Apted’s 9 Seven Up movies constitute the greatest documentary series in the history of cinema. Got to see him in person at the 2019 Mill Valley Film Festival.
Giusepe Rotunno’s cinematography in CARNAL KNOWLEDGE
Cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno was a master at creating images that told us about the characters and their relation to each other. Here’s my remembrance with some of his images, plus a link to a brilliant video essay.
Hary Dean Stanton and Warren Oates in Monte Hellman’s COCKFIGHTER
Monte Hellman, my favorite cult film director, was described by theNew York Timesas a “hero of the American independent film movement“. Working in low-budget genre movies, collaborating with the likes of Roger Corman Hellman could elevate the sparest of scripts and the most minuscule of budgets into film classics. Hellman showcased Warren Oates’ gift for playing a tough, bottom-feeding grasper who needs a little too much luck in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and the Hellman masterpiece Cockfighter (1974).
Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones in Larry McMurtry’s LONESOME DOVE
Writer Larry McMurtry told powerful, unflinching, character-centered stories of the Old West (Lonesome Dove) and the contemporary West (The Last Picture Show). He won an Oscar for his Brokeback Mountain screenplay, and his novels were the basis for Hud and Terms of Endearment.
Melvin Van Peebles was a Renaissance Man (see his NYT obit) who wrote, directed, edited and produced 1971’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Along with Gordon Park’s Shaft, that film launched blaxploitation cinema and was a landmark in indie filmmaking. His son Mario directed and starred in Baadasssss! (Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube) about this seminal project.
Jean-Marc Vallée directed The Dallas Buyers Club, Wild and The Young Victoria, which earned acting awards for Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Reece Witherspoon, Laura Dern and Emily Blunt.
Photo caption: Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem in BEING THE RICARDOS. Courtesy of Amazon.
The origin story of I Love Lucy is pretty amazing, and Aaron Sorkin samples it in his Being the Ricardos, which is not as compelling as the real story. Sorkin takes two pivotal moments that threaten the show (and Lucy and Desi’s careers) – when Lucy is redbaited and when Lucy gets pregnant. These two events really happened 18 months apart, but Sorkin compresses them into one week.
In fact, just about everything in Being the Ricardos is more or less true to fact except for a totally imagined J. Edgar Hoover telephone call. Being the Ricardos gives the audience a glimpse of Desi’s business genius, Lucy’s artistic genius and their passionate and tempestuous relationship, all embedded in a procedural about the making of a TV episode.
I’ve learned a lot about Lucy and Desi from I Love Lucy, the third season of the TCM podcast The Plot Thickens, and I strongly recommend it. Here’s one of many tidbits from the podcast that is not in the movie: Desi invented the TV rerun by repeating episodes during Lucy’s maternity leave; it was possible because Desi had innovated by recording the show on film instead of kinescope, and it was a huge success because TV ownership had boomed since the original broadcasts.
Lucy and Desi are played by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. The filmmakers have used some prosthetics to make Kidman look more like Ball, but have come up short, and I found it distracting until I settled into the story. Kidman is an excellent actor, and they just should have let her play Lucy while looking like Kidman.
Sorkin’s signature in West Wing was to have characters striding around the White House, tossing off impossibly quick and witty repartee; after forty years in politics, I can tell you that real life political professionals do not talk like that. But Sorkin’s Lucy was really a quickwitted product of showbiz during the 40s, and her banter in the movie rings true – Sorkin has finally found a subject that fits Sorkin dialogue.
Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem are just fine, but Being the Ricardos is a little disappointing – it’s better to dive into the TCM podcast instead. After a brief theatrical run, Being the Ricardos is now streaming on Amazon (included with Prime).
One of the primary reasons that I watch so many movies is to see something that I haven’t seen before.
Some 2021 films have imaginatively tweaked the very forms and parameters of cinema itself and its genres:
Summertime: I can’t remember hearing so much poetry in a movie. This ever vibrant film is about giving voice, the voice of mostly young Los Angelenos, expressing themselves, mostly through poetry.
499: In this critique of contemporary Mexico, director Rodrigo Reyes has invented the medium of “docu-fable”. It is all as real as real can be (the documentary), except for the fictional, 500-year-old conquistador (the fable).
The Velvet Underground: I’ ve never seen a doc which so completely immerses the audience into a time and place.
Lamb: This dark, cautionary fable of karma is somewhat misdescribed as a horror film because it plays with the concept of “monster”.
Aviva Armour-Ostroff (left) in LUNE, world premiere at Cinequest. Photo credit: Samantha Falco.
Then there are the movies that take us to the unknown, the underrepresented and the new:
Lune: The Must See in this year’s Cinequest is this astonishingly authentic exploration of bipolar disorder. Played by writer and co-director Aviva Armour-Ostroff, the most singular movie character I’ve seen recently is based on Armour-Ostroff’s father.
I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking): Filmmaker/star Kelley Kali shows us a hard-worker trying to stay afloat the gig economy – and explicitly in a pandemic.
Socks on Fire: Bo McGuire uses old home movies and re-enactments in this unconventional documentary about his family’s unlikely inheritance battle. Socks on Fire swings between funny and operatic, and there’s a sweet remembrance of a grandmother in here, too.
Ma Belle My Beauty: Marion Hill’s simmering exploration of the post-breakup dynamics of polyamorous queer women. This is a beautiful, absorbing movie with the unexpected appearance of a strap-on.
Strawberry Mansion: Filmmaker/star Kentucker Audley’s very trippy and ultimately sweet fable is set in an utterly surreal, imagined future. It’s also a sharp and funny critique of insidious commercialism.
Slow Machine: In their enigmatic dive into paranoia, filmmakers Joe Denardo and Paul Felten somehow made a film that is at once engrossing and impenetrable.
And finally, there is the category of “aiming low and hitting it”:
Photo caption: Reika Kirishima and Hidetoshi Nishijima in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.
Drive My Car is director and co-writer Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s engrossing masterpiece about dealing with loss – and it’s the best movie of 2021. Layered with character-driven stories that could each justify their own movie, this is a mesmerizing film that builds into an exhilarating catharsis.
Drive My Car opens with an entrancing story about a teenage girl, told by a woman to her sexual partner. It turns out that the woman regularly tells stories to her husband during sex. advancing the plot after she climaxes, and the husband remembers and preserves the stories. She is Oto (Reika Kirishima), a television writer and showrunner. He is Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a theater actor and director, known for his work in Beckett and Chekhov. He works on his line readings while driving his beloved 13-year-old red SAAB 900 turbo.
Yûsuke and Oto’s relationship is complicated. We later learn how complicated and why.
Forty or so minutes in, the movie’s opening titles appear, and it’s two years later. Yûsuke still has the SAAB, which he drives to Hiroshima for a two-month theater residency. He is to cast and direct a pan-Asian, multi-lingual production of Uncle Vanya. His Japanese, Korean, Filipino and Taiwanese-American cast speak the lines in their languages (one being Korean Sign Language), with the dialogue subtitled at performances.
To Yûsuke’s distress, he is required by by the Hiroshima theater to use their driver, the impassive tomboy Misaki (Tôko Miura). He resents this incursion into his vehicular sanctuary, but Misaki is now driving his SAAB, and she turns out to be diligent and expert.
During the weeks of rehearsal, more stories emerge and more of Yûsuke’s own story is revealed. When Yûsuke and Misaki have dinner at the home of the theater project’s organizer (Dae-Young Jin) and his deaf wife (Yoo-rim Park), they are surprised by a deeply personal revelation.
Masaki Okada and Hidetoshi Nishijima in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.
Yûsuke has cast a young actor, Koji (Masaki Okada), whom we know to be unreliable, but even Koji comes through with an impassioned, and apparently true, story of his own.
There’s an outdoor rehearsal scene between two actors (Sonya Yuan and Yoo-rim Park) that becomes magical.
Sonya Yuan and Yoo-rim Park in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.
Each component story is powerful, and Drive My Car becomes even more than the sum of its parts and builds in intensity.
Drive My Car is three hours long. While screening a movie, I take notes on an unlined notebook, and I see that I had scrawled, MESMERIZING ENGROSSING WHAT AM I WATCHING? The rest of the art house audience was as spellbound as I.
There is one soon-to-be-iconic shot in Drive My Car. After a cathartic scene, Misaki and Yûsuke drive into a reddish tunnel. Hamaguchi shows us two hands holding lit cigarettes out of the SAAB’s open sun roof. It’s an exhilarating and unforgettable shot, and once enough cinephiles see Drive My Car, it will become the instantly recognizable signature of Drive My Car.
Hidetoshi Nishijima and Tôko Miura in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.
Hidetoshi Nishijima (Yûsuke) and Tôko Miura (Misaki) are superb. Both characters are poker-faced, so the performances are exceptionally subtle.
I’m dismayed that Drive My Car is so difficult to find. It is currently playing in only three Bay Area theaters, in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco, plus a couple For Your Consideration screenings in San Rafael. It is currently the number one movie on many top ten lists, including mine and Barack Obama’s.
Photo caption: Bradley Cooper in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
See the year’s best movies now: Drive My Car, Belfast and Nightmare Alley in theaters and The Power of the Dog and Don’t Look Up on streaming services.
ICYMI here’s my year-end coverage to date. (I’ve been holding off on posting my Best Movies of 2021 until I see Licorice Pizza, The Tragedy of Macbeth and Parallel Mothers. ) But here’s my year-end list so far.
Reika Kirishima and Hidetoshi Nishijima in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.
Drive My Car: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s engrossing masterpiece about dealing with loss. Layered with character-driven stories that could each justify their own movie, this is a mesmerizing film that builds into an exhilarating catharsis.
Nightmare Alley: Guillermo del Toro’s absorbing remake of the 1947 film noir classic, a cautionary fable of overreaching. Del Toro has deepened the minor characters, creating a showcase for many of our finest film actors.
Red Rocket: Sean Baker’s dark comedy is a portrait of a human trainwreck and the Texas City, Texas, residents whose lives he touches (and none for the better). Once again, Baker makes inspired use of non-actor to tell his story.
The Humans: Stephen Karam’s film version of his Tony Award-winning play introduces us to a family that is guaranteed to be more depressing than yours. Remarkably cinematic and non-stagey for a play that takes place in one apartment. Its very brief theatrical run is over, but you can look or it on video soon.
Also in theaters:
Belfast: a child’s point if view is universal. If you have heartstrings, they are gonna get pulled.
C’mon C’mon: In Mike Mills’ charming and authentic film, Joaquin Phoenix plays a well-intentioned, emotionally intelligent guy who gets an immersion course in parenting.
House of Gucci: Lady Gaga and Adam Driver shine in this modern tale of Shakespearean family treachery.
Benedetta: Paul Verhoeven’s entertaining parable of belief and class, wrapped in scandal and sacrilege.
ON VIDEO
Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry in DON’T LOOK BACK. Courtesy of Netflix.
Don’t Look Up: Wickedly funny. Filmmaker Adam McKay (The Big Short) and a host of movie stars hit the bullseye as they target a corrupt political establishment, a soulless media and a gullible, lazy-minded public. Netflix.
Photo caption: ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN. Courtesy of HBO Max.
2021 has been an unusually strong year for biodocs. With the notable exceptions of Dean Martin and Kenny G, most of the subjects have been disruptors: Anthony Bourdain, Julia Child, Kurt Vonnegut, Brian Wilson, Guy Clark, John Belushi, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams.
Along with Penny Lane’s surprisingly revelatory Listening to Kenny G, a good watch even if you never ever think of Kenny G, here are the best from 2021:
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain: An unusually profound, revealing and unsentimental biodoc of a complicated man – a shy bad ass, an outwardly cynical romantic, a brooding humorist. A triumph for director Morgan Neville, Oscar-winner for 20 Feet from Stardom.
Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road: An unusual documentary about an unusual man. Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys’ songwriting and arranging genius weighs in on his life and work. Wilson’s old and trusted friend drove him around important places in his life – in the format of Comedians in Cars Drinking Coffee – and it paid off with oft emotional revelations from the usually monosyllabic Wilson.
Without Getting Killed or Caught: This lyrical documentary traces the lives of singer-songwriter Guy Clark and his painter-songwriter wife Susanna. Their roommate was troubled songwriter Townes Van Zandt, Guy’s best friend and Susanna’s soulmate. This is a film about an unusual web of relationships amidst the creative process.
Julia: This charming documentary, affectionate and clear-eyed, tells the unlikely story of how Julia Child broke through every expectation of her gender, class and upbringing to become an icon in her fifties.
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time: This uncommonly rich biodoc of the social critic/humorist/philosopher benefits from having been paused and restarted several times, resulting in hours of filmed interviews with Vonnegut in different decades. Very entertaining because Vonnegut was so damn funny.
King of Cool: King of Cool is filled with insight into an icon who was extremely successful at being unknowable. Dean Martin used his charm to mask his detachment. Universally beloved, his internal life was still never understood by his closest friends and colleagues – and even by his family. The filmmakers turned to the device from Citizen Kane – what was the “Rosebud” that drove and explained Dean Martin?
Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation: Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams were both gay men from the Deep South, who attained fame and descended into addiction. They also knew each other. Truman and Tennessee tells their stories from their own letters and from being interviewed on TV by the likes of David Frost and Dick Cavett. There is no third-party “narration”. It’s an effective and increasingly popular documentary technique, used in, for example, I Am Not Your Negro.
Belushi: We all know the story of John Belushi – a career soaring like Icarus, propelled by comic genius and then death by drug overdose at age 33. The new biodoc Belushi brings us more texture because of unprecedented access to Belushi’s friends and widow and to Belushi’s own letters, notes and journals.
Photo caption: Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Nightmare Alley is Guillermo del Toro’s absorbing remake of the 1947 film noir classic, a cautionary fable of overreaching. Del Toro has deepened the minor characters, creating a showcase for many of our finest film actors.
It’s just before WW II and a drifter named Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is desperate enough to take a menial job in a transient carnival. In the first scene, we learn that Stan is lethally dangerous; he also has movie star good looks, a gift of charm and enough burning ambition for a thousand carnies.
Stan befriends (and beds) the world-weary Zeena (Toni Collette), who stars in a mind-reading act. Zeena is married to Pete (David Straithairn), a master of clairvoyance acts, whose alcoholism has dropped him from vaudeville stardom to this gutter-level carnival. Stan ingratiates himself with Pete and steals Pete’s notebook of secret codes. Armed with Pete’s secret system, Stan seduces the good-hearted and pretty, young Molly (Rooney Mara), and the two head off to launch a new nightclub act in the Big Time.
Stan and Molly achieve great success and encounter Lilith, who has her own phony psychologist racket. Stan sees an opportunity for even greater riches by fleecing the rich – pretending to communicate with their dead loved ones. Pete had warned Stan against “the spook business”, and Molly has moral objections. But Stan sees Lilith as an equally ruthless and amoral partner, and he proceeds with his scheme. Will he succeed? (Hint – this is a film noir.)
Bradley is very good as Stan, a guy who will do anything to win, and who is intolerable when he gets to the top. Blanchett is superb as the sleek and cynical Lilith. Willem Dafoe is perfect as Clem, the carnival boss; Clem’s pay-by-play description of geek recruitment is one of the best scenes this year.
Del Toro wrote the screenplay with his wife Kim Morgan who is also (YAY!) a longstanding movie blogger (Sunset Gun). The source material for both movies was the William Lindsay Gresham novel. Gresham had a buddy in the – Spanish Civil War who was a carnie abd fascinated Gresham with his tales of the carnie life.
The 1947 original runs one hour and fifty minutes. With my strong bias against overlong films, I was initially skeptical of the 2021 version’s two hours, thirty minutes running time. But del Toro and Morgan invest the extra forty minutes into enriching the minor roles played by Straithairn and Dafoe, and other fine character actors: Ron Perlman, Mary Steenbergen, Richard Jenkins, Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Beaver and Holt McCallany (Mindhunters).
Willem Dafoe in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
I recently rewatched the original 1947 Nightmare Alley, and it still stands up. I’m not usually a fan of Tyrone Power, but I’ll admit that he’s perfect as Stan, and his work at the end, when Stan is on the skids, is heartbreaking. Joan Blondell is excellent as Zeena, and Colleen Gray is compellingly adorable as Molly. Helen Walker’s turn as Lilith is brilliant, and it’s a shame that an auto accident scandal derailed her career. Ian Keith, a stage actor with very few memorable screen appearances, delivered a touching performance as Pete (in far less screen time than Straithairn gets).
Tamara Deverell should win the 2022 Academy Award for production design; she deserves it for Lilith’s art deco office suite alone, never mind for creating the extraordinary world of the carnivals.
Nightmare Alley is the first film i”ve seen with geek credits: Paul Anderson as Geek #1 and Jesse Buck as Geek #2. I also stayed to the end to see no animals were harmed – bad things happen to chickens, so the CGI effects in Nightmare Alley are pretty cluckin’ effective.
The final line is one of the all-time best. Nightmare Alley is one of the Best Movies of 2021, and is currently in theaters.
Photo caption: June Squibb, Amy Schumer, Jayne Houdyshell, Steven Yuen, Beanie Feldstein and Richard Jenkins in THE HUMANS. Courtesy of A24.
A family grown apart checks in with each other in The Humans, Stephen Karam’s film version of his Tony Award-winning play. The family, living their separate lives, hasn’t gotten together for a while and it turns out that each member has experienced a significant life event.
The occasion is the first time the youngest daughter (Beanie Feldstein) has hosted a holiday dinner. She and her partner (Steven Yuen) have just moved into a decrepit apartment in NYC’s Chinatown and haven’t finished unpacking.
Her taciturn dad (Richard Jenkins,) and no-bullshit mom (Jayne Houdyshell) have brought the senile grandma (June Squibb), and her lawyer sister (Amy Schumer) shows up, too.
Deadpan humor results from the young’s couple’s blissful obliviousness to how hopelessly dilapidated the apartment is. They are embracing NYC charm but are choosing to overlook the stained and chipped tiles, exposed pipes and wiring, ancient fuse box, and the excruciatingly slow, tiny elevator adorned with male appendage graffiti. The parents and sister take it all in with polite silence.
There are also, of course, the eye-rolling moments of parent-adult child interactions and the well-known quirks of each family member. This all sounds like familiar movie fodder, but The Humans is NOT AT ALL sit-commy.
Big, life-changing things have happened to each family member, and they are about to be revealed. There’s the whispered admonition “Don’t wait until after dinner.” If you need to see a family that should be more depressing than yours, this is your movie.
Richard Jenkins in THE HUMANS. Courtesy of A24.
The Humans was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play.While off-Broadway, the script won the 2016 Obie Awards for Karam’s playwriting and Houdyshell’s performance.
The entire cast is excellent, especially Houdyshell and Jenkins.
The Humans must be the least stagey movie set completely in one apartment. The playwright Karam really uses cinema – this is not a theater performance on video. The camera stares at the apartment’s flaws, and the apartment becomes the seventh character. We hear dialogue off camera – some is atmospheric and some is important and revealing.
The Humans moves from wry to shattering as it authentically probes how we accept our failings and those of our loved ones – or not.
Photo caption: Sylvie Mix and Bobbi Kitten in POSER at the Nashville Film Festival, Photo courtesy of the Nashville Film Festival.
2021, an unquestioned improvement over 2020, has come with its challenges, but I’ve still had a rich year at the movies. Here are my favorite movie-going experiences of 2021:
First, let’s acknowledge that The Movie Gourmet is back in theaters. On June 19, 2021, I saw The Sparks Brothersat the AMC Mercado in Santa Clara. The last movie that I had seen in a theater had been The Burnt Orange Heresy on March 5, 2020 in the California Theatre at the 2020 Cinequest. In the 472 days of COVID lockdown, I still managed to watch 329 movies and episodic series via streaming and screeners.
But here’s the year’s topper – for the first time, I traveled to cover the Nashville Film Festival. NashFilmFest’s director of programming Lauren Ponto curated an excellent slate. My favorites were discovering the dazzling indie Poser and attending the pre-release screening of Old Henry with the filmmakers, including star Tim Blake Nelson. I also caught a couple of non-fest movies at Nashville’s excellent art house theater, the Belcourt. Of course, Nashville is a culturally rich city with epic barbecue; (I worship the ribs at Peg Leg Porker and the pulled pork at Martin’s Bar-Be-Que Joint).
Along with Nashville, I discovered new films by virtually covering Cinequest, Frameline, San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) and San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. My favorite festival nuggets were Poser (Nashville), Lune (Cinequest), Summertime (Frameline and Cinequest) and Ma Belle, My Beauty (SFFILM).
I discovered my favorite film of the year so-far, Riders of Justice (and I’m waiting for eveyone else to catch on to how good it is).
I got to revisit some of my all-time favorite films: Lone Star, House of Games, The Commitments, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Point Blank. and the grievously overlooked One False Move.
And then, I have this very individual obsession – seeing a movie as the only patron in a theater (just like William Randolph Hearst in his personal theater at Hearst Castle). One would think that this would happen more than it does because I see lots of obscure movies at sparsely-attended weekday matinees. But, almost always, there’s at least one more audience member, and I had only enjoyed two solos screenings in thirty-five years. Anyway, it happened TWICE in late 2021 – The Souvenir Part II at San Francisco’s Landmark Embarcadero and Benedetta at Berkeley’s Landmark Shattuck.
Photo caption: Simon Rex in RED ROCKET. Courtesy of A24.
The dark comedy Red Rocket is Sean Baker’s portrait of a human trainwreck named Mikey. Mikey is introduced when he steps off a bus, with no luggage and bearing the wounds of a fistfight he has lost, returning to his hometown of Texas City, Texas, after 17 years in Los Angeles. When he re-introduces himself to the locals, he is invariably met with an unhappy “What are you doing here?“. He is there because he is no longer viable as a porn star, and he has burned every available bridge in Southern California.
A fast talker with a gift for gab and flexibility with facts, Mikey begs for shelter from his estranged wife Lexy and her mom Lil; they greet Mikey with well-earned wariness. Mikey is one of those people who churn through life leaving a trail of relationship carnage. He’s always on the lookout for some opportunity for someone else to get him something he wants, regardless of the cost to the other person.
Mikey basically has the worldview of a pimp, and the plot in Red Rocket is basically whether he hurl himself into well-deserved self-destruction before he can damage folks who don’t deserve it, including Lexy, Lil, his dim-witted neighbor Lonnie and the underage target of his affections, Strawberry.
Mikey is a scumbag, and Red Rocket only works as entertainment because Simon Rex (who has worked in porn himself) is very good as the loquacious and pathetically self-absorbed Mikey.
Sean Baker’s trademark is making excellent movies (Tangerine, The Florida Project) with non-actors. Here, Bree Elrod (Lexy) and Suzanna Son (Strawberry) have some professional experience. Shih-Ching Tsou (Miss Phan the doughnut shop proprietor) is a longtime Sean Baker collaborator who has been a producer of his previous films and has bit parts in them.
The rest of the cast are first-timers. Brenda Deiss is perfect as Lil, and she doesn’t look or behave like any professional from Hollywood. Brittney Rodriguez is very funny as the tough-as-nails enforcer of a family dope ring, and she is compelling enough on screen to find a pace in other movies.
Baker makes Texas City into a character in his story. In virtually every exterior shot, the smokestacks of petrochemical plants are visible. (And it helps to know that Texas City is about a 35 to 40 hour $200 bus ride to and from LA.) Pickup trucks are very popular, but Mike has to make do with a bicycle.
Sean Baker is the writer, director and producer of Red Rocket and, unfortunately, its editor – it’s 20 minutes too long. Red Rocket is not nearly as good as Baker’s best – Tangerine and The Florida Project, but it’s pretty good.
