Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Scenes from an Empty Church’ Review: Cloistered Filmmaking

      by

      This film, proudly shot and set during the pandemic, stars Kevin Corrigan and Thomas Jay Ryan as priests with different perspectives.“Scenes From an Empty Church” stars three actors — Kevin Corrigan, Thomas Jay Ryan and Max Casella — who emerged as scene-stealers in the 1990s. But watching this proudly pandemic-shot and -set feature from Onur Tukel is like being returned to the locked-down days of 2020. In a decade, the film will serve as a time capsule. But right now, it feels redundant: a dramatization of arguments (about masks, the pandemic’s effects on New York and the value of applauding first-responders at 7 p.m.) that have circulated for too long.Most of the movie is indeed set at a church — it was shot at the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel on West 34th Street — that has two priests: Father Andrew (Corrigan) and Father James (Ryan). An unseen third has died of Covid-19. The action kicks off when Father Andrew meets up with a friend, Paul (Casella), who insists not only on entering the closed church, but also on going maskless, which upsets Father James.Father James agrees to let parishioners visit one at a time under strict rules (“if they have a cough, send them off”). And as they arrive, the movie increasingly resembles a feature made solely to prove that limitations were no obstacle. The stopgaps are simply part of the drama. Paul Reiser, as Father Andrew’s dad, appears only in video-chat.“Scenes” has its moments, as any film that sits Ryan and Corrigan opposite each other in a confessional would. But even special effects near the end play more like the response to a challenge than a spark of inspiration.Scenes from an Empty ChurchNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Stand-Ups Get Experimental in Five Adventurous New Specials

      by

      For these sets, Chris Gethard, Rory Scovel, Carmen Christopher, Josh Johnson and Jessica Watkins borrow from improv, documentary and more.“You gotta get a gimmick if you wanna get applause.”When Stephen Sondheim placed this timeless showbiz advice in the classic musical “Gypsy,” he was referring to stripping. If dancing seductively while taking your clothes off is not enough to win over an audience, imagine the challenge of telling jokes in a crowded stand-up scene. In her debut, “Specialish,” Jessica Watkins puts it this way: “You need more than comedy. You need a shtick.”For Watkins, this meant pushing a cart across America on highways and through woods, sleeping in a tent and filming this lonely trek while doing sets in small spaces from New York to California. An odd mix of stand-up special and “Nomadland,” her effort is both exceptional and characteristic of the try-anything moment in comedy, one in which many performers are fusing forms, mixing onstage with off, merry with melancholy, written jokes with music, improv or other elements.Bo Burnham’s buzzy “Inside” (Netflix) packaged a solo show inside a musical. Next month, Tig Notaro releases a fully animated stand-up special. But the fastest growing comedy hybrid is the stand-up documentary. Shots of the comic backstage once bookended the jokes, but now scenes of the life of the comic regularly introduce, respond to and buttress the performance. It’s no surprise that the winners of the 2020 Oscar for best documentary feature made Dave Chappelle’s next movie, “This Time This Place,” a chronicle of, among other things, performing in his hometown Yellow Springs, Ohio, during the pandemic.“Specialish” (available on major digital platforms) is an example of the strengths and pitfalls of this high-concept approach: While it added scenic drama and beauty to her strenuous journey, it eventually overwhelmed the comedy. In explaining why she’s pushing a cart on her trip, she quips, “I wanted to look more homeless.” Such punch lines hit less hard than interludes in her life. The stand-up often seems incidental if not out of place, even a distraction from the main event.Carmen Christopher, left, and Chris Gethard in “Half My Life.”Comedy DynamicsIn recent months, Rory Scovel, Chris Gethard and Carmen Christopher put out more modestly focused specials that mix stand-up with behind-the-scenes footage. Each is experimental in different ways. In “Live Without Fear” (available on YouTube), Scovel, a dynamic and inventive performer who has delivered some of the funniest sets I have ever seen, set himself the task of making up six shows completely on the spot: stand-up merged with improv. His goal was to capture the spontaneity of creation while weaving in post-show commentary on what went wrong.Shot by Scott Moran with sensitivity to the rhythm of jokes, Scovel’s performances are riveting high-wire acts, not as refined as a normal set but displaying the drunken thrill of a party conversation starting to take off. Scovel brings titanic aggression leavened by patience, toying with words, searching for the funny parts, filibustering a premise and biding his time, waiting for inspiration to strike. Many of his best improvisations begin with simple observational premises — the weirdness of the phrase “getting on your high horse” — then move into puns (“pot-smoking horses”) followed by absurdity (“That’s where the show ‘Mr. Ed’ comes from”) and a coda with bizarre rage (“Tell me I’m wrong!”).If Scovel courts failure, Christopher hugs it tightly in “Street Special,” a deadpan, self-consciously awkward special, one of the first produced on Peacock. Carrying his own microphone, Christopher set up shop on New York street corners during the pandemic, surprising nervous pedestrians with jokes. At the start, he interrupts outdoor diners at the East Village spot Veselka by announcing that he just got engaged. After some lonely applause, annoyed glances and some quintessential New York indifference, he said he was kidding, that he has been single for seven years and that he just wanted to see what it felt like to have people excited for him.This cringe comedy will divide viewers. He satirizes certain kinds of hack comedy but finds an oddball spirit all its own. Christopher doesn’t just capture the anxious atmosphere of pandemic-era city life. He exploits it to jack up the tension in a joke.He also shows up as the opening act in Chris Gethard’s special “Half My Life” (on major digital platforms), a chronicle of a road trip alongside a portrait of a comic in a midlife crisis. Gethard is a New York comedy institution whose many projects include the popular podcast “Beautiful/Anonymous,” which features conversations with a stranger. But now, with a newborn at home, he sounds surprisingly ambivalent about his two-decade career, calling himself the king of the “near sellout” and wondering aloud about his passion for performing. “I think I still love comedy, but my back hurts and I’m tired,” he says.In his work, Gethard is known for wandering down dark avenues, but “Half My Life” actually evolves into a lightly fun special. He’s smart enough to drill down on his best bit — a series of jokes about Gatorland, an amusement park in Orlando that competes with Disney World — and concludes by becoming what is surely the first stand-up to perform for an audience exclusively of alligators.Josh Johnson follows jokes with R&B songs on his new album.Mindy TuckerIf there’s a fusion of forms that approaches the popularity of the documentary-stand-up mix, it’s that of the marriage between comedy and music. While many comics use music in their jokes, the new album by Josh Johnson (on Apple Music) is the first I have heard that puts stand-up bits side by side with earnestly produced songs. Johnson is a rising star, a “Daily Show” writer who emerged from the pandemic with this album, as well as a sharply observed special on Comedy Central that is a better showcase for his joke writing. The album, billed as “part millennial escapism, part Negro spiritual,” is a mixed bag that follows a joke about how love should be regulated (“There’s nothing someone hasn’t done for crack that they haven’t done for love”) with an R&B song.Sometimes, the connections between the comedy and the music are hard to detect. It’s right there in its title — “Elusive.”The great thing about standup is that it’s a bare-bones art. Anyone with a voice can do it. And traditionalists have a point when they roll their eyes, insisting that comics should just get to the jokes. These specials have more unnecessary or unfinished elements than the best comedy. (Scovel’s “Live Without Fear” includes a side plot about the history of the theater he performs in that doesn’t quite come together.)But it’s a mistake to be too cynical about efforts to push the form or to borrow from new sources, because that’s what will keep comedy growing. Even if the new adventurousness in specials is rooted in gimmickry, I still welcome it. The stand-up special is too young an art to become set in its ways. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Legend of the Underground’ Review: Gay Activism in Nigeria

      by

      In this stylish documentary, young men discuss their country’s laws criminalizing gay sex.The documentary “The Legend of the Underground” captures queer Nigerian activists as they discuss their country’s laws criminalizing gay sex. Together, they lament unjust arrests and police brutality. But they are not aiming for either martyrdom or altruism — instead, their goal is to improve the circumstances of their own lives.This film is stylish, like a well-curated advertisement. These men are beautiful, youthful, dressed in mesh and silks. But the movie’s almost shallow appeal to aesthetics is not disconnected from the political agenda of gay Nigerians. For these men, desirability serves multiple purposes. It may entice potential partners, but also advertisers, the global entertainment industry and the hostile Nigerian public.The movie shows the tug of war between profit and public service by contrasting the civic-minded approach of Michael, an organizer who splits time between Lagos and New York for his safety, with the actions of the prominent Nigerian activist James Brown. James wants to grow his follower count to publicize the queer cause, but he also has ambitions to become a global influencer.The filmmakers Giselle Bailey and Nneka Onuorah capture arguments as other activists wrestle with the contradictions of James’s motivations. But crucially, they don’t shy away from James. Instead, the film leaves the tension unresolved, suggesting that James’s mix of political protest and personal ambition may be new tactics from a new generation. In the Nigerian queer scene, there are no sinners and no saints. In the end, Michael dons a sweater for a night out at the club. The shirt’s glitter typeface shows a single word: Buysexual.Legend of the UndergroundNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Mae West Vamped and Winked. She Also Blazed a Trail We’re Still Following.

      by

      New editions of her early films reveal a screenwriter with a deep interest in lives on the margins. That was just one reason the censors couldn’t abide her.Mae West is fourth-billed in her film debut, the 1932 melodrama “Night After Night,” and she doesn’t appear until the 37-minute mark. But it’s an unforgettable entrance. We first hear her whiskey-soaked voice purring, from behind a wall of ogling men, “Now why don’t you guys be good and go home to your wives?” The men part like the Red Sea to reveal the blonde bombshell, poured immaculately into her gown and sparkling with jewelry.Within her first minute onscreen, she has tossed off one of her signature lines, as a coat check girl coos, “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds,” and West replies, slyly, “Goodness had nothin’ to do with it, dearie!” West didn’t just take over the movie — she took over the movies, period.In recent years, film historians, archivists and programmers have cast a long overdue spotlight on the earliest female auteurs, resulting in such indispensable efforts as the “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers” box set from Kino Lorber; the documentary “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché”; and fresh releases and reappraisals of works by Ida Lupino, Lois Weber and Dorothy Arzner. But West is rarely mentioned among those groundbreakers, still regarded solely (alongside contemporaries like the Marx Brothers and her onetime co-star W.C. Fields) as a comedian, starring in entertaining if interchangeable roughhouse Paramount comedies of the 1930s.West making her screen debut in “Night After Night.”Kino LorberThe simplest explanation for this exclusion is that West did not direct her own pictures. But she wrote them, often adapting her own plays, a rarity among female performers of the era. And while marquee directors helmed her films (including Leo McCarey, Henry Hathaway and Raoul Walsh), none put their personal stamp on them as she did. A close examination of her first nine films, all released between 1932 and 1940 (and all newly available on Blu-ray, via KL Studio Classics) reveals recurring themes and concerns beyond even the considerable achievement of creating and cultivating her iconic comic persona.In “I’m No Angel” (1933), West is advertised as a “Marvel of the Age,” and that’s as good a description as any. Born Mary Jane West in Brooklyn, daughter of a prizefighter turned private investigator, she began performing in talent competitions as a child and hit the vaudeville stage in her early teens, eventually graduating to burlesque shows and Broadway revues. But West’s career didn’t take off until she began writing, producing and directing her own Broadway vehicles: lurid comic melodramas with attention-grabbing titles like “Pleasure Man,” “The Constant Sinner” and, simply and most memorably, “Sex.”West was pushing 40 when she made that memorable debut in “Night After Night,” and she came to the screen with her comic personality fully intact. Her first starring vehicle, “She Done Him Wrong,” was based on her Broadway hit “Diamond Lil.” It paired her with a handsome young unknown named Cary Grant, with whom she re-teamed for “I’m No Angel” later that year. Alas, the year in question was 1933, the final stretch of Hollywood’s pre-Code era, so named because of the still-scant enforcement the Hays Code, which was intended as a strict set of moral guidelines — for characters in motion pictures and for the actors who played them.West opposite Cary Grant  in “She Done Him Wrong,” based on her Broadway hit “Diamond Lil.”Kino LorberIndeed, “She Done Him Wrong” and “I’m No Angel” could only have been made — and Mae West, thus, could only have become a star — in the pre-Code era. The women she played were not just sexually independent; they were sexually voracious, unapologetic in their appetites (and their forthrightness about them). Such women were otherwise uncommon onscreen in the 1930s, and frankly, are still far from the norm.She got away with it (for a time) by wrapping her sexuality in a comic character. But when enforcement of the Code cranked up in 1934, West — whose two 1933 films were among the year’s biggest hits — topped the list of targets, and her screenplays were subjected to such scrutiny that her persona was all but defanged. Even slicing her dialogue couldn’t “clean up” a West picture, though; she had merely to wrap her suggestive voice around a line or to insert a little moan or a suggestive eye roll to make the most innocent piece of dialogue sound filthy.But she was always vamping with a wink and taking pains to include her audience on the gag. Time after time, West pulled off the neat trick of being sexy and satirizing the very concept of sexiness, pushing her eyebrow raising to the level of parody, exploring and ultimately eradicating the razor-thin line between horny and silly.West’s characters in “I’m No Angel” and other films were sexually independent and unapologetically so.Kino LorberStill, her scripts were never mere clotheslines on which to hang her double entendres. They were snapshots of life on the fringes, where she herself had dwelled: Bowery bars, vaudeville stages and carnivals, filled with gangsters, boxers and drunks. Perhaps because of her proximity to these worlds, she conveys a palpable affection for lowlifes, eccentrics and outcasts. No one thinks of Mae West as a purveyor of social realism, but perhaps people should. Is “I’m No Angel” less worthy of esteem than a social realist drama like “Dead End” simply because it has more laughs?Moreover, the personal preoccupations of her work, easily overlooked at the time, become apparent when viewing the films as a whole. Over and over again, West plays an outsider trying, and often failing, to fit in. Her characters are objects of derision, frequently from local women, hypocritical cops or corrupt politicians, who look down on her because she’s in show business, or because she’s a nouveau riche, or (most of all) because she’s sexual. Whatever the reason, she does not “belong.”Yet, Hays Code or no, women who not only survived as outsiders but thrived remained the central motif of West’s work. It has taken decades for mainstream cinema to catch up with what she was doing in the early 1930s, and while there are scores of possible explanations for West’s current exclusion from the canon, it is entirely possible that they’re the same now as they ever were: that she was a comedian, that she was overtly sexual, that she was fundamentally disreputable. It’s quite possible she’ll forever remain a gate-crasher.On one hand, that’s a shame. On the other, she probably wouldn’t have it any other way. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Taylour Paige on ‘Zola,’ Grace and Being Kinder to Herself

      by

      For the stripper tale, the actress was mindful of the real Zola’s voice: “We’re in service of the bigger truth, the way we as Black women go through the world.”By her own estimate, Taylour Paige has about 48 voices inside her, at the ready for any situation.“I got an auntie voice, my educated, white-school voice, my high school,” she begins on a video call from Bulgaria, where she’s shooting “The Toxic Avenger.” Before she continues, one of those voices stops to clarify her statement. “When I say ‘white-educated,’ I’m not saying that being white is educated. I’m saying I went to a very white college. I was around a lot of white people, so that was a voice.” Then there was the voice observing her white friends doing wild things “where I’m like, ‘Oh, hell no. You white people are crazy.’”Code-switching — or “assimilating and survival,” as the actress described it — came in handy throughout her portrayal of the title character in “Zola,” the director Janicza Bravo’s new dramedy. In the film, inspired by the real-life Zola’s viral tweet thread, Paige plays a stripper who quickly vibes with Stefani, a white stripper (Riley Keough) with cornrows and a blaccent.“I think Zola was like, ‘OK cool, I got a new friend,’” Paige said. “‘She’s fun. We both hustle.’”But when Stefani whisks Zola to Florida to earn extra money dancing, things slip dangerously out of the latter’s control: there’s a sex-work scheme, an unhinged pimp (Colman Domingo) and other shady dealings. Zola navigates these increasingly chaotic circumstances while sharing her inner dialogue about how disturbing this all is.“I think, ultimately, the tragedy in this film is there’s a betrayal,” the actress said, referring to how Zola’s so-called friend has set her up.Paige, 30, is now known for her acting (her film credits include “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) but growing up in Inglewood, Calif., she was a dancer under the tutelage of Debbie Allen, and later worked as a Los Angeles Laker Girl. She looks back on those years as a self-conscious young woman grappling with “generational self-loathing” with more compassion now. “Because I’ve given myself grace, I have a different availability to the roles that I always wanted. Before I was auditioning for my personality and auditioning for a role. So, everybody was lying.”Paige talked about “Zola” and how it helped her tap into her true identity. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Paige with Riley Keough in “Zola.” The real Zola wasn’t “some ghetto buffoon that just went on Twitter,” Paige said. “She was very strategic.”Anna Kooris/A24Paige, center, appeared opposite Viola Davis and Dusan Brown in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”David Lee/NetflixSince last year, you’ve appeared in several movies — “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Boogie” and now “Zola.” How does it feel to be a bona fide movie star?I’m still this human being trying to figure it out day by day. I’m trying to live my truth in my storytelling and in my life, my spirituality. There’s no stop and start to what I feel like I’m trying to learn as a human.When I hear “breakthrough,” it is like, “OK, but what’s expected of me? What’s expected of Black women?” I just want to be a bridge for what happens when you stay focused and patient and kind and tell the truth.Where does your spirituality come from?I’ve always been a seeker and a philosopher and a deep thinker. Like, “What am I doing here?” Since I was 5, I was very much thinking about death and my existence. My mom had me at almost 40, so it’s a completely different generation and very much fear-based thought. My own insecurities were projected onto me from my mom’s own self-loathing. I just wish I was kinder to myself sooner and I was able to distinguish which voice was mine. Seeing the way my mom asserted herself and lived [affected] me in a good way and a bad way. Because I thought, “Time is ticking, and I have to figure this out.” I’ve changed that fear to “Time is eternal, but what are you going to do with it?”Did playing Zola help you realize anything about how you previously moved around the world in your own body as a dancer?I’ve been dancing since I was really little. I loved it. But I got to an age where there’s pressure and I was tired. I wanted to stop. But I had a scholarship. My mom wouldn’t let me. Your butt all of a sudden is growing and you’re going through puberty, and you need to be super skinny like everybody else.Dance, as much as it was my escape from my home, would start to be something I resented. It started to feel like something I was doing for my mom or because some people thought I was good. I still was involved with Debbie Allen, but I stopped a little bit. With “Zola,” it’s like a return home to the innate ability of shaking that ass. It’s not so technical, so overthought. It’s like a Black girl getting down in her bedroom, but at a club. How do you get back to that without it needing to be perfect? I wanted to undo all that for her and for myself.Paige said she had “Laugh” tattooed on her arm. “When you’re laughing, you’re like, ‘I’m still alive, I’m still here.’”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDid you have any reservations about how your body would be seen on the screen?I was of course really nervous and scared. Zola is such a force and so comfortable and confident in her body, and I’ve been self-conscious but I have been ready to be like, “Enough with the self-hatred. I’m never going to be this age again. My body works, my heart beats without assistance, I got 10 fingers, 10 toes. I’m just over it.” So I use that.That’s how Zola moved through the world. We’ve talked about how she’s been scared. But she does it anyway because she’s a Black woman and the bills got to be paid. Nobody’s going to do it for you. Also, Janicza was super protective from the jump. Like, “We’re not going to see your boobs.” I was like, “Hey, if it’s the right storytelling.” We show murders and violence on TV. I don’t know what the big hoorah is around boobs and our natural bodies.It does fit into the film’s voyeurism. Zola engages viewers with pithy commentary as her shocking experience unfolds. What was it like telling this kind of story while inside of it?I knew that this movie existed as hyperbolic, that this was Janicza’s interpretation. I don’t mean “interpretation” in a condescending way. But when we are processing and observing something that happened to us, there’s multiple truths. It’s Zola’s interpretation of what happened to her, Janicza’s interpretation from Zola’s brilliant writing. You living through it is different than when you’ve had time to process it and put it on Twitter. So, it’s multiple things happening at once when you’re watching it.Janicza was super clear that I’m the straight man. She treated this like a play or a comedy: there’s a straight man, and there’s a buffoon. Riley is like the minstrel in blackface. I’m observing it, so we don’t need two buffoons for us to be able to take in this type of atmosphere and react to it. You’re watching it through my eyes. So, a lot of my acting in the movie, my dialogue, is in my head.Paige said the director Janicza Bravo was protective when it came to nudity. But the actress was willing to take a chance if it was right for the story: “I don’t know what the big hoorah is around boobs and our natural bodies.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesI imagine it puts some pressure on you to convey the multiple layers of the story in a way that is tongue-in-cheek yet critical at the same time.It was like, “Am I doing enough?” But I get that I’m serving Zola. I’m serving Black women. White women, Black women — it’s satirical, psychological. It’s the systems in place. It’s racism. It’s on a white body. But on a Black body, you don’t really believe her. Even when she’s being gentle and tender, you’re going to question if she’s telling the truth. We’re in service of the bigger truth, the way we as Black women go through the world and the [stuff] that’s put on us. That’s why I thought it was so brilliant, because it was protective of Zola’s voice. Zola isn’t some ghetto buffoon that just went on Twitter. She was very strategic and knew exactly what she was doing and saying.“Zola” is also funny at times. Black women often use humor to protect ourselves, process things. Because of your own experiences, was it easy for you to embrace the comedic moments?I find humor in the most mundane things. Most things, even when they’re bad, are pretty funny. Like, “Wow, life is outrageous. This is ghetto.” I have “Laugh” tattooed on my arm because, man, laugh often. When you’re laughing, you’re like, “I’m still alive, I’m still here.” More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘White on White’ Review: Problematic Images

      by

      This striking, slow-burn portrait of a 19th-century Argentine archipelago considers a photographer’s involvement in the horrors of colonialism.Distressingly beautiful and subtly provocative, “White on White,” the slow-burn second feature from the Spanish-Chilean director Théo Court, considers the casual violence of image-making against a 19th-century backdrop of flesh-and-bones barbarism.Set in a grimly frigid and not yet fully colonized stretch of Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina’s southernmost archipelago, a photographer, Pedro (an excellent Alfredo Castro), is contracted to take wedding portraits of Miss Sara (Esther Vega Pérez Torres), a powerful landowner’s child-bride.Pleased with Pedro’s work, the landowner, Mr. Porter — a figure whose continual absence (he never appears onscreen) makes him all the more sinister — has the photographer stay to document his estate and its operations. The most powerful, after all, control the writing of their own histories.When Pedro is discovered to have secretly taken a suggestive photo of Miss Sara, however, his visit is extended indefinitely as he is absorbed into Mr. Porter’s wretched band of employees.Though the drama restages two real-life sets of photographs that inspired Court — Lewis Carroll’s perturbingly erotic portraits of prepubescent young women and the harrowing images of the explorer Julius Popper’s huntsmen standing over the bodies of slaughtered Indigenous people — “White on White” refuses to indulge in spectacular violence.Instead, Court — whose languorous pacing heightens the film’s brief, bewildering moments of action — summons an unsettling experience from relatively restrained gestures: the way Miss Sara’s sleeves are pulled down over her shoulders, delicately eroticizing her figure; a grave mound in the distance after a night of debauchery involving kidnapped Indigenous women.The cinematographer José Ángel Alayón shows us frames within frames that emphasize the limited subjectivity of Pedro’s camera — a comment on the considerations inevitably left out of any artwork — as well as long shots that capture glorious vistas shrouded in fog, both heavenly and hostile. Ultimately, these images remind us of the cruelty embedded in the striving for perfection, aesthetic or otherwise.White on WhiteNot rated. In Spanish and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Mubi. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over’ Review: A Punk Provocateur Endures

      by

      Beth B’s documentary tells the story of an iconic underground New York City misfit and her durable career.The musician, writer and spoken-word artist Lydia Lunch is an immediately provocative figure. The name alone, right? Escaping a horrifically abusive home in Rochester, N.Y., at 16, she took one look at the burgeoning 1970s punk rock scene on Manhattan’s Bowery and was determined to both join and upend it.“I had a suitcase and $200,” she recalls in “Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over,” a vigorous documentary directed by Beth B, whose own work as an underground filmmaker began in the same milieu as Lunch’s early efforts. Lunch’s first band was called Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and one of their songs began with Lunch caterwauling, “The leaves are always dead.”Lunch, now 62 — who, when reflecting on her generation, says, “The ’60s failed us” — had other interests, musical and extra-musical. The abundance of her ideas, and her resourcefulness in executing them, enabled a career that’s been a lot more durable than those of many other iconoclasts of her time. Her musings on the condition of womanhood and the failings of conventional feminism are emphatic, to be sure. She asks how women “devolved from Medusa to Madonna” and offers an unusual perspective on the #MeToo movement that finds its rationale in an examination of cycles of abuse.Lunch’s entire aesthetic is centered around trauma: how abusers dispense it, how it is — and how she thinks it ought to be — received, and turned back on the world. This yields any number of anecdotes, including a tale from the musician Jim Sclavunos about how Lunch took his virginity before admitting him into one of her bands.The footage of her on the road with her current band, Retrovirus, shows her mastery of live performance and also highlights her very urban sense of sarcasm; sometimes she suggests no-wave’s answer to Fran Lebowitz.Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never OverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘America: The Motion Picture’ Review: In Bros We Trust

      by

      The American Revolution gets a frat-style sendup in this irreverent animated comedy.Two nights before signing the Declaration of Independence, George Washington threw a celebratory rager where America’s founding father was said to have rung up a bar tab equivalent to $17,253. Our nation began with a hangover, a fact too factual to be included in “America: The Motion Picture” (streaming on Netflix), a raunchy, aggressively inane cartoon that flips the bird — both onscreen and thematically — to a strain of patriotism that insists that the slave owners who started this country were sober-minded heroes whose vision of democracy remains flawless, bro. “That’s why we make the rules, baby!” bellows Samuel Adams (voiced by Jason Mantzoukas) after a keg stand. Here, to be a privileged white man in America is intoxicating, a truth no less fictional than watching Paul Revere win a “Fast and Furious”-inspired street race that goes “one quarter-mule at a time.”This sacrilegious prank, directed by Matt Thompson and written by Dave Callaham, opens with Abraham Lincoln (Will Forte) getting his throat ripped out by the turncoat (and werewolf) Benedict Arnold (Andy Samberg). Let’s dodge a description of Lincoln’s deathbed flatulence and skip ahead to the plot where Lincoln’s prom date George Washington (Channing Tatum, perfectly himbo-esque) vows revenge on the “fun police,” a.k.a. King James (Simon Pegg), who has constructed a dirigible that will tea-bag the fratty Yanks into submission. What follows is a rowdy sendup of the country’s id. Eagles scream. “Free Bird” wails. Paul Bunyan boxes Big Ben. And in a nod to America’s ill-informed history classes, Washington also stutters his goal to do “something about taxation?”The one-joke premise results in a headache by the time we witness Washington impregnate Martha (Judy Greer) during a montage that includes Old Faithful and a sledgehammer crushing a cherry pie. Squint hard, and the first lady’s buoyant pep and pectorals could charitably be a satire on ideal womanhood. Less subtle are the film’s cheeky rip-offs of “Star Wars” and “The Avengers,” and the inclusion of a reimagined Thomas Edison (Olivia Munn), now a female Chinese immigrant who exists to roll her eyes at the dingbats. Ultimately, Edison decides the country is worth defending anyway. Is it? The fictional ending isn’t sure — and the real ending is yet to be written.America: The Motion PictureNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More