Review: Beastie Boys Story

Image courtesy of Apple TV.

More than merely a jaunt down memory lane - although there's certainly some of that - Spike Jonze's "Beastie Boys Story" is an enjoyable, informative and more-sage-than-you'd-imagine concert film without an actual concert.

Shot at Kings Theater in Brooklyn and led by the band's two surviving members - Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) and Mike Diamond (Mike D); Adam Yauch (MCA) died of cancer in 2012 - the film chronicles the story of the group from a punk rock band in the early 1980s to a hip hop mega-group produced by Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin, both of whom Mike D and Ad-Rock appear to suggest exploited them.

One of the film's most surprisingly refreshing elements is that it often comes across as two older men looking back upon their youths with a bemused attitude, occasionally shaking their heads at their own foolishness and discussing the capacity for change. It's also a tribute to friendship and creative bonds, and at times emotionally explores the concept of the passage of time and the experience of loss.

I know, right? Not what you might expect from the Beastie Boys. Then again, as the film explores the peaks - the explosive popularity of "License to Ill" - and valleys - how unfair it is that the excellent "Paul's Boutique" flopped commercially - of the band's career, we get glimpses into how much more was going on under the surface in their music than the rowdy humor, antics and quirky videos for which they are often remembered.

It probably took a filmmaker of great caliber like Jonze - who directed some of the Beasties' most well-known videos, including "Sabotage" and "Sure Shot" - to aptly draw attention to these elements, although Horovitz and Diamond's storytelling ability, humor and pathos also make the film better than you'd expect from what basically amounts to two guys leading an audience through a series of video clips and nostalgic banter.

There's a great moment during the film when Diamond notes how he was proud to be Horovitz's friend following a magazine interview during which a reporter asked Horovitz how some music he'd written at that time about treating women with respect could be viewed as hypocritical, considering he was a member of a band previously known for frat-boy antics - although the band's hit "Fight for Your Right" was originally written as a parody of frat bros - and featured a large dick popping up during their stage performances. "I'd rather be a hypocrite than be the same person forever," Horovitz told the writer.

And that's what's at the heart of "Beastie Boys Story," a live, two-person monologue with video clips about how people change over time - in this case, for the better - and how art and friendship can bind people together for a lifetime. I found myself laughing, always interested - especially about touring with Run DMC - and even moved by the film. It's well worth a watch, regardless of whether one's a fan of the band.

Review: Tigertail

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Alan Yang's "Tigertail" is all at once a captivating immigration tale coupled with a moving story about intergenerational disconnect and a wistful tale of lost loves and lost time. It manages to cram all of this into a brief 91 minutes, and while the picture might feel as if a large part of its story were left on the cutting room floor, its short running time simultaneously drives home the concept that time - especially those times in our lives that count most - are fleeting.

Yang is primarily known for his association with such TV shows as "Parks and Recreation" and "Masters of None," both of which are unseen by me, and "Tigertail" is technically his directorial debut in feature filmmaking. Stylistically, he borrows from several Asian masters, most notably the great Wong Kar Wai, but if you're aiming to emulate, that's a pretty great standard to attempt to live up to.

The film is set during several different time periods. It starts off during the 1950s when Taiwan was under the rule of China's Kuomintang nationalist party. A young boy named Grover (Zhi-Hao Yang) plays in a stunningly gorgeous field close to where his grandmother keeps him hidden in her house. His father died when he was young and his mother is in China because she was unable to find work in Taiwan. Grover meets a young girl named Yuan (Hai-Yin Tsi) and the two become close friends.

Some years later, Grover (Hong-Chi Lee) is a good-looking young man hoping to escape from Taiwan and move to the United States, taking along his mother - who has since returned and works in a factory - with him. The man who operates his mother's factory makes him a proposition - if he marries the factory boss's daughter, Zhenzhen (Kunjue Li), he'll give them the money to go to America.

To complicate matters, Yuan (Yo-Hsing Fan) shows back up and the two begin a romance that involves some antics - a Chinese version of dine and dash - and a lovely moment when the young couple sings Otis Redding's "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" under the moonlight by the water. Another effective musical moment involves Grover dancing with Yuan to a Chinese surf rock song that is later coupled with a moment in which he decides to part with the record for various reasons.  However, Grover makes his choice between Yuan and America, leading him to forever consider her the "girl who got away."

Much of the film is set in the present as Grover has become a silent, non-emotive older man (Tzi Ma) who is divorced from Zhenzhen, who couldn't take his lack of affection any longer and has moved on with her life, and somewhat estranged from his grown daughter, Angela (Christine Ko), a hard worker who has relationship problems of her own. Angela doesn't know her father's past, and a reckoning between the two of them leads to a journey in the film's final scenes that is among its finest sequences.

"Tigertail" may flit by like a dream - but its brevity makes it all the more poignant. Occasionally, an epic story can successfully be told in a short span of time - by squeezing an entire life into a brief film, we are reminded of how much of a blip one's life truly is. Some have criticized the picture for the same reason, saying it's almost too brief, but I'd disagree. This is an impressive debut and Netflix's best offering for 2020 so far.

Review: Vitalina Varela

Image courtesy of Grasshopper Film.

The films of Pedro Costa are an acquired taste - a body of work and cinematic rhythm that take some adjustment regardless of whether you are a champion of so-called "slow cinema." I was introduced to the Portuguese director through his Fontainhas trilogy - the very good "Essos," "In Vanda's Room" and "Colossal Youth," my personal favorite of the three - and was mesmerized by his languid, if visually gorgeous and hypnotic style.

His latest film, "Vitalina Varela," which won the Locarno Film Festival, is being released to a fair amount of acclaim, but it's oddly enough one of my least favorite of his films. It's certainly a well-made and often visually engrossing picture, but the filmmaker's typically languid style doesn't work as well this time around, and there are long, drawn out sequences that often feel aimless.

Centered at the heart of the film is the titular character (played by none other than... Vitalina Varela), a woman who has lived in Cape Verde for 40 years and hasn't been home to Portugal during that amount of time. She has arrived in town for the burial of her husband, but she's three days too late - no matter, she hasn't seen him in decades after he left her behind. Upon exiting barefoot off an airplane, she is told that there's nothing left for her in Portugal - but Vitalina is determined to stay.

The next several days consist of her tolerating visits from her husband's friends and family, that is, until she tires of feeding them and having them loaf about in the house. She also spends time with a priest (played by Costa regular Ventura), whom she asks to give a burial mass for her husband. Occasionally, storms batter the flimsy home of her husband and a young couple drops by once or twice for a meal.

In terms of story, that's about it. "Vitalina Varela is, similar to Costa's other work, mostly just a vehicle for capturing the faces and structures of Portugal's slums. It moves at a deliberately slow pace, but I didn't find it as captivating as the Fontainhas trilogy.

Varela gives a strong leading performance, and much of her acting is done with the eyes, rather than the mouth, and there's a poetic beauty to the filmmaking. But ultimately, Costa's latest didn't rank among his best - for me, at least. "Vitalina Varela" is often beautiful to view and can be hypnotizing, but those seeking an introduction to the director's work would be better to start with his Fontainhas trio of films.

Review: Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

"He makes me do things I don't want to do... he's got the power of love over me," sings Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), a 17-year-old high school student from Pennsylvania, during a talent show in the opening scene of Eliza Hittman's powerful "Never Rarely Sometimes Always," another chronicle from the director about working class teens whose sexuality ends up causing them trouble. Autumn's performance - accompanied by her guitar playing - stands out among the other students in the talent show, most of whom are male-female duets that seem like numbers out of "Grease." And we'll later learn during the film's most standout moment that the words she's singing from The Exciters' "He Got the Power" have particular relevance.

The other students' performances aren't the only thing seemingly out of time in Autumn's small town, where men have all the power - from the slut shaming student who calls Autumn out during her performance to the grocery store manager who fondles the hands of Autumn and Skylar (Talia Ryder), Autumn's dedicated cousin who works with her at the supermarket, and Autumn's jerk of a stepfather, who plays with the family dog, calling it a "slut," and acts strangely hostile toward his stepdaughter.

Skylar senses something is off with Autumn - and she's right. Autumn is pregnant, 18 weeks in fact, but told 10 weeks for nefarious purposes by a local women's clinic worker, who also shows Autumn videos to dissuade her from considering an abortion. Autumn realizes that if she's going to have the procedure done, it'll have to be away from her hometown, so Skylar steals some money from their grocery store and the two trek to New York City, where they'll spend a two-day odyssey that plays like a surprisingly warmer version of the Romanian masterpiece "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days."

During their bus trip to New York, the girls meet a young man named Jasper (Theodore Pellerin) who insists they meet him while they're in the five boroughs, most likely to party. Jasper is the type of faux "nice guy" who pretends to be munificent - and indeed helps the duo later in the picture, but at a price - but takes liberties he shouldn't: for example, he's quick to place his hands on Skylar to her obvious discomfort.

Once in New York City, Autumn goes through the machine of bureaucracy as she attempts to get an abortion - the clinic workers are much more supportive and warm toward her, but the stringent rules force her and Skylar to end up staying two nights in the city without an obvious place to rest their heads.

In the film's tour de force sequence, the reserved Autumn's mask finally comes off during an unbroken close-up shot as she talks to a social worker, who tells her she can make one of four responses to a series of questions - "never," "rarely," "sometimes" or "always" - regarding her relationships, sexuality and home life. There's more characterization in that one scene - and we learn more about Autumn's troubles - than in what you'd typically discover during an entire movie. It's an incredibly powerful moment, made the more so by Flanigan's terrific performance. The father of her baby is never actually revealed, but some unsettling possibilities arise during the conversation.

Another scene that leaves a mark is during Autumn's procedure when her sympathetic social worker holds her hand while she's on the operating table. This is thematically coupled in a deeply moving manner during a sequence late in the film when Autumn takes her cousin's hand at a moment when she really needs it.

For a movie about such harrowing subject matter, "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" is often warm and lovely, due to the fact that the picture often focuses on the friendship between Autumn and Skylar and the actresses' camaraderie is so convincing. I've admired the technique and craft behind Hittman's other pictures - "It Felt Like Love" and "Beach Rats" - but this is the first time that I felt genuinely invested in her characters. This is the best film I've seen so far in 2020. As to whether the film hits the mark, the answer I'd choose among the four words in its title would be, nearly, "always."

Review: The Whistlers

Image courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Corneliu Porumboiu's "The Whistlers" is the Romanian director's most accessible - and among his better - films. Incorporating the somewhat dour absurdist tone of his previous works - which include "Police, Adjective," "12:08 East of Bucharest" and "The Treasure" - and scenes that would feel at home in a Coen Brothers crime movie, "The Whistlers" is a mostly enjoyable, if at times slightly confusing, picture.

As the film opens, a disgraced cop named Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) who acts as a whistleblower for the mafia is roped into a scheme in which he ends up finding himself on both sides of the equation. On the one side is a beguiling woman named Gilda (Catrinel Marlon) and a series of Spanish criminals who are quick to draw bloodshed. On the other is Cristi's police captain, Magda (Rodica Lazar), who can be trusted as far as one could sling a piano.

But it's Cristi's mother who gets him into trouble after he gives her a bag full of money, which she hands over to her local priest, who is then contacted by the authorities, who are curious as to how Cristi came to obtain the loot. His apartment is bugged and his fellow police officers clearly don't trust him.

Meanwhile, the Spaniards are involved in a plot to bust a guy named Zsolt (Sabin Tambrea) out of jail because he knows the location of an even larger sum of money. But - and here's the film's central plot thread - the men communicate through the use of El Silbo, a Canary Islands language that involves a series of whistles that stand in for words.

As I'd mentioned, the picture occasionally has the feel of a Romanian Coen Brothers movie, especially when Cristi - who's not a natural to say the least - is being taught how to speak via whistle. At first, the whole concept is meant to be funny, but eventually the means of communication becomes second-hand, both to Cristi and the audience.

This is one of those types of films in which it's not always clear how a specific character is connected to another, who's double crossing who and even when specific scenes are taking place - for example, whether one conversation between people involved in the scheme is taking place exactly after the one you previously saw. Ultimately, it doesn't matter much. "The Whistlers" is an engaging, occasionally funny and even a little thrilling crime drama.

For those unfamiliar with Porumboiu's work, "The Whistlers" is more accessible than his earlier films, several of which are pretty good, but nearly all of which are more dense. It's a good starting point for the director's work.