Category Film/TV

Documentary Two-Fer: The Musical Odysseys of Leonard Cohen and Jason Isbell

One an observant, mystically inclined Jew, born to wealthy, pedigreed parents outside Montreal, a poet by training and temperament, handsome, charismatic and refined, who drifts down to New York City in his early 30s to shore up a wobbly career by throwing himself into songwriting.

The other from rural Alabama, the son of uncultured, unmoneyed teenage parents whose loud and bitter fighting drives the pudgy and awkward boy to his room, where he teaches himself electric guitar in order to drown out the noise and his own rage and sorrow.

One born in 1934, full of questions, indignation and ardor for a God he doubts as a profession of faith, even as so much of his music probes the places God may be hiding.

The other born 35 years later, seeking escape from the dark gods of domestic hell and hoping he’s found it in rock & roll, only to be felled by its all-too-common underbelly: a wretched excess of drink...

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Quirky Movie Lover’s Delight: John Carney’s Hybrid Musical, “Once”

A busker is wailing his heart out to an audience of absolutely no one as drivers and pedestrians go about their business on a Dublin sidewalk. His brow furrowed and throat straining, he espies a stoop-shouldered addict, cigarette dangling from his lips, stumbling out from a little alleyway where he has just relieved himself against a graffiti-laden wall. Still wailing (“…the healing has begun…”), the busker keeps a wary eye out for the addict, who is milling about in front of the busker’s open guitar case pretending to enjoy the music.

As the addict stoops to ostensibly tie his sneakers, the busker stops singing momentarily and utters words of warning that he will chase him down if the addict dares to snatch whatever meager reward may be lying about in the guitar case, which is the very picture of “not overflowing with bills.”

The addict protests, mills about a bit more, then pounces, swooping up the enti...

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The Tragicomedy of “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.”

Many critics are lumping Adamma Ebo’s “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” into the comedy genre, and suggest the movie should have stuck to its lane in drawing laughs at the hypocrisy and thinly disguised greed on display with a certain kind of evangelical megachurch pastor who at best has his hands in your pocket and at worst isn’t looking only for money when he’s fishing around in there.

Yes, there are plenty of cringey laughs at the usual sendups of avaricious preachers in expensive suits and palatial homes pounding away at a “prosperity gospel” that reserves most all the prosperity for themselves.

But Ebo’s film debut, in conjunction with her twin sister Adanne as producer, is much more notable for its dark and tragic elements that underscore the dismal con job such ostensible conduits to the divine perpetrate not only on their flocks, but on themselves, too...

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Melanie, the BuddhaChristLamaDoormat of “Gone With the Wind”

“Gone With the Wind” is an alternately enchanting, preposterous, compulsively readable/watchable turbo-charged romance of seduction, goodness and cynicism. Along the way, it is also top-heavy on the myth of a doomed Southern nobility fighting to preserve its way of life against the “invading hordes” of abolitionist heathens.

Watching the movie version the other night for probably the fifth or sixth time thanks to the cultural treasure of “Turner Classic Movies,  I was struck more than once with cynical guffaws and groans as scenes of wildly extravagant balls and untold riches played out under a patina of honor and chivalry that was in truth built upon the backs of slaves.

That said, I was also struck as never before by the character of Melanie Wilkes, the noble Ashley’s golden-hearted, ever-faithful wife.

Melanie contends with main character Scarlett O’Hara’s long-running obsession with stealing Ashley a...

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Protest and Patriotism: Kota Ezawa’s “National Anthem” Video

A row of black men clad in black uniforms is down on one knee, their arms interlocked along the sideline of what is obviously a football field. Their heads are bowed, while behind them stands a row of racially varied men in casual, mostly identical civilian clothes, their arms also hooked together as they stare into the near distance.

It commands a kind of tender patriotism that asks: What is it to love one’s country, and, for that matter, to love anything?

Music from deep mournful cellos begins to play as the scene comes to life, though the figures and subsequent scenery from around the stadium are animated, and in a rich palette of colors.

It is impossible not to notice that no words are ever spoken, either from the figures on screen or any narrator. It is left to the cellos to carry the entire audio load.

But the pacing and texture of the sounds are just different enough from the original song being rep...

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