Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb (2020)

Jack and I really liked this documentary about journalist Hunter Thompson's running to be elected Aspen, Colorado's sheriff in 1970. Vintage film and stills are expertly woven with voiceovers and film from the present, and it moves along beautifully.

Ajax Phillips and Daniel Joseph Watkins are the directors and screenwriters, inspired by Watkins' 2015 book "Freak Power: Hunter S. Thompson's Campaign for Sheriff."

The score by Gustavo Sanotaolalla doesn't seem to be available anywhere, other than the song Valley of Last Resort by him and Gary Clark Jr. (listen here). Because I care, I tracked down the song list from the online press kit. Scroll down on this link. The movie's trailer is right after it.

Santaolalla was last blogged for the soundtrack of Wild Tales.

Rotten Tomatoes has not rated this movie, so here's a review from Rolling Stone, one of Thompson's employers. We rented it on June 16 from Apple TV.

Bo Burnham: Inside (2021)

OMG. Jack and I were blown away by this clever, hilarious, and thoughtful one-man musical show with comedian, actor, director, writer, songwriter, singer, and editor Bo Burnham. We've never seen anything like it. 

Shot entirely in his house for a year during the pandemic lockdown, it has him talking, singing, playing, and dancing awkwardly with lighting and editing effects complementing both his comedy and neuroses. Is it autobiographical or is he just playing a character?

Halfway through the 87 minute show, there's a card that says INTERMISSION so there's your pee break.

An album of his many catchy tunes is available, but I recommend watching the video on Netflix first and then go back to hear the songs you liked best. Here's a link to all the services that are streaming the album.

If you want to delve more deeply into the show, I found this article and then this one fascinating. They are riddled with spoilers, though, so wait to read them until after you watch it.

Burnham was last blogged for acting in A Promising Young Woman, where he played the more sympathetic of Cassie's former classmates, and his directing/writing feature debut Eighth Grade earned a raft of wins and nominations.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are inside with us, averaging 97 and 94%, respectively. We watched it on Netflix June 18 and highly recommend it.

Shiva Baby (2020)

Jack and I enjoyed this cringey comedy about a young woman, Danielle, who runs into her sugar daddy Max at a Jewish funeral reception. Danielle cannot stop lying to everyone, her relentless parents overshare and pick at her, and some viewers may not be able to stand it, but we laughed a lot. 

Rachel Sennott is terrific as the awkward Danielle, as are Polly Draper and Fred Melamed as her pushy parents. Molly Gordon has some good scenes as Maya and Danny Deferrari plays Max. Let me just say that I found it confusing that Max is wearing glasses when they're having sex in the opening scene, and no glasses at the shiva. I also thought, for a moment when we first see him without glasses, that it was the actor Jay Duplass, and then thought I would've liked to see Duplass in the role. But Deferrari is fine. Deborah Offner has a funny featured role as one of the gossipy shiva ladies. I always like her, and not only because we were in the same NYC elementary school class many moons ago (we have completely lost touch, though).

Director/writer Emma Seligman fleshed out her seven minute long 2018 short of the same name (nominated for a South by Southwest Grand Jury Award) into this, her first feature, which is still only 78 minutes long. I found the short on Vimeo. In it, we see Max's face better at the beginning so there's no question as to who it is at the shiva. Also in the short, Danielle's father is played by Ted Seligman, father of the director.

An interesting trivia item is that actress Dianna Agron, whose character is referred to several times as a shiksa (non-Jewish woman) is Jewish, while Sennott, Draper, and Deferrari are not. Hey, it's called acting.

This one racked up some 2020 nominations and wins and came out streaming and in theatres this spring.

Ariel Marx's eerie soundtrack consists of mostly plucked violin, viola, and cello, mixed with synthesizer. The entire score is available on her website as well as Apple Music (and probably more). One track is called Anxiety Attack. and the whole album could be unsettling in its creativity.

Draper was last blogged for Obvious Child (in which she played a much kinder mother), Melamed for Together Together, and Offner for The Boy Downstairs. We have been enjoying the series Call Your Mother, in which Sennott has a supporting role, and this is her second feature. Gordon has not been in these pages yet, but had roles in Animal Kingdom, Booksmart, and Good Boys, among others. Deferrari has acted in Private Life and more. Agron's long resumé includes 74 episodes of Glee as Quinn and five of Heroes. Marx has scored dozens of shorts and eight features, including this one.

 

Rotten Tomatoes' critics have brought this baby up to a 98% average, while its audiences aren't so familial at 76.

We rented it on iTunes June 8 because Chris recommended it to us and we're glad we did.

Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang (2016)

Bam! I, a fireworks fanatic, was moved to tears of joy watching this documentary about the Chinese artist whose mediums include pyrotechnics, pen, and paint. Jack liked the movie, too. The art is spectacular, the photography splendid, and the music superb. The internet says his name is pronounced Tsai gwoh djung (rhymes with my low young).

Director Kevin Macdonald, his two dozen producers, two directors of photography (Robert Yeoman and Florian Zinke), and two editors (Adam Biskupski and Nick Emerson) bring us a magnificent show whose only award, surprisingly, was a nomination for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.

The sky ladder project serves as bookends here for Cai's work, which also includes the fireworks displays at the Chinese Olympics on 08/08/08 and the 2014 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit) meeting, as well as the Ninth Wave exhibit, also in 2014, which included stuffed animal replicas (you have to see it), gunpowder on paper, and so much more. As much as I love fireworks, the Ninth Wave alone made the movie worth watching. Here is the artist's website.

We also get a glimpse into Chinese politics and Cai's love for his aged grandmother and father.

The music by Alex Heffes doesn't seem to be available online, though he is experienced and lauded.

Macdonald was last blogged for State of Play, Yeoman for The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Heffes for Queen of Katwe. Zinke's credits seem to be all Chinese movies, documentaries, and shorts, none of which I have seen.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are reaching for the heavens with us, averaging a perfect 100%, while its critics are slightly more earthbound at 84.

Made for Netflix, this is a scant 76 minutes long, and we watched it Friday June 4. I can't remember how it made its way onto my watch list but I'm very glad it did. We recommend it highly.

Plan B (2021)

This sweet but raunchy comedy about teenage girls in search of the morning after pill in South Dakota  is good fun and Jack and I liked it a lot. Kuhoo Verma and Victoria Moroles are terrific as Sunny (of Indian/South Asian heritage) and Lupe (Latina), respectively. Apparently it was pitched as Harold and Kumar plus emergency contraception. In fact, the writers of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) are among the producers.

The only faces in the cast I could place were Rachel Dratch as the sex ed teacher and Gus Birney as mean girl Megan. Jack recognized Edi Patterson, who plays Doris at the gas station.

This is a terrific feature debut for actress Natalie Morales (different spelling from the co-star) as director and for the screenwriting team of Joshua Levy and Prathiksha Srinivasan.

Isabella Manfredi's short music cues can be streamed with a subscription to Apple Music and for free on Spotify. Then I counted 31 songs in the credits, old songs and new, pretty much all good.

Though set in South Dakota, it was shot in Syracuse and Skaneateles, New York.

Dratch was last blogged for Wine Country. This the second feature for Verma (she had a small part in The Big Sick) and fourth for Moroles, and Birney played another mean girl in I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Patterson was in Knives Out and dozens of other projects, including four episodes of Black-ish. Morales was most recently in these pages for acting in Stuber, and Levy and Srinivasan worked on a few TV series.

Rotten Tomatoes' are right with our Plan A, averaging 97% and its audiences aren't far behind at 89. We watched this on Hulu on June 2. Highly recommended and I look forward to Morales' next feature, Language Lessons, to be released later this year.

Fourteen (2019)

This story of the codependent relationship of 20-something best friends (since they were 14) veers wildly from wonderful to maddening. The acting and plot are good but the pacing frustrated me so much that I started catcalling at the television and Jack joined me. We watched it because its festival accolades include director Dan Sallitt's winning Best Screenplay at the Gotham Awards, tied with Radha Blank for The Forty-Year-Old Version (the latter movie had no such problems).

Tallie Medel plays Mara, the level-headed one, who takes care of her unstable friend Jo (Norma Kuhling). When the credits rolled, I realized that Sallitt also edited it, which could explain the tedious real-time scenes that do not advance the story. When the camera lingers on a wide shot of the Katonah, New York train station, it seems interminable, you should forgive the expression, as we see the train arrive at the station, come slowly to a halt, discharge dozens of passengers, and finally we see Mara (with longer hair, I might add, than the rest of the movie) walk to the parking lot and head up the street. If I could stand it, I'd load it again just to see how many minutes long that sequence is. But I'm not going to do it.

The whole movie is only one hour 34 minutes long, and we suspect that it might have started as a short film and was padded to make it feature length but I have no evidence. Then again, editor Sallit might have been in love with every shot and could not "kill his darlings."

No composer nor soundtrack listing is on imdb, and, though it's been only eight days since we saw it (paying a rental fee on iTunes), I must have blocked any memory of the music. I think we liked seeing the Brooklyn locations, maybe?

Sallitt directed, wrote, and edited two features before this and wrote and directed another. Medel and Kuhling are also new to me, though Medel has dozens of credits and Kuhling has a few.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are way more patient than we are, averaging 98%, while its audiences seem to agree with us at 53.