FAREWELL TO HOLLYWOOD: Henry Corra & Regina Nicholson's doc about dying and films

Diagnosed with a fatal disease at age 16, a freckle-faced, snaggle-toothed young girl with close-cropped hair named Regina "Reggie" Nicholson who dearly loves movies decides that she wants to make one before she dies. So filmmaker Henry Corra agrees to help her, and the result is the new documentary, FAREWELL TO HOLLYWOOD. There is no way that a subject like this one is not going to make the viewer emotional. The film would have to border on horrible not to wring some emotion out of you. Fortunately, the film that Mr. Corra and Ms Nicholson (the pair is pictured below) have made is a pretty good one, so the emotion we feel here is earned.

It is what we've learned, however -- about family, end-of-life demands and untimely dying -- the makes Farewell to Hollywood the keeper that it is. It is difficult to imagine what it must be like to lose a daughter at this terribly young age. Even so, the behavior of Reggie's mom (and somewhat that of her dad, too) is startlingly ghastly. Normally, I would think that parents would want to keep and cherish a final testament from their dying daughter. In this cast, probably not.

As Mr. Corra and Ms Nicholson grow more and more attached, the two parents grow angrier and crazier. The question of an unseemly closeness between filmmaker and subject is broached, but appears to be laid to rest -- at least until Reggie turns 18 and moves out and into her own small space atop a hill overlooking L.A., to be cared for by the filmmaker and a team of aides.

In the course of the film, we get the girl's history (which seems relatively normal, given what happens to the family later on). Mom alternates between helpful and nutty, while Regina sometimes seems like a typical rebellious teen. And yet we do see the girl grow in degrees. Eventually we realize how her condition has forced upon her a kind of maturity that she would not otherwise possess.

Along the way, to give us the sense of Reggie's movie love, are intercut scenes from various famous films -- from Pulp Fiction and The Dark Knight to Silence of the Lambs, The Graduate and Apocalypse Now. (Clearly, this girl was not into light romantic comedy.) Soon Mr Corra is becoming ever more a part of his own movie -- for good reason: the filmmaker as activist, helper and friend.

The movie itself? Alternately shocking, amusing and sometimes quite painful to watch, this is film as history, weapon, therapy, love story and advocacy. But is it art? I don't think so, for it is not, finally, that well done. It runs around all over the place, as though Mr Corra, having had to split his time between helper and filmmaker, opted for the former. As perhaps he should have. Yet considering what his movie gives us -- all of the above -- it doesn't have to be art. It ends up memorable enough, while Regina, by the by, has made her movie, and in the process given herself -- with Corra's help and as long as digital DVDs last -- a tiny bit of immortality.

Farewell to Hollywood opens this Wednesday, February 25 (the date of Reggie Nicholson's birthday), in New York City at the Cinema Village and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 (for one night only). It will then open at Laemmle's Noho 7 on March 13 and at the Playhouse 7 on March 14. A limited national release is expected to follow. 

Robin Campillo's odd, moving and surprising immigrant love story -- EASTERN BOYS

One of the many things I love about the films of Robin Campillo (shown at right) is how interested he is in all his characters. As a writer/director, he's made two fine films: this new one and They Came Back, one of the most unusual zombie movies of all time in which the undead return and instead of feasting on human flesh, simply want their jobs and homes and loved ones back again. As screenwriter-only, Campillo has given us three terrific films: Time Out, Heading South and The Class, all of which, whatever plot is involved, once again help us understand the situation and needs of the various characters we meet -- to the point at which we are no longer so easily able to take sides.

In his new film EASTERN BOYS, he begins with a gay pick-up in and around the Parisian railway station Gare du Nord, below, of a young man (an Eastern European immigrant) by a middle-aged well-off Parisian. Where this initial assignation leads and how it gets there prove anything but the usual scenario of so many of our gay-themed films. The resulting movie is a beautiful, subdued knockout (although its penultimate scene is quite exciting and would not be out of place in a suspense thriller) -- once again, because we come to understand so well the situation and needs of so many of these characters, we find ourselves identifying with both victims and the so-called villains.

M. Campillo is here tackling several themes -- immigration (which is as hot-button a topic in France as it is all over Europe and America), survival, gay life, and the buying and selling of sex and "love." His take on all of these are what you might expect from a filmmaker as attuned to life as he is to art: realistic but aware of the ways in which need and desire can cloud intelligent thinking.

Our protagonists are played by two actors who give indelible performances: Marek (later to be known as Rouslan) is played by Kirill Emenyanov (above, left),  a young actor who has performed a bit in Russian television and film, here making his western debut; as Daniel, Olivier Rabourdin (below, left) is a French actor I've seen numerous times without really noticing him -- something that I doubt will ever happen again.

Both actors come to life about as fully and beautifully as you could want, especially given Campillo's insistence on not offering up much exposition. He allows the two men to fill in their own characters via behavior -- and they absolutely do this. Each man takes an unexpected course and brings it to believable, pulsating life.

We also get to know the group of young men (one of them particularly young) of whom Marek is one, especially the gang's leader, played by Daniil Vorobyov (above, center), a nasty character whom we initially hate -- until we begin to understand him and his odd situation, as well.

As Campillo moves from the study of a group situation into the specifics of a relationship and back again, we begin to understand things more fully. While I might have wanted a bit more explanation by the older man to the younger of why and how their relationship is changing, thanks to the fine performances I am willing to buy into all this and finally go with the filmmaker's desire for less exposition.

As also is usual in the work of this artist, Campillo offers up a look at class and economics via the haves and have-nots. As is also usual, the filmmaker does not indict the entitled Frenchman simply because he has been given what he has. Instead, it's what he does with this that counts.

Eastern Boys -- from First Run Features; 128 minutes; in French, Russian and English, with English subtitles as needed --  which I expect will appear on a few best-of-year lists come the close of 2015, opens theatrically this Friday, February 27, in New York City at the FSLC's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, in New Orleans on March 6 and the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, and in Vancouver on April 17 at the Vancity Theater. Click here to see any further scheduled updates as they are booked.

WILD CANARIES: Lawrence Michael Levine's new-fangled comedy/mystery throwback

Imagine Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys meeting as adults in modern-day Brooklyn and encountering murders and a lot of lesbiansim, and you might just come up with an idea of what you will get from the new independent movie WILD CANARIES.

Better yet, think of the 1950s television series, Mr. and Mrs. North, with Pam and Jerry played by the modern-day couple Lawrence Michael Levine and Sophia Takal, and you'll have an even stronger sense of this odd little concoction.

The press info for the film calls it a "freshly comic take on classic film noir" -- which is yet another way to approach the movie. As a kid TrustMovies couldn't get enough of the Mr. & Mrs. North series. Watching some of these half-hour programs again recently on video, he can understand why he loved them so back then, while realizing that, no, they're not all that entertaining for the adult mind. Something of the same effect transpires in the course of this new film, written and directed by Mr. Levine (shown at right).

Levine's movie begins promisingly enough, with some fine banter between its in-love protagonists, Barri and Noah (Ms Takal and Levine, above) involving everything from jobs and money to friends, landlords, employers and past loves -- several of whom we soon meet.

These folk include the likes of roommate Jean (Alia Shawkat, above), a young woman who has more than a passing interest in Barri, and Eleanor (the gorgeous Annie Parisse, below) ex-lover and current employer of Noah, who is herself now exploring a lesbian relationship of her own.

Then there are the couple's neighbors who include the aged Sylvia (Marylouise Burke) and her visiting son (Kevin Corrigan, shown in the penultimate photo), and the building's relationship-troubled landlord, Damien (Jason Ritter, below).

There are plenty more familiar names and faces for those of you who frequent American independent cinema, including even the likes of Larry Fessenden (playing poker in a non-speaking role). In fact, as it unfurls and because the plot is not a little far-fetched and the final explanation of which even more so (though Miss Parisse does a bang-up job of explication), the movie seems to almost be a kind of "inside" joke played upon us by the bougie-aspiring Brooklyn filmmaking set.

The excellent, if highly naturalistic performances here -- especially from Corrigan, Ritter, Lindsay Burdge and Eleanore Hendricks -- sometimes interfere with the movie's aspirations to the screwball comedy/mystery genre, while the performances of Takal, Levine, Shawkat and Parisse all handle the plot machinations with a lighter, more graceful touch. While some this can be attributed to the characters these performers play, at times it seems that half the cast is appearing in a different film.

One of those movies that you sometimes feel may have been more fun to make than to view, and despite its straight-ahead intent to charm and entertain above all, Wild Canaries raises some interesting questions that its filmmaker might have included here in an unconscious rather than conscious manner. Why are all five of the most prominent women in the film either involved in or toying with a lesbian relationship, while, among the men, there's not a trace of homosexuality to be seen. Are Brooklyn gals more open to exploring their sexuality to its fullest, while the guys are, as usual, completely closed off dunderheads? Or is this the too-often experienced male view of women as all possibly femme fatales, to which lesbian tendencies simply add? Interesting to consider. It makes one wonder what a female writer/director would have done with this story?

In any case, Wild Canaries -- from IFC/Sundance Selects and running just a little too long at 96 minutes -- is a well-acted and not un-entertaining bauble that I wish had been even more so. It opens this Wednesday, February 25, here in New York City at the IFC Center. On Friday, March 6, it hits Los Angeles (at the Arena Cinema), Seattle (at the NW Film Forum), and Miami (at the Cosford Cinema. Click here to check in as later playdates are posted.

Overlooked winner: Tommy Lee Jones' THE HOMESMAN, now on Blu-ray, DVD & digital

THE HOMESMAN is the fourth film that Tommy Lee Jones has directed -- two for the home screen (The Sunset Limited and The Good Old Boys) and two for theatrical release (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and this new one). As well as being a first-class actor who can handle both comedy and drama, Jones continues to grow as a filmmaker. The Homesman is such a fine and intelligent piece of work on so many levels that it constitutes a "don't miss" effort --
which many of us unfortunately did.

The story -- of a trek from Nebraska to Iowa a century or so ago by a young woman and the maybe-not-so-trustworthy man she recruits to help as they take three women from her town, all gone mad due to the severity of the region in which they live and what they have had to endure there -- is a very good one (from that generally excellent late writer Glendon Swarthout). Even better is the manner in which Mr. Jones (above, right) -- as director, co-writer (with Wesley A. Oliver and Kieran Fitzgerald) and leading actor -- has managed it.

He has cast his film about as well as you could imagine or want, with Hilary Swank giving one of her best performances as the woman in charge -- and actors the likes of James Spader, Meryl Streep, Tim Blake Nelson (above, left) and William Fichtner in small but choice supporting roles. The three mad women are played quite specifically and well by Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and Sonja Richter.

The movie is drained of sentimentality but never of humanity, and this becomes its great strength. It is also quite beautiful to view, with fine cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto. The sense you have of time and place is always correct, while the behavior of every character on view seems believable, if sometimes wanting. The movie is really a one-of-a-kind in so many ways that you'd be foolish to let it pass you by. It's available now on DVD and Blu-ray and probably streaming via several of the usual sources.

MY WAY: Vanity, thy name is Rebekah Starr, abetted by Vinny Sisson & Dominique Mollee

"Everyone told me this was a stupid idea," notes Rebekah Starr, the producer and star of MY WAY, which, though 2015 be young, wins the up-to-now unnecessary vanity production of the year. "Everyone," it turns out, can sometimes be right. The 'stupid idea' of Ms Starr's that the movie tracks is the road trip from a small Pennsylvania town to Los Angeles, where the lady is bent on making a "kick-ass" video featuring one of her band's songs, which turns out to be the titular "My Way" -- as though the singer/songwriter has no idea that title had already been used, and rather well, by a certain Frank Sinatra, about whom perhaps our heroine knows very little.

Suffice it to say that Ms Starr's "way" doesn't hold a candle to the well-known song penned by France's Claude Francois (aka Cloclo) and made most famous by Mr. Sinatra. But Starr's offering (the performer is shown at right) is indeed the song we hear the most throughout this tiresome movie, by the end of which you're ready to throw up your hands and scream, "Please, not again!" The problem here, to get right to the point, would seem to be that Starr has a huge need to recognized and famous but not, perhaps, any real talent to underpin that need.

So instead we get a terribly slipshod, slapshot little movie that tosses in everyone from Ron Jeremy (above) -- who is identified as a "Sunset Strip aficionado" (with that last word misspelled, above) rather than the famous porn star that he is -- to Rikki Rocket (below), who informs us that "the world needs a kick-ass girl band." Maybe. But I'm not at all sure that it needs this one.

Along the way, Starr, who narrates and is almost always center stage, tells us of her family history and its coal mining business, and her own work experience at same. Here, she tosses in some ersatz feminism (it's actually narcissism passing as feminism), giving us conclusions but almost no details that might help us agree with those conclusions.

We meet her husband (above, and now ex-), who smartly wants no part of this trip, and we meet and spend time with her women friends/band members: Temea, below, who can't accompany Rebekah on her trip, and Annika, shown further below -- who does, and ends up becoming the most interesting of the women we meet, and who for a time, at least, puts up with Rebekah's shenanigans a lot better than would I.

Overall and over time Starr impresses most as the kind of self-absorbed, narcissistic woman who, as we later learn, will spend money having her hair cut and colored but doesn't have the funds for Annika to do the same. Is this unfair, she wonders? (She also might have invested in a proof-reader who could spell Albuquerque, which appears as Albequerque, on the map showing our heroine's progress across country.)

Once in L.A., the pair hooks up with friend and drummer Holly, below, who definitely seems to be the most grounded of the women we meet.

At no time does this band appear to be particularly original or witty or intelligent or talented. Rebekah rarely allows us to see them in performance, and then, when we do, it's very brief. Later, we supposedly watch her go surfing. Except that, again, we don't really see her surf. The defining word here is shallow.

On (and on and on) it goes, one dumb cliche after another, until the movie begins to seem like a mockumentary. Suddenly tempers flare: "I just want to get through with this video and be done with her!" When the girls do finally perform at a the Sunset Strip club, they do the song 'My Way.' And then do it and do it until we're blue in the face.

Finally we discover what our Ms Starr has learned from all this. "The world proved to me that the world wasn't worth pleasing." Not to worry, dear: You haven't come close.

According to the IMDB, My Way originally ran 120 minutes. It has now thankfully been cut down to only 92 and opens this Friday, February 20, at the Arena Cinema in Los Angeles and a week later on February 27 here in New York City at the Quad Cinema.

In DRUNKTOWN'S FINEST, Sydney Freeland explores life in today's American-Indian town

Hard to believe, but it's been 27 years since the last really good movie -- Smoke Signals -- about modern-day American Indians hit the screen. DRUNKTOWN'S FINEST, the new film from first-time/full-length filmmaker Sydney Freeland, is not in that league -- it doesn't possess the poetry: visual from director Chris Eyre, verbal from screen-writer Sherman Alexie -- but it is still a movie worth seeing. More "modern," due to its inclusion of a transgendered character, as well as an adopted Indian raised by "whites," and of course the usual alcohol-problemed guy, the movie touches some of the new "bases" while remaining a relatively honest look a society ever in transition and trying to hold on to what's best about its past.

Ms Freeland, pictured at left, works in a realistic mode, while allowing a little leeway for the usual Indian "visions" thing. But she also lets her characters -- a couple of them, anyway -- appreciate the irony and humor of some of their "spirit" endeavors. And her New Mexico scenery is, as expected, often a pleasure to view.

As a screenwriter, Freeland's plot and dialog tend toward the plain and believable, despite maybe a coincidence or two too many; as director, she has surrounded herself with a professional crew, while keeping things moving along at a good clip and drawing decent performances from her mostly adept cast.

In her screenplay, Freeland gives us three main characters, the (somewhat) bad-boy-with-a-firewater-problem Luther (Jeremiah Bitsui, above), transgendered Felixia (newcomer Carmen Moore, below),

and the adoptee struggling with identity issues (MorningStar Angeline, below). All three characters are connected in ways that will not become apparent for some time. Fortunately, their connection does not insist on some clever plot surprise; it's just part of typical small-scale reservation life.

The film begins with the statement that this town is more likely a place to leave than a place to live. Two of our three characters are trying to get out, while the other is being prevented from getting in. What the moviemaker appears to be telling them -- and us, of course -- is that they ought to try to find some way to bring their life and location together.

To that end we meet some of the subsidiary characters: the kindly grandparents (one of whom is shown, above left), the problemed parents of two of our kids, and the far-too-into-the-drug-and-booze-culture friends of the three. Yet no one and nothing is held up as villainous and evil. We can understand and sympathize with the whole batch we meet here.

Finally, if things come together a little too easily, at least Ms Freeland does not tie up every loose end and smooth over all the rough patches. The finale -- which involves a young girl running (Magdelena Begay, below)-- reminded me of the ending in the current and quite exceptional Oscar nominee, Timbuktu. Except that here, the running is something positive and wonderful. It lifts our spirits -- as does, despite its flaws and pretty much in its entirety, Drunktown's Finest.

From Indion Entertainment the movie, running 92 minutes, opens this Friday in New York City at the Quad Cinema. Elsewhere? No idea, but as the film is a product of Sundance, with Robert Redford credited as an executive producer, one would imagine the film might open at one of the several Sundance Cinemas.

Want something a little different? Sonia Barrett's dizzy documentary, THE BUSINESS OF DISEASE

If the page after page of written do's-and-don'ts that appear at the opening of this new would-be documentary don't make you a little wary of what will follow, I'll be surprised. First, we're told to take charge of our life and health, and then there's a disclaimer about all the logos we're going to see in the film and how these do not mean that the companies themselves sponsored or in any way financed this movie (as if). No, THE BUSINESS OF DISEASE instead spends its time flipping back and forth between a bunch of would-be "experts" on everything from sound to light to music to health to... I don't even know quite what some of these people's claim to fame is supposed to be. It's as though the documentary, as envisioned by its writer/producer/director Sonia Barrett (shown below) and its "editorial department" (click and scroll way down), offers some weird visual equivalent of the old jokester game of 52 Pickup. That's how bizarre is the entire organization of this film.

The movie begins by quoting from those very au courant folk Hippocrates and Thomas Edison, as visuals of the aforementioned logos fly by to some heavy-handed, pulsating music. Then the "experts"  begin bantering about herbs (better grow your own) and organic food and the body as energy and epigenetics and building a house around "your signature sound."  (Sound is very big here: We also hear about listening to the sound of one's refrigerator as well as sounds from outer space.) But it's all anecdotal, and -- via the manner in which it is presented -- comes off as faintly ridiculous.

Did nobody bother to tell Ms Barrett about the idea of organizing her material in order to make a case for her main idea?  Her thesis -- which seems to come down to "take charge of your life and health" -- is way too broad to begin with, but her examples of how we ought to do this don't begin to coalesce.

So we flip back and forth between speakers (and can't help wondering who gathered these people under the same roof and why they're even that important). One fellow, a certain Hal A. Huggins, DDS, has this immortal line to tell us: The "disease is gonna get more worse."  And yes, I am quoting verbatim.

We learn that sun glasses and sunscreen are bad for us because they don't allow the skin to repair itself. We hear about light and our "age of light," and art in the face of your cat. And I believe, somewhere in the midst of all this, someone tells us that our convictions should be flexible. Flexible convictions? What a great idea!

There are probably a few (very few) good things to be found in this mess of a movie, but I'll be damned if I could ferret them out from all the twaddle on display in this nitwit documentary. Among other oddities, it seems to be thoroughly against Obamacare. (It wants us to take charge of our life but has damn little to say about how we might afford to do that.)

When you keep using mere anecdotes as "proof," you're in big trouble. But, then, I suppose you would have to be intelligent enough to realize this. Instead, the speakers here, and especially filmmaker Barrett, appear to be blithely unaware of this or maybe have been roped into taking part in something from which they expected a lot more.

In the spirit of sparing undue embarrassment, I have deliberately left out any names of our guest lecturers pictured above (except for dentist Huggins, who is not shown), but I will note that the movie ends with yet another disclaimer. Unlike the earlier ones that are left on screen long enough for your to read them five or ten times, this one I think you might actually want to read. But it is gone before you can even do that.

The Business of Disease, which I feel has no business opening in an actual theater and roping in any poor paying customers, hits a New York City screen (the Quad Cinema) this Friday, February 20, and then arrives in Los Angeles one week later at the Laemmle Music Hall 3. Your move.