LUCE

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

The actors in Luce traffic in subtleties, small expressions of facial emotion largely open to wide interpretations. This is clearly by design, as its dense script, by J.C. Lee and director Julius Onah based on a play of the same name by J.C. Lee, clearly exists to challenge, in all the best ways.

That’s not to say it’s never frustrating. There were moments when I found myself wondering why the movie was clearly withholding vital information from the viewer as a tactical maneuver, but in ways that did not yet make sense. Even now I have burning questions, as to who did exactly what and when. But that is this movie’s strength, as it is just as ripe for discussion among intellectually curious friends as it is for film academics. Luce is a movie made for people to talk about it, in a way far too few movies are anymore.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement is how Lee and Onah weave both racial and international politics into the story without overtly making those things what Luce is about. The story unfolds much like a mystery, with suspicions and suspect motivations among several characters. It’s easy to imagine viewers taking the side of different characters and getting into heated arguments about it, much as did audience members of the 1994 film Oleana — itself also based on a play, in this case about either real or perceived sexual assault between a professor and a student on a college campus.

The key difference with Luce is its total lack of sensationalism, even though it is also about a conflict between a teacher and a student. Here, the school is a high school, the respective genders are reversed, and they are both black instead of white. Sexual assault, again either real or perceived, does factor into the story here as well, but as a subplot, and not between the teacher and student. Instead, Miss Wilson (Octavia Spencer, fantastic as always) interprets something the title character, Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr., a young actor to keep a look out for), says to her as a sinister threat. On the surface, upon first hearing it, it sounds perfectly innocent and not like a threat at all. But, as the complex story unfolds, you start to think: or was it?

Miss Wilson pushes back against this perceived threat immediately and clearly, but with restraint. Her uneasiness with Luce is apparent from the moment we meet these characters, Miss Wilson introducing herself to Luce’s parents after he gives a speech at a school assembly. There are uneasy glances exchanged from the very start.

What is difficult to gauge is how much Miss Wilson’s view of Luce is colored by her knowledge that Luce was adopted out of war-torn Eritrea at the age of seven, by white parents (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) who bring with the a whole other set of issues and, to a certain degree, sociopolitical baggage. It’s fascinating to see all three of these grownups, two of them white and one of them a black woman, navigating their own biases in individual ways.

It all starts with Miss Wilson expressing concern about the paper Luce wrote, in which he adopted the point of view of a historical figure, just as assigned, but choosing an obscure figure who argued justifications for violence. Things kind of snowball from there, with miscommunications and in some cases simply misinterpretation of tone. New information comes to light at key moments, unfolding in ways that only complicate matters more when the hope is for clarity. By the time the movie ended, I merely wondered if I had figured out what had actually been going on all along, because things are of course never what they seem. I’m still not entirely certain.

And that is also what I loved about this movie, which so thematically rich that it stays with you in a peculiar way, offering a unique experience. Luce is intensely compelling, even as it refuses to provide any easy answers. It’s a provocative exploration of the ways life is unavoidably complicated, often unfair in surprising ways, and even the smartest people can be tragic victims of circumstance. And, sometimes, who the victims even are, exactly, is open for debate. This movie would therefore best be seen with someone you can talk about it with.

Everyone wonders where the power dynamic begins and where it ends.

Overall: A-

HONEYLAND

Directing: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A+

Honeyland is a triumph of editing, of cinematography, of will, of perseverance, of humanity.

It’s a genuine shock that this is a documentary film, so gorgeous are the visuals, so well crafted is the narrative. Indeed, it feels more like watching a narrative film than perhaps any other documentary I have ever seen. Admittedly part of it is its foreign conception, giving it the same feel as many films spoken in a foreign language with local, and therefore completely unfamiliar — yet utterly believable — actors. If I had been told this was a regular movie shot in rural Macedonia outside its capital city of Skopje, I would never have doubted it.

Because co-directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov take an utterly cinematic approach to their subjects, particularly the central figure of middle-aged Hatidze, often framing her in stunning panoramic shots as she strolls the Macedonian countryside and hillsides, harvesting honey from strategically placed bee colonies. Occasionally she features in drone shots from above, as in the memorable opening shot of her casually walking around a high cliff, along a trail barely wider than she is.

There are no interviews here, which creates the sense of it being a movie rather than the documentary Honeyland really is. There is plenty of dialogue (in Turkish), a fair amount of it not even subtitled, but no talking heads. No analysis, no conjecture, just what is onscreen speaking for itself. And God knows how much total footage must have been shot, the filmmakers granted stunningly intimate access to Hatidze, her ailing mother, and her heartbreakingly misguided neighbors over the course of three years. It’s all cut down to the 87 minutes that became “the most awarded film out of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.”

It deserves every award and then some. I certainly deserves far more audiences than it will ever get. This is a very small, intimate story with global implications, about the delicate balance between nature and humanity. If this were a conventionally produced motion picture, it would be a parable. But this is real life, illustrating very real consequences as a direct result of ignorance and impatience.

Hatidze, doing nothing more than live a simple life doing simple work and selling her high-quality, raw honey in the city, is the hero of this story. She makes no particular effort to be; she is gentle and kind and generous by nature, and extends those qualities to the poor nomadic family that parks their camper trailer and their 150 cows near her. When the head of this family, Hussein, decides he wants to get into the honey game himself, Hatidze is happy to offer him sensible advice, most notably the sustainable practice of “take half, leave half.”

It would be a mistake to call Hussein a villain, exactly, but his family’s presence certainly poses a threat to Hatidze’s livelihood, and therefore her very life. Tensions brew as Hussein, a very poor father of several children, over-harvests honey from bees that also attack Haditze’s colonies, thereby posing a threat to all of them. The longevity of her amicable relationship with everyone in Hussein’s family comes into question.

Honeyland is presented with a clear vision, of both the broader geopolitical context of these people’s lives, and the details of how they live them. The filmmakers simply observe, without comment or judgment. The little things are the most fascinating, such as the degree to which all these children get used to frequent bee stings, or the frequency with which these people eat dripping honeycomb with their bare hands, in a village with no electricity or things as simple as napkins.

Hatidze does indulge in one pointedly modern invention, dying her hair from a boxed kit purchased the market in Skopje, using her bare hands scraping the mix from a ceramic bowl and using a carefully propped small mirror next to her bedridden, elderly mother. They speak briefly about how Hatidze never married, and how different things could have been for her had she produced any children. This woman is an inspiration, with a remarkably sunny disposition considering her lot in life, with a sort of innate love for it. Rest assured her story here ends with at least a small note of hope, even if it is far more comforting to her personal fate than to her story’s wider implications for the planet.

There are many lessons to be learned from old-world experience, fast disappearing.

Overall: A

READY OR NOT

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

An unsuspecting bride discovers on her wedding night that her husband’s family initiates her by playing a deadly came of . . . hide and seek. Sounds unbearably corny, right?

Don’t judge a movie by its dumb concept, man! Or its hokey title, for that matter. True, usually a movie like this is quite predictably a waste of time. But Ready or Not has a sly undercurrent of self-awareness, never takes itself too seriously, and while it might be a stretch to call it “clever,” it is consistently funny, largely thanks to its great ensemble cast of mostly unknown actors. The most recognizable player is Andie MacDowell as the groom’s mother, and she immediately proves delightful.

All of these judgments are largely subjective, of course, and this movie absolutely won’t be or everyone. Some viewers will still dismiss it as stupid; others will be unable to stomach its gruesome humor. It’s hardly a surprise the reviews are somewhat mixed, albeit leaning toward favorable. As far as I’m concerned, co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have created a work of such specifically dark humor, fundamentally, this movie is my jam. But I find a lot of seriously twisted shit funny.

Ready or Not is unique in its consistency of quality. The script, by Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy (not the TV producer), relies a bit too much on exposition at times, but most people open to a movie like this to begin with isn’t going to care much. Suffice it to say that if you have a bent sense of humor, this movie is a guaranteed good time. I laughed a lot.

And the plotting is impressive, considering it’s about a rich family attempting to kill a woman just married into it, as part of a traditional ritual involving a common child’s game. It’s 95 minutes of not knowing what’s coming next, a surprisingly unpredictable maze of menace, tension and hilariously lethal accidents. The variable tone never stretches too far; one minute I was looking at the screen through my fingers, and the next I was cracking up. Either way it’s a blast.

There is an element of satire regarding the filthy rich, which this movie could have benefited from leaning into a bit more, or perhaps the notion of the bride, Grace (Samara Weaving), becoming the type of person she’s running from. It’s somewhat ironic how this movie “keeps it light,” given how much bloodshed there is in it. I guess the work of considering how fucked up it is to delight in the demented is left to ponder once the movie is over. You might be a bit distracted by how over the top it gets at the very end.\

Ready or Not is not designed to be anything but fun — and the knowledge that some people might be horrified or disgusted by its playfulness with things like Satanic ritual is a big part of the appeal. I kept thinking about how much more fun this movie would be going into it blind, not having any idea what it’s about. It begins with what seems like a lovely wedding at a stately mansion. I’d love to find friends to introduce to this movie in such a way. Who doesn’t love being blindsided by the delightfully deranged?

You won’t believe what’s coming.

Overall: B+

WHERE'D YOU GO, BURNADETTE

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

Every once in a while, it seems Richard Linklater gets inspired to take a step away from his indie cult movie roots and take a stab at Hollywood mediocrity. Sometimes his Hollywood offerings are actually pretty good, as in 2011’s Bernie or even 2017’s Last Flag Flying. Compared to the greatness of his earlier work, though, Where’d You Go, Burnadette has Linklater basically phoning it in. It’s only because his name is attached that the film does not get written off as basically forgettable.

It’s too bad, especially for fans of the runaway hit novel, by Maria Semple, on which it’s based. That goes double specifically for Seattleite fans of the novel, who appreciated Semple’s humor and satirical look at local culture in the Pacific Northwest, through the eyes of a transplant Los Angeles architect (here played, quite well, by Cate Blanchett) who rather dislikes the city. Only a little of that sentiment makes it through in the adaptation to motion picture, really confined to one ranting monologue by the title character.

Sometimes a sensibility just works in prose and doesn’t translate to the screen. And as always, a film should succeed on its own merits. Where’d You Go, Burnadette does’t exactly fail, it’s more like it coasts, gliding along with no real resonance.

That said, as a longtime Seattle resident, there are some frustratingly cliché things about the depiction of Seattle in this movie (which definitely were not part of the novel). As always, it rains way too much, and every time it’s raining, it’s raining too hard. Linklater and his two co-writers attempt to give themselves an out by having it mentioned that it’s “the wettest winter on record.” It’s still an inauthentic representation of Seattle weather, long an overused crutch in movies set in the Pacific Northwest.

On the upside, the performances elevate the material, at least a little bit. Cate Blanchett remains the consummate character actor, every bit as much as she is a movie star, slipping into true specificity as she channels Burnadette Fox. Billy Crudup is all exasperated bemusement as her husband, Elgie, deals with Burnadette’s erratic behaviors. Emma Nelson is lovely as their 15-year-old daughter, Bee. And Kristen Wiig is perfect as Burnadette’s snooty neighbor, at the end of her rope regarding the invasive blackberry bushes from Burnadette’s yard.

Lawrence Fishburne, Steve Zahn and Megan Mullally show up in much smaller parts as Burnadette’s past colleagues in the architecture profession, and although they all show up well for what they’re called on to do, it’s all brief enough that it kind of feels like wasted talent.

The story takes at least half the movie’s run time to get to this point, but Burnadette disappears out her bathroom window in the middle of an attempted intervention wrapped around her mental health. Before long, Elgie and Bee figure out she has left without them on what had been a planned family trip to Antarctica. How this trip got planned to begin with is a little oddly contrived, but whatever: Elgie and Bee go after her, spending a fair amount of time just behind her on other tourist vessels, and the action movies from Seattle to Antarctica. There was no filming at the bottom of the planet, but production did move to Greenland as the closest approximation, and if nothing else, it makes for some very pretty scenery to look at.

Beyond that, Where’d You Go, Burnadette doesn’t even try to be much of an actual mystery, and is more of a hang with these barely-odd characters, and it’s pleasant enough most of the time, when it’s not being ridiculously unrealistic, particularly regarding how Burnadette half-cons her way onto vessels in Antarctica that would be far more careful than this in the real world about unauthorized personnel. But, sure, I’m just nitpicking now. Still, there is a feeling of a great lot of unrealized potential here, a lack of electricity in the dialogue, a sense that there should be some kind excitement. No part of this story is exciting or electric; it is merely adequate at entertaining as long as the movie goes on. It’s fine but nothing special, when it clearly could have been something special.

She went to the Seattle Public Library, apparently. Mystery solved.

Overall: B-

THE REPORTS ON SARAH AND SALEEM

Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

What do you do when you’ve told a lie in an official capacity to cover up one truth, the official lie convinces the authorities of a much broader, more sinister truth, and you endanger everyone you care about in the process?

The Reports on Sarah and Saleem is a modern, geographically specific take on the very idea of a catch-22, where characters are forced between two decisions that are equally horrible. It takes some time to get there, of course, and Palestinian director Muayad Alayan increases the tension in the meantime, so steadily you barely register it’s even happening until it’s been doing on for a while.

There are four characters, two married couples, and the story at first revolves around what seems like a pretty straightforward extramarital affair — straightforward, at least, in the context of the politics those involved naively think they can avoid: one couple is Israeli and the other is Palestinian. This alone could easily make for a compelling story, given the obvious prejudices at play.

But, here things are not that simple. This is the story of otherwise regular people making small but bad choices, which turn out to have huge and horrible consequences. Saleem (Adeeb Safadi) is a Palestinian man struggling at a low paying job at a delivery service, who is having an affair with Sarah (Sivane Kretchner), an Israeli bakery cafe owner in West Jerusalem. Both are part of communities in which extramarital affairs on their own have dire consequences. They meet in secret and have sex late at night on the side of empty streets in the back of Saleem’s delivery van.

But, they make two key mistakes, when Sarah agrees to go out for drinks with him in a part of Jerusalem where nobody knows them, where Saleem has agreed to make extra cash making nighttime deliveries, but Saleem gets into an altercation with a man aggressively trying to hit on Sarah.

It’s difficult to explain how things snowball from there without giving spoilers, but suffice it to say that official government reports — hence the movie’s title — are involved, they contain falsehoods intended to save Saleem’s livelihood and reputation, but the Israeli government takes them at face value and considers them a threat. Ultimately Saleem and Sarah both find themselves faced with a choice between either ruining the other person’s life to save their own, or ruining their own lives.

And that’s not to mention their spouses, both of whom bring greater richness to the storytelling here. Sarah’s husband, David (Ishai Golan), is a colonel in the Israeli army, unknowingly inching closer to the case against Saleem and therefore some version of the truth about his wife. Saleem’s wife, Bisan (Maisa Abd Elhadi), is very pregnant, very suspicious of the circumstances surrounding Saleem’s arrest, is pushed away as a nuisance at every turn as she attempts to uncover the truth, and is very tenacious. Of all these characters, Bisan is the most underestimated, although Sarah is a bit as well.

All of these actors deliver excellent performances. And it must be said, the tenuous relationship that develops between Sarah and Bisan is treated with a refreshing delicacy. There are no reductive clichés about women scorned or pitted against each other here; rather, they reach a sort of painful understanding of each other. I did find myself thinking about the Bechdel Test as I watched this movie, and it does pass it, albeit barely, and technically. The entire story is about an affair after all, so by default nearly any conversation between the two female leads is bound to be about a man. It’s worth remembering, though, that the Bechdel Test is more of a barometer than an indicator of a film’s quality. A lot of stories, even compelling ones, are simply about the relationships between men and women. That said, I would argue The Reports on Sarah and Saleem has a far more feminist bent to it than you’re ever likely to find in any other story like this. The two women here are the strongest characters, with the most dimension.

Best of all, Muayad Alayan does not pass judgment on any of these characters, the women or the men — one of each potentially seen, depending on the point of view of the observer, as a victim and as a criminal. Here Saleem and Sarah are each both at once, in over their heads because of very human mistakes. It’s easy to sympathize with every single one of them, and that’s what makes this movie great, as it offers no easy solutions and yet still provides a thoroughly satisfying movie experience.

Sometimes you don’t realize there was a fork in the road until it’s too late.

Overall: A-

THE KITCHEN

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

I guess DC Comics should be given some credit here — The Kitchen is originally a graphic novel published by them, written by Ollie Masters and drawn by Ming Doyle. This film adaptation, written and directed by Andrea Berloff, thus qualifies as a cinematic offering by DC that’s a tad better than the abysmal “DC Cinematic Universe” of superhero films of recent years.

That said, “tad” is perhaps the operative word here, as The Kitchen gets to be a little on the nose with its “female empowerment” themes, rendering them trite at times, occasionally even hypocritical, as these women evolve into even more ruthless monsters than the mobster husbands they take over for when they are sent to prison in the late 1970s (also the setting of the graphic novel). Perloff has previous co-writing credits on such films as World Trade Center (2006) and Straight Outta Compton (2015), and if The Kitchen proves anything, it’s that Berloff is better off as a team player. There is plenty to like about The Kitchen, but unfortunately Berloff’s direction and her writing are easily its two weakest elements.

How close is this movie to the story in the graphic novel, I wonder? I don’t read comic books. I can only hope this graphic novel in its original form is better, and doesn’t stumble so much over its own feminist themes. This movie is trying to hard, and in the end lacks narrative clarity.

It’s not to a fatal degree, at least. This movie isn’t bad — certainly not nearly as bad as a sore of 35 out of 100 at MetaCritic would suggest, or a 21% on Rotten Tomatoes. The B- by audiences at CinemaScore seems much more reasonable, although by industry standards that’s a very low score. It’s as though this movie is a crushing disappointment. It’s not terrible! It just . . . isn’t great.

I’m really selling it, aren’t I? This is one of those movies that falls into the gray-area category of not feeling like a waste of my time, but not something I’m going to go out of my way to recommend to anyone else. If it has any selling point, it’s the actors — specifically, the women in it: Melissa McCarthy as the one housewife with a relatively decent husband; Tiffany Haddish as the black woman who never gained the trust of the Irish family she married into; Elisabeth Moss as the woman with a physically abusive husband; even Margo Martindale in the (as always) character part of a monster matriarch who is a no-nonsense bit. Among the many men with much smaller parts, the only standout is Domhnall Gleeson, who sheds his natural Irish accent in favor of a New York accent so convincing it takes a minute to realize it’s even him.

The film is also decently edited, and has several nice flourishes of cinematography as the camera moves through a Manhattan converted to look like it did in 1978, but I don’t know how many people besides me will care about that much. None of that really means anything without the strength of the performances, with three lead actors who have a workable onscreen chemistry. McCarthy, Haddish and Moss all have wide appeal, their only moderate crossover spreading out the appeal quite widely between the three of them. They have all been on better projects, but together here they lift the material so it doesn’t quite buckle completely under the weight of its own narrative contrivances.

I did get to a point where I struggled to understand whether I was supposed to be rooting for these women. The moral compromises they make are plain and obvious, and yet Andrea Berloff never really makes them part of her themes, of which The Kitchen is in short supply. It’s long on plot though, with a bit of a twist near the end that doesn’t quite make it all any better. All of that notwithstanding, the lead performances command attention, and reveal some of these actors, especially Tiffany Haddish, to be capable of better and richer things.

Three people who can stand the heat.

Overall: B-

CRAWL

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B

How much can be said about Crawl, really? It’s so straightforward, such a to-the-point thriller, really all you need to know to decide whether it’s worth watching is the premise: a young adult woman (Kaya Scodelario) and her dad (Barry Pepper) are stranded by giant alligators in the crawlspace under a house during a Florida hurricane. And even though I usually avoid cornball thrillers, I saw that and I was like, “Sold!”

Well, okay, I didn’t exactly put it at the top of my priority list — this movie opened a month ago and I only saw it this week due to a lack of better options. But hey, when there’s nothing better around to see, it works great! Also, to be perfectly honest, I would absolutely recommend it to any person I know with lowbrow tastes. I don’t even say that derisively — plenty of lowbrow entertainment is worthy. And this director, Alexandre Aja, does it well. At least he did this one well; I haven’t seen anything else he’s done. The Hills Have Eyes? Piranha 3D? Don’t waste my time!

You might think I’m being a little inconsistent here. You might be right. But! As it happens, Jaws is among my all-time favorite movies, and this is essentially Jaws with alligators. Of course, Jaws is a masterpiece and Crawl is . . . not. The impressive thing about Crawl is how it manages not to be total trash either. Perhaps it needs to be seen to be believed, considering it basically mashes up the killer-animal-thriller genre with the natural disaster genre. Why didn’t they call this Hurrigator, anyway? I’ll tell you why: because it actually isn’t trash!

Sure, the script, by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen, is slightly corny at times. For a movie of this sort, the corniness being only slight is a massive compliment, considering how very much worse it could have been. The story beats are well polished, and clocking in at a tight 87 minutes with impressively paced suspense throughout, this movie never even flirts with being boring. A $13.5 million budget is not exactly huge, and they spend it well, with special effects that won’t blow you away but are still impressive given their clear limitations.

For what it is and what it promises to be, Crawl has few particular flaws, and whatever flaws it has are minor. It’s a thriller that delivers on the thrills. I suppose it’s easy to have a “take it or leave it” approach to the subplot regarding the estrangement of this father and daughter due to his being an overbearing swim coach. But can you guess whether that swimming skill winds up coming in handy?

A good majority of the film features only these two characters — the names of the two actors who play them being the only ones above the title in the opening credits. Sporadically other characters come into play — most notably local law enforcement directing traffic or doing rescue work, and a trio of looters in a convenience store across the flooded street. You can go ahead and just regard all of these characters as expendable. A few of them meet some quite entertainingly gruesome fates. There’s a dog too, of course, and just don’t worry your pretty little head over him. That said, I did kind of wish this movie would buck convention and just end with the gators having actually eaten everyone. I would have loved that.

Instead, of course, Crawl follows a pretty tried and true formula. A movie can still be good while following a formula, though. With something like this, it’s basically the trappings that matter. How realistic it is doesn’t even matter. What matters is how well executed the story is onscreen, and that’s where Crawl surprises. I spent half this movie with my fingers over my eyes, and I also had a blast. What more do you need?

Every horror movie needs a shower scene.

Overall: B+

KATHY GRIFFIN: A HELL OF A STORY

Directing: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

As a general rule with these reviews I write, as has been the case ever since I began posting them in late 2004, I would only write them for movies I have seen in a theatre in their original theatrical release. The documentary / comedy special Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story is kind of a different beast, or at least a middle-ground one: I did indeed see this in a theatre, but only as a one-time-only Fathom Events screening. It doesn’t matter what I say about it, you won’t have any opportunity to go to a theatre to see for yourself.

In the end, it hardly matters. Presumably this standup movie will eventually be available some other way soon enough, if not streaming then available digitally somewhere for purchase. And the only relevant information there is for a reader right now is this: if you’re a Kathy Griffin fan, you’ll likely have a great time watching this. If not, you won’t be missing anything by skipping it. And that last part is not even directed at the deranged Trump supporters who have sent her countless death threats; their propensity to either ignore or hate-watch her goes without saying. I’m even talking about the neutral observer, who might even agree that she was given a raw deal. Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story is straight up fan service, through and through.

The film features a long prologue that lasts maybe twenty minutes, itself much more of a short documentary about Kathy Griffin and her career immediately following her infamous 2017 photo holding up a fake, bloody Donald Trump head. It depicts Griffin’s world tour she took when she could not book any U.S. gigs, and frankly, this portion of the film is insanely contrived.

It pains me to have to say this. I count myself among Kathy Grffin’s longtime, loyal fans, and that’s what makes the beginning of this film all the more disappointing. This is a woman who has never made any bones about the hustle that has always been her career, and I still respect her for it; I don’t fault her for milking everything she can for all it’s worth. But there are moments here that just plain feel disingenuous. Does she really need to turn the camera on herself when she’s supposed to be emotionally at rock bottom? Does she not realize that when a move she makes is transparently in the service of a money-making venture, the “emotion” on display rather loses its impact?

Griffin occasionally has her boyfriend holding the camera, talking behind it. In one scene, she’s broken down crying, apparently on an airplane between cities, and he consoles her from behind the camera. It’s entirely possible what he says to her was not rehearsed — or at least the product of being directed — but, his delivery sure makes it sound like it was.

I did not realize as I watched this that most of it was just a film of one of Kathy Griffin’s standup theater gigs, basically a film version of yet another one of her record-breaking number of standup specials. Watching this extended documentary prologue, I expected most of the whole movie to be this, perhaps intercut with clips of her stage performance. I really began to worry about how good this movie was really going to be. The overall quality — the cinematography, the editing in particular — is really not of the caliber of a theatrically released film. It immediately became apparent why this was a one-time-only theatrical presentation. It would have been far more appropriate on cable, but of course Griffin mentions at every opportunity how she still has no bidders for TV standup specials anymore.

But! Much to my relief, the documentary portion ends, and A Hell of a Story moves into straightforward standup footage of a performance at a single, Santa Monica venue, and in Griffin’s own, spectacularly singular way, she does just that: tell a hell of a story. And she does it incredibly well.

The “standup special” portion of the film is a hard turn from the documentary stuff, where Griffin may be much more obviously rehearsed, but now in her element, she comes across as genuine. She’s also very funny, and she gets into all manner of detail about all the crazy shit that’s happened to her. It’s this part, which lasts much longer, which makes it required viewing for the loyal Kathy Griffin fan. She is a comic whose many signature traits include rambling, and yet she always manages to circle back to the point or the story at hand. Her complete set is a lot more structured than it might seem at first glance.

She even gets into a significant bit about hanging out in Sydney with Stevie Nicks — a star I have personally long idolized — and Chrissie Hynde. It’s one of the most delightful stories she tells, among many delightful stories included here. It does include bits about Stevie Nicks being among the few people to come to her defense, as a whole lot of this show does — and it’s well known how far more people Kathy Griffin thought were her friends either abandoned her or actually went out of their way to twist the knife.

Kathy Griffin is transparently a born performer, and it’s plain to see the stage is where she is meant to be. Hopefully it will continue to be for decades to come — even though she’s already 58 years old at the time of this recording. It’s genuinely a joy to watch her doing both what she loves and what she does best, which is making people laugh through observations of the ridiculousness of our world. When it comes to A Hell of a Story, though, what she clearly is not born to be is a documentarian. Or perhaps to be more fair, director Troy Miller isn’t. This film starts like a TV special lower-mid-level quality, with some things onscreen that are strangely suspect. Thankfully, getting through it is well worth the wait, because the complete standup show that follows, for anyone who has gone out of their way to watch it, is something that truly delivers everything you could want from it.

I say this with love, Kathy: stick to what you’re good at.

Overall: B-

SWORD OF TRUST

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

You could barely say Sword of Trust had a script that was “written” — the cast was merely given a basic outline of the story, presumably with its pertinent plot points, and then they were left to improvise all the lines. That leaves this film more of a feat of editing than anything else, really. One wonders what other, completely different movies could have been cut together with the unused footage.

This approach is a departure for director Lynn Shelton, who has a history of sensitive handling of potentially problematic premises: Humpday (2009); Your Sister’s Sister (2012); Outside In (2017). Shelton’s past films have generally been dramas, in some cases dramedies, but Sword of Trust, in which she hands off the task of dialogue to a quartet of skilled comic actors, is the first I have seen that is a straightforward comedy. Her other films have been serious stories with funny stuff in them; this one is a funny story with serious subtexts.

I won’t mislead, you, though — I would not call Sword of Trust “uproarious.” I would call it . . . consistently funny. Certainly a worthwhile amusement. You won’t be laughing your ass off, but you will find yourself entertained.

The main cast of four is mostly focused on Mel, the Birmingham, Alabama pawn shop owner played by Marc Maron, in his first lead role in a feature film. Maron’s and Shelton’s professional relationship has developed rather organically over the past few years, after she appeared on his WTF with Marc Maron podcast in 2015. She directed a couple episodes of his quasi-autobiographical show Maron in 2016; then directed his Too Real comedy special in 2017. Turns out, they work quite well together, as Sword of Trust best illustrates.

Seasoned comics have to be good at improvising, adapting material to sometimes unpredictable circumstances, and Maron is up to the task. The same goes for the others in the film with him: John Bass as Nathaniel, his gullible pawn shop employee; and Michaela Watkins and Jillian Bell as lesbian couple Mary and Cynthia, who come into the shop looking to sell a Civil War-era sword willed to Cynthia by her grandfather.

Where things get interesting is the personal letter written to Cynthia by her grandfather apparently during his last years when his mind was going, given all the details of the sword’s supposed story that he is inconsistent about; and the supposed “authenticating documents” accompanying it. The claim is that the documents “prove” the South actually won the Civil War, thereby increasing the artifact’s value.

Never mind the preposterousness of such a claim. Are we all living in some alternate reality today where the Southern states are the poorest and least educated, then? But as Sword of Trust shows, rational thinking is never the purview of people with such beliefs, as Nathanial illustrates with his “convincing” evidence that the Earth is flat.

That aside, after some tentative approaches to each other, in the end Mel, Mary and Cynthia all decide to work together on selling the sword to the highest bidder. What follows is a sort of low-rent, American South version of “secret society” shenanigans, including a moving truck ride to an undisclosed location in the country to meet the buyer (played by a perfectly cast Dan Bakkedahl).

And although directed by Lynn Shelton and co-written by her and Mike O’Brien, Sword of Trust has Maron’s DNA all over it, starting with the entire score being credited to him, snippets of his blues guitar riffing just like those he does to close out his podcast episodes. They are a perfect match for this story, as it turns out. A lot of character details come lifted directly from his own life, as well: a Jewish guy originally from New Mexico; a recovering alcoholic now sober for many years. A minor subplot involves an ex girlfriend still struggling to stay off drugs who keeps coming around asking for loans, played by Shelton herself.

Movies so reliant on improvisation rarely work as well as Sword of Trust does. I find myself wondering who cut the trailer to this movie, because it is clearly not the same person who cut the movie itself. The trailer sets up expectations that are, if not exactly low, are midlevel at best. The film itself creates a solid story that features dialogue that doesn’t feel improvised. There is both a consistency and a depth to these characters that indicates a high level of talent and skill for all involved. It just works, in a way storytelling on an improv stage never does. That is arguably faint praise, but this is still a group of artists and entertainers at the top of their game.

Who would you trust with your sword?

Overall: B+

THE THIRD WIFE

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A
Editing: A

When it comes to patriarchy, it seems it’s just the same shit, different day — and different place.

The Third Wife has a unique point of view for American audiences in particular. It’s one thing to get a window into other cultures through foreign films, and another for that film to be a period piece. Sure, there are history buffs with a working knowledge of history around the world. But this one gets pretty specific: late-nineteenth-century Vietnam. And although that country has a more recent history quite obviously inextricably linked to that of the United States, such events were far from even a glimmer on the horizon for the Vietnamese, say, 125 or 150 years ago.

The opening title card introduces us to May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My), a young woman — to us, a child — who has become the third wife to “a wealthy land owner.” And this is indeed her story, skipping how she was chosen to be wed to this man and starting with the beginning of her married life. The custom of displaying her bloody sheet on her wedding night for all of her community to see, evidently, was widespread the world over. All the movies I have seen depicting this custom prior to this have been western, or Eastern European.

Written and directed by Ash Mayfair, who is herself Vietnamese, The Third Wife is quite deceptively serene in its storytelling, from its gorgeous cinematography depicting rural 19th-century Vietnam, to the quiet delivery of the dialogue and action. Only in rare cases do the proceedings get overtly dramatic, and they are always brief. This is a depiction of a quiet way of life, and it seems that is the point: the way girls and women fit into this society is not just something everyone is resigned to. It’s literally all they know.

Some details are only heartbreaking in retrospect, and regarded by many with neutrality at the time. Mayfair includes a subplot wherein it’s a young man who is devastated to be expected to marry a girl chosen for him, when he is in love with another. And here, even when it’s the man who breaks from tradition and accepted moral codes, it is the girl who gets blamed an punished: her father refuses to take her back, and asks her what she did to keep the man from wanting to touch her.

But his reasons are obvious but unspoken. May is herself only fourteen, learning the ways of her wealthy yet still repressed life as she goes along, and spends much of the story pregnant. This other girl is even younger. Her age is never stated, but she hardly looks older than ten. The man, himself young but still much older than her, is quite understandably not even interested. The girl attempts to undress for him on their wedding night and he barks at her to stop.

Mayfair treats her characters, to a person, with unusual empathy. It does not feel pointed that none of the men in this story are villainized, only that it was unnecessary. The men, by and large, are acting according to cultural strictures, just as the women and girls are. No one here is depicted as especially malicious. The caning of a young man who impregnated a woman out of wedlock is not so much a conscious evil as it is simply part of the rules. This is a society of people who lead otherwise peaceful lives, albeit in a deceiving way, given the subtle cancer that is sexism the world over.

It’s hard not to love Mayfair’s choice of perspective here. This is not the story of men who oppress, but rather the story of women who are barely even aware of the oppressive society in which they live. As such, The Third Wife features all of about three male speaking parts, and their combined dialogue is very limited. The husband to the three wives in question, who form a sort of sisterhood amongst themselves, is barely heard talking at all.

I can think of nothing negative to say about The Third Wife. I can think of nothing wrong with it — even though it caused some controversy in Vietnam itself, which pulled it from local release. One might have some ambivalence about the age of the lead actor, who was only 13 years old during shooting. I did not learn that particular detail until after seeing the movie, during which I did wonder how old she was — never thinking she could be that young. This may make little difference to some, but by all accounts the young actor is a precocious one, with a nuanced understanding of the script, and even though she was involved in some “intimate” scenes, none of them were outright sex scenes and none involved nudity. Well, now that I think about it, there is one scene in which she french kisses one of the other wives, who is much older than her. Any sane person would feel ambivalent about that at best.

I have no idea how much leeway to give cultural differences here. If nothing else, there is some comfort in the director having been a woman, with a clear vision of the story she was telling and an intricate understanding of the sexual politics involved. How appropriate was Nguyen Phuong Tra My for this part, then? That’s hard to say. I’m choosing to separate that knowledge from the final product onscreen, which is sublime in its presentation. It’s too bad its local theatrical run is limited to three days, and ends tomorrow. Its quiet, melancholy beauty is certainly best appreciated on the big screen.

A girl arguably too young for the part plays a girl too young to be married.

Overall: A