Carmine Street Guitars

Flowers aren’t the gift; flowers come with the gift.

(2018) Music Documentary (Abramorama) Rick Kelly, Cindy Hulej, Dorothy Kelly, Dallas Good, Travis Good, Lenny Kaye, Bill Frisell, Eszter Balint, Jim Jarmusch, Nels Cline, Marc Ribot, Charlie Sexton, Kirk Douglas, Dave Hill, Eleanor Friedberger, Jamie Hince, Stewart Hurwood, Christine Bougie. Directed by Ron Mann

 

It is sometimes depressing to consider how the world has become so commodified. Everything is product now; mass-produced, soulless, disposable. Hand-crafted items are a rarity now, and becoming rarer by the day. Few people take the time or the effort to make things from scratch.

Rick Kelly is one of those people. He has a storefront in Greenwich Village in New York City; the titular Carmine Street Guitars. There, he and his apprentice Cindy Hulej make guitars the old-fashioned way – by hand. Rick uses wood rescued from buildings that have been demolished, buildings that predate the Civil War and I’m not talking about the Marvel movie.

This documentary ostensibly follows the shop for a week in the life, although it doesn’t ostensibly say so. There are pictures on the wall of some of the store’s famous customers (one, a signed photo of Robert Quine, is crooked and no amount of fiddling will straighten it out) which include the late Lou Reed and Bob Dylan. Dylan’s current guitarist, former New Wave pretty boy Charlie Sexton, drops by to test drive one of Rick’s guitars.

In fact much of the film is people dropping by to check out guitars Rick has made or is making. Those dropping by include Nels Cline of Wilco, there to buy a birthday gift for bandmate Jeff Tweedy; jazz guitar legend Bill Frisell who plays some surf guitar hits from early in his career. Lenny Kaye of the Patty Smith Band also drops by to noodle on a guitar as does avant garde guitarist Marc Ribot. No matter what the style of the guitarist, they all sound pretty amazing on Carmine Street guitars.

This is a stream of consciousness kind of cinema verité; there are no talking head interviews, no animated sequences and there is no archival footage. We are always in the moment during the film; we don’t get a lot of context and are left to manufacture that on our own. Kelly is kind of an ex-hippie who has an almost grandfatherly aspect to him; the guitars are his children and his clients prospective adoptive parents. Hulej is even more interesting than the idiosyncratic Kelly (whose 93-year-old mother answers phones and does the books for the store). A platinum blonde goth punk chick, her extraordinary beauty works for her as a cinematic focal point but against her in her career; she talks frankly with Eleanor Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces that men often don’t take her seriously because of her looks, particularly as a crafter of guitars.

While Hulej seems to primarily be concerned with burning graphics into the guitars, she can also build them and the sense that these two people are artisans in the best sense of the word also points out that they are a disappearing breed. Watching the two of them at work reminds the viewer that there is something special about those who love what they do and take pride in what they make.

I like that Kelly uses old wood – what he calls “the bones of Old New York” – in his craft. That shows not only a sense of history but also of caring very much about not just where he set up shop but what is sold inside of it. It reminds me why New Yorkers consider their city the greatest on Earth and more importantly, why they have a case for that boast. I know that if I played guitar, I’d want to own one of these. Those who love guitars and the people who play them are very much encouraged to see this one.

REASONS TO SEE: Very much a stream-of-consciousness documentary; no talking heads, no animations. Some great guitar noodling by masters of the craft.
REASONS TO AVOID: May not have as much appeal for non-guitar junkies.
FAMILY VALUES: There are some mild profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2018.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/15/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 97% positive reviews: Metacritic: 82/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Strad Style
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: Parallel Love: The Story of a Band Called Luxury

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Paterson

Paterson and Laura see things in black and white.

(2016) Drama (Bleecker Street/Amazon) Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Nellie, Rizwan Manji, Barry Shabaka Henley, Trevor Parham, Troy T. Parham, Brian McCarthy, Frank Harts, Luis Da Silva Jr., Chasten Harmon, William Jackson Harper, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, Kacey Cockett, Kara Hayward, Jared Gilman, Sterling Jerins, Masatoshi Nagase, Sophia Muller. Directed by Jim Jarmusch

 

Paterson is a bus driver. Paterson is also coincidentally the name of the New Jersey town in which Paterson plies his trade. It is not coincidentally the home of famed 20^th century poets William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg. Paterson (the bus driver) also writes poetry in a journal he keeps with him. He scribbles during lunch breaks and before he starts work. He uses mundane, everyday subjects to inspire him. He leads a mundane, everyday life.

Director Jarmusch is notorious (or acclaimed) for finding the rhythms of life and setting his films to those rhythms. We see Paterson’s routine; getting up in the morning at 6:15 precisely, eating breakfast with his wife Laura (Farahani), going to work, coming home for dinner – Laura is apparently not much of a cook but he gamely is polite about pretending to enjoy it. Afterwards he takes his English bulldog Marvin out for a walk, ending up at his favorite watering hole talking with Doc (Henley) the bartender and then heading home to go to sleep with his wife.

We follow Paterson in his routine over the course of a week. It’s not a particularly important week – just a normal, mundane, everyday week. His wife is making cupcakes for a popup farmer’s market. She has ordered a guitar which she paints black and white like everything else in the house and dreams of becoming a country music star, which would be a bit of a stretch being that she is an immigrant from Iran which in the current climate might not fly among a certain element that loves country. He overhears conversations on the bus, adjusts his mailbox which always seems to be leaning (late in the film we find out why), and sometimes just sits out by the beautiful waterfall that is Paterson’s pride and joy.

Paterson is definitely a working class environment. Some might remember that it was the town in which Ruben “Hurricane” Carter was framed for murder; it is referenced during the film but not dwelled upon, at least not as much as the fact that it was also the home of Lou Costello of Abbott and Costello fame. Then again, Laura’s penchant for black and white patterns might allude to the racial divide that led to one of the most notorious legal cases of the 20th century that was part of the DNA of Paterson at the time.

There is a beauty to the rhythms of life here. Jarmusch is an expert to finding the beauty in the mundane. But, as mundane as Jarmusch wants to make the environment of Paterson, he can’t help but populate it with quirky indie film characters that lend an air of “this isn’t real life in the rest of the world” to the film. I think in some ways it sabotages what he’s trying to do and for me it diminished the enjoyment of the film. Why can’t films about ordinary people actually have a few ordinary people in them?

Driver is a bit white bread here. He doesn’t really distinguish himself much which is likely what Jarmusch had in mind. Paterson (the bus driver) is basically a pretty nice guy without much ambition; his poetry is amazing (written by real life poet and Pulitzer prize winner Ron Padgett) but he refuses to publish them. He clings to them like a lap bar on a particularly scary roller coaster and when near the end of the film an event occurs that puts that to paid, it feels like it should be more liberating than it is. Or at least more traumatic than it seems.

I’m not really quite sure what to make of Paterson (the movie). On the one hand it achieves the “all about nothing” that the Seinfeld show aspired to. On the other, it definitely succumbs to indie film clichés. On a third hand, it plays as a cinematic tone poem, analogous to the works of Williams and T.S. Eliot. There’s beauty here but Jarmusch makes it oddly humorless, although there are occasional twitches of the lips that approximate smiles. It’s an elegant movie that’s not completely successful but is completely worth your while.

REASONS TO GO: This is very much a cinematic tone poem.
REASONS TO STAY: Too many quirky characters inhabit Paterson’s world.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a fair amount of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Driver undertook training to drive the bus for three months in Queens; he passed is licensing test a week before shooting started and was able to drive the bus himself, allowing Jarmusch to get a broader amount of options in shooting the film.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/21/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 96% positive reviews. Metacritic: 90/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Mike and Molly
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: Country: Portraits of an American Sound

New Releases for the Week of January 20, 2017

XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE

(Paramount) Vin Diesel, Samuel L. Jackson, Donnie Yen, Toni Collette, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Deepika Padukone, Ruby Rose, Kris Wu, Ice Cube. Directed by D.J. Caruso

An elite team led by the enigmatic Xiang is pursuing a powerful weapon named Pandora’s Box. This team is so deadly as to be nearly unstoppable, prompting the government to try and persuade Xander Cage, the legendary “Triple X,” to come out of “retirement.” He assembles an elite team of his own to take on Xiang but discovers that not everything that is happening is the way it seems.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, IMAX 3D
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for extended sequences of gunplay and violent action, and for sexual material and language)

20^th Century Women

(A24) Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup. As the 70s come to an end, a 50ish single mom in Santa Barbara finds raising her son a challenge and enlists the help of two younger women to help raise him to be the man she hopes he can become. Bening got a Golden Globe nomination for her performance and has a good shot to see some Oscar love as well.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, Enzian Theater, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: R (for sexual material, language, nudity and some drug use)

The Founder

(Weinstein) Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Linda Cardellini. The story of Ray Kroc, a milkshake machine salesman who one day stopped off at a popular burger joint in San Bernardino and discovered their method of producing burgers could revolutionize the way America eats. He determined to hitch his wagon to that restaurant and in doing so made it one of the biggest businesses in history. Today there’s a McDonald’s on every corner – and you have Ray Kroc to thank for it.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for brief strong language)

Paterson

(Bleecker Street/Amazon) Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Nellie, Barry Shabaka Henley. Paterson, a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey (yes, they have the same name) spends his days watching the world go by his windshield. Snippets of conversations and his own observations make it into a book of poetry he has written but allows nobody to read. He likes his life and is content to let it remain as is. His wife, an artist, however is changing as new dreams inspire new creations. They love each other very much but are they drifting apart? This is the latest from director Jim Jarmusch.

See the trailer, interviews and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for some language)

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone

(BH Tilt/High Top) Brett Dalton, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, Shawn Michaels, D.B. Sweeney. A former child star, fallen on hard times gets arrested and sentenced to community service at a local megachurch. In order to land the role of Jesus in the annual Passion Play, he pretends to be a devout Christian. Soon enough he discovers that the role requires more than just lip service.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Faith
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, AMC Loew’s Universal Cineplex, AMC West Oaks, Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Regal Oviedo Mall, Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: PG (for thematic elements including a crucifixion image)

Split

(Universal/Blumhouse) James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Betty Buckley. A gifted young man with 23 distinct personalities fighting for dominance within him kidnaps three young women. His psychiatrist realizes that a 24^th is set to emerge, one that is vicious, evil and set to dominate the others. Can the three kidnap victims find a way to escape their captor before the world is introduced to The Beast? This is the newest film from M. Night Shyamalan.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, featurettes and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for disturbing thematic content and behavior, violence and some language)

Gimme Danger

Iggy Pop seems a little surprised to discover that it’s 2016.

(2016) Musical Documentary (Magnolia/Amazon) Iggy Pop, Ron Asheton, James Williamson, Scott Asheton, Danny Fields, Steve Mackay, Mike Watt, Kathy Asheton, Ewan McGregor, Ed Sanders. Directed by Jim Jarmusch

 

The aphorism is that true artists are not appreciated in their own time. That is certainly true of the Stooges, a seminal Midwestern hard rock band that erupted from Ann Arbor, Michigan in the late 60s only to self-destruct in 1971, only to return a year later like a bad penny, then break up again for nearly 30 years in 1973 until a resurrection in 2003.

Their music received scathing reviews from critics who didn’t know what to make of them and the public took little interest; their record sales were tepid at best. Still, they became one of the founding influences of punk rock and their music influences nearly every heavy music artist of the 80s and afterwards.

Indie auteur Jim Jarmusch is a clear fan of the band, having cast frontman Iggy Pop in two of his movies and it is equally clear that this is essentially a love letter to the band. Although incomprehensibly Jarmusch begins his film with the 1973 break-up, he then goes back to their roots and tells the story in a more linear fashion from there.

Mostly told through the music documentary tropes of talking heads interviews interspersed with performance footage and animated recreations of events, the movie captures the band’s management woes along with their descent into drug addiction – nearly the entire band was at one time on heroin which led to missed gigs, sloppy performances and poor decisions. In their glory, the band was raw and primal, a kind of primitive rock and roll which would have been equally at home with banging on rocks as it was with electric guitars.

Pop was the consummate front man, performing shirtless and dancing like an epileptic male exotic dancer whose DNA was equal parts Mick Jagger and Tina Turner. His bandmates – guitarists Ron Asheton and James Williamson, bassist Dave Alexander, saxophonist Steve Mackay and drummer Scott Asheton – tended to stare at the floor and move very little allowing their frenetic frontman to do the heavy lifting.

Pop and Williamson are the only surviving band members of the band’s glory years and each of them is compelling in their own way (Mackay and the Asheton brothers both lived into the 21^st century and there are plenty of interview clips with them; Alexander passed away in 1975 and as a result we see him only In performance clips and publicity stills). Pop is surprisingly intellectual and a pretty entertaining raconteur; Williamson, who spent most of their post-breakup era as a software engineer for Sony, has a much more objective perspective of the band.

The solo career of Iggy Pop, which netted classic rockers like “Lust for Life,” isn’t mentioned here although the post-Stooge efforts of the other band members is gone into in some detail. There is also little outside perspective of the band itself; nearly all of the interviews are with the band members, Danny Fields and Kathy Asheton, sister to the Asheton brothers. Only bassist Mike Watt, who performed with a 21^st iteration of the band, is interviewed.

There is also surprisingly little of their music used on the soundtrack. We do get to hear those magnificent opening chords to “I Wanna Be Your Dog” but we hear it several times during the film. I get that there is precious little performance footage from the band’s 1970s era but one gets a sense that what we’re seeing here is pretty much readily available elsewhere, or at least that’s what I get from Internet comments on the documentary by fans of the group.

I was a bit surprised at how ordinary the documentary was. Jarmusch has a reputation for turning convention on its ear, but this is as conventional a music documentary as you’re likely to find. Maybe Jarmusch is too close to the subject; they are surely worthy of a documentary but this is one of those occasions where the subject of a documentary isn’t done justice by the documentary itself. Still, the Stooges are so compelling a story, Pop so entertaining a storyteller that I can freely recommend this to not only fans of the group but students of rock music history in general.

REASONS TO GO: The Stooges make for compelling subjects and Iggy is an interesting storyteller.
REASONS TO STAY: The film is disturbingly light on actual music.
FAMILY VALUES:  Plenty of profanity and drug references here.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT:  Danny Fields had been sent by Elektra Records to scout the MC5 for which the Stooges were opening; impressed by both Michigan groups, he signed the MC5 for $20K and the Stooges for $5K.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/20/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 94% positive reviews. Metacritic: 72/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: We are Twisted Fucking Sister
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Doctor Strange

New Releases for the Week of November 18, 2016

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

(Warner Brothers) Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Colin Farrell, Ezra Miller, Ron Perlman, Jon Voight, Dan Fogler, Johnny Depp, Zoë Kravitz.  Directed by David Yates

Young magizoologist Newt Scamander is returning home to Hogwart’s after a global tour collecting and cataloging all manner of magical creatures but is stopping in New York City briefly before the final leg home. However, things go dreadfully wrong when a No-Maj (that’s the American term for Muggle) starts a chain reaction of events that leads to the escape of some of the creatures locked in Newt’s magic case which could lead to dire consequences for both the Wizarding and No-Maj worlds. This prequel to the Harry Potter series, penned by J.K. Rowling herself, is set in 1926.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, IMAX 3D
Genre: Fantasy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some fantasy action violence)

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

(TriStar) Joe Alwyn, Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel, Garrett Hedlund. A 19-year-old soldier becomes a hero after a harrowing battle in Iraq. Returned home for a victory tour, his story is told in flashbacks culminating in a spectacular halftime show at a Thanksgiving Day football game in which he and his fellow soldiers of the Bravo Company are meant to be an integral part. The movie has received some acclaim for the innovative filming techniques used by Oscar-winning director Ang Lee in immersing the viewer in the battle sequences like no other film before it.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: War Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for language throughout, some war violence, sexual content and brief drug use)

Bleed for This

(Open Road) Miles Teller, Aaron Eckhart, Katey Sagal, Ciarán Hinds. The pride of Providence, RI, boxer Vinnie “The Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza is on top of the world. He has just won the world championship and everything is going according to plan. Then, he is involved in a near-fatal car accident and ends up with a broken neck. Surgery that will guarantee that he’ll be able to walk again will end his boxing career so Vinnie elects to go without the surgery, although he could end up in a wheelchair. Told by everyone around him that he can’t do it, Pazienza is determined to go back into the ring – less than a year after the accident took him out of it. This is based on the inspiring true story of a boxer who didn’t have any quit in him.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: True Sports Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for language, sexuality/nudity and some accident images)

The Edge of Seventeen

(STX) Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, Kyra Sedgwick, Blake Jenner. There’s nothing more awkward than high school, particularly when you aren’t one of the chosen few. However, when you’re golden boy older brother starts dating your best friend, awkward doesn’t even begin to describe it.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for sexual content, language and some drinking – all involving teens)

Gimme Danger

(Magnolia/Amazon) Iggy Pop, Ron Asheton, James Williamson, Scott Asheton. The story of Iggy Pop and the Stooges who came out of Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 1960s and essentially created punk rock a decade before its time, and kicked a hole in rock music during an era when anything and everything went from a musical standpoint. Acclaimed filmmaker Jim Jarmusch takes us through the career of the Stooges and their front man, Iggy Pop, who continues to make relevant music today.

See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Musical Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian Theater (Friday, Saturday and Sunday only)
Rating: R (for drug content and language)

Loving

(Focus) Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Michael Shannon, Marton Csokas. The important story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple in Virginia at a time when living as man and wife was restricted to one’s own race. The two spent nine years fighting the draconian laws that would keep them separated and took their fight all the way to the Supreme Court. The landmark decision made interracial marriage the law of the land.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: True Life Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements)

The Take

(High Top/Focus) Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Charlotte Le Bon, Kelly Reilly. A pickpocket inadvertently foils the plans of a powerful but corrupt group in the French government to steal millions from French banks. He is set up to look like a terrorist and finds himself on the run. A rogue CIA agent realizes what’s happening and the two must join forces in order to take down the conspirators before they’re taken down themselves.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action
Now Playing: AMC Loew’s Universal Cineplex, AMC Disney Springs
Rating: R (for violence, language and some nudity)

Hot Sugar’s Cold World

The most erotic Pop Rocks recording ever.

(2015) Musical Documentary (Amplify) Nick “Hot Sugar” Koenig, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jim Jarmusch, Rachel Trachtenburg, Shelby Fero, Martin Starr, Kool AD, Dapwell, Heems, Kathryn-Leigh “Kitty” Beckwith, William Edward Glen, Despot, Ariana, Himanshu Suri, Frank Andrews, Danny Brown. Directed by Adam Bhala Lough

Music isn’t just a collection of pretty notes played on instruments; in its most primal form it emanates from everything around us, from the noises of a drunk vomiting next to a cab door slamming to a pair of human skulls being smashed together in the Paris catacombs. In its most intellectually stimulating form, it challenges us to define it and redefine it – is music just a collection of sounds or is it something else?

Nick Koenig, a.k.a. Hot Sugar seems to think the latter. An electronic composer/musician/performer based in New York, most of his music has been released via the Internet. Thought by some to be a modern-day Mozart, he almost compulsively records sounds throughout his world (and any others he can find) and utilizes them to create beats and base music on. Some of the soundscapes he creates are incredibly beautiful; others are harsh and discordant; others are percussive and propulsive.

Like many artists, he doesn’t have a ton of humility; at one point he dismisses musical instruments like the piano and the guitar as “novelties” as if something that has been around more than a thousand years is just a passing phase. However, if you dig deep you can kind of see his point; musical instruments were essentially invented to be heard at a further range in a pre-amplification era; drums in fact have been used as devices of communication. Music going back to our most primitive past was essentially made via human sound – the voice and the beating of the chest and the clapping of hands.

Koenig is consumed by his muse; he can’t be bothered to devote a ton of attention to interpersonal relationships, although he has a girlfriend, rapper Kitty who like Hot Sugar, is more of an internet personality rather than a mainstream figure. When the two break up about 20 minutes in, the vitriol is incredibly toxic with Twitter and Instagram used as a delivery system for the poison.

Koenig responds by returning to his roots – visiting family in France including where his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, is buried. He goes on a world tour although he has reservations about it; one of his posts on the Internet can reach far more people than any club appearance. Apparently the necessity of face-to-face interaction with his fanbase eludes him.

Some of the better moments in the film come when Koenig is interacting with others – like astrophysicist and current face of scientific endeavor Tyson who discusses the science of sound with Koenig, as well as members of the hip hop group Das Racist and comedian/actor Starr (Silicon Valley), the latter who goes out with Koenig on a perhaps ill-conceived attempt to buy illegal fireworks to shoot off in a local gymnasium.

The documentary by respected filmmaker Lough captures Koenig in all his best and worst moments; from composing some really dazzling pieces to some thoughts that will bring the facepalms out in force. His single-mindedness and occasional bouts of Taking Himself to Seriously-itis can make him a difficult figure to relate to and one senses that it is perfectly okay with him. He’s not looking to be related to; he’s looking to challenge our concepts of what music is or should be, and to recreate it in his own image. It’s a brash and ultimately senseless undertaking, but one has to admire his guts to even try.

I can’t say I liked the documentary because ultimately I found Koenig to be the ultimate millennial; absolutely sure in his views that everything that preceded his existence was more or less wrong. It is a mindset in which the sum isn’t just greater than the parts but that the parts are irrelevant. I find that sort of thing to be a little bit disturbing but it is a brave new world and while being hip doesn’t interest me, being able to navigate the changes that come does. Hot Sugar may indeed be making the noise of the future that will replace music as we know it. That doesn’t mean I will embrace the change that he may very well have the talent to make.

The movie is currently set for a very limited release mainly in one-off screenings but as of November 6 the film will be available in on-demand or downloadable form; go to the website to see where you can find the film by clicking on the photo at the top of this review.

REASONS TO GO: The music can be incredible. Some fascinating images. Interesting look at the creative process.
REASONS TO STAY: Koenig comes off as a bit self-important. The breakup of his relationship takes up too much time. Hot Sugar is not necessarily a film subject that people will go out of their way to look for.
FAMILY VALUES: Some profanity, sexual images and some drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Although Koenig lives in New York City now, he was raised in Paris and speaks fluent French.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/5/15: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Exit Through the Gift Shop
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Miss You Already

New Releases for the Week of May 16, 2014

GODZILLA

(Warner Brothers/Legendary) Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston. Directed by Gareth Edwards

The king of all monsters returns to wreak havoc with coastal cities as well as to face malevolent creatures of human creation that now threaten our very existence. Judging on the reaction to the most recent trailers, this is one of the most anticipated films of the summer.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-Roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D, IMAX 3D (opens Thursday)

Genre: Sci-Fi Action

Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence)

Dom Hemingway

(Fox Searchlight) Jude Law, Richard E. Grant, Demian Bichir, Emilia Clarke. After being released from serving twelve years in prison, a safecracker with a larger-than-life personality sets out to make up for lost time. Setting out to reclaim an old debt, a brush with death leads him to try to re-connect with his estranged daughter but in his own inimitable fashion. This played at the recent Florida Film Festival and it’s single screening was completely sold out.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Dramedy

Rating: R (for sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, some violence and drug use)

Locke

(A24) Tom Hardy, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott, Bill Milner. Like every working day, Ivan Locke left the office  for the drive home. Blessed with the perfect family, his dream job and a successful career, he should be at the high point of life. However in a 90 minute drive, it all comes apart and a single phone call will force him to put everything on the line.

See the trailer, interviews, a featurette and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: R (for language throughout)

Million Dollar Arm

(Disney) Jon Hamm, Bill Paxton, Lake Bell, Aasif Mandvi. When a sports agent loses his biggest client to a rival agency, he knows that his business is in serious trouble. A chance viewing of a cricket match from India leads to the brilliant idea of staging a nationally televised competition of finding the first major league players in India. Two finalists are at last selected and as they are brought to America to learn the game, the odds are against them as cultural differences and an unfamiliarity with the game may prevent them from achieving their goal.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-Roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: True Sports Drama

Rating: PG (for mild peril and some suggestive language)

Only Lovers Left Alive

(Sony Classics) Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt. An underground musician, dissolute and discouraged over the deteriorating state of humanity, reunites with his enigmatic and more optimistic lover. Their romantic idyll is interrupted by the arrival of his wild and out of control little sister. Oh, and did I mention they’re all vampires? The latest from acclaimed director Jim Jarmusch.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Horror

Rating: R (for language and brief nudity)