Month: August 2022

Recently released from jail, Mark Wahlberg accepts a job working with his friend Joaquin Phoenix as muscle for his aunt’s new husband James Caan’s railway car company. It’s hard to watch any gangster work, especially The Sopranos, and not know about the corruption in the sanitation business, but it wasn’t until A Most Violent Year and now this film that I realized it oozes through all contract oriented services in New York. With an impressive cast that also includes Charlize Theron, Faye Dunaway, and Ellen Burstyn, it generally follows the expected trajectory of similar stories. Wahlberg’s simple-minded, wide eyed schtick gets old after awhile which makes him a mostly unappealing protagonist. 

Led by visionary guitarist David, the three Hackney brothers formed the punk band Death in 1970s Detroit. Pioneers in their genre, they largely remained mostly unknown until record collectors in the early 2000s rediscovered the band and spread their music. The beginning of the documentary is a standard, low-budget retelling of the trio’s history from funk to punk to gospel that only barely held my attention. I’m glad I kept with it as the second half as the band begins to find new fans is much more remarkable. The love the Hackney clan shares with each other is quite beautiful to witness and their willingness to share these emotional moments is appreciated. 

Saxophonist Robert De Niro meets singer Liza Minnelli on V-J day, leading to a tumultuous relationship that runs against their burgeoning music careers. From the beginning De Niro has not a single redeeming characteristic which makes for real confusion as to why the bubbly Minnelli would want anything to do with him. She’s delightful in the film which some musical moments that really shine, but the rest of the film is such a drag that every one of its 163 minutes is felt. It’s a strange thing that the theme song has become such a standard that it seems like it has existed for much longer than this film.   

On his 39th birthday, Albert Brooks dies in a car accident and is sent to an afterlife where everything is determined by the quality of life led on earth and where a person goes next is decided by a pair of judges who assess if that person has conquered fear. During his nine days in Judgment City, Brooks meets and falls in love with Meryl Streep, a more perfect woman who is certain to be sent on to the next phase of living. This is my favorite of the Albert Brooks films I’ve seen. The version of the afterlife as seen here is creative and unique while also being absolutely ridiculous. Even in this ridiculousness, the world building is relatively consistent and the actors seem to be having fun working in it.     

Trying to escape a dead end life in a dying small town, teenaged Diane Lane finagles her way into joining a rock tour with her unpracticed punk band that includes her cousin Laura Dern and little sister Marin Canter. It’s rather incredible that I hadn’t ever heard of this film until stumbling on reviews fairly recently. It’s a fantastic merging of Girl Power and early 1980s MTV culture. Lane’s character is so very relatable while also being aspirational. She has no idea what she’s doing, but she’s not going to let that stop her or get in her way even as she fumbles at almost every step. At only seventeen years old, Lane the actress is impressive, carrying the film on her young back in ways that is hard to look away.