Movie Nation

“Punk” wasn’t music solely confined to The West. It happened behind the Iron Curtain as well. As did its offspring, New Wave.

Granted, it wasn’t always the loud, passionate and sometimes musically-inept thrashing punk of The Ramones and The Sex Pistols, or the fashion statement New Wave pop of Duran Duran and The Cars.

“Leto” is a wistful, black and white musical fantasia, a memoir of the “24 Hour Party People” school set in the grim coast-to-coast gulag that was the Soviet Union. There’s a romantic softness to its grit and a somber, observational tone to many scenes.

But every now and then, magical realism takes over and Russians on buses or trains or in phone booths launch into Lou Reed, T-Rex or “the Heads that Talk” and things get downright giddy.

Musicians and the kids who wanted to be punks got off on T-Rex, Lou Reed, “All the Young Dudes” and “The Velvets (Underground).”  You don’t have to know the bands — Kino, Zoopark et al, to follow what was happening in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in very slow tape delay years after these movements and bands broke out in London, New York and points West.

It’s the early ’80s, the end of Breznev era, and musicians in the U.S.S.R. still have to have their songs approved in order to get the chance to play in the state operated “rock club,” where plainclothes state security officers act as ushers.

Don’t get out of your seat, don’t stand up and dance. Don’t hold up homemade posters for your idols and for the love of Mother Russia, don’t hold up a lighter and yell “FREE BIRD!”

This is an environment that Mayk Vassilievitch Naumenko (Roman Bilyk) thrives in. He wears Raybans in the Italian fashion — around the clock — and smokes in the Russian style — constantly. “Mike” and his band Zoopark own this scene.

He’s devoted to The Velvet Underground and “Berlin” era Lou Reed — music, like T-Rex, another favorite — that was seriously passe in the U.S. and Britain by then.

The fact that he’s considering covering Sweet songs — “Lies in Your Eyes” — tells you he’s out of step, which is just fine with The State.

Along come Viktor Tsoy (Tee Yoo) and Liosha (Filipp Avdeev), fans who play acoustic guitar and write biting, bitter songs about life in the Land of the Not Free, love and drinking. This is the cutting edge that Mike never found, and he’s enough of a music buff to hear it.

He doesn’t need the resident “Skeptic” in their orbit (Aleksandr Kuznetsov, funny) reminding him that Reed, Dylan, Bowie and other heroes of Western rock did cultural commentary and protest songs, and that he should be, too.

So he takes the lads under his wing. It’s just that his wife, the ravishing Natacha (Irina Starshenbaum) is quite taken with the long-haired, brooding face of artistic integity — to the point of being smitten.

Co-writer/director Kirill Serebrennikov (“The Student”) takes us into the clubs, the recording studio, the “official” meetings to get your music approved, the smoky house parties and beach bonfires of these real-life figures from the Russian music of the era.

He gives us a little hedonism, escape, sex, drugs and rock’n roll. Just enough. He uses hand-drawn animation to add “fantasy” dream elements to the story, simulated old home movies in black and white and color, and recreated Western music videos (and album covers) to create a chiaroscuro impression of a place, a time and the feeling of being young in that world.

And he and his fellow screenwriters, working from a memoir Mike’s wife Natacha wrote, find moments to bring a little musical magical realism to the enterprise. No, the scenes aren’t as gloriously over-produced as the big moments in “Rocketman.” But they’re delightful jolts, turning up just often to upend the movie’s drift toward Russian mopiness.

Kids, led by the boy Punk, prattle on (in Russian with English subtitles) about The Sex Pistols as inspiration, “the enemy’s songs,” the older folks overhearing them on the train gripe. “You are singing the pop songs of our ideological enemy!”

A beating starts, the secret police show up with their “Get your papers out”

And the Skeptic (VERY “24 Hour Party People”) tells Punk the only answer to this is a song by “the band ‘Heads that Talk.'”

The kid romps, bloody-nosed, through the train, belting out “Psycho Killer” as passengers of all ages take swings at him and sing along.

Skeptic is not quite our narrator, punctuating this moment with “This didn’t happen. Nor will it.” Later, it’s “Sadly, this did not happen. If only it had.”

All the while, the musicians are making music (very folkie/singer-songerwriter “New Romantics” stuff, mostly, little that’s punk or New Wave), experimenting in the studio — “Try ‘Mama, mama, mama’ here!” “How about a drunken chorus? You know, like The Doors did with ‘Alabama Song?'””

And Natacha openly flirts with Viktor, who remains desperate for Mike’s approval and help.

“Natacha, come, your husband’s still alive,” is all the husband can think of in response.

“Leto” — the title means “Summer” in Russian, and is the title of one of the popish songs played here — never quite reaches the full gallop that this era and this material demands, with the Afghan War draft hanging over every young man and All the Young Dudes more concerned with dissecting Bowie’s “Aladdin Sane.”

But the musical moments stick, and the dialogue is tasty and ever-so-Russian.

“It’s bad, sad for the songs if they’re stuck in your head. Release them!”

Yes, too little changed in Mother Russia with these cultural warriors battling commissars who growl, “Soviet youths don’t need these kind of messages.” But as the Skeptic might say, it’s nice to think it could have, that the “Children of the Revolution” could have reformed their repressive State, just with their tunes.

“Leto” makes us wish for a Russian “Summer of Love” that never was.

MPAA Rating: unrated, nudity, alcohol abuse, smoking

Cast: Teo Yoo, Irina Starshenbaum, Roman Bilyk and Aleksandr Kuznetsov

Credits: Directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, script by Mikhail Idov, Lili Idova , Ivan Kapitonov and Kirill Serebrennikov. A Gunpowder & Sky release.

Running time: 2:08

Who better to do that? Interesting break down of the film’s version as opposed to what really happened.

Lots of liberties taken, mistakes made. And typos in the article. It’s a pity none of us can afford a copy editor, these days.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/rocketman-fact-check-elton-john-biopic-842902/

Not a runaway weekend at the box office, like say LAST weekend was, with “Aladdin” far exceeding depressed expectations and clearing over $100 million.

“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” didn’t hit the predicted $65, $55 or $53 million it was expected to pull in last week — indeed, as late as Saturday morning.

A tepid film in a worn out franchise? It’s not as if nobody cared, but not enough cared to make it a runaway hit. $49 million isn’t terrible, and with overseas money the $200 million monster mash won’t be a flop. But still…Let’s hope they retire the character and find better Hollywood parts for Ken Watanabe.

“Rocketman” appealed to an older audience of Elton John fans, and while there weren’t nearly as many of them as say, “Gnomeo & Juliet” et al fans (cartoons that used Elton’s tunes), a $25 million weekend is better than things looked Friday. This was expected to challenge “Bohemian Rhapsody’s” break-out opening in the $40s — and didn’t. Predictions ran into the $30s as late as Thursday. Didn’t happen.

It’s a sour, joyless film, built around everybody who ever did Elton wrong. “Makes him look like a jerk” one critic noted. I’d agree with that.

“Ma” wasn’t all that, but Octavia Spencer and BH Tilt opened a horror movie with no supernatural evil, ghosts or “Amityville/Insidious/Annabelle” universe tie-ins. $18 million on a cheap film is a win.

“Booksmart” fell off so steeply that any thoughts it would find a bigger audience, hold onto screens and become a hit “with legs” disappeared. It fell only 52%, but that’s a falloff that took it way down the top ten. It will join “Long Shot” in the over-hyped but under-viewed comedy of the summer sweepstakes, out of the top ten and losing most of its screens within two weeks.

The PG-13 “The Hustle,” a cute remake of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and “Bedtime Story” (1964) has earned more than the two R-rated comedies put together. R-rated has been the way to go in the Judd Apatow Ap-pack era, but not this summer. Not so far.

“Booksmart” is better, more ambitious than “The Hustle.” “Long Shot” isn’t.

If the adorable documentary “Biggest Little Farm” was on a few more (275 now) screens, it might crack the top ten. But that’s the sort of thinking that made “Booksmart” seem like a bomb. It was never going to have wide Middle-America appeal, nor is “Farm.”

Very sad news out of Britain.

Terry Jones, diagnosed with dementia some while back, is now reported to have lost his powers of speech to the disease.

Jones was the quizzical, whimsical polymath of The Flying Circus, the Medievalist who directed the unalloyed delight that is “The Holy Grail,” in title and in cimema comedy history a film that lives up to his and its name.

And a pretty funny crossdresser, to boot.

Interviewed him on the occasion of a “Holy Grail” anniversary release some years back. A great thrill for me, I have to say.

He did Medieval history TV series, “explainer” comedies about the economy, and never missed a Python reunion. Alas, nevermore.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/monty-python-star-terry-jones-16241886.amp#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s

The latest “Godzilla” movie is coasting by on its brand, not being helped by reviews, which were middling to awful, or apparently word of mouth from folks who have already seen it.

Because it’s no damned fun.

It did a robust Thursday and had a big start Friday, then began a cooling off that could make it fall 10 percent or more below the low end of predicted opening weekend sales. $51 million, Deadline says. Maybe.

“Ma” is performing exactly as anticipated. A studio brand, no supernatural elements, horror built on good actors acting scary. $18 million, and please note, Octavia Spencer is MONEY.

Elton John is getting his ass kicked by Freddie Mercury. No sense sugar coating it. A musical built around a pop star who didn’t die young and stuck around, still tours, etc. is proving to be less of a draw.

They went for the R rating with “Rocketman” and didn’t shy away from the gay sex (not gay “romance,” it is worth noting) and drugs. It made his story more a maudlin melodrama, but that’s how he sees it.

The production numbers have ambition,  a couple are delightful and one is downright dazzling. But it’s not proving to be that appealing of a story, kind of snippy and self pitying and bitchy. “Joyless” I said in my review. An impressive enough film that has a sourness that keeps it from taking flight.

Elton Approved. Elton should have been kept out of some of the meetings. Plainly. It won’t open at $30, which was below the predicted low $30s. It may only manage $23 or so in the U.S.

The Bitch ISN’T back.

Older audience, and young people aren’t as connected with the music as generations have bonded with Queen, whose surviving members went for a PG-13 version of Freddie Mercury’s life. And look like bloody geniuses for doing so.

“Aladdin” is falling off a very respectable 50 percent or so, over $40 its second weekend.

“Booksmart” is holding over half it’s opening weekend numbers and will be just fine.  It will clear $20 by the end of NEXT weekend.

“Long Shot” is gone and forgotten fron the top ten. The PG-13 “The Hustle” is still the biggest comedy hit of the summer, middling reviews be damned.

https://deadline.com/2019/05/godzilla-king-of-the-monsters-rocketman-ma-opening-weekend-box-office-1202624876/

Why not? He has rarely done anything but brood on the big screen. He’s good at it. And his choice of roles and films post “Twilight” is ambitious and impressive.

“I’m…………….Batman!”

So he’ll be a younger Bat, and in the cowl and cape as of 2021.

It is to weep.

At the insanity of it all — the excess, the staggering amounts of cash, the cynical actors all collecting a paycheck even though they could see the script was crap and knew a very profitable movie studio had put a no-budget horror hustler in charge of the enterprise.

Because all “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” was ever going to be was the priciest B-movie in history. But what’s the rule with B-movies, kids?

“Don’t forget the cheese.”

Without the B-movie laughs, without a pear-shaped guy lumbering about in a lizard suit, that’s all that’s left to us — weeping.

I don’t know which is worse, the endless “Godzilla” reboots or this homage to the Japanese series (taking its title from the Raymond Burr starring 1956 film) with all the monsters on the Warners’ payroll deposited into one “universe.”

They included the cautionary parable, monsters awakened by “atomic testing, the lesson that “history shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man,” to quote Blue Oyster Cult — which the film does.

All they forgot was the fun.

In “King of the Monsters,” we’re a long way from “The Day the World Discovered Monsters are real.” That was back in 2014, and now monsters are popping back to life, from the South Pole to Skull Island.

It must have something to do with that heartless corporation, Monarch. But surely not. Not with Sally Hawkins, Vera Farmiga, Bradley Whitford, Kyle Chandler, Zhang Zuyi and Ken Watanabe on the payroll!

And let’s not forget Thomas Middleditch. He’s got a one liner or two.

“Is it just me, or has ‘He’ been working out?”

Millie Bobby Brown spent a “Stranger Things” vacation shooting this, a movie that’s pretty much instantly awful, in large part due to the efforts of the screenplay to work a headstrong and company-connected kid (daughter of feuding scientists Farmiga and Chandler) into the heart of the action.

“Maddie” steals this and escapes that, argues with Mom and For Dad…and for Godzilla.

Because all these monsters being awakened need a counter-balance, and that’s what the Lizard King is for, at least in these movies. He is our protector from, oh, Mothra, Rodan and that hydra-headed thing, Ghidorah.

That’s the “thinking,” anyway.

The military (David Strathairn is an admiral, with Aisha Hinds and O’Shea Jackson Jr. are the fighting elite) is inclined to shoot first and ask for budget increases later.

“Admiral, you MUST have faith in Godzilla!” Watanabe, a holdover from the last “Godzilla” movie, declares. “Poor Watanabe” is all I could think. Almost the only thing American audiences see him in is Godzilla movies.

Charles Dance shows up as a villain, the kid is put in jeopardy here and there, characters die; off-camera, as if their agent knew this was going to be a stinker, or nobly, in self-sacrifice, because that is a favorite trope in such Save the World spectacles.

And the picture travels from green screens meant to mimic Antarctica to Mexico, China (got to appease the Chinese in every blockbuster) to Fenway.

We see lots of V-22 Ospreys, the favorite vehicle of sci-fi set in our time, a flying wing (ditto) and a sub.

All just fillers — the locations, the explosions, the debates, the attempted one-liners. Because we know even without seeing the trailer that this is headed towards a Monster Sumo Mash finale.

The parable, that humanity has been Earth’s “dominant species for thousands of years, and look what happened,” stings.

As in the classic “Godzilla” sequels, the fate of the monster is supposed to get us all choked up. Right.

The idea that some might see the deliverance of The Titans (what they call these monsters) as a good thing, a cleansing “reset” for Planet Earth, is straight out of Bond villainy. Cynical and heartless, perfectly in step with the rest of the picture, in other words.

They went with a bargain basement director (Michael Dougherty of “Krampus,” lessening their cost, if not their risk. How’d that work out?

At least the effects houses that digitally rendered Godzilla & Friends (Frenemies?) got paid for hurling radiation-zapping kaiju at me and you, usually brawling in the rain, often in edits that make even the lumbering slow motion a monstrously murky blur.

Warners is going to make a buttload of bucks with this, and I don’t usually begrudge the business side on the hard decisions they take a flier on — $200 million for this, or four much better human stories with few special effects?

But as the truism “If you’ve seen one ‘Godzilla’ movie, you’ve seen them all” still applies, I kind of hope they choke on the cash from this one.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of monster action violence and destruction, and for some language

Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Sally Hawkins, Ken Watanabe, Vera Farmiga, Kyle Chandler, Zhang Ziyi, O’Shea Jackson, Jr., Charles Dance, David Strathairn

Credits: Directed by Michael Dougherty, script by Zach Shields and Michael Dougherty. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:11

The battle for gay civil rights in the United States really began when those rights were abruptly taken away in the 1950s.

President Dwight Eisenhower presided over a sweeping purge of homosexuals in the Federal government, which opened the floodgates for discrimination across a wide range of fields, in large parts of American life.

Careers were derailed, lives were ruined and some of those thus discriminated against began the long campaign, in the courts and in the court of public opinion, to get this injustice reversed, public recognition for their cause and the media to stop participating in the name calling, scapegoating and persecution.

“The Lavender Scare” is the title of a new documentary about this “Red Scare” era assault on a vulnerable minority. It’s a film built around the letters and public pronouncements of a pioneer, a reluctant but combative, persistent and successful leader in this fight.

Dr. Franklin E. Kameny was a Harvard-educated astronomer whose dream was to work in America’s nascent space program, a dream interrupted when he was abruptly fired from the Army Map Service as a security risk in 1957. That began a life long battle to right this live-shattering wrong and turned Kameny into “The Father of the Gay Rights Movement.”

In letters to his mother (read by David Hyde Pierce), Kameny pre-echoes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he notes that “Every American citizen has the right to be considered in the light of his own personal merit.” It took guts to make this fight, to refer to himself, in public at that time, as “a homosexual American citizen” when America’s gay community was hardly a community at all — underground, closeted pretty much from coast to coast.

Josh Howard’s eye-opening film captures the context of the times and the birth of many government sanctioned gay stereotypes

In “the panic of the Cold War,” the idea was homosexuals, forced to live secretive lives, were suddenly believed to be security risks. Even as “The Kinsey Report” came out, 1950s America was largely in the dark about this minority and its practices. It was much easier to just dismiss “them” as “perverts.”

The “Red Scare” notion that, as Senator Joseph McCarthy declared, “perverts could be blackmailed into betraying national secrets,” caught hold. And when Eisenhower took office, he eagerly took action on this McCarthy whipping boy.

David Johnson, the author of “The Lavender Scare” book on this piece of gay history, notes pointedly on camera that in this country, this sort of blackmail never happened. A Senate “Perversion” inquiry run by Republicans fails to find an instance of a security breach by a gay employee of the government. That didn’t stop “a systematic campaign…to identify and fire homosexuals.”

A retired government official of the day notes how homosexuals were “easy to identify,” and how it was “just as easy to get them to go away.” The mere threat of exposure made “them quite happy to resign quietly.”

That’s how Madeline Tress, then a 24 year-old economist with the Dept. of Commerce, lost her career. Questioned by the FBI, “the most demeaning thing,” she faced insults that she was “not at all feminine, “”manish” wearing “no lipstick” — all documented in her file with J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I.

“My career was over before it began.”

The interrogators worked with “tables” that made “guilt by association” accusations. The accused were routinely railroaded the way Navy veteran Carl Rizzi was, outed by a “confidential informant,” confronted with photos of a drag performance he did at a local club.

If you want to know how far “Transamerica” has come, take a gander at the officials and official documents here discussing “mentally ill perverts, fond of little mustaches…sodomites…C-S-ers” (“suckers” is the second word they abbreviated) shown here.

“The Lavender Scare” lays out how official Washington’s treatment of gays was promptly aped by local law enforcement across the country, which began the litany of raids on gay bars and round ups of homosexuals wherever they cruised.

People got their names in the paper for being arrested, and some killed themselves.

Those arrested in government were strong-armed into naming “five other people you know” in true McCarthy Era blacklist fashion.

One bit of context that Josh Howard’s film points out was the vast human mobilization of World War II, when isolated gays from all over America found out they weren’t alone when they were drafted into the service or enticed to various cities for government work.

We see the camera panning over scads of snapshots of gay couples, in and out of the service, read the headlines about “deviates” as protests began in the late 50s, when even the ACLU refused to fight on their behalf.

“Pickets call Nation ‘Unfair’ to Deviates”

One important contextual sin of omission is worth noting. There was a precedent, glaringly obvious, for fearing that homosexuals working with sensitive information could be compromised. It was happening “across the pond,” gays being blackmailed into spying or continuing to spy for the Soviet Union against Britain and NATO. Much of what was known about the Cambridge Spy Ring did not become public until years later, but in espionage circles it was suspected or recognized at about the time The Lavender Scare became policy.

All the public attention and call for “action” against “commies” and “queers,” began in 1948, “the year America worried about homosexuality,” and didn’t officially end until Bill Clinton overturned the last of the edicts of that age, and pushed “Don’t ask, don’t tell” as a military enlistment policy he thought he could sell the public on.

All of which is important history to remember, with the speed of social change today such that the first openly gay politician to run for president and be taken seriously is a part of the day’s conversation.

And straight America can finally get to know the name of Dr. Frank Kameny, a very smart man with a very big grievance against the government, one he was willing to endure mockery and the loss of his original career to settle.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Narrated by Glenn Close, Joan Cassidy, Carl Rizzi, John D’Emilio, Lillian Faderman, with the voices of David Hyde Pierce, Cynthia Nixon, T.R. Knight and Zachary Quinto

Credits: Directed by Josh Howard. A Full Exposure release.

Running time: 1:14

“Wonders of the Sea” is an undersea “Isn’t nature amazing?” documentary that manages to find new sights to dazzle us, decades and decades after Jacques Cousteau introduced us to “The Undersea World.”

Narrator Arnold Schwarzenegger calls this film, co-directed by Cousteau’s son, “a declaration of love” because “you always save the things you love.”

It’s not an environment-in-crisis film, although that’s a given. The filmmakers have conjured up a picturesque underwater travelogue, an “eight thousand mile” tour of all that we’ll lose if we don’t do something about plastic, seafood consumption and carbon-burning-driven climate change.

It starts on the coral reefs of Fiji, drops in on a vast squid orgy off coastal California, in the kelp forests there, moves down to “the world’s aquarium,” The Sea of Cortez  where fisheries have been depleted but the mangrove marshes could provide the base for bringing everything from tuna to snapper back.

With so many other films using the same general setting, “Wonders of the Sea” wisely zeroes in on smaller life and odder creatures with exotic names — The Mermaid’s Wineglass, The Christmas Tree Worm, The Crown of Thorns Starfish, The Stone Scorpion Fish, “the most dangerous” venomous fish on Earth.

It’s all lovely to look at, and you gain an appreciation for the new tech the crew mention in the opening moments of the film, cameras and gear that allow such dazzling (often minute) images to be captured.

But as I listen to the quartet of narrators (Cousteau’s son and two grandchildren share flatly-voiced speaking duties with him and Schwarzenegger, a poor decision), I wonder about things like why they didn’t use a “greener” ship to make the voyage, something Jacques was constantly heralding.

With the oceans in such awful shape, setting an example is important.

Perhaps the Cousteau family has forgotten the mockery the patriarch’s cloying French-accented narration (he had his own series on ABC in the ’70s) became a cultural punchline, back in the day. You’d think they’d avoid precious banter among themselves — “Okay, Papa!” — and leave most of the narrating to the Austrian-accented movie star.

Oh. Right.

Still, we have never seen how gorgeous a giant clam is when it opens its mouth.

“Behold, the humble flatworm…the multi-colored magic carpets of the reef.”

And it’s helpful to be shown the bum rap sharks have gotten and the vast array of threats the sea’s top predator faces, from shark fin soup slaughter to “by catch” waste that kills 100,000,000 of the them every year.

“Wonders of the Sea” doesn’t break much in the way of new ground. We’ve seen slow-motion sting-rays, spiny lobsters, hermit crabs, octopi and moray eels before.

But the extreme close-ups, vivid colors of the various habitats the Cousteaus take us are worth the price of admission. And if ever there was a time we need to be reminded of what we need to save in the briny blue, it’s now.

MPAA Rating: G

Cast: Jean-Michel Cousteau, Celine Cousteau, Fabien Cousteau, narrated by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Credits: Directed by Jean-Michel Cousteau, Jean-Jacques Mantello, script by David Chocron, Francois Mantello and Jean-Jacques Mantello.  A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:22

Not blown away. Yet.

I mean, c’mon. It’s elves. Smurfs by any other name?

March of 2020, “Onward” opens and we find out.