Movies
New music documentary is ‘Velvet’ perfection
A piece of pure cinema that exemplifies its genre while transcending it
When it comes to great music documentaries – the ones that stick with you after you watch and make you want to come back to them again and again – there is one ingredient that stands out as a common thread: immediacy.
From D.A. Pennebaker’s fly-on-the-wall chronicle of young Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of the UK in “Don’t Look Back,” to Martin Scorcese’s joyful document of The Band’s final concert performance in “The Last Waltz,” to Jonathan Demme’s thrilling cinematic rendering of the Talking Heads in performance at the peak of their creative genius in “Stop Making Sense,” all of these now-revered films have endured – indeed, even grown – in popularity over the years because they captured the talent, the personality, and the power of their subjects on celluloid and preserved it for the ages, allowing generations of audiences, fans and soon-to-be-fans alike, to feel as if they were there.
But none, perhaps, have ever done it quite so viscerally as Todd Haynes’ “The Velvet Underground.” This is a remarkable feat when you consider that the films listed above, as well as most of the other highly regarded “rockumentaries” of the past, were all concert films, showing the performers at their center in the full bloom of their musical gifts, and Haynes’ film is not that. It’s something else, something singular, a piece of pure cinema that exemplifies its genre while transcending it entirely.
The basic outline of the band’s story is well known, now. Coalesced in the early ‘60s New York art scene around a pair of charismatic geniuses (John Cale and Lou Reed), the Velvet Underground was swept into the orbit and under the wing of Andy Warhol, who turned them into the house band at his famous “Factory,” added to their mix an exotic European chanteuse named Nico, and launched their record career by producing their first album – and designing an instantly iconic cover for it featuring a banana, to boot. They were, for a while, the darlings of the New York underground set, birthing a handful of additional albums across the latter years of the decade; but their sound, which was experimental, rough, and a far cry from the flower-power sound being embraced within the status quo of Middle American music fans, did not catch on. That, combined with the volatility of the relationships at its core, ensured an ignoble and unsung dissolution for the band; though its two front men went on to forge expansive solo careers on their own, the Velvets themselves remained a kind of blip, an ephemeral presence in the history of rock – and the history of New York – remembered by anyone who wasn’t actually on the scene as nothing more than a buzzy band they never actually heard with a catchy name and a familiar album cover.
As one of the voice-over interviewees in Haynes’ movie points out, however, the counterculture wasn’t actually the counterculture – it was the culture. The rest of the world just didn’t know it yet. Decades later the Velvet Underground is credited with, among other things, providing early inspiration for what would become the punk rock movement, to say nothing of influencing the aesthetic palate of (surely without exaggeration) thousands of musicians who would go on to make great music themselves – often sounding nothing like the Velvets, but somehow cut from the same raw, edgy, white-hot honest cloth, nonetheless. Yet in their moment, they were doomed before they had even begun to become a sideshow attraction, hurling performative realness in the face of a curious-but-disinterested glitterati crowd that was already embodying the superficial fakeness that would be so aptly monikered, both as an ethos and a watchword, as “Plastics” by Buck Henry and Mike Nichols in “The Graduate” barely a year after their first album was pressed.
Frankly, it’s the kind of story that makes for a perfect rock ‘n roll legend, and the kind of legend that deserves to be explored in a film that befits its almost mythic, archetypal underpinnings. There’s nobody more qualified to deliver that film than Todd Haynes.
Haynes, of course, is a pioneer of the ‘90s “New Queer Cinema,” whose body of work has maintained a consistent yet multi-faceted focus on key themes that include outsider-ism, dysfunctional socialization, and the fluid nature of sexuality and gender. Each and any of these interests would be enough to make him a perfect fit as the person to tell the story of the Velvet Underground, but what gives him the ability to make it a masterpiece is his ongoing fascination with music and nostalgia. Beginning with his controversial debut short “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” the musical landscape of his formative years has been inseparable from his milieu, and films such as his glam-rock fantasia “Velvet Goldmine” or his post-modernist Dylan biopic “I’m Not There” have dotted his career like cornerstones. Likewise, his painstaking recreation of the past in period pieces like “Far From Heaven,” “Carol,” or “Wonderstruck” has proven his ability not just to capture the look and feel of a bygone era, but to transport audiences right back into it.
In “The Velvet Underground,” it’s more like he transports the era to the audience. His comprehensive chronicle is not just the story of the band or its members, but the story of the time and place that allowed them to exist, in which a generation waking up from the toxic artificiality of their parents’ “American Dream” took creative control of the future through an unprecedented explosion of art and culture. Art was a by-any-means-necessary endeavor that now demanded a fluency across various forms of media, and a blending together of any and every thing that worked to get the message across. And yes, sometimes the media itself was the message, but even within that depressingly superficial reality was room for an infinite layering of style and substance that could take your breath away.
That description of the era in which the Velvet Underground thrived, in which Andy Warhol turned the shallow into the profound (whether he knew it or not), in which music and film and photography and poetry and painting and every other form of expression blended together in a heady and world-changing whirlwind, is also the perfect description of Haynes’ film. Yes, there are famous veterans of the age sharing their memories and their insights, yes there is copious archival footage (including the godsend of Warhol’s filmed portraits of the legendary faces in his orbit), yes we get to hear about Lou Reed’s struggle with his sexual identity – and it’s refreshing that Haynes makes no effort to categorize or finalize that aspect of the rock legend’s persona, but merely lets it be a fact. But even though “The Velvet Underground” checks off all the boxes to be a documentary, it’s something much more. Thanks to Haynes’ seamless blend of visuals, words, history, and – always and above all – music, it’s a total sensory experience, which deserves to be seen in a theater whether you subscribe to Apple TV or not. It puts you right in the middle of a world that still casts a huge shadow on our culture today.
And it’s unforgettable.
Movies
Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells want to adopt baby in ‘I Don’t Understand You’
Film premiered at SXSW in Austin
Editor’s note: Jack Morningstar attended SXSW in Austin, Texas.
“I Don’t Understand You” focuses on a couple whose romantic Italian getaway devolves into bloody chaos while they prepare to adopt their first child.
The film, while veering into hilariously gruesome hijinks, tells the story of a gay couple who is willing to kill for a chance at fatherhood. It sheds light on the hurdles that same-sex couples often go through in the adoption process: Financial burdens, time constraints, fraud, and in this case, a rural Italian family.
The film premiered last weekend at SXSW in Austin and stars Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells along with Nunzia Schiano, Morgan Spector and Eleonora Romandini. It was written and directed by Brian Crano and David Craig, who are married. They sourced inspiration from their own adoption struggles and an Italian vacay gone wrong.
“We were about to leave for Italy when we found out that we had matched with a birth mother and our son would be born in about six weeks,” said Crano.
According to Craig, the trip was tense and it culminated in their car getting stuck in a ditch on their way to an anniversary dinner.
“We ended up at an old lady’s house after she rescued us in her Fiat. Her family cooked us a meal and we stayed up drinking with them until 3 a.m., not understanding a word they were saying,” he said.
Without spoiling anything, the couple in the movie go to absurd lengths to ensure that their adoption goes through. Craig explained that the theme of the movie was “what would you do for your kid.”
“We were three years into our own journey at the time and realized we would literally do anything to make that dream a reality. It’s really a love letter to our son,” he said.
The film is hard to relegate to a single genre.
“When conceiving the story, we saw it as different parts — romantic comedy, horror movie, murder play — but I think by bringing in Nick and Andrew that blend actually became much more of an organic mix where the comedy sustained throughout. They elevated it in a more elegant fashion,” said Craig.
“I Don’t Understand You”was produced by Pinky Promise, a women-led production company with the mission to elevate diverse voices in their storytelling. Kara Durrett, Pinky Promise’s current president was a champion of this script from the beginning. Founder Jessamine Burgum recounts that when Durrett was onboarding, she said “If you don’t get [“I Don’t Understand You”] I don’t know if this is going to work.”
It ultimately became one of the first projects Burgum and Durrett collaborated on.
Kroll and Rannells’ chemistry carried the film.
“There was a desire to work with each of them because they had both separately been in such amazing comedian teams — like Andrew with Josh Gad and Nick with John Mulaney. Nick and Andrew’s characters are in almost every scene of the movie together, so they needed to be adept to basically doing a shared performance. There was no one more well-positioned to do this as naturally as possible,” said Crano.
Their characters are easy to root for, yet also deeply flawed.
“A big thing we wanted to do with this movie, and with all of our work in telling stories, is avoid telling a cliched gay trauma film. We’ve never ascribed to the idea that there is a subcategory to film that is LGBTQ, rather — movies are for everyone. We want to make a movie where gay characters are flawed, not for being gay, but because of who they are. They can be villains, but they are our protagonists,” said Craig.
Movies
Previewing queer movie and TV highlights for spring
New options coming despite recent Hollywood strikes
The Hollywood awards season has come to an end at last, which means we can finally look forward to some fresh new movies hitting screens over the next few weeks. And although the actors’ strike of 2023 has led to inevitable delays in bringing new content to our televisions for the spring, there are a few titles to watch for there, as well.
Girls 5Eva: Season 3 (March 14, Netflix)
The under-the-radar cult hit musical comedy series from Peacock, following a Y2K-era girl group that reunites to take advantage of a wave of millennial nostalgia, returns for a third season after being resurrected by Netflix. Lauded for its sharp and funny skewering of pop culture and the music industry and cut from the same zany, absurd cloth as “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” (much of its creative team are veterans of that hit show), it’s the kind of giddy-but-smart, rapid-fire comedy that begs to be binged. Starring Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Paula Pell as a divorced lesbian dentist, fans will surely be logging on to watch as soon as it drops, but new viewers are encouraged to jump on board for this one, too.
Love Lies Bleeding (March 15, theaters)
Rumbling into theaters after an auspicious premiere at this year’s Sundance Festival, this pulpy 1980s-set lesbian-themed thriller from director Rose Glass (“Saint Maud”) is touted as “an electric new love story” and promises to take viewers on a wild ride with its story of a reclusive gym manager (Kristen Stewart) from a criminal family who falls in love with an aspiring bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian) on her way to Las Vegas to follow her dreams; unfortunately, their romance sparks unexpected violence, dragging the new lovers deep into a dangerous web of crime and intrigue. Though it was given limited release in New York and Los Angeles on March 8, it expands wide on March 15. Also starringJena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, and Dave Franco, with Ed Harris as Stewart’s crime boss father. Consider it a must-see.
Femme (March 22/29, limited theaters with national expansion to follow)
From the UK comes this taut noir-ish thriller about a prominent London drag artist (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) who, while stepping out one night after a show to buy cigarettes, is brutally attacked by a man (George MacKay) and his gang of friends. Left traumatized by the experience, he retreats into isolation – but when he recognizes his attacker in a chance meeting at a gay sauna, he begins an affair with the closeted bully, hoping to enact a plan of revenge. Co-writer/directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping developed the film as an expansion of their award-winning 2021 short film of the same name, and the resulting debut feature premiered to enthusiastic acclaim at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival. Also starring Aaron Heffernan, John McCrea, and Asha Reid.
Ripley (April 4, Netflix)
This long-awaited eight-episode limited series adapts lesbian literary icon Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley” for yet another screen incarnation – there have been at least four so far, most famously the 1999 feature film version starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow – and stars queer Irish actor Andrew Scott (BBC’s “Sherlock”, “Pride”, “All of Us Strangers”) as the title character, who is sent by a wealthy man to persuade his son to return home from an extended trip to Italy. Once there, however, the ambitious Ripley finds himself irresistibly drawn into the privileged life of leisure led by young Dickie (Johnny Flynn) and his girlfriend Marge (Dakota Fanning), and he embarks into “a complex life of deceit, fraud and murder.” Shot in an elegant black and white that evokes its early 1960s setting, show creator/writer/director Steve Zaillian says his adaptation was crafted to provide an interpretation more faithful to the story and closer in tone to Highsmith’s novel than has been seen before, which is great news for fans of the original Ripley, whose adventures were continued by the late author throughout three further books after the success of the first, perhaps paving the way for follow-ups to this adaptation should it live up to the high expectations that accompany it. Eliot Sumner, Maurizio Lombardi, and John Malkovich also star.
Housekeeping for Beginners (April 5, limited theaters)
Another festival darling, this Macedonian film won the Queer Lion prize at Venice in 2023, and was submitted as an official selection for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards. While it didn’t make the cut for Oscar, it’s hitting US screens for a limited release next month – no doubt on the strength of writer/director Goran Stolevski’s previous feature, “Of An Age”, an Australian coming-of-age romance between two young men that made multiple “Best of the year” lists (including ours) in 2023. Revolving around a woman finds herself raising her girlfriend’s two troublemaking daughters despite having no interest in being a mother, the synopsis describes it as an exploration of “the universal truths of family,” framed in a “heartwarming story” of clashing wills “about an unlikely family’s struggle to stay together.” The pedigree alone is enough for us to suggest catching this one, if you can, when it hits theaters. Starring Anamaria Marinca, Alina Șerban, Samson Selim, Vladimir Tintor, Mia Mustafa, Džada Selim, Sara Klimoska, Rozafë Çelaj, Ajse Useini.
Glitter & Doom (April 9, digital)
Billed as “a fantastical queer romance set to the hit music of the Indigo Girls,” this indie oddball made a theatrical debut earlier this month, but heads to digital and VOD on April 9. It’s the “love at first sight journey” of its title characters, two young dreamers – an aspiring circus performer (Alex Diaz) and a struggling musician (Alan Cammish) – who embark on “an epic summer romance” until they find their love threatened by “the realities of pursuing their dreams.” Though we haven’t yet seen it ourselves, the buzz promises a campy yet uplifting and exuberant good time, and a star-studded queer-centric cast that includes Tig Notaro, Missi Pyle, Ming Na-Wen, Lea DeLaria, B-52s diva Kate Pierson, “Drag Race” alum Peppermint, Broadway star Beth Malone, and yes, even the Indigo Girls themselves.
Challengers (April 26, theaters)
From “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino comes this buzzy romantic triangle starring “Euphoria” and “Dune” star Zendaya as a former tennis prodigy turned coach whose husband – a champion on a losing streak (Mike Faist, “West Side Story”) – must face off against a washed-up former best friend (Josh O’Connor, “The Crown,” “God’s Own Country”) that also happens to be his wife’s former boyfriend. According to the synopsis, “pasts and presents collide and tensions run high,” and though details are scarce beyond the basics we’ve already shared, rumors (as well as a few not-so-subtle hints in the trailers) suggest that things might take a decidedly bisexual turn. Whether or not that should turn out to be true, Guadagnino’s name on the credits is enough reason to make this a queer must-see – especially with a cast as vibrant and talented as the one he has assembled.
I Saw the TV Glow (May 5, limited theaters)
Also coming from Sundance is this horror thriller from writer/director Jane Schoenbrun, produced by recent Oscar-winner Emma Stone (with husband Dave McCary) and starring queer actor Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine as two troubled teens who bond over a fantasy TV series and find their realities starting to blur after its cancellation. Praised by reviewers for its surreal style and its exploration of queer and trans themes within its mind-bending, darkly disorienting framework, it’s likely not the kind of movie that will resonate with all viewers – but it’s probably a great match for those who enjoy their horror on the abstract side.
In addition to all these, though their premiere dates are still not set, three much-loved TV series are set to return this spring. Streaming network Max will debut the third seasons of both Hacks and The Sex Lives of College Girls, two popular shows with heavy queer appeal. The former, starring Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, is a multi-award-winning comedy about the unlikely creative partnership between an old-school stand-up legend and an edgy young comedy writer who loathe each other – or at least did in the beginning. After two seasons of alternately awkward, bittersweet, and hilarious misadventures together, they might have warmed up to each other a bit, but we’re betting that won’t keep them from locking horns.
The latter, starring Renée Rapp, Pauline Chalamet, Alyah Chanelle, and Amrit Kaur, is also a comedy, following four freshman roommates at a fictional college as they explore love and friendship, financial stability and personal independence, and – of course – sex. It would have a draw for queer audiences even without the sapphic subplots, and for its enthusiastic fans, queer or otherwise, it will surely be a must watch.
Finally, the venerable UK sci-fi adventure series Dr. Who is set to return to the BBC sometime in May, when out queer actor of color Ncuti Gutwa (“Sex Education”, “Barbie”) officially becomes the 15th incarnation of the shape-shifting titular time lord – a role he already previewed to much fan approval in a Christmas special late last year. While the charms of this long-running fan franchise may escape viewers without an appreciation for the kind of campy intellectual fantasy that is its trademark appeal, Gutwa’s charmingly fabulous persona might be just the thing to bring a whole new army of queer converts into the fandom.
Movies
No problem with ‘Problemista’
Julio Torres’s debut film hints at greater achievements to come
Confronted with the title of queer SNL alumnus Julio Torres’s debut feature film, the first question that comes to mind for many people might be, “What’s a ‘Problemista’?”
For the millions of retail workers, reception staffers, and hospitality clerks, however, or anyone else whose job it is to interface with the public, the label – coined by Torres to describe the particular kind of driven personality embodied in his movie by headliner Tilda Swinton – may be, if not familiar, at least evocative enough to convey its meaning.
We’ve all encountered them, actually; entitled, self-righteous, demanding, aggressively impatient, and unwilling to accept anything less than complete capitulation for an answer, they are the people every cashier dreads to see (and every customer loathes to be behind) in line. They seem to thrive on drama, and they don’t care how much it inconveniences or disturbs anyone in their radius. In fact, they seem at times to relish doing so, as if they were striking a blow against social injustice by bullying a grocery clerk into honoring an expired coupon. In short, they might be described as a sort of contemporary urban warrior whose response to a problem is to become a problem until they get the solution they want. But by legions of waiters and customer service reps, they are typically just described as “the customer from hell.”
The central character in Torres’s stylish, smart, and surrealistically infused contemporary New York fairy tale – Alejandro (played by Torres himself) – is not such a person, at least not when we meet him. His creative imagination nurtured by his artist mother (Catalina Saavedra) in El Salvador, he’s now a young immigrant on a work visa in the U.S., getting by in his daily life by making as few waves as possible while dreaming of being a toy designer for Hasbro. But when a minor flub gets him fired from the cryogenic company where he works, he inadvertently finds himself drawn into the never-peaceful orbit of the titular “problemista” herself: Elizabeth (Swinton), an outcast art-world maven and wife of a terminally ill eccentric painter (Wu Tang Clan founder RZA) that has frozen himself in hope of being revived when a cure is available to save his life.
Tasked with tending to her not-quite-late husband’s legacy and estate, she is harried from her efforts to enforce her husband’s wishes via a campaign of unreasonable requests and non-negotiable demands, and sorely in need of someone to help manage the burden — and with his future in America now hanging by a thread, Alejandro takes on the challenge, hoping this terrifying woman whose path he has crossed can keep him from deportation until he can land the career opportunity he’s been waiting for.
It’s at once a familiar and an oddball conceit, a tale of toxic mentorship with shades of “The Devil Wears Prada” that weaves a strangely heartwarming sense of unexpected but perfectly matched kinship into the mix and takes us past tropes and cliché to discover a perspective that illuminates the extremes instead of reinforcing the bland status quo of our lives. While most audiences may not have experience within the elite cultural circle in which Swinton’s Elizabeth asserts her presence, the core essence of her persona is instantly recognizable to us all. And although Torres’s screenplay gets a lot of mileage – and indeed, the movie gets a lot of its appeal, thanks to Swinton’s masterful performance – out of parodying that “high-maintenance” image, it also takes us slyly past our easy judgments to reveal all the easily relatable human qualities behind the stereotype. By the time it’s over, we might still see her as a “monster,” but perhaps no more so than any of the rest of us. We might even, like Alejandro, start to see her seemingly insufferable approach to life as something a little less clueless and a lot more justifiable than we want to assume – and recognize that, even if it makes people cringe when they see her, it might sometimes be the only way to get by in a world bent on maintaining a veneer of calm banality. It might even be the only appropriate response to – and best rebellion against – the indifference of a system whose first priority is always the preservation of a placid status quo.
That, of course, is the joy of “Problemista,” a movie that successfully gets a load of intelligent laughs from the eccentricities of both its unorthodox lead characters – a non-specifically but unmistakably queer protagonist and a ferociously uncompromising “difficult woman” – yet somehow manages to turn them both into aspirational figures. It successfully pokes a savvy kind of fun at the rarified cultural niche in which it takes place – as well as at the not-so-subtly delusional constructs which govern the lives of anyone who fits within its boundaries – without diminishing or degrading its characters or making their individual pursuits feel foolish; it accomplishes this because, even in its unabashedly satirical milieu, it places the greatest emphasis on the humanity of its characters. Alejandro and Elizabeth, in almost any other film, would be supporting players – comic relief, perhaps – in a story about people whose lives were more comfortably mainstream; here, they take center stage, allowing us to laugh at their eccentricities but never letting us lose sight of the real human impulses behind them.
For that, we can thank the deeply committed performances of Swinton, an actress of legendary caliber whose background in underground and counter-cultural theater and film brings a considerable layer of stature to Torres’ freshman effort, and Torres himself, who comes across as a fully confident and seasoned performer capable of holding his own onscreen with someone of his co-star’s stature. RZA’s amusing but somehow sweet performance in flashbacks as Elizabeth’s husband also has a humanizing effect, and acclaimed Chilean actress Saavedra casts a luminous glow in her limited screen time that nevertheless seems like a keystone element of the film’s delicate balance of magical realism and absurdist comedy.
To be fair, defining “Problemista” within a label is a problematic undertaking from the start; neither comedy nor drama, fantasy nor surrealist ephemera, it combines all these elements to approach something more profound, perhaps, or at least more useful for audiences looking for a new perspective on the sometimes-soul-crushing sea of obstacles that seems to govern our daily lives. At any rate, far more important than any of these esoteric themes, it confronts – gently, if with considerable cynicism – the existential rattlesnake of navigating the immigration system of the US, straddling multiple agendas and managing to succeed with all of them.
Torres, whose stint on “SNL” led to a successful stand-up special and a gig as the creator and star of HBO’s critically acclaimed Spanish-language series “Los Espookys,” has managed an impressive debut as a filmmaker; it’s the kind of movie that hints at greater achievements to come, and we are eagerly on board to watch them unfold in years to come. No small feat for a first-time filmmaker, especially considering the number of ambitious sociocritical comedies that have tried and failed to pull off the same delicate balancing act – and even more especially because it’s also a lot of fun.