A concert film double-feature, more Oscar-nominated shorts, and Hail, Caesar! keeps February’s wide releases honest
Thursday
Wattstax + Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (7:00p + 9:30p — Union South Marquee)
The Memphis-based Stax Records needs no introduction beyond a list of musicians it’s played host to: Booker T & the M.G.’s, Otis Redding, The Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave, the list goes on. In the midst of the label’s funk boom in 1972, Stax would host a live benefit after the debilitating effects of the Watts neighborhood riots in Los Angeles seven years prior. The concert featured performances from some of the label’s biggest names at the time — The Bar-Kays, Carla Thomas, and Albert King, even an opening speech by Jesse Jackson — and was ushered into this 1973 documentary by David L. Wolper and Mel Stuart (of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory fame).
And that’s not all. With Dave Chappelle returning to Milwaukee, Madisonians may be a little salty about his avoiding the Orpheum Theater this year. This Michel Gondry-directed concert film won’t do a ton to assuage fans of Chappelle’s comedy (although he does pepper in bits of material between sets), but the comedian’s lineup is a drawing point in and of itself: Kanye West, Big Daddy Kane, Mos Def & Talib Kweli’s Black Star project, The Roots, a Fugees-reuniting Lauryn Hill and more. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party has decidedly lower cultural stakes than Wattstax‘s political residue, but it’s as top-notch of a modern compliment as you’re likely to get. (FREE.)
All freakin’ weekend
Oscar Shorts: Documentary (Sundance)
Rounding out the live-action and top-notch animation shorts gracing this year’s AMPAS nominations is all that documentary stuff. HBO scored three nods on its own with its “Documentary Films” offshoot. Body Team 12 recounts the Ebola crisis from the perspective of the collection team’s lone woman; sobering Pakistani honor killings are detailed in A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness; and Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah finds the titular director reflecting on his landmark Holocaust film turning 30. Outside the Home Box Office is Chau, Beyond the Lines, Courtney Marsh’s eight-year undertaking that resists the possibility a young man handicapped by the effects of Agent Orange may never become the artist he’s dreamed of. Last Day of Freedom sounds promising all on its own. Intersecting the criminal justice system with broader notions of allegiance, its subject Bill Babbitt makes the haunting decision to turn his brother over to authorities and watch as his subsequent conviction unfolds, all in a chalky, black-and-white animation style.
45 Years (Sundance)
Andrew Haigh emerged promising new voice with Weekend, a kind of LGBTQ iteration of Before Sunrise. That subsequently landed him a major producing role on Looking, HBO’s short-lived dramedy series that explored the ups and downs of gay life in the Bay Area. All of which is to say his latest feature, wherein Tom Courtenay learns that the body of his deceased ex-lover has been preserved in the frozen Swiss slopes that killed her 50 years prior, isn’t an obvious follow-up. At least not immediately. At face value, it’s a close critical reassessment of a longstanding heterosexual marriage, putting Courtenay and his wife (the Oscar-nominated Charlotte Rampling) through the emotional ringer with one of life’s surreal curve balls. Really though, 45 Years shouldn’t come as a surprise. With its attentive ruminations on our interpersonal relationships — and the stuff that both keeps them together and breaks them apart — isn’t divorced from his prior work in the slightest. Pardon the pun.
Hail, Caesar! (Sundance, AMC Star, Point)
Joel and Ethan Coen are kind of immune to gimmicks. Their collective career has been defined by a temptation to fuck with history, mythology, and a handful of shaggy dog stories, lending most of that end result a matter-of-fact approach to action and their special brand of comedy. To that end, Hail, Caesar! squeezes right into the duo’s omnivorous appetite, catching the film industry on the tail-end of Classical Hollywood. When a hunky leading man (George Clooney) goes missing from the set of a sword & sandals picture, it’s up to “fixer” Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) to find him — and then maybe figure out why a shadowy organization named “The Future” wants six figures from the studio for his safe return. With an embarrassment of familiar names — Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, narration from Michael Gambon — the Coens’ bonkers (and surprisingly cheery) caper takes aim at the era’s familiar boilerplates, all while serving up yet another breakout performance (this time from Alden Ehrenreich as an underestimated yokel of an actor). Et tu Coens?
Friday
Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (7:00p — 4070 Vilas Hall)
Yes, you’re probably pronouncing “Mercy Humppe” correctly. A kind of arthouse cousin to Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, the award-winning British composer behind Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory Anthony Newley — can we cool it on the Roald Dahl synergy, UW? — lets his imagination run really, really wild directing this 1969 vanity project that’s so many things (a documentary, a film-within-a-film, a burlesque showcase, a dick measuring contest on celluloid), it might be easier to list the things it doesn’t fail at satisfying. Less a mess one might normally expect out of an X-rating and maybe more just a mess, Newley’s ambitious failure sports weird visual digressions and the limpest plot ever: Will Newley’s titular Merkin get over his sexy lifelong crush (1969 Playmate of the Year, Connie Kreski) and be satisfied living with his sexy wife (Joan Collins) instead? This weekend, “All the world’s a stage and a bed.” (FREE.)
Monday
Paris is Burning (7:00p — Union South Marquee)
Before RuPaul’s Drag Race, there were New York City’s underground balls, safe havens where ethnic minorities and the LGBTQ community could express themselves far from the judgment of 1980s peevishness and the rampant paranoia over the AIDS epidemic. Jennie Livingston’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner posits that the scene reached its veritable apex at the turn of the 90s, interviewing prominent members of the ball community while documenting the extravagant runway proceedings and the origins of “voguing” (recreating cover poses of fashion mags). More importantly, Paris is Burning sheds a light on the gay black and latino communities who, especially at the time, were criminally ushered out of any spotlight. (Co-presented FREE by WUD Film & Pathways to Educational Achievement.)