Joan Rivers: A Dead Funny All-Star Tribute, on NBC

It is a healthy sign that the entertainment industry can finally pay tribute to Joan Rivers. It only took ten years (and change) after her death. It is obvious why it took so long. Personally, Rivers was a paragon of tolerance, but for her comedy was serious, take-no-prisoners business. Shrewdly, Rivers’ admirers celebrate her “thematic boldness” as well as her genuine stature as a feminist trailblazer in Joan Rivers: A Dead Funny All-Star Tribute, executive produced by her daughter Melissa, which airs tonight on NBC.

Sadly, Rivers passed away in 2014, but she lived to see the release of Rucki Stern & Annie Sundberg’s Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which helped put her career resiliency into proper perspective. Of course, nobody in this special mentions her victory on Celebrity Apprentice, but the 2010 documentary made it clear her Trump-related triumph helped reinvigorate her career, once again. However, Joel McHale does a funny bit about all the awful news of the last ten years Rivers was fortunate to miss. He also takes several shots at E!, where he met Rivers, which is suitably subversive, considering the network will rebroadcast this very special on June 5^th.

In fact, most of the presenter/tributer/roasters are rather funny, because they adopt Rivers’ fearless spirit. Nikki Glaser and Rachel Brosnahan pretty much go straight for the crotch (with ample precedent). In addition, Brosnahan notably gives Rivers credit as the model for Miss Maisel. Fittingly, Tiffany Haddish (who discovered her Jewish roots in adulthood) gives Rivers credit for serving as her Jewish role model. Of course, it also makes you wonder how the forceful Rivers would have responded to the current alarming surge of antisemitism, especially on college campuses.

Spin Me Round: Comedy Scored by Pino Donaggio

You will learn more watching a few hours of the Food Network than from attending this casual Italian restaurant chain’s special managers’ training workshop, but it has the distinct advantage of being in Italy. That definitely interests Amber, who has never been out of Bakersfield. She hopes to find romance in Italy, but stumbles across trouble in Jeff Baena’s Spin Me Round, which opens today in New York.

Initially, it seems like there is a bit of a bait-and-switch going on with the managerial seminar. They were supposed to stay in founder Nick Martucci’s villa, but instead they are stuck in a strip mall budget inn. However, when Amber catches Martucci’s eye, he tries to whisk her off her feet. His loyal assistant Kat facilitates his courtship, but she also shows an interest in Amber as well.

Much to Amber’s surprise, all the attention ends just as suddenly as it began. Martucci appears to be romancing other women in the program, while Kat mysteriously disappears. She starts to suspect it is all some sort of sleazy grooming operation, especially when her colleague Dana reveals he and his fellow manager Fran are two of the only men to ever participate in the program. They also both happen to have names commonly associated with women.

Spin has a reasonably promising premise, but it was not sufficiently developed. Frankly, it only really gets funny when Amber and Dana team-up to sleuth out the truth behind their seminar. Alison Brie and Zach Woods bounce off each other nicely in these sequences. However, most of the first half of the film just tries to force laughs out of uncomfortable situations. It does not help that Spin features several thesps whom the dictation-taking entertainment press keeps trying to convince us are funny, but they really aren’t, such as Fred Armisen and Molly Shannon. True to form, they just sap the energy out of Spin.

Calls, on Apple TV+

It is sort of like “Sorry, Wrong Number” for fans of Tenet. Thanks to a strange quantum physics anomaly, people have been getting phone calls from different time periods—in some cases from themselves. Unfortunately, whenever someone tries to alter their timeline, the universe fights back, usually in a rather vicious way. The concept is high but the visuals are minimal in creator-director’s Fede Alvarez’s Calls (based on the French series created by Timothee Hochet), which premieres this Friday on Apple TV+.

Supposedly, Calls starts with the ending—the cataclysmic doomsday end—and then flashes back to the beginning, before filling in the middle with the subsequent seven episodes—except maybe not. There might be a handful of people smart enough to figure what is happening to our plane of reality in time to stop it. Of course, there are those who will try to take advantage of the quantum anomaly to reverse horrible personal tragedies, but these rarely work out well.

Indeed, Calls is an unusually dark and moody science fiction series. Several episodes, like “Me, Myself, and Darlene,” “The Universe Did It,” and “Mom” are downright downers (the former two being the most poignant and effective). Ironically, the best episode, “Pedro Across the Street,” is a total outlier, due to its humorous tone and the fact the quantum phone call doesn’t even happen in the episode (it is only referenced by the character who called himself).

Stylistically, Calls is more closely akin to a podcast than a television show, because the only visuals are the audio waves and static representing the phone calls heard during each episode. Basically, the viewing experience is like watching the spectrum analyzer on your stereo. (As a point of contrast, Shudder’s terrific podcast Video Palace created a much more intriguing visual loop for its creepy tale of insidious video tapes.) However, the way Alvarez keeps dropping hints about the greater quantum mystery afoot keeps us sufficiently hooked.

Tribeca ’16: Pistol Shrimps

If you are true to the game, it will be true to you. On the other hand, if you secretly moonlight with a rival team, you might just suffer a season-ending injury. That’s how it is in the big leagues and in the Los Angeles’ women’s rec league as well. Everything you like to think about sports will be confirmed in Brent Hodge’s Pistol Shrimps (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

There were plenty of intramural basketball leagues for guys in LA, but nothing for women. As unfair as it sounded, it was also a reflection of demand at the time. However, when a group of actresses, comediennes, and models decided they wanted to play, they managed to drum up enough interest to field a small league. Having built it, more players and teams started to come. In fact, the league sort of caught on, becoming something of a thing.

Although they played a pivotal role in the league’s founding, the Pistol Shrimps ranked towards the bottom of the standings during the initial seasons. Yet, they built up a strange cult following, largely due to their roster, which includes Aubrey Plaza, Molly Hawkey (who became internet-famous for splicing herself in clips from The Bachelor), model Melissa Stetten, and actress Angela Trimbur (who totally kills it in Trash Fire and The Final Girls and also leads the Shrimps’ halftime dancers).

Yes, they really have a halftime show, but it is probably the play-by-play podcasts that built their fanbase. Frankly, it is more random color commentary than play-by-play, but whatever. The point is, people seemed to like following the Shrimps and the poise they gained on the court also seemed to carry-over to some extent with their professional careers.

Unfortunately, Plaza nearly torpedoed their championship run when she tried to play on the down-low for another team, earning herself an untimely injury and a stern talking-to from her management. Can the Shrimps come back? Is there a Hollywood ending in the house?

It is gratifying to see players from different walks of life come together through their passion for the game. The Pistol Shrimps are particularly cool, because they are one of the few teams that did not femme-up a pro team’s name, like the She-Cago Bulls. Rather they took inspire from the small crustacean whose powerful snapping claw emits a mini-sonic boom, so there is your Animal Planet sound bite of the day.

As you would expect, the Pistol Shrimps can talk trash with the best of them. Funny is their business (in most cases), but they play to win. Their enthusiasm is contagious throughout the film. While Hodge and co-producer Morgan Spurlock surely see wider social significance to the Shrimps’ appeal, they keep the film breezy and snarky, as the fans would prefer. Recommended for all basketball fans, Pistol Shrimps screens again today (4/23) as part of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, with future screenings scheduled for May 11 and May 15 at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver.

Ned Rifle: The Grim Family Endures

In 1998, people still talked about independent filmmaking as a movement, while keeping a straight face. You could also get away with characters named “Henry Fool” and “Simon Grim” without being dismissed for clumsy pretension. It was therefore the perfect time to release Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool, which remains his biggest hit to date. The dramedic fable hardly seemed to lend itself to a sequel treatment, yet Hartley delivered Fay Grim anyway. The Grim family is now a full-fledged franchise, with Hartley’s third installment, Ned Rifle (trailer here) opening this Wednesday in New York.

If you remember the first Fool, but skipped the second Grim, you are not alone. Apparently, at the end of her eponymous film, Fay Grim was unjustly convicted of terrorism and her son, Ned Rifle as he is now known, went into witness relocation. Needless to say, this fine state of affairs is all the fault of her husband, Rifle’s father, the jerkweed literary poseur and degenerate drunkard Henry Fool. After seven years, Rifle is finally allowed to see his mother. Aging out of witness protection, he will soon leave Rev. Daniel Gardner’s family to set out on his own. His plan is simple. Kill Henry Fool for ruining his mother’s life.

This would seem run somewhat counter to the Christian faith Rifle adopted under Rev. Gardner’s tutelage, but sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. To find Fool, Rifle will drop in on his uncle, Nobel Prize winning poet Simon Grim. That is how he crosses paths with Susan Weber, a graduate student sort of stalking Grim. However, as Weber attaches herself to Rifle, it becomes clear she has her own mysterious reasons for wanting to track down Fool.

Despite Rifle’s rather problematic mission, Hartley treats his Evangelical faith rather respectfully. It is very clear he and Rev. Gardner are flawed, but we are supposed to consider them basically good people nonetheless. Fool on the other hand, remains an intentionally Mephistolean figure, as well as an annoying blowhard. Again, there is something hugely compelling about Simon Grim’s idiosyncratically humanistic perspective, but Hartley shortchanges him on screen time this go round.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to take one’s eyes off James Urbaniak when he is on screen. He continues to deepen Grim’s cynical but forgiving everyman persona. Martin Donovan is suitably earnest as Rev. Gardner, while Thomas Jay Ryan continues to be wildly obnoxious and somewhat menacing as Fool. Parker Posey makes the most of her limited scenes, playing Fay Grim like a jailhouse Norma Desmond. However, Aiken (who has played Rifle since he was a mere lad of seven years) grows into the neurotic lead role quite nicely. He also develops some appealingly off-kilter chemistry with series newcomer Aubrey Plaza, who manages to be simultaneously awkward and sultry as Weber.

The problem with the misconceived war-on-terror middle film is that the Grim family is now stuck with a lot of clunky mythology. Hartley does his best to minimize it, reaching back to a scandal furtively referenced in the first film for the film’s big shocking reveal. It all works better than you might expect, even though the characters all seem slightly embarrassed by their continuing longevity. After all, Henry Fool was the sort of you want to seal into a climate controlled vault, lest it be contaminated by a stray ironic remark from outside its ecosystem.

Although billed as the final chapter, if there is a fourth film, it has to focus on Urbaniak again and be called Simon Grim. Of course, we have to deal with what we have before us—Ned Rifle, which manages to get into your head thanks to some eccentric but forceful performances and Hartley’s soothing electric soundtrack. Recommended for fans of Hartley and Plaza, Ned Rifle opens this Wednesday (4/1) at the IFC Center, in New York.

Sundance ’14: Life After Beth

Teenagers and zombies both have bad skin and smell like feet.  However, the similarities end with the risen dead’s affinity for smooth jazz.  At least, that is how the zombie apocalypse rolls in Jeff Baena’s Life After Beth, which screens today during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Zach Orfman was always inclined to be mopey, but the death of his out-of-his-league girlfriend Beth Slocum really has him down. He is especially anguished because their final awkward days of couplehood teetered on the brink of splitsville.  Seeking comfort in proximity, Orfman starts spending time with Slocum’s parents, Maury and Geenie, who also seem to take consolation from his presence.  Then one day they freeze him out and close off their entire house to the outside world.

Eventually, Orfman discovers they are harboring the “resurrected” Slocum, who has no memories of her fatal hiking misadventure.  The Slocums are determined to keep it that way.  They allow Orfman to renew their relationship, but insist he never tell her about her death or share the happy news with the rest of the world. It is all good for a few days, until certain changes start manifesting in Slocum. For instance, her skin is drier and her behavior is more aggressive. We also get hints she might not be the only zombie who came back.

Writer-director Baena dexterously keeps the zombie apocalypse lurking just outside our field of vision, focusing instead on the increasingly problematic relationship between Orfman and Slocum. He also stays true to the logical necessities of zombie movies in the redemptive third act climax.  However, the humor in After definitely leans toward the mild chuckle end of the spectrum.

Aubrey Plaza is the perfect choice for Slocum, jumping into the undead teenager angst and zombie gore with both feet.  In contrast, Dane DeHaan’s Orfman is a leaden presence, stuck on moody brooding throughout the film. He might be convincingly nebbish, but it is impossible to believe someone with this kind of dead fish charisma could attract the reasonably popular Slocum. While Paul Reiser (his second dad role in a Sundance film this year) and Cheryl Hines are largely wasted as Orfman’s parents, John C. Reilly’s shtick suits Maury Slocum rather well.

Life After Beth is pleasant enough, but it is quite like scores of previous teenager horror mash-ups thematically and stylistically. While it earns originality points down the stretch, Plaza and Reilly could have used some help carrying it to that point. Tightly executed but low in calories, Life After Beth will only serve as a light snack for genre fans when it screens today (1/24) in Park City, as a selection of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.