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Danny Says

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  • Title: Danny Says
  • IMDb: link

Danny SaysThe documentary Danny Says takes a look at the life and work of music manager Danny Fields who discovered signed, and managed a variety of noteworthy bands in the 60s, 70s, & 80s including Iggy and the Stooges, MC5, and the Ramones, and also worked with Jim Morrison, the Velvet Underground and the Modern Lovers.

Spending as much time discussing Danny’s sex and drug use than the music, Brendan Toller‘s documentary includes several photographs and recordings Fields has kept over the years. It may not be the in-depth look at the music scene of that time period I expected, but it is an intriguing (if completely self-congratulatory) glance at one man’s impact on the music scene. Presented entirely from Fields’ point of view, some of his stories (such as how he hid Jim Morrison’s keys) are more entertaining than others (such as him struggling to justify his role in the storm up after the Beatles “more popular than Jesus” remark”). Music fans and historians should get a kick out of it.

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The First Monday in May

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  • Title: The First Monday in May
  • IMDb: link

The First Monday in MayThe subject of Andrew Rossi proves to be more fascinating the the movie itself. Following the near-year-long process of creating The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s most attended fashion exhibition in history, “China: Through The Looking Glass,” the highlights of the documentary are the exhibits themselves while the behind-the-scenes of time and budget constraints, the jockeying of celebrity attendees (without ever naming names), battles with China of the historical (not modern) nature of the exhibit, the struggle to pay the headline act, and the actual design of the various pieces in the exhibits aren’t explored in much more than superficial detail. Like much of the fashion it highlights, it’s great to look at but doesn’t always have much to say.

As a snapshot into a world most won’t ever see personally, The First Monday in May is interesting (if never all that compelling) look at some of the work that went into The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s most profitable exhibit. Available on DVD and On-Demand.

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Kubo and the Two Strings

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  • Title: Kubo and the Two Strings
  • IMDb: link

Kubo and the Two StringsThe latest from stop-motion studio Laika is their best yet. Centered around a young boy named Kubo (Art Parkinson) known in the local village for his tremendous storytelling ability where his origami creations spring to life, the adventure gets started in earnest when Kubo learns that the stories passed down from his mother (Charlize Theron) about an evil Moon King (Ralph Fiennes) are all true. To save himself and stand-up to his grandfather, Kubo will have to complete the unfinished quest which destroyed his father.

In a year without a heavyweight favorite for best animated feature Kubo and the Two Strings makes a strong play for the title. Undeniably visually stunning, it’s the strength of its story that separate Kubo from some of Laika’s previous releases. Available on Blu-ray and DVD, extras include a pair of short featurettes on the film’s myth and the worldwide enterprise to make the film, a six-part behind-the-scenes making-of featurette, and commentary by director Travis Knight.

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Café Society

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  • Title: Café Society
  • IMDb: link

Café SocietyDefinitely fitting into the category of lesser Woody Allen films, Café Society follows the rather uninteresting romance between a Brooklyn transplant to Los Angeles (Jesse Eisenberg) and a young woman (Kristen Stewart) who is also dating his older, and married, uncle (Steve Carell). The main problem with the film is we don’t care about any of the three characters or who ends up with who. There’s also an underdeveloped subplot involving the kid’s gangster brother (Corey Stoll) which, like the rest of the film, never goes anywhere all that interesting.

While capable, and beautifully shot, neither Stewart nor Blake Lively (in a much smaller role) have the wit or spirit of Woody Allen’s more memorable female characters. No one will confuse either with Annie Hall. And neither Eisenberg nor Carell seem particularly suited to Allen’s storytelling, although the blasé script gives them very little to work with.

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Sausage Party

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  • Title: Sausage Party
  • IMDb: link

Sausage PartyThis movie is fucked up. Offering us a glimpse into the lives on anthropomorphic food and other assorted items in a grocery store who sing about the promised land after being bought by god-like humans, Sausage Party follows the misadventures of a hot dog named Frank (Seth Rogen) and his friends (Michael Cera, Kristen Wiig, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, and Salma Hayek) who discover the truth about what really happens to food in the kitchen. Wrong in (mostly) all the right ways, it has to be seen to be believed.

Offering an inspired amount of cursing and obvious jokes (the bagel doesn’t get along with the lavash, the douche is, well, a real douche) along with several genuinely funny moments, the script by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Rogen, and Evan Goldberg gets too infatuated with sexual innuendo at times (and ignores the inevitable truth of what will happen to all the characters), but while it lasts Sausage Party delivers an animated experience unlike anything you’ve seen before on the big screen.

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