Review: 'Pahokee'

‘Pahokee’

★★★

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 110 minutes. Next screenings: Thursday, Jan. 31, 7 p.m., Redstone Cinema 2, Park City; Friday, Feb. 1, 8:45 a.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 3 p.m., Salt Lake City Library Theatre, Park City.

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The notion that small-town life often revolves around the local high school, and in particular that school’s football team, isn’t a new revelation, but the absorbing documentary “Pahokee” captures that truism with a clear eye and stunning imagss.

The movie chronicles the senior year for the class of 2017 at Pahokee Middle High School in Pahokee, Fla., an agricultural town on the banks of Lake Okechobee. Directors Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan follow four students over the year:

• Na’Kerria, who is on the cheer squad, works nights at a chicken joint, and who is determined to won the beauty pageant of Miss PHS.

• Jocabel, who aims to get into a good college after graduation, likely one that would take her away from her parents, who moved to the United States when Jocabel was 3 years old.

• BJ, one of the stars of Pahokee’s football team, the Blue Devils, who’s hopeful he will land an athletic scholarship to college.

• Junior, a drum major and single father who dotes on his baby girl.

Ivete (who’s also the film’s editor) and Bresnan’s also the cinematographer) uses a Fredrick Weisman-style verité approach, trying to be unobtrusive and letting events unfold as they happen — including a seemingly gang-related gunfight near a public park just after an Easter egg hunt. 

Meanwhile, true to the modern sensibilities, the movie also includes FaceTime clips in which the movie’s four protagonists reveal their younger selves directly to the camera. Those exchanges expand the film’s range, past what the filmmakers can see in the field to open a window to what’s on their minds.

Review: 'Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins'

‘Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins’

★★★1/2

Playing in the Documentary Premieres section of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 91 minutes. Next screenings: Tuesday, Jan. 29, 6 p.m., Park Avenue Theatre, Park City; Friday, Feb. 1, 3 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 2, Park City.

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Journalists make unlikely heroes — we’re usually too jaded, too cynical, and too tired — but the late Molly ivins, the jaunty chronicler of Texas politics and stalwart defender of the First Amendment, is one of those heroes, and the documentary “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins” is the profile of her that we have needed.

She was a striking figure, six feet tall with flaming red hair, with the ability to drink heartily and a mouth that would make a longshoreman blush. Raised in Houston by a domineering father, Ivins attended Smith College, studied in Paris, and got her journalism degree from Columbia. She worked briefly for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, before going home in Texas in 1970 to be co-editor and political writer at the alternative Texas Observer in Austin.

Thus began a long career of pointing out the foibles of the Texas Legislature, of which there were many. The New York Times hired her away in 1976, but didn’t quite know how to handle her iconoclastic spirit. A high spot of her Times career was getting the byline for Elvis Presley’s obituary and flying down to Memphis to cover the funeral. The low spot was when she covered a “community chicken-killing festival” in New Mexico and tried to get the phrase “gang-pluck” past the copy desk and the Times’ imperious editor Abe Rosenthal.

Texas beckoned again. The Dallas Times Herald gave her a political column in 1982, and she worked there until 1991, when the rival Dallas Morning News bought the paper and shut it down. She moved over to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She also syndicated her column to more than 400 papers, and wrote for Mother Jones and other publications. (The documentary omits my favorite Mother Jones column of hers, an appraisal of culture critic Camille Paglia: “Christ! Get this woman a Valium!”)

Director Janice Engel includes some of Ivins’ best witticisms. There was the time when she called former vice-president Dan Quayle “dumber than advertised” and said that “if you put his brain in a bumblebee, he’d fly backwards.” Or there’s her assessment of Pat Buchanan’s infamous “culture war” speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which she said “probably sounded better in the original German.”

Engel also shows when Ivins got serious, like when she and investigative reporter Lou Dubose dissected George W. Bush, as he went from Texas’ governor to the presidency.

Chock full of interviews with friends and the occasional political opponent, the documentary doesn’t shy away from Ivins’ demons — namely her alcoholism and the cancer diagnosis that ultimately killed her in 2007. Engel also compares the political landscape then to now, and leaves the open question of how righteously angry Ivins would have been if she had encountered President Donald J . Trump. One suspects she would have cut him to ribbons, like a ninja assassin.

Review: 'Big Time Adolescence'

‘Big Time Adolescence’

★★

Paying in the U.S. Dramatic competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 90 minutes. Tuesday, Jan. 29, 9:15 a.m., The Ray Theatre, Park City; Thursday, Jan. 31, 11:30 a.m., Prospector Square Theatre, Park City; Friday, Feb. 1, 6:15 p.m., Grand Theatre, Salt Lake City; Saturday, Feb. 2, noon, Library Center Theatre, Park City.

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I enjoy Pete Davidson on “Saturday Night Live” as much as the next person, but the coarse coming-of-age comedy “Big Time Adolescence” is proof that Davidson’s abrasive stoner persona is best consumed in small doses.

Writer-director Jason Orley structures his story around the oft-repeated device: The wacky bad influence. That’s Davidson’s character, Zeke, a 23-year-old slacker who is the best friend of the movie’s protagonist, 16-year-old Monroe Harris (Griffin Gluck, the kid brother from “Why Him?”). The movie starts with the “You’re probably wondering how I got here…” framing device, in which Monroe is being taken out of school by a police escort.

Monroe, who goes by Mo, doesn’t hang out much with his peers, preferring to hang out at Zeke’s rundown house to play video games, drink beer and learn pearls of wisdom from Zeke, his pals (one of them played by the rapper Machine Gun Kelly), and his girlfriend Holly (Sydney Sweeney). Mo’s parents (Jon Cryer and Julia Murney) can’t understand why Mo hangs out with the ex-boyfriend of Mo’s older sister Kate (Emily Arlook), but don’t do much to rein him in.

One example of Zeke’s questionable help: When Mo develops a crush on classmate Sophie (Oona Lawrence), Zeke delivers advice on how to woo her and then “ghost” her. And another: When school pal Will (Thomas Barbusca) asks Mo for help acquiring booze so they can get into senior-class parties, Mo goes to Zeke for help — and Zeke does one better, providing marijuana to sell to the suburban kids.

Orley makes space for some funny moments, particularly by Davidson and Barbusca. But the script travels down all the awkward and irresponsible directions you would expect, once the premise is established and plays out to its foreshadowed conclusion — by which time, Davidson’s stoner mannerisms have grown stale. (I would, however, love to hear Davidson and John Mullaney review the movie, the way they did “The Mule.”)

Review: 'Brittany Runs a Marathon'

‘Brittany Runs a Marathon’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 103 minutes. Next screenings: Wednesday, Jan. 30, 11:30 a.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City; Thursday, Jan. 31, 2:30 p.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City; Friday, Feb. 1, 3 p.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 3:15 p.m., Grand Theatre, Salt Lake City.

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The comedy “Brittany Runs a Marathon” deals with a lot of weighty subjects — about self-worth, body shaming and accepting friendship — but writer-director Paul Downs Colaizzo and star Jillian Bell carry it effortlessly.

Bell, best known for comic turns in “22 Jump Street” and “Rough Night,” plays Brittany, who’s nearing 30 in New York without a lot to show for it. She barely holds down a job as a theater ticket-taker, and she spends too much time partying and making bad choices with her YouTube-obsessed roommate Gretchen (Alice Lee). A trip to a doctor (Patch Darragh) gives her the information she’s been denying: She’s borderline-obese, and needs to lose 55 pounds. “That’s a Siberian husky! That’s a medium-sized working dog you want me to pull out of my butt,” Brittany replies, falling back on using jokes to deflect from her problems.

She sees their rich neighbor Catherine (Michaela Watkins) jogging, so she decides to try it, but the effort to just get around the block is exhausting and soul-crushing. Catherine takes Brittany under her wing, explaining that everyone has problems — Catherine’s involved “needle stuff” — and offers to bring Brittany to her running club. She does, and forms a small team with Catherine and Seth (Micah Stock) who make a pact that they will each complete the New York City Marathon, 11 months away.

As Brittany gets serious about running, she also starts cleaning up other parts of her life. One of those parts is finding a new job as a housesitter, which is how she meets Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar), a “man boy” who is living in the townhouse in which he’s housesitting.

Colaizzo’s script, inspired by a friend who ran the New York City Marathon, smartly progresses through Brittany’s struggle to lose weight, embrace her inner runner, and toss aside the negative influences in her life. There are setbacks, of course, but Brittany’s growth and her determination are authentic and inspiring.

In a cast full of funny people — including Lil Rey Howery (“Uncle Drew”) as Brittany’s brother-in-law and surrogate stepfather — Bell’s funny and warm-hearted performance reigns. She cracks jokes that most stand-ups would sell their mothers to land, and her blossoming from supporting player to movie star is delightful to see.

Review: 'Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen'

‘Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen’

★★★

Playing in the Documentary Premieres section of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 95 minutes. Next screenings: Tuesday, Jan. 29, 12:30 p.m., Redstone Cinema 1, Park City; Friday, Feb. 1, noon, Park Avenue Theatre, Park City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 9:30 p.m., Rose Wagner Center, Salt Lake City.

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Merata Mita is a pioneer in film that most people outside New Zealand don’t know, and her son Hepi Mita’s loving chronicle of her life, “Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen” goes a long way of correcting that blind spot and furthering her mission to bring different voices to movies.

Merata Mita’s claim to fame was as the first Maori woman to direct and write a feature film, the groundbreaking “Mauri,” a drama set among her native New Zealand people. Mita’s films, both narrative films and documentaries, advocated social-justice issues, which often prompted harassment and violence.

Merata Mita was also at the nexus of New Zealand’s film scene, as casting director and other roles for other directors — most notably Geoffrey Murphy, who directed the classic “Utu” and went to Hollywood to direct “Young Guns 2.” (Murphy, who died in December, was Merata’s third husband, and was Hepi Mita’s father.)

Hepi Mita, an archivist, deploys a wealth of footage of his late mother working, talking and agitating. He also interviews his older half-siblings, woh talk about the personal strain their mother’s passion for film and politics had on the family.

“Merata” ends with a sequence that notes her legacy through the Sundance Institute fellowship for Native filmmakers that is named after her. It’s a fitting tribute, but the segment feels uncomfortably close to a Sundance infomercial.

Review: 'Bedlam'

‘Bedlam’

★★★

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 84 minutes. Next screenings: Tuesday, Jan. 29, 9 a.m., Temple Theatre, Park City; Wednesday, Jan. 30, 9 p.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City; Thursday, Jan. 31, 9:15 p.m., Salt Lake City Library Theatre, Salt Lake City; Friday, Feb. 1, 6 p.m., Redstone Cinema 7, Park City.

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By turns harrowing and heartwarming, director Kenneth Paul Rosenberg’s documentary “Bedlam” exposes deep flaws in the way America handles the mentally ill — mixing history, anecdote and personal survival story.

Rosenberg, himself a psychiatrist, takes cameras inside the psychiatric ER of Los Angeles County / USC Hospital, which is where many of southern California’s most intractable mentally ill patients land. The movie introduces us to several patients, dealing with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other problems. Rosenberg then traces these patients over a couple years of recovery, relapse and renewal.

Interspersed with these personal stories is information about the history of mental treatment, from the asylums of the 19th century to the “breakthrough” of prefrontal lobotomy (now considered barbaric, the technique earned its inventor the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1949). The turning point was John F. Kennedy’s drive to eliminate the snake pit of the asylum, in favor of local community treatment centers — which had the benefit of letting the federal government fob off the problem to state government budgets, with predictably disastrous results.

Rosenberg also tells the story of his sister Merle, who suffered from schizophrenia that medicine of that age could not treat. It’s Merle’s plight that led Rosenberg to become a psychiatrist, and later a filmmaker dedicated to telling stories to break the stigma of mental illness.

Rosenberg pours everything he knows and feels about the crisis in America’s mental health system into “Bedlam,” which is both its strength and its weakness. The stories of individual patients and of Rosenberg’s sister are compelling, and the historical background fascinating. But piling them all into a single movie is too much of a good thing. Rosenberg has a lot to say that needs to be heard, and he should take more time, and more movies, to say it.

Review: 'Before You Know It"

‘Before You Know It’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 98 minutes. Next screenings: Monday, Jan. 28, 8:30 a.m., Egyptian Theatre, Park City; Tuesday, Jan. 29, 9 p.m., Tower Theatre, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, Jan. 30, 3:30 p.m., Eccles Theatre, Park City; Friday, Feb. 1, 9 p.m., Sundance Mountain Resort Screening Room, Provo Canyon; Saturday, Feb. 2, 3 p.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City.

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The only significant stumbling block that director Hannah Pearl Utt’s insightful comedy-drama “Before You Know It” makes may be that title, the sort of generic phrase usually attached to a Nancy Meyers-directed comedy where all the kitchens are immaculate — not the inspired mess that’s found here.

Utt and her longtime writing partner Jen Tullock star as sisters Rachel and Jackie, polar opposites in a rather dotty family. Rachel is stage manager and producer of the struggling Greenwich Village theater the family owns, mostly to produce the brilliant but unappreciated plays of their dad, Max Gurner (Mandy Patinkin). Jackie is an underemployed actor who chases after the wrong men, drinks too much, and sometimes neglects her daughter Dodge (Oona Yaffe). Rachel, Jackie, Dodge and Max all live upstairs from the theater, which puts a damper on Rachel being able to bring new girlfriends home after dates.

Then a family tragedy happens, and Rachel and Jackie are forced to confront the financial fate of their theater. That’s when they get a second shock: The co-owner of the property is the sisters’ mom, whom they thought had died decades ago. Nope, she’s alive and, under the name Sherelle, the longtime star of a network soap opera.

Utt and Tullock’s script finds hilarious moments in Hannah and Jackie’s infiltration of the soap-opera studio to meet Sherelle for the first time. In the course of it, the sisters end up being background players, and Hannah becomes Sherelle’s secret punch-up writer.

Of course, the irony of Rachel and Jackie infiltrating a soap opera, considering their lives would make a great soap opera, is not lost on Utt and Tullock. They take the dysfunction of their oddball stage family and draw out both the humor and sorrows of being too up close and personal.’

The movie assembles a solid supporting cast, which includes Mike Colter (“Luke Cage”) and Alec Baldwin. But the MVPs here are Utt and Tullock, whose longtime comic pairing (including the series “Disengaged”) has honed their comic timing until every joke in “Before You Know It” sails through the screen and into our hearts.

Review: 'Knock Down the House'

‘Knock Down the House’

★★★

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 86 minutes. Next screenings: Tuesday, Jan. 29, 8:30 a.m., Prospector Square Theatre, Park City; Thursday, Jan. 31, 11:30 a.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City; Thursday, Feb. 1, 9 p.m., Redstone Cinema 1, Park City; Friday, Feb. 2, 3:30 p.m.

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The underdog election of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have been a good thing for the Democratic Party, and maybe even for democracy itself, but it sure has an unbalancing effect on Rachel Lears’ otherwise engrossing documentary “Knock Down the House.”

Learn began the project by following four insurgent Democratic candidates who bucked the party establishment and ran in primaries against long-entrenched Republicans. Ocasio-Cortez is one, and her victory in New York’s 14th district over incumbent Joe Crowley becomes the through line that energizes this documentary. Watching Ocasio-Cortez in the film, wrestling with doubts before she became a congressional media star and scourge of condescending conservatives, is quite delightful.

But the focus on Ocasio-Cortez, though easily defensible from a journalistic view, shortchanges the other three women profiled. Amy Vilela in Nevada started with a single issue, Medicare for all, after her daughter died from a pulmonary embolism that might have been prevented if the hospital hadn’t refused blood tests because she had no proof of insurance. Paula Jean Swearengin, who challenged Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia, decries the decades that the coal industry has destroyed mountains and poisoned drinking water without consequences. And in Missouri, Cori Bush, an activist in the district that covers Ferguson, tries to unseat Rep. Clay Lacy, whose family — Clay and his father, William, before him — has held the seat since the 1960s.

Lears gets some great in-the-moment footage, no better than Ocasio-Cortez’ reaction when the vote totals came in. She also brings focus to the two activist groups, Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, who recruited and supported insurgent candidates nationwide. One just wishes there was more of Bush, Swearengin and Vilela to make it a party.

Review: 'Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile'

‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’

★★★1/2

Playing in the Premieres section of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 110 minutes. Next screenings: Tuesday, Jan. 29, 6:30 p.m., Rose Wagner Center, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, Jan. 30, 6 p.m., Sundance Mountain Resort Screening Room, Provo Canyon; Saturday, Feb. 2, 12:15 p.m., Eccles Theatre, Park City.

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There’s no doubt, based on the title “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile,” what director Joe Berlinger and screenwriter Michael Werwie think about the movie’s subject, the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy — but the subtle way they get to such an unsubtle conclusion is fascinating.

The script is adapted from the memoir written by Elizabeth Kendall, nee Kloepner, who was Bundy’s girlfriend from 1969 through the mid-’70s, when she was unaware of his many killings. When they first meet in a Seattle bar, Ted (played by Zac Efron) is a perfect gentleman, even making breakfast for Liz’s toddler daughter, Molly, the morning after their first date.

Liz’s suspicions begin to form when two young women go missing in Washington state, and the composite sketch witnesses describe looks a lot like Ted. By then, though, Ted is in Utah, pulled over by a Utah Highway Patrolman (James Hetfield, from Metallica), and soon facing kidnapping charges. Ted professes his innocence, and for the longest time Liz believes him.

Berlinger, best known as a documentary filmmaker, only slightly condenses the details of Bundy’s legal history. After being convicted in Utah, Bundy is extradited to Colorado in connection with killings there. In Colorado, he escapes from custody once in pretrial, and again after another conviction. Two weeks after leaving Colorado, he pops up in Florida, having committed his most brazen crime: The beating death of two sorority sisters and the near-deaths of three other women.

Berlinger depicts Bundy’s Florida trial as dark farce, with a grandstanding prosecutor (Jim Parsons), an exasperated public defender (Brian Geraghty), a good-ol’-boy judge (John Malkovich) who indulges Bundy when he defends himself, groupies in the gallery, and the introduction of courtroom cameras. Meanwhile, Liz has abandoned Bundy, but another woman, Carol Moore (Kaya Scodelario), is eager to take her place.

Berlinger doesn’t bombard the audience with gory images of Bundy’s crimes, at least not in the beginning. Instead, he aims to show how someone as smart and as charming as Bundy could keep Liz in the dark for so long.

For this goal, Berlinger’s not-so-secret weapon is Efron. The former “High School Musical” heartthrob deploys his good looks to devastating effect here, but also conveys the menace and madness beneath the smooth exterior. With Efron providing the shark’s smile, “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” becomes a cutting commentary on the slippery nature of evil.

Review: 'Midnight Family'

‘Midnight Family’

★★★

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 81 minutes; in Spanish with subtitles; screens with the short “The Dispossessed.” Next screening: Monday, Jan. 28, 3:30 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 1, Park City; Wednesday, noon, Sundance Mountain Resort Screening Room, Provo Canyon; Thursday, 9:45 p.m., Broadway Centre Cinemas 3, Salt Lake City; Friday, 2:30 p.m., Egyptian Theatre, Park City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 9:30 a.m., Prospector Square Theatre, Park City.

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Luke Lorentzen’s verite-style documentary “Midnight Family” is an engrossing look at a family’s grit and determination to help the sick, wounded and dying in an unfeeling Mexico City.

The Ochoas run a private paramedic service, answering ambulance calls they hear on the scanner. They have to rush to be the first to a scene, because other ambulance companies are competing for the business. In a city where 45 government-operated ambulances serve a population of 9 million, there’s plenty of business for the for-profit guys.

The situation tests the Ochoas’ morality and financial plight with every call. The family wants to help anyone who’s hurt or ill. But they also need to get paid, usually from some relative who arrives at the hospital.

Lorentzen serves as director, cinematographer and editor, and he deftly illustrates the hot pursuits and the down times the Ochoas face every night. There’s a gritty intensity to the Mexico City street scenes, which are shown unadorned, without narration and with little background score.

That minimalism sometimes gets in the way of our empathizing fully with the Ochoas, or with the patents they’re treating. The movie might have benefited from a little bit of explanation of the more esoteric parts of this ambulance business.