Indie Focus: Strange and profound with 'Elvis and Nixon,' 'The Meddler' and 'Purple Rain'

By Mark OlsenStaff Writer

April 24, 2016 12:05 AM PT

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

We’ve already talked some recently about the filmmaker Chantal Akerman in this space. The retrospective series that has been ongoing in Los Angeles has been a revelation for fans and newcomers alike, and the local theatrical opening of her last film and a recent documentary also deserve attention.

Sheri Linden wrote about both Akerman’s “No Home Movie” and Marianne Lambert’s doc “I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman.” Of “No Home Movie,” Linden called it “an intimate self-reflection that, like all of Akerman’s work, unfolds to an uncommon pulse. It asks of the viewer a kind of openness that might be called patience and richly rewards it.”

We’ve got some pretty exciting screenings and Q&As coming together at Indie Focus HQ, including the upcoming “A Bigger Splash.” Check back at events.latimes.com for more info.

Nonstop movies. Movies nonstop.

‘Elvis & Nixon’

I — we’ll drop the usual “we” façade for a moment — can’t even front: I am an unrepentant fan of Elvis Presley. There is, for me, something so elementally American in the tragic tale of a boy who dreams big, gets everything he wants and yet still winds up wanting, lonely and displaced. And at the same time this is shadowed by the triumphant, artistic Elvis, who had a beautiful widescreen vision of music and the world. Honestly, I could go on.

Is the new “Elvis & Nixon,” which tells the unlikely tale of how Elvis came to meet Richard Nixon in the Oval Office in December 1970, a great film? Not exactly. But it is fun and fascinating and a vital new piece of Presley-ania. Directed by Liza Johnson, the film has a stirring performance by Michael Shannon as Elvis and a more comedic turn by Kevin Spacey as Nixon.

In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis explains what makes Shannon’s Elvis fascinating when she writes that “it isn’t even a halfway decent Elvis impersonation. It is instead a performance of stardom by an actor whose own magnetism trumps every objection, much as the real Presley transcends every jibe, jumpsuit and downward turn.

In The Times, Robert Abele says that the film, in “mixing the real and the possible in their meet-up, turns an eccentric what-if scenario into a not-so-memorable what-of-it.”

In the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips said, “In a wryly comic but unshticky vein, they imagine for us what the two most disparate Americans in American history were like behind closed doors, and why they may have found some common ground, if only fleetingly, as increasingly isolated titans in their respective realms of performance.”

I recently had the distinct and unique pleasure of sitting down with Jerry Schilling, a longtime friend of Elvis who was there in the Oval Office on that day and served as an executive producer on the movie. I’ll be publishing something on Schilling and the movie as soon as I can take care of business.

‘The Meddler’

In the new film from writer-director Lorene Scafaria, Susan Sarandon plays a recent widow who moves to Los Angeles to be closer to her daughter, played by Rose Byrne. It’s a gently insightful comedy-drama that should hold special attention for Angelenos for its locations like the shopping mall the Grove.

In The Times, Gary Goldstein said that “not enough can be said about the terrific Sarandon, whose Marnie is reportedly based on Scafaria’s own widowed mother. The actress beautifully runs the gamut of emotions and reactions, managing the character’s amusing mix of earnest efforts and maternal — and social — missteps with realism, depth and grace. Amazingly, for someone who’s played such a variety of film roles over so many years, it feels like we’ve never seen Sarandon in a role quite like the game, life-affirming and, yes, Beyoncé-loving Marnie. Not to mention she also looks great.”

In Variety, Peter Debruge said that “writer-director Lorene Scafaria’s sophomore feature returns to what works for her, as she draws upon personal experience to deliver a heartfelt dramedy that audiences are sure to appreciate.”

At LA Weekly, critic April Wolfe said, “‘The Meddler’ is what you watch before a weekend with your mother to remind yourself she’s doing it all from the goodness of her heart, not to drive you crazy.”

‘Men & Chicken’

Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen writes bracing dramas for other directors such as Susanne Bier, but when he makes films for himself, they are wild, absurdist tales like his new “Men & Chicken.” Starring Mads Mikkelsen, the story of a weird, insular family will be quite a shock for fans of his work on TV’s “Hannibal.” (Or maybe that show was just strange enough too that it will have some unexpected audience crossover.)

In The Times, Michael Rechtshaffen said, “In Jensen’s uniquely wacky world, there’s a genuine affection for his offbeat characters. The slapstick outlandishness and the tender bonding manage to coexist as harmoniously as the acoustic guitar and otherworldly Theremin that are featured prominently on the soundtrack.”

At the New York Times, Glenn Kenny said “The movie’s grave commitment to its own quirkiness is admirable, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to recommend it.”

At the A.V. Club, Mike D’Angelo said, “The film is grotesque and bizarre without ever really being funny, and while the sight of Mikkelsen as a nebbishy loser is initially bracing, the novelty wears off fast, leaving little else.”

‘Purple Rain’

It’s hard to believe we are now living in a post-Prince world, with the shocking news of his death this week at 57. But in a way we have already been living in a post-Prince world for decades, as the explosive expanse of his vision beyond genre, fashion, gender, race or horizon has slowly become closer to the norm. In Prince’s world, to borrow a lyric, everybody’s going Uptown.

The Cinefamily booked an immediate run of shows for Prince’s definitive movie statement, “Purple Rain,” and the New Beverly announced it would be showing the film in May. (AMC Theatres are also putting the film onto limited screens.) The movie is still something else, part veiled biography, part love story, part musical, part knockabout nightclub comedy, part statement of purpose. As Sheila Benson’s original 1984 L.A. Times review of the film stated: “Hot, jagged, garish, ‘Purple Rain’ uses an old story, works it over with a blowtorch, and succeeds beyond even its own audacious dreams.”

Among the tremendous outpouring of writing on the film that spilled out in the immediate aftermath of Prince’s death, our own Steve Zeitchik declared, “Though we didn’t know it at the time, the film began to suggest the complex dynamic between Prince and his fans, that very rare ability to be both a megastar and someone with whom fans could feel a close personal connection ... Prince was big, but he felt personal.”

At the Daily Beast, Jen Yamato noted: “When ‘Purple Rain’ aligned story with song, it was perfect, using music to underscore character and narrative much like some films use fight choreography and wordless action to convey the unspoken and the unspeakable.”

At Rolling Stone, someone using the pseudonym Christopher Tracy — the name of Prince’s character in his 1986 film “Under the Cherry Moon” — wrote about Prince and “Purple Rain” by saying that “for a very long time it felt like a skeleton key that might unlock the truth between Prince Rogers Nelson, the man, and the iconic performer. Now, his death has papered over the lock, leaving generations of listeners with only the film itself as a biography, an explanation, an encapsulation of his singular identity.”

“Purple Rain” is really a spectacular spectacle and a movie that is more than worth seeing large and loud in a theater with a crowd. So grab the chance when you have it. Now, if we can only get some revival screenings of “Under the Cherry Moon” and the concert film “Sign ‘O’ The Times.”

Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.