Searching for Sugar Man (***1/4)

I’ve always been impressed by the ability of foreigners to appropriate America’s culture and make it their own. (It happens less the other way around.) We sometimes make a joke of it, as with David Hasselhoff’s popularity in Germany, or Jerry Lewis’s in France. But, on the evidence presented here, and it’s pretty good evidence, Sixto Rodriguez is bigger that Hasselhoff, or Lewis…in South Africa.

That the Detroit native made only two albums in the early 1970s and remained completely unknown everywhere else, including Detroit, makes the story unlikely. Even more unlikely, and impossible in today’s digitally connected world, is that Rodriguez heard nothing of his overseas following. Nor did the South Africans know anything about the man who was a household name there. (At least among the white population. Although Rodriguez is said to have been an inspiration to whites who opposed apartheid, his fan base does not appear to be multiracial.) Fans pored over lyrics for clues about the artist. There were rumors — he was said to have committed suicide before a hostile audience — but that’s all.

So this documentary — by a Swede, Malik Bendjelloul — is a kind of detective story as much as anything else. Bendjelloul also managed to interview the producers of the two albums, who attest to his genius, but that’s not the interesting part. What turns out to have happened to Rodriguez, including his missed opportunity for 1970s stardom, is both unusual and mundane. And the movie itself has provided its own touching ending to the story, with its soundtrack and Rodriguez’s re-released 1970 debut finally granting him the chart placings that eluded him 40 years ago. The music itself, incidentally, fits into the emerging singer-songwriter sensibility of the time, but with generally grittier lyrics and a haunting musical quality somewhat reminiscent of another 1970s artist who has re-emerged, Nick Drake, with some Bob Dylan influences. There’s plenty of it heard in the movie, which cannot explain its enduring qualities nor the vagaries of circumstance and coincidence that can affect what becomes popular.


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viewed 10/17/12 7:45 pm at Ritz Five and reviewed 10/17/12

Tamara Drewe (***)

A small-town setting is a good way to bring together a collection of characters, and a newcomer is usually the best way to stir up some plot among them. Tamara is that character, a duckling-turned-swan journalist who’s returned to the English village where she unhappily grew up. A good Cinderella story is nearly irresistible, and irresistible is what Tamara (Gemma Arterton) has become since her recent nose job. Tamara is not so much the lead character as the one around whom all of the action revolves, though she’s a nice role for Atherton, recently the female lead in Prince of Persia. This particular village is a writer’s colony, currently populated by a pompous, adulterous mystery novelist (Christopher Hitchens lookalike Roger Allam) and his wife, an American with writer’s block, a pair of mischievous teen girls, and the guy who dumped the teenage Tamara. Soon enough, there’s a rock drummer. And there’s cows, lots of cows.

Based on a series of comics by Posey Simmonds, in turn based loosely on Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd—the American writer is a Hardy scholar—the light comedy is directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen, Dirty Pretty Things, High Fidelity). Neither farcical nor subtle, it’s a pleasant romp about a few people whose lives need sorting out. You’ll hardly notice it takes two hours to do so, even though what needs to be done is pretty obvious from the start. No, this won’t be the film at the top of Frears’s résumé. Tamara Drewe is neither Hardy nor hardy fare. It’s more like a piece of candy whose familiar taste makes it no less pleasing.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/10/2010

Get Him to the Greek (**3/4)

Lifting Russell Brand’s supporting character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, not that it makes much difference, this zanier sort of comedy also features Jonah Hill as the record-company employee asked to chaperone the wild-and-crazy rock star Aldous Snow from London to Los Angeles.

Brand displays the same gift for odd turns of phrase as in the earlier movie, or indeed in interviews. Lascivious yet playful, he exhibits a swagger that’s neither macho nor metrosexual, but a little of each. Hill plays the straight man trying to keep him from from losing his way in a drug-fueled haze. When Brand gets to exhibit his strange brand of wit, the movie is pretty funny, and I’m guessing a lot of the entertainment value probably comes from the actors. Nicholas Stoller is the same one who directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but he’s also credited with the script, it’s not as good as Jason Segel’s for the earlier film. So the wild party scenes—in London, in New York, in Las Vegas—though necessary to the plot, are slightly tedious.

IMDB link

viewed 2/5/11 [borrowed DVD] and reviewed 2/8/11