Review: Documentaries take intimate looks at musicians Jason Isbell and Lewis Capaldi
‘Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed’
From the outside, singer-songwriter Jason Isbell looks to be a phenomenal success. He plays to big crowds all over the world. He runs his own label — which means he actually makes money off his records. Thanks to his lively social media presence, his fans have come to appreciate his humor and his tastes; and they also know all about how he overcame drug and alcohol abuse with the help of his wife and collaborator Amanda Shires and their young daughter. Isbell and his family are productive and respected parts of the Nashville community — and of the modern-rock and country music scenes.
But in the at-times painfully intimate documentary “Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed,†director Sam Jones captures the toll that being exemplary takes. Shot mostly during the recording sessions for the 2020 album “Reunions†— and also during the early months of the pandemic, which hit just as the record came out — the film shows how tough it can be to maintain a good guy persona when sometimes you’re bickering with your wife or getting frustrated by creative blocks. In the studio, Isbell tries to be as chill with his band as he is on stage; but he’s a perfectionist with something very particular to say, and sometimes he struggles to be outwardly nice to everyone while inside he’s beating himself up.
Jones has covered this kind of territory before, in documentaries like “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart†and “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off,†which consider how greatness may require a kind of destructive obsessiveness. The situation isn’t that catastrophic for Isbell in this film, but in a way that’s what makes it so moving. He’s dealing with the same kind of ordinary disconnects that so many of us do, like trying to focus hard on doing good work while also keeping some of himself open to his loved ones. It’s a challenge like so many of the ones that Isbell so sensitively sings about — including in the “Reunions†song that goes, “It gets easier, but it never gets easy.â€
‘Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed.’ TV-MA for adult content and language. 1 hour, 39 minutes. Available on HBO Max
‘Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now’
Writing songs and performing them in front of people is a difficult enterprise even under the best of circumstances, because it takes a lot of confidence to be creative in public. But Joe Pearlman’s emotionally raw documentary “Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now†illustrates how it’s even harder to do it while also trying to follow up a an international smash hit like the Grammy-nominated song “Someone You Loved†— and while struggling with mental and neurological health issues.
Pearlman goes behind the scenes as Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi works on his latest album and endures confidence-testing questions from his family and his management about whether his new material is strong enough. Periodically, “How I’m Feeling Now†flashes back to how this unassuming young folk-pop musician — seemingly more comfortable goofing around with his buddies than performing in arenas — became an unlikely star. Then the movie circles back to explore how the stress of fame may have exacerbated some of Capaldi’s preexisting problems, including a physical twitching eventually diagnosed as Tourette’s. This revealing film is filled with pleasant balladry from a likable troubadour; but it also shows what it’s like to sing his little tunes while under unfathomable pressure.
‘Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now.’ TV-MA for language. 1 hour, 36 minutes. Available on Netflix
‘Country Gold’
The eccentric auteur Mickey Reece directed, co-wrote (with John Selvidge) and stars in the dryly funny, lightly surreal “Country Gold,†which imagines a 1994 meeting in Nashville between a rising country music superstar named Troyal Brux (Reece) and the legendary George Jones (Ben Hall). Handsomely shot in black and white, the film gets a lot of its oddball energy from the chemistry between Reece and Hall, whose characters spend one drunken evening swapping boasts and tall tales the night before Jones is to be cryogenically frozen. Hall plays Jones as a wizened but exhausted old-timer, cranky about the changing times, while Reece’s Brux is defensive about his success and hilariously awkward in his need for validation from an icon.
It’s important to note that “Country Gold†is a work of fiction. George Jones wasn’t frozen in 1994. (He died in 2013.) And while Brux resembles Garth Brooks — and at one point slips into a reverie where he imagines himself as a rock star, similar to Brooks’ alter-ego Chris Gaines — he isn’t real. But Reece doesn’t let facts or convention get in the way of him taking his movie in any direction he wants to go, including interludes such as an animated cartoon about the perils of ordering a well-done steak; multiple flashbacks to Jones as a pulp fiction antihero; and a closing-credits sequence featuring a singing fetus. Reece’s ideas don’t always fit together neatly, but by gosh he has a lot of them. It’s a treat to watch him play.
‘Country Gold.’ Not rated. 1 hour, 22 minutes. Available on Fandor
‘One Day as a Lion’
Throughout his career, actor Scott Caan has occasionally tried his hand at writing and directing, delivering some lively and quirky independent films — including the superb 2003 thriller “Dallas 362.†His latest produced screenplay is “One Day as a Lion,†directed by the talented genre filmmaker John Swab (“Candy Landâ€). Caan plays Jackie Powers, a low-level hood who needs cash quick to spring his wayward teenage son from juvenile detention. He takes a job from mobster Pauly Russo (Frank Grillo) to kill an indebted gambler, Walter Boggs (J.K. Simmons). But Jackie botches the hit and goes on the run with a witness, Lola Brisky (Marianne Rendón), a diner waitress and aspiring actress who starts out as Jackie’s hostage but soon becomes his girlfriend.
There’s a screwball looniness to this plot and these characters that Swab and his excellent cast lean into — led by Caan, who at times seems to be channeling the sad-sack hustlers his dad, James, played in ‘70s movies such as “Cinderella Liberty.†Ultimately, “One Day as a Lion†is more about attitude than coherence, and it never develops any thematic or narrative heft. Nothing that happens really matters that much. Nevertheless, the movie has the kind of personality and heart too often missing from grimy little crime pictures. It’s endearingly ramshackle.
‘One Day as a Lion.’ R, for pervasive language, some violence and sexual references. 1 hour, 27 minutes. Available on VOD
‘Chupa’
Director Jonás Cuarón draws inspiration from classic children’s movies and Mexican folklore for his family-friendly adventure “Chupa†(written by Sean Kennedy Moore, Joe Barnathan, Marcus Rinehart and Brendan Bellomo). Evan Whitten plays Alex, a nerdy Mexican-American teenager who gets picked on a lot at school. When he takes a trip to see his grandfather Chava (Demián Bichir) — a former luchador who lives on a small farm south of the border — the usually sullen Alex is surprised and delighted to find a baby chupacabra living on the property.
While Alex and his eccentric cousins Memo (Nickolas Verdugo) and Luna (Ashley Ciarra) take care of this winged, furry cryptid, a dogged scientist named Quinn (Christian Slater) searches for it, believing that studying chupacabras could help humanity. The plot here is very basic — shades of “E.T.†and “E.T.†clones — and the action sequences, while solid, are unspectacular. But as with the similar ‘80s and ‘90s films of director Chris Columbus (a producer on this project), the characters in “Chupa†are likable and memorable, with a fun dynamic. And Cuarón — the son of the Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón — creates a rich sense of place here, encouraging the viewers to come to love Mexico as much as Alex eventually does.
‘Chupa.’ PG, for some action, peril and thematic elements. 1 hour, 38 minutes. Available on Netflix; also playing theatrically, Bay Theater, Pacific Palisades
Also on VOD
“iMordecai†stars Judd Hirsch in a rare leading role, playing a stubborn Miami retiree who reluctantly agrees to start using a smartphone at the urging of his struggling son (Sean Astin) and against the wishes of his ailing wife (Carol Kane). Based on director Marvin Samel’s experiences with his own father, this is a film about how new technology can unlock new relationships and create new ways for people to cope with their troubled pasts. Available on VOD
“Living with Chucky†is a comprehensive documentary about the “Child’s Play†horror-comedy franchise, directed by Kyra Elise Gardner (the daughter of Tony Gardner, one of the series’ effects artists) and featuring interviews with nearly every major cast and crew member. Gardner goes film by film, collecting fun behind-the-scenes details from people she’s heard about for pretty much her whole life but whom she had never met until she made this surprisingly sweet movie. Available on Screambox and VOD
Available now on DVD and Blu-ray
“Living†features an Oscar-nominated performance from Bill Nighy, playing a dying 1950s London bureaucrat who decides to spend his final days getting a children’s playground built. The Nobel-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro adapted the film from Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film “Ikiru,†honoring the original’s quietly moving celebration of an ordinary man’s redemption. Sony
“Scrap†is a mesmerizing and thoughtful documentary about what humans do when we no longer have use for something large and metal — like a car, an airplane or a ship. Director Stacey Tenenbaum travels the world, collecting eerily beautiful images while hearing from people who have turned society’s cast-offs into homes or art. First Run Features (also available on VOD)
Only good movies
Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
