Entertaining Documentaries: An Honest Liar & The Wrecking Crew

Half-joking: If you've got the opportunity to watch a lot of movies over the weekend, do so, because the alternative is trying to cram everything in before a festival and then not have the time to tell anybody about them between seeing them and them going away. I'm sorry, An Honest Liar, and while The Wrecking Crew is holding on a little bit, it's just barely doing so.

Oh well; I'm sure many of you are reading this in the future when they're both on video and/or streaming. It was an interesting evening at the movies, at least, a decent sort of "theme night" for a man and a group who were big-time entertainers in previous decades.

An Honest Liar

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2015 in Landmark Kendall Square #8 (first-run, DCP)

James "The Amazing" Randi has been best-known his efforts on debunking psychics, faith healers and other frauds for so long that many associate him with that alone. Even remembering that it was his qualifications as a magician that led him to become America's most famous skeptic doesn't necessarily imply he was a great escape artist. This movie won't necessarily do much more than remind a viewer of that fact but it will fill that person in on a couple things he or she might find pretty interesting.

At first, it looks like the big secret hinted at early on in the film is that Randi is gay, which seems like a disappointment as far as revelations go; as much as it is something he could not exactly advertise during most of his 86 years, it's probably the least interesting thing about him. He seems to agree, mentioning it matter-of-factly when talking about growing up and recounting how he met longtime partner Jose Alvarez. That soon leads to relating one of his larger-scale attempts to demonstrate to the public how they are being taken in by con artists, "The Carlos Hoax", where Alvarez portrayed a "channeler" who was quickly able to become a sensation in Australia despite how any attempt to check his claims would cause the whole house of cards to come falling down.

Other big operations get a fair amount of time - "Project Alpha", a sting on faith healer Peter Popoff, and what seem like never-ending battles with arch-nemesis Uri Geller. It's material that is often right on the border between hilarious and maddening, depending on how angry charlatans like this make you, although I think that perhaps directors Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein err a bit on how they present it, often content at leaving things at "Randi proved Geller was using simple sleight-of-hand" without actually showing details. It's almost as though they are adhering to some sort of "magician's code" at the expense of making a terribly persuasive case. A bit odd, considering how Randi's career in magic is mostly presented in short clips that are almost casual.

Full review on EFC.

The Wrecking Crew

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2015 in Landmark Kendall Square #8 (first-run, DCP)

The Wrecking Crew has had a long time on the path to release - it played the festival circuit back in 2008, but it started shooting in 1996, meaning that it took director Denny Tedesco nearly two decades to shoot, edit, and secure the ability to use the music and video necessary to tell the story of Los Angeles studio musicians in the 1960s. As an audience member, it's worth it, but it's a good thing that this was a labor of love on Tedesco's part.

Tedesco comes by this love naturally; his father, who passed away in 1997, was Tommy Tedesco, one of the guitarists in this group of a couple dozen musicians who started getting work in the 1950s when the session players working for the studios considered rock & roll beneath them, often talking about how this next generation was wrecking the business. Tommy is one of four who sat around a table to talk about old times in an interview that serves as the spine of the film, with segments given to all for participants (Tedesco, bass player Carol Kaye, saxophonist Plas Johnson, drummer Hal Blaine), but much time is also spent interviewing other folks, from Dick Clark to Glen Campbell (part of the crew before becoming a successful solo artist), Cher, and Brian Wilson.

The stories are often the expected ones - you hear how big stars didn't want them credited, some comments about how the job is demanding enough to destroy one's family life (although, in other cases, the stability of studio work seems much less taxing than being on the road), and how a change in the industry can suddenly end a run as quickly as it seemed to start. Aside from being familiar, these stories are in many ways much less dramatic than those in similar documentaries like Standing in the Shadows of Motown and 20 Feet from Stardom; as much as Denny Tedesco starts from a position of feeling his father and similar people being overlooked is an injustice, it's not the stunning, crushing ones that those other films related.

Full review on EFC.