Between the Temples: Insufferable direction sabotages a sweet story

Between the Temples (2024) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and explicit sexual references

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

A tender, poignant love story is all but obliterated by the relentless barrage of stylistic tics and hiccups courtesy of director Nathan Silver, who — at times — has made his little film just this side of unwatchable.

 

When Carla (Carol Kane) has trouble properly pronouncing many of the Hebrew terms
in the bat mitzvah ceremony, Ben (Jason Schwartzman) helps by "playing" them
on a guitar.

Although the setting is modern-day upstate New York, the style is a throwback to 1960s cinema verité: grainy, 16mm film stock; claustrophobic settings, and a roving camera that follows the actors as if they were characters in a stage play; and Robert Altman-esque overlapping dialogue, which — because of the low budget and poor sound quality — often makes it damn difficult to understand what people are saying.

Worse yet, Silver and cinematographer Sean Price Williams favor tight-tight-tight close-ups to an ludicrous degree. I mean, seriously: Do we really need to zoom in on a woman’s mouth, as she eats some crackers? Along with an endless array of shots that show only portions of a given person’s face?

 

If all this clutter serves some artistic or symbolic purpose, it eludes me.

 

Jason Schwartzman stars as Ben Gottlieb, a small-town cantor at the local synagogue. He has lost his “bliss” following the tragic and untimely death of his wife, Ruth, a year earlier. Since then, he has been unable to sing ... and a synagogue cantor who can’t sing, is about as useless as the proverbial screen door on a submarine.

 

His two mothers, in an effort to bring him out of his funk — the doting, sympathetic Meira (Caroline Aaron) and overly stern and critical Judith (Dolly De Leon) — try to “solve” the problem by setting Ben up with an endless stream of inappropriate, sneak-attack blind dates.

 

The one we meet, as this film begins, is over-the-top bizarre in a manner that may have intended to be humorous, but Silver and co-scripter C. Mason Wells exaggerated her to the point of absurdity. Or maybe the actress in question improvised her brief scene. Either way, this prologue is so Out There, that it may prompt viewers to flee the theater.

 

Aaron’s Meira is the model mother: patient, sensitive to others, and always ready with a kind word. In great contrast, De Leon plays Judith as an cold-hearted, judgmental control freak ... which is ironic, since she and Meira likely faced their share of intolerance, during the early days of their relationship. It’s hard to think kindly of Judith.

Theater Camp: Concept, 8; laughs, 10

Theater Camp (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity and drug references

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.28.23

This is one of the most sarcastic — yet affectionate — films I’ve ever seen.

 

Also one of the funniest.

 

Whilte the young cast members stare in nervous astonishment, Amos (Ben Platt) and
Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon) interrupt a rehearsal to indulge in another of their
many artistic arguments.

Granted, theater people are an easy target, with all their quirks and ostentatiously sincere eccentricities. Co-directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman clearly know their way backstage, and their script — co-written with Noah Galvin — explores territory that’ll instantly be familiar to any parent whose adolescent child has been bitten by the stage bug (along with all the other adults who’ve politely endured community theater productions).

Gordon and Lieberman’s mockumentary was a smash hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and took home the coveted U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award.

 

So … let the curtain rise!

 

With summer approaching, AdirondACTS founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) and general manager Rita (Caroline Aaron) once again scout local school theater productions, in order to entice kids to attend — and their parents to help fund — their scrappy upstate New York theater camp. Alas, this undertaking proves calamitous; the strobe effects during a production of Bye, Bye Birdie send Joan into a shock coma.

 

(The fact that this crisis is milked for humor, gives a sense of how edgy the script will be.)

 

Responsibility for overseeing the summer’s activities therefore falls to Joan’s oblivious “crypto bro” son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro), a clueless failure-to-launch who probably didn’t graduate junior high school. His arrival coincides with busloads of eager young thespians, which horrifies Rita and the rest of the staff, notably drama instructors Amos (Ben Platt) and Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon). Their goal: to keep Troy the hell away from day-to-day activities.

 

Alas, Troy is so dense that he can’t take even sledge-hammer hints. His effort to introduce himself to the assembled children, on the first morning, totally fails to quell the eager chatter of reuniting friends and eager newcomers.

 

Then Amos grabs the microphone and croons “Oh, what a beautiful…”

 

…at which point, all the kids snap to attention and sing, in unison, “morning!”

 

Right then, the film becomes can’t-miss captivating.