FILM REVIEW: The Dicks from Texas

When it comes to documentaries, a fascinating subject can often compensate for a lack of style or technique, and that goes double for music docs. It's a category built on outsized personalities, archival footage and killer soundtracks, all of which can go a long way toward covering up the cracks in an otherwise clumsily made film. And since the viewer is there for the musical content as much as the craft, if not more so, a bad movie about a good band can still be worth watching in a lot of ways, and that's certainly the case with The Dicks from Texas, just released on DVD courtesy of MVD Entertainment.

If having a good subject is half the battle, the film certainly has that aspect covered. Though one of the most interesting early purveyors or American hardcore, the Dicks have long been criminally under-examined in the seemingly endless march of punk-era chronicles. That's probably because the Austin provocateurs' unusual music set them apart from the wider scene almost as much as geography did. A roiling mix of seething anti-authoritarian politics, blunt LGBT themes and profane gallows humor, all bubbling up through an unhinged, beer-and-blues-drenched din that is at once smart and as subtle as a fist, it was menacingly alien compared to the taut sounds of Los Angeles or DC.

Featuring plenty of interviews with the original members, as well as punk-doc regulars like Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins, the film does a decent job of recounting their tumultuous, short-lived anti-career, their lives thereafter and, of course, the inevitable reunion shows. Unfortunately though, while it boasts just enough interesting stories and vintage footage to keep you involved, the low-budget film, directed and produced by Cindy Marabito, is also rather amateurishly shot and put together, full of grainy, poorly lit talking heads and student film-style editing. As such, It's hardly the documentary the Dicks deserve, but ultimately the band itself is engaging enough to distract you from the film's many flaws.

FILM REVIEW: The Color of Noise

From the outside, it often seems as if running a successful independent record label is an exercise in navigating contradictory impulses. You certainly don't want everything you release to sound the same but you need to establish a cohesive identity, you need to take risks to stand out but you also need a good head on your shoulders and so on and so forth. It's a schizophrenic mix of art and commerce, a tightrope act that Tom Hazelmyer pulled off with a certain dangerous flair during his time as czar of the sprawling noise-rock empire Amphetamine Reptile Records. That's probably because Hazelmyer himself is a bit of a split personality, a Midwestern punk kid turned US Marine whose outrageous story is brought loudly to life in the entertaining new documentary The Color of Noise.

While the film functions as a thorough chronicle of the talent Amphetamine Reptile managed to recruit, a roster that at one time or another included the Melvins, Mudhoney, Helios Creed and Cosmic Psychos in addition to a host of others, the focus here is on the man behind it all. As ambitious as he is uncompromising, Hazelmyer originally founded the label in 1986 as a vehicle for his own band, Halo of Flies, but quickly transformed it into an alternative powerhouse, largely thanks to his tireless work ethic and uncanny ability to form connections with like-minded weirdos from around the world. And with over 50 interviews, plenty of those weirdos, from musicians to visual artists to record store employees, are on hand to recount their often unpredictable interactions with AmRep's prickly but lovable leader.

At two hours, The Color of Noise might go into a little too much detail concerning the imprint's ups and downs, but with so much archival footage, particularly from label staples like Unsane and Helmet, it rarely feels long. It's also lent an unexpected third act by the fact that this look at his life nearly coincided with its end, since Hazelmyer fell into a meningitis-induced coma during production, remaining unconscious for nearly a month. His miraculous recovery, during which he discovered a new passion for printmaking, brings some poignancy to the film but, true to its subject, it never veers into sentimentality. Instead it embraces Hazelmyer's rough edges, showing him to be simultaneously a loyal friend and an unapologetic asshole, both traits which have served him well in his chosen field.

FILM REVIEW: Medora

Like many American small towns, Medora, Indiana was hard hit by the recent economic downturn, which was in itself but a cruel exclamation point to decades of dwindling manufacturing jobs. Once the town boasted two big employers, a brick plant and an auto parts factory, that provided well-paying positions for a booming middle class, but with them out of business, Medora's population has dropped sharply, as have incomes and property values. Mirroring the town's seemingly unwinnable battle against changing economic forces is the plight of the local high school basketball team, the Medora Hornets, formerly one of the most competitive in the area, now a ragtag squad of underprivileged kids locked in a seemingly unbreakable losing streak.

Following the lives of these teenage athletes as they struggle to turn things around is the engrossing new documentary Medora, directed by Davy Rothbart, longtime publisher of Found Magazine, and Andrew Cohn. As hard as the team practices however, the deck is stacked against them, not only because their opponents come from incorporated high schools with more students and bigger budgets, but because the problems of a community caught in the grip of poverty, from alcoholic and absentee parents to run-ins with the law, provide a constant distraction, and compound the apparent hopelessness of their demoralizing cycle of defeat. Nobody in town is hoping for a Hoosiers-style championship run, just one much-needed win, no matter how symbolic. 

In a variety of ways, Rothbart and Cohn's film, which was produced in part by Steve Buscemi and Stanley Tucci, recalls 1994's Hoop Dreams, only inverted (and not as good, though it's probably unfair to compare it to a bona fide documentary masterpiece). While Medora takes place in a rural, predominantly white setting, not the slums of inner-city Chicago, and profiles perpetual losers instead of talented players with an embattled shot at pro-ball stardom, the issues that motivate them are very much the same. Both are about America failing its marginalized youth, consigning them to crumbling housing, substance abuse and a failing educational system, and how lessons learned on the court can help undo some of that damage. 

Filmed over the course of two years, Medora is revealing but compassionate when it comes to its adolescent subjects, none of whom have had any easy go of it, grappling with learning disabilities, homelessness and other adversity, and is effective at drawing you into rooting for these epic underdogs, but feels somewhat short on drama considering the competition and precarious situations involved. Yet, while it's not as gripping as it maybe could be, there's a wistful, earnest sense of melancholy pervading every lingering shot of dilapidated buildings, every desperate locker room pep talk and even the nail-biting finale, that proves subtly, quietly affective, largely because, in the end, a Hornet's victory isn't the game-changer Medora really needs.

FILM REVIEW: She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column

It's always a treat when an obscure but important band gets the feature-length music doc treatment instead of some overexposed, already-iconic rock star, and Toronto post-punk outfit Fifth Column certainly fit the bill as underappreciated trailblazers, having had a huge impact on the direction of queercore, riot grrrl and other scenes, only to end up more or less overlooked. Giving them some welcome big-screen recognition is Kevin Hegge's entertaining documentary portrait, She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column, which makes a compelling case for why their music needs more reevaluation and attention, even if the film itself could stand to dig a little bit deeper.

Formed at the dawn of the 1980s, the arty, all-female Fifth Column, along with a loose collective of like-minded musicians, experimental filmmakers and zine publishers, took its inspiration from their utter alienation from mainstream culture, especially its strict sexual norms and the sense of endless conflict it fostered; even their name comes from military terminology for a group of agents who secretively destabilize an entrenched regime. Hegge does a good job of coherently unpacking their many complaints with their patriarchal North American surroundings, as well as the battles between band members themselves, whose dramatic quarrels over differing artistic visions actually proved good for their creativity.

The soundtrack is what really sells She Said Boom, but the documentary is visually engaging as well, kinetically splicing together live footage, clips from film projects and original interviews, memorably with founding member G.B. Jones and director Bruce La Bruce, a frequent collaborator. The film does have flaws, mainly a distinct lack of context, particularly surrounding their time with K Records and their place in the broader 1980s underground, which makes it seem deceptively as if the band's adventures were unfolding in a bubble, and at a mere 64 minutes, there's certainly room for more background. Still, while not that thorough, it's an enticing introduction

FILM REVIEW: I Am Divine

When Baltimore filmmaker John Waters bestowed the name "Divine" on his friend Glenn Milstead during their first cinematic collaboration, the 1966 short Roman Candles, it was never meant to stick, but with a brash drag alter ego to escape into, the shy, bullied Milstead found a whole new path as a performer, one that would blaze colorfully, but all too briefly, through the worlds of film, theatre and music. Divine's was a remarkably unique life, full of dualities, redemption and unapologetically trashy behavior, making him an all but irresistible documentary subject, and while director Jeffrey Schwarz latest effort, I Am Divine, is a snappy, affectionate portrait, it mostly succeeds by staying out of its protagonist's way.

Producer-director Schwarz has built something of a cottage industry chronicling interesting gay lives (Vito, Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon) and there's an experienced efficiency to the way he packs 42 years of anecdotes and identity crises into 90 minutes, from Milstead's lonely childhood to his falling in with Waters and the drugged-out coterie of Dreamlanders freaks, and on to his incandescent stardom and untimely demise. There are plenty of engaging original interviews from friends and co-conspirators, particularly Waters, who always makes for an entertaining talking head, but Schwarz also leans rather heavily on clips from Divine's films and talk show appearances, though considering his flair in front of a camera, that's not exactly a drawback.

The documentary isn't all surface, delving into his sexuality, the struggle to live down the Pink Flamingos-inspired image as a dog shit-eating maniac and get the respect he deserved as an actor or his distant relationship with his family, but there are times when you wish the offstage Divine, the quiet, generous man his friends knew, got a little more screen time. While it could be more intimate, the film has fun with the high points, the international infamy and glamorous celebrity hobnobbing, while keeping things grounded in the ultimately very human story of a repressed young man who found a way to escape, and did so spectacularly. There's a reason the name stuck.

FILM REVIEW: Computer Chess

Though it's a landmark moment that's now long since passed, before Garry Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue in 1997, developing a computer that could best a human chess Grandmaster was one of the loftiest goals for generations of programmers and artificial intelligence researchers. The philosophical question at the heart of their quest was whether raw number-crunching power could ever compete with the uniquely human lateral thinking and creativity the game was believed to require and, if so, what kind of future could humanity have. These heady themes are omnipresent in writer-director Andrew Bujalski's new Computer Chess, permeating every conversation, but they ultimately serve more as a backdrop for his peculiar brand of offbeat comedy than the subject of any substantive exploration.

The film takes you back to an unspecified time in the early 1980s, as an oddball assortment of scientists and academics converge on a drab hotel for a weekend-long tournament pitting their chess-playing programs against one another. Though Bujalski has an eye for accuracy in regards to his retro setting, from the dorky clothes to the charmingly clunky computers, the film departs from reality fairly quickly, following the surreal goings-on between matches, including run-ins with paranoid drug peddlers, the kooky couples therapy retreat also utilizing the conference room, and a sentient, suicidal machine. None of these subplots are pursued with any real zeal, the hotel's mysterious cat infestation or the Pentagon's interest in the competition leaving a lot of intentionally unanswered questions.

Computer Chess won't appeal to every taste, the humor being of the supremely awkward, stuttering sort that earned Bujalski, director of Funny Ha Ha and Beeswax, recognition as the father of mumblecore, and its look, a grainy (mostly) black-and-white video appropriate to the era it's depicting without going full-on mockumentary, is purposefully cheap and sometimes feels more like an aesthetic exercise than a movie, but it's not without its own goofy appeal, which lies mostly in the convincing performances from perfectly cast unknown actors and the light, dreamlike feel. It's quirky strangeness, its technophile nostalgia and, at 90 minutes, its relative brevity, should serve it well once it hits Netflix, but as theatre fare, it's probably not worth leaving the house for. 

FILM REVIEW - Man of Steel

When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman in the early 1930s, they never could have known how iconic the character would become, how the last son of Krypton would inspire countless imitators and make the leap from the pages of DC comics to a myriad of other media. First there was the hugely successful radio drama, followed by an endless stream of animated shorts, movie serials, stage plays, feature films and a vast array of TV productions of varying quality. Put short, DC has never been shy about pimping out Supes' archetypal premise for just about anything, which makes it so strange that we've seen very little of him on the big screen in recent years, even as comic book movies grew into an unstoppable force at the box office. Before Bryan Singer's mildly received Superman Returns in 2006, there hadn't been a single Superman film in nearly 20 years (the 1997 calamity Steel notwithstanding), during which time four different actors donned Batman's cape and cowl. Seeking to borrow some of the gritty credibility Christopher Nolan brought to his Batman reboot, as well as their main competitor Marvel's seemingly Midas touch, Zack Snyder's new Man of Steel aims at reinvention, but largely ends up missing the point.

The film opens, as any Superman movie naturally would, on the planet Krypton, with its final days fast approaching. Not fast enough though; far from just recapping the classic origin story and setting up key elements to unfold later, the film quickly gets bogged down in the conflict between Russell Crowe's Jor-El and the condemned leader of a military coup, General Zod, played by a hammy Michael Shannon. When the rocket containing the newborn Kal-El finally makes its way to earth and we're granted the first glimpse of uber-bland Henry Cavill as the iconic superhero, it's not a red cape flapping in the wind or even the milquetoast mild-mannered reporter, but a bearded crab fisherman and drifter. A series of awkward flashbacks never explain quite how he ended up there, but hammer home how Pa Kent (Kevin Costner) insisted his unusual adopted son never reveal his powers. Working an incredibly dangerous job and hanging around seedy waterfront bars seems like a bad way to go about that, and indeed enterprising gal reporter Lois Lane, played by an underused Amy Adams, figures out Clark's "secret" in seemingly no time at all, but that soon becomes irrelevant when Zod escapes his imprisonment and comes to earth to call out Kal-El.

There's nothing wrong with Snyder, or co-producer Nolan, tinkering with the order of events or the details of the mythology, Superman needs to be redefined for each new generation, but in the process they've thrown out a great deal of what made the character timeless in the first place. What people find compelling about Superman is his immigrant's struggle of trying to fit into a strange culture without sacrificing what makes him special, but without the tension of balancing his dual contrasting personas, he's just a really strong guy from outer space. The perfunctory script barely gives him one discernible identity let alone two, making very little time for characterization or developing any of its subplots, particularly with his supposed love interest. Even the dialogue is stilted and weird, what little of it there is sandwiched between endless knock-down, drag-out brawls; it's basically two-and-a-half hours of shit blowing up, without a trace of wit or a sense of adventure. What's more, product placement spoils what may be the film's best action set piece, tragically taking place between a Sears, an IHOP and a 7-Eleven. Hollywood has done Superman right before, and you've got to hope the figure out how to do so again; the Man of Steel deserves better than this.

FILM REVIEW: The Space Invaders: In Search of Lost Time

As video games continue to evolve into a more and more integral part of our daily lives, and each successive generation of developers and players adds to that unfolding history, there's an ever growing body of peripheral media to record it all and to put video game's cultural and technological impact into context. There're the usual books, websites, magazine articles, etc., but over the last few years there's also been a sharp increase in feature length documentaries on the subject, such as the 2007 offbeat hit The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and last year's Indie Game: The Movie to name but a few. There are enough films now for it to be considered a genre unto itself, like rock docs, and there's always room for one more, in part because video games are such a complex and fascinating medium, and in part because their fans tend to be a bit obsessive.

Obsession is the motivating factor in the new The Space Invaders: In Search of Lost Time, which finds a new spin on retelling some familiar gaming history by profiling the avid fans who collect vintage arcade games, filling their garages and basements with the coin-operated behemoths that once populated every mall and pizza parlor across this great nation. The film, directed by Jeff Von Ward, does a thorough job of outlining how arcades became a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon in the late 70s and early 80s, generating an absurd amount of revenue before the industry collapsed, thanks mostly to technological advancements like the rise of the home console, but in many ways it's less about video games and more about the unending zeal of any kind of serious collector. It's an expensive hobby, and one that requires a lot of room (hence the punny title), but not so different than collecting coins or comic books.

It's that human angle which really puts the film across, the emotion that's evident in the way the interviewees (predictably almost exclusively male) fondly recall their misspent youths and eagerly describe the intricate details of how they painstakingly bring battered machines, and the neon 1980s feel of the arcade, back to life. From a technical standpoint, the film's small budget at times shows through and it can lean a little too hard on borrowed and archival footage, even if much of it is rather interesting. The real stars here are the shrines built to a bygone era, and, late in the film, having spent considerable amounts of money and countless hours constructing them, the subjects ponder the ultimate fate of their collections, wondering if future generations will care enough to preserve them, to keep them functional and, just as importantly, fun. Thanks in part to films like this, they likely have little to worry about.

FILM REVIEW: Indie Game: The Movie

Like it or not, technology has a way of liberating culture, but video games, a relatively young media, have had to wait their turn just like music or film before them. There was a time where making a movie or releasing an album seemed beyond the reach of the ordinary Joe, but, over time, advancements in electronics have given that power to just about anyone; video games are no different, but their complexity makes going DIY a bit harder than writing a song or pointing a video camera. Even though inspired amateur programmers have had the technological means to make their own games for some time now, it's only in the past few years that Internet connected consoles have created a market for games produced outside the studio system and proven downloadable content (DLC) to be one of the fast growing segment of the industry. For visionary independents, that means a potential goldmine, but the risks, financial and psychological are just as great.

Directed by Canadian filmmakers James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot, Indie Game: The Movie profiles four intrepid indie creators at varying stages of guiding a game to its release date; there's Phil Fish, the perfectionist programmer behind the continually delayed Fez, Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, the duo making last minute improvements to their irreverent Super Meat Boy before its surprise deadline, and Jonathan Blow, who released his innovative Braid to rave reviews and excellent sales, but wonders if he really got what he wanted. There are really two sides to each of their stories, the creative and the commercial. Each and every one of them is clearly pouring their heart and soul into their projects, speaking in lofty artistic terms about pushing the boundaries and needing to communicate and express themselves in their work, a luxury not afforded the often hundreds of programmers working on a major release like a Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty, but all of them are also desperately hoping for a huge payday, not just to make up for all the sleepless nights, but to take care of some rather pressing financial needs.

There's another common thread connecting all of these men too: all of them speak at one point or another about the depression and isolation their chosen career path has brought them, staring at bits of code in a darkened rooms like tortured artists (whether or not they are, in fact artists is a debate to unwieldy to get into here). Still, though the prospect of their creation being a flop or, worse, not coming out at all and leaving them deep in debt is a daunting one, the passion with which they talk about their craft suggests none of them would ever even consider doing anything else. That's where Indie Game: The Movie becomes more than just a doc about technological or cultural trends, or even about video games, it becomes about people in obsessive pursuit of a creative and personal ideal. Even if you're not a gamer yourself, you'll probably find yourself rooting for them, sharing in their triumphs and failures, not simply because their underdogs, but because for them, these aren't just games, their whole lives are on the line. 

FILM REVIEW: TPB AFK

Chances are, if you're engaged with the issue enough to form an opinion about it in the first place, you're probably fairly entrenched in the way you think about illegal file sharing and the sites, chief among them The Pirate Bay, that make it all possible. Whether you think about them as a vast criminal enterprise, a radical political movement or just a byproduct of an out of touch industry, it's unlikely that a documentary like Simon Klose's new TPB AFK ("The Pirate Bay - Away From Keyboard") is going to change your mind. Which may be why Klose more or less steers clear of polemics or fiery political diatribes, smartly allowing his subjects to extol their virtues (and expose their failings) on their own. The film is, thankfully, not a work of propaganda, so the question becomes: is it a film worth watching?

Following Pirate Bay co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde as they stand trial in a Swedish courtroom, charged with the somewhat vague crime of "assisting others in copyright infringement", while also strategizing ways to ensure their creation stays online no matter what. The proceedings are just as much about politics as the law, watched intently by both the powerful Hollywood film industry, who miss no opportunity to demonize the defendants, and the crowds of protesters outside (and online) who are more than ready to make them martyrs. The testimony is pretty fascinating stuff on its own, but the film really comes to life away from the courtroom, where it becomes a character study of its passionate and deeply flawed protagonists: Svartholm the no-nonsense, substance abusing programmer, Neij the racist xenophobe with a Laotian bride, and, the most likable of the bunch, Sunde the reluctant spokesperson who does his best to hold everything together.

There's a slight lack of suspense about the impending verdict, with all three on the loose and jetting back and forth between Stockholm and the South Pacific and, after appeals, facing a sentence of less than a year, but the look of the film is pure political thriller, from the fluorescent-lit courtrooms to the ominous looking bunkers that house the Pirate Bay's nuts and bolts. At the end of the day though, it's less about the corporate and legal wrangling that surrounds their predicament and more about the men themselves, who seem to have created something that far exceeds their control ("It's disorganized crime" Neij remarks at one point) and struggle to make sense of it as much as anyone else. Funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign, and distributed for free online under a Creative Commons license (including via the Pirate Bay itself, also on YouTube here), it's not hard to suss out where Klose's ideology lies, but it's hard to accuse his film of pandering. You don't have to be a free Internet crusader or even a torrent user to be enthralled by TPB AFK, there's more than enough drama in its portrayal of imperfect individuals straining to shape an uncertain future, for better or worse.

FILM REVIEW: The Avengers

The Avengers, directed by nerd-king Joss Whedon, is something of a coup for Marvel. Not only is it the biggest in a long line of well-received films based on their classic characters, it's also the culmination of a rather ambitious effort that aims to have the lucrative Marvel movies better reflect the comic book universe that spawned them. Though it may seem commonplace now, one of the company's most forward thinking contributions to the medium was their development of a cohesive, consistent world, a mirror of our own, which all of their creations share. It lends the fantastic adventures of colorful heroes a sense of reality, and pulls individual story lines and series into one grand, sprawling narrative. Of course, that's the intellectual appeal; it also provides an excuse for characters, who normally wouldn't meet, to come together and beat the crap out of each other.

So starting with 2008's Iron Man and continuing in Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel has been setting the stage to bring earth's mightiest heroes together, teasing audiences with cameos by Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury. Comic book movies are always forced to walk something of a tightrope, to strike a balance between geeky fanboy expectations and mainstream accessibility, and here the sheer number of beloved superheroes involved just multiplies those pitfalls. Thankfully though, Whedon and company have pulled it all off, creating an ideal summer blockbuster by sticking to what already made the characters iconic and relatable, and by avoiding needless reinvention.

Like many of the big-budget action flicks from the past few years, The Avengers is long, but even though it stretches to nearly two-and-a-half hours, it never feels bloated or poorly paced. Between bringing all the main players together and forging them into a team before sending them into action to fend off an alien invasion led by the conniving Loki, there's a lot of ground to cover, and the film clicks through it at a snappy pace. Despite its busyness, it doesn't sacrifice characterization, nailing the somewhat thorny philosophical differences represented by the individualist Iron Man (played once again to smarmy perfection by Robert Downey, Jr.) and Chris Evan's duty-bound Captain America, and also by introducing a Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) who may or may not be learning how to coexist with his violent alter-ego, The Hulk.

The only character who remains disappointingly two-dimensional is Hawkeye, who plays a rather large part in the action (including the climactic battle through the streets of New York), but is never given much of a personality or even a cool looking suit. They could have given him more of a back story, or indeed any back story at all, especially since much of his teammates' exposition was already fleshed out in previous films, but as it stands his presence feels like a bit of an afterthought.  It's a minor disappointment, one that will hopefully be rectified in future films, which, thanks to The Avengers now have the possibility of including any number of awesome Marvel Team-Up scenarios (personally, I want a Spiderman/X-Men or maybe a Ghost Rider/Punisher crossover). If that wasn't enough to get you excited about the future, stick around through the main credits for a glimpse of the next major villain. I don't want to ruin the surprise, but if you're geeky enough to know who it is, you will be very psyched to see him.

You could probably save yourself a few bucks and skip the 3-D version, but you'll want to see this one on the big screen. Marvel has been on an impressive streak over the last decade (which DC, even with the groundbreaking new Batman franchise, simply hasn't kept up with), releasing the kind of fun, universally appealing films we all look for as warm weather sets in. The Avengers doesn't break that trend. In fact, it takes it to a whole new level.

FILM REVIEW: The Man Who Would Be Polka King

The music industry and scandal go hand in hand. From organized crime seeing easy marks in profitable night clubs and venues to troubled, drug-addicted artists spiraling out of control to record company executives engaging in white collar crime like payola to help their product sell better, people involved in music often find themselves on the wrong side of the law. But by no means is this impropriety relegated to those scenes most often associated with crime, namely rap and dance music, and in fact has little to do with the content or the perceived "outlaw" character of any particular genre. In the end, corruption is more entwined with money than with art, and even a cheesy, ostensibly family-friendly style like polka is not immune to people trying to make a buck off of it in a less than legal way.

Released in 2009, but screening Friday at Turner Hall as part of a series called "DONK-umentaries with Bob & Brian" (which, despite the name, disappointingly has nothing to do with the Blackout Crew), The Man Who Would Be Polka King entertainingly recalls the biggest scandal to ever rock the polka world. At the heart of the trouble is Jan Lewan, a Polish émigré who chased his musical ambitions to Pennsylvania, where the large population of eastern Europeans allowed him to build a profitable polka empire. Unfortunately, the love of the people, and even a Grammy nomination in 1995, proved not to be enough for Lewan, who used his considerable popularity to launch a large scale pyramid scheme that swindled hundreds of his fans out of their paychecks and pensions. It's a fascinating tale of greed and delusion, one that begins with a talented and driven young Soviet defector and nearly ends in a vicious prison shanking, with plenty of detours, including his alleged rigging of a beauty pageant, in between.

But while it may be an interesting story, it's also a relatively small one, which leads filmmakers Joshua Brown and John Mikulak to make some odd choices. Chief among them is the decision to hire an actor to play a fictional Stan Tradowski, who narrates the proceedings from a bar stool at the local VFW hall. It's a distracting and unnecessary framing device, especially since the interviews with Lewan himself, who has always professed that he had no idea he was doing anything wrong, even in light of several warnings from the government, reveal a much clearer view of his pathological misunderstanding of the American dream he sought so feverishly. Being a few years old, the film is already available for free on Hulu, but given the $10 all-you-can-drink special going on during the screening, The Man Who Would Be Polka King, with all of its head-scratching weirdness, is probably best enjoyed in the company of a large, well-lubricated crowd.