Weekend Picks: Astronauts and Aristocrats

(This week’s Washington Post reviews for “Alien: Romulus” (⭐ ⭐ 1/2), “Good One” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) and “Mothers’ Instinct” (⭐ ⭐) can be found beneath the paywall below.)

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Back to business: Every week I check the new arrivals on the various streaming platforms – “new” meaning older movies that are cycling into a given service’s VOD window – and while the titles are by no means exclusive to that service, the exercise is a memory jog to remind me of good films that are still out there, either fading into the cultural past or under-seen in the first place. For instance:

I always felt that “First Man” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2, 2018, newly streaming on Netflix, for rent on Amazon, Apple TV, and Microsoft), Damian Chazelle’s follow-up to “La La Land,” got lost in the shuffle following the arguable overhype for that movie. It’s also something of a headscratcher: A drama about the Apollo XI moon landing that focuses on the inner lives of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling, above), his wife (Claire Foy), and the other families of NASA. I wrote in my 2018 Globe review that “First Man” “is a movie that shows how the most personal moments can coexist within and alongside the most momentous events.”

Ira Sachs’s “Little Men” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2, 2016, new to Prime Video, also streaming on Hoopla and Kanopy and for rent on Amazon, Apple TV and Microsoft) likewise flew beneath the radar due to a bland title (is it a sequel to “Little Women”?) and low star wattage. But it’s a tricky and extremely touching New York tale of boyhood friends (Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri, the latter a real find) being gradually yanked apart by the social and market forces of gentrification. “At its heart,” I wrote in 2022, “the movie wonders what — and who — New York City and our surrounding society are giving up as we move further into the new millennium.”

Similarly, I never felt that Gina Prince-Bythewood’s muscular historical epic “The Woman King” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2, 2022, streaming on Hulu, for rent on Amazon, Apple TV and Microsoft) got its proper due from moviegoers, despite being one of the best movies of its year, a ferocious sword-and-sandals action films about a true-life warrior queen (Viola Davis) of 19th-century Dahomey. “On one level, this is just a rousing Saturday-matinee action-adventure,” I wrote in the Watch List. “On another, it carries the weight of everything Davis has done up to now and every page of Black history – Black women’s history – that hasn’t been told on this scale and in this medium. If Russell Crowe can win an Oscar for ‘Gladiator,’ there’s no reason Davis shouldn’t win one for what she does here." (Editor's note: She didn't.)

In other news, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is now streaming on Max (appropriately) and for rent on Amazon, Apple TV and Microsoft, and I will weigh in on the movie once I’ve seen it. And the highly regarded documentary “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” has just popped up on Peacock in addition to streaming on Netflix, Hulu and Hoopla and being available for rent from Amazon and Apple TV, so there’s no excuse for either you or me to skip it anymore.

Lastly, one of my all-time favorites has come around again: “The Aristocrats” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2, 2005, streaming on Prime Video, Peacock, Hoopla, Kanopy, for rent on Amazon and Apple TV), a documentary about the filthiest joke ever told, as told by dozens and dozens of comedians, some of them now sorely missed (George Carlin, Gilbert Gottfried, Bob Saget). Forgive me while I reprint the entirety of my Boston Globe review from August 12, 2005, because it’s not often writing one of these is as much fun as the movie itself.

 Stop me if you've heard this one before.

The joke at the center of "The Aristocrats" isn't much of a joke, really. Comedians and co-instigators Paul Provenza (who directed) and Penn Jillette (who executive produced) think so little of the punchline that they give it away in the title. If the joke were any better, though, this rude, crude, socially unacceptable, and gut-crampingly funny documentary on the art of humor might not be as good as it is. And it is very, very good.

What Provenza and Jillette have done is brilliant in its simplicity: They've rounded up over 100 comics and other professionals whose job it is to make people laugh, and let them each tell or comment on a single joke, one that is rarely told in public but has functioned as a sort of secret backstage handshake for comedians over the decades.

Years ago, most stand-up comics had a "clean" act for TV and family shows while "working blue" – trotting out the dirty jokes – at late-night gigs. "The Aristocrats" (the joke, not the movie) was the bluest of the blue: an anecdote with the potential for such unspeakably off-color envelope pushing that it was reserved for bull sessions once the paying customers had gone home. Even after Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin toppled the walls of propriety in the 60s and 70s, the joke stayed samizdat, underground.

Fittingly, Carlin is the first to be heard from, and he's as cogent and cantankerous as ever. The comics following him, filmed in one uncomplicated medium close-up after another, include old school yukmeisters like Don Rickles and Phyllis Diller, 60s conceptualists like Martin Mull and the Smothers Brothers, 80s revivalists like Steven Wright and Emo Phillips, new blood like Chris Rock and Jon Stewart and the staff of "The Onion." There's a mime version of the joke, a "South Park" version, a wickedly funny impressionist version with Kevin Pollack delivering the joke as Christopher Walken might tell it. There's a Penn and Teller magic version.

All of them are joyfully raunchy, wallowing in foul language, nasty behavior, child abuse, bestiality – and that's for starters. Does a lot of this shock? Absolutely. Does it lose its potency and grow monotonous over the long stretch? At times; it depends on the comedian and his or her creativity. Which is precisely the point: between the set-up – guy goes into a talent agency – and the punchline is an open space for improvisatory play, for soaring verbal cadenzas of filth that speak the unspeakable and then go further, into surrealism and beyond. "The Aristocrats" – the joke, not the movie – is jazz.

Accordingly, some of the players freestyle better than others. With comedians whose humor stems from persona more than material – Emo Philips, Andy Dick – the joke just lies there, unmoving. The surpassingly lovely pottymouth Sarah Silverman, on the other hand, internalizes the joke and re-enacts it as recovered childhood memory; it's a daring, dark, and extremely funny bit (and you'll never think of Joe Franklin again without cringing).

Surprisingly, one of the main contenders for the crown here turns out to be Bob Saget, the deceptively bland star of TV's "Full House" and "America's Funniest Home Videos." But the true hero of "The Aristocrats" is the great, squinty-eyed crank Gilbert Gottfried, who salvages a Friar's Club roast of Hugh Hefner with a version of the joke that builds and builds with manic high-wire artistry. The other comedians speak of his performance with the awe reserved for legends, and the video of the event, when we finally see it, connects the raw schtick of the borscht belt masters with the hyper-aware irony of today.

"The Aristocrats" – the movie, not the joke – is a working demonstration of the pleasures of the profane.

Enjoy your weekend, and feel free to leave a comment or add to someone else's.

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