Parky At the Pictures (3/7/2026)

(Reviews of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie; Birds of War; and

Roberto Rossellini: Living Without a Script)

NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE.

Some will know Canadian director Matt Johnson for such admired features as The Dirties (2013), Operation Avalanche (2016), and BlackBerry (2023). A few others might know him from the DIY web series, Nirvana the Band (2007-09), which he worked up into a short-lived Viceland TV show entitled Nirvanna the Band the Show (2017-18), with musician Jay McCarrol. Now, the pair have revisited the concept for Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, a time-travelling mockumentary that is stuffed with goofball gags, improvised situations, and classic film pastiches. Whether you find it infectious or infuriating, it's difficult not to appreciate the ingenuity and the chutzpah with which it has been made.

In 2008, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol have big plans to play The Rivoli in Toronto. Matt delivers his spiel to Jay at the piano, as he imagines sending the crowd wild with a two-step shuffle that will take them into their opening number. Seventeen years later, the guys are still clinging to the same dream. But Matt has hit upon the idea of gaining publicity by skydiving off the EdgeWalk at the CN Tower into the neighbouring SkyDome stadium during a Blue Jays baseball game. A nice Libertarian clerk at the Canadian Tire hardware store tries to talk them out of the stunt when they go to buy cable cutters, which temporarily get them stopped by the scanner at the CN security desk. However, they make it to the ledge and jump off towards the arena, just as its roof closes and they land on top and have to be helped down by a fire crew.

Jay is not best pleased by the reckless nature of the failed bid. But Matt is undaunted and hatches a plan to pose as time travellers to convince the Rivoli to book them. He watches Robert Zemeckis's Back to the Future (1985) for clues how to trick up his RV so that it looks like a time machine. Meanwhile, Jay books a solo microphone slot in Ottawa and sets off without knowing that Matt has dozed off on the bus after dealing with a fire after he knocked a bottle of Orbitz into the time machine gubbins.

Realising they have gone back to 2008, the pair scarper across town to their old apartment to find another bottle of Orbitz to propel them back into the future. As their younger selves are rehearsing, they hide in a cupboard with their cameraman, Jared Raab, and spend hours trapped in a small space. When they get out, older Matt goes in search of some Orbitz and wakes younger Jay and tells him he's in his dream to bring him the melody that older Jay is playing for dozing younger Matt downstairs. Jay is so touched by the way in which Matt chats to his younger self that he confesses that he was going to go solo. But Matt is wounded and rubs their plans off the whiteboard and scribbles a note not to play The Rivoli before returning to the RV and powering them back to 2025.

Much to his horror, Matt discovers that Jay is a major star, while he is the drummer in a covers band with three flatmates who all sport the same Jay tattoo on their biceps. They have tickets for that night's show and Matt tries to jog Jay into remembering the time machine, but he claims to have no knowledge of it. However, he is finding the celebrity lifestyle difficult without Matt to being there firing off ideas and wacky schemes. In trying to get to know the members of his new backing band, Jay succeeds in shooting one of them dead and he goes on the run. He goes back to the old digs to find Matt scribbling a plan to fix the time machine and return to 2008 and restore the timeline. Jay offers to help, but he is primarily interested in erasing the murder so he can resume his new lifestyle doing car karaoke with James Corden and being interviewed by Ellen De Generes.

Matt has smashed the Orbitz bottle, so they have to wind an electrical chord across the city from the CN Tower to a junction box in the street, so that lightning hitting the building will fire the RV through time. Once again, Matt has to do the clambering (with Jared again behind with the camera), while Jay reassures passers-by and the occasional cop that everything is under control. Unfortunately, the cable disconnects and Matt has to clamber up the innner tower ladder again and plunge off into the darkness with his parachute. On reaching the street, however, he discovers the line is a couple of feet short and he is torn what to do when he reads that Jay has killed his bandmate. But friendship prevails and he uses the cable cutters to complete the circuit and Jay is able to return to 2008.

Entering their apartment, he changes the whiteboard to read `Play The Rivoli' and the timeline is restored. In the present, Matt re-proposess the SkyDome dive again and Jay agrees, although he suggests they leave a little earlier so as not to crash land on the closing roof again.

Played to the hilt by Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol (who are clearly having a ball), this is rooted in esteemed tradition of the double-act comedy, with flashes of Laurel and Hardy. Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, Meyers and Carvey, and Reeves and Winter illuminating a splendidly silly premise that keeps finding new ways of being even sillier. After all, how hard can it be to get a booking at The Rivoli (even with a show as rubbish as the one that Matt and Jay keep rehearsing)? There are lulls in the buffoonery, while not all of the running gags or the improvised encounters with the unsuspecting members of the public come off, as neither is quite on Sasha Baron Cohen's level when it comes to brass-necking. Nevertheless, this celebration of friendship is time-passing fun that makes few demands on the faculties or the conscience outside noting how time has not been kind to either Bill Cosby or Todd Phillips's The Hangover (2009).

Belying the DIY feel, the action is often slickly staged, with some sophisticated special effects making the CN Tower sequences genuinely unsettling. It's also full of cine-literate gags, most notably leavening the Back to the Future shtick with a borrowing from Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), with Orbitz replacing Chernobyl as the soft drink with a time-travelling kick. Indeed, the plot strand in which Jay becomes a superstar echoes Lou Dorchen's wealth in Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015).

The use of slowed-down voices for the monochrome flashbacks is neat, as is the inclusion of the web footage that enables the pair to set the scene and interact with their younger selves. Moreover, Jared Raab's guerilla photography (and the amusing ways in which he is incorporated into the action) is splendid, while a couple of McCarrol's soundtrack songs are delightful. Quite whether the package does enough to send people scurring in search of the web and TV series is open to debate. But it's bound to get people talking about Matt Johnson ahead of the release of his biopic about celebrity chef and travelogue host, Anthony Bourdain, later this year.

BIRDS OF WAR.

The Syrian Civil War (2011-24) has spawned several compelling and deeply disturbing documentaries, including Talal Derki's Return to Homs (2013), Feras Fayyad's Last Men in Aleppo (2017) and The Cave, and Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts's Oscar-nominated For Sama (both 2019). Now, Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak's Bird of War can be added to the list.

In 2016, BBC Arabic reporter Janay Boulos was seeking contacts on the ground in Syria to unearth stories to broadcast to the wider world. She made text contact with Abd Alkader Habak, a videographer based in Aleppo who was committed to exposing the crimes of President Bashar al-Assad. Despite initial suspicions about Boulos's credentials, Habak started sending regular footage after he responded to her request to find people growing vegetables on their rooftops to beat the food shortages.

Originally from Idlib, Habak had started filming protests because he wanted to make sure the voice of the Syrian people was heard. Moving to Aleppo, he recorded bombing raids and street fighting with selfless courage. As we see footage of the chaos caused by nighttime attacks and the strains placed upon his doctor friend, Hamza, he wonders how he has survived and jokes that maybe God doesn't want him.

Having grown up in the Lebanese seaside town of Byblos, Boulos is also familiar with the sights and sounds of warfare. Despite an ambition to become a marine biologist, she had graduated in journalism, but didn't feel she could report freely in her homeland. Consequently, she had moved to London and joined the BBC's Arabic Service, making occasional appearances on news bulletins. But she felt guilty about sitting in safety, broadcasting footage for which her contacts had risked their lives.

Habak also feels pangs of regret when he joins the evacuation of Eastern Aleppo in 2017. He doesn't know if he will be able to return, but he knows he needs to get his hard drive archive out of the city, as he will be targeted by the regime if it's discovered. He returns to Idlib after parting from his housemates and comrades and films the bombed buildings. Boulos visits her Christian parents, who are uncertain what will happen if another war breaks out. She asks Habak if he is thinking of leaving, as the BBC want a story about someone fleeing Syria. But he intends holding firm and invites Boulos to help him show that life is going on as normal and she carries his images of carpet-weaving and pot-making.

They exchange photos of themselves, with Boulos introducing her cat, Fashfash. He is pleased she is not caged and starts calling her `little bird'. She worries when she doesn't hear from him and he misses her when the Internet goes down. Habak also keeps sending her footage, such as the bombing raid on a hospital when he feared being trapped inside. Until now, he has avoided personal attachments because life is so unpredictable. But the images of Boulos at her desk or trudging throught the rain in Queen's Park have got under his skin and they start flirting with each other in the daily video calls they call `interviews'.

Boulos wishes she could be with Habak, who has gone to film a refugee convoy. He shows children getting food handouts and there is a sense of hope. But the location is attacked and a picture of Habak carrying an injured child makes newspapers around the world. In the exchange of texts and voicemails, Boulos urges him to flee because he is more important to her than any footage. He is not just another story. However, the coverage has raised his profile with the Assad regime and he decides to cross the border into Turkey. Boulos comes to meet him and they snorkel and paraglide (like birds) before getting married. However, she knows her parents would disapprove of her marrying a Muslim and she doesn't tell them.

Habak moves into her flat in London, despite feeling guilty about leaving people behind in Syria. They cover the October Revolution in Lebanon in 2020, as Boulos felt she had to be on the ground at such a momentous time. Her parents are sceptical, however, that much will change. Feeling she needs to be working with Habak, she quits the BBC and they cover pro-Palestinian marches and other events relating to the Middle East. When Israel bombs Lebanon as part of its ongoing war with Hezbollah, Boulos feels she should return to be with her parents in Byblos, as she still feels like an outsider in London. But it's the only place she can be with Habak, although he is keen to return to Aleppo when the Assad regime is toppled, as he needs to witness the new Syria for himself having risked so much to cover its struggle to exist. He tours familiar parts of Aleppo to see them in ruins, even the Al-Quds Hospital. But his mother is delighted to see him and looks forward to meeting her daughter-in-law. Boulos also tells her mother she is married, but remains vague about his background. In an exchange of texts, Habak wonders how long they can keep shuttling between their countries and Boulos replies they will have to do so until the wars end.

It's bad form to quote someone else's insight when writing a film review. But, in profiling Boulos and Habak for The Guardian, Bethan McKernan has it spot on when she says, `Birds of War isn't just about war: it is more broadly a portrait of what it means to be Syrian or Lebanese at this precarious time for the Middle East. It is about what it means to belong - to each other, to a cause, to an ethnic group, to a city, to a nation - and the hopes and fears that accompany these bonds.' It couldn't be put any better.

As they are their own cinematographers, it's inevitable that the odd shot of them together has been pre-planned, as the camera would have to have been placed (perhaps on a tripod) in advance. But such details should not distract from the poignancy of the love story and the harrowing nature of the ordeals that each has had to endure in their beleaguered countries. Editor Will Hewitt has done a magnificent job (with assistance from Tanya Singh) in piecing together video footage, voicemails, and texts from the couple's 13-year archive, although care was taken not to show anything too graphic from Habak's coverage of the siege of Aleppo. The development of the bond between the strangers who had chanced upon each other online is established with particular delicacy, with various avian nicknames conveying how its strength caught both Habak and Boulos by surprise.

By all accounts, Boulos only informed her mother that her spouse was a Syrian Muslim before she saw the film. This itself says much about the worlds from which the pair came and one suspects similar complications will continue to beset them when uncertainty is an everyday reality. But one can only wish them and their countries well, as they have deserved a little peace and love.

ROBERTO ROSSELLINI: LIVING WITHOUT A SCRIPT.

Produced by the same company that sponsored Alessandro Rossellini's The Rosselinis (2020), Ilaria de Laurentiis, Andrea Paolo Massara, and Raffaele Brunetti's Roberto Rossellini: Living Without a Script is an archival exploration of the last two decades of the Italian director who had helped to transform world cinema in the 1940s as one of the pioneers of neo-realism and who had found himself unwillingly in the headlines in the 1950s, as a result of his relationship with Swedish superstar, Ingrid Bergman.

Over monochrome clips from various French TV art shows, Roberto Rossellini laments the fact he is feted as the father of neo-realism when he is no longer interested in the kind of films he used to make. It is 1956 and, even in the company of such acolytes as François Truffaut, he resists discussing either Rome, Open City (1945), Paisà (1946), and Germany, Year Zero (1947) or the pictures he made with Ingrid Bergman, including Stromboli (1950), Europa `51 (1952), and Journey to Italy (1954). During one interview, Rossellini even covers his eyes to avoid watching the scene in which Anna Magnani is gunned down in Rome, Open City.

Colour home movies of Bergman and her children lead into an interview in which she states that her films with Rossellini were disasters. Frustrated by their financial situation, she had urged him to declare bankruptcy and move into a small flat. But he couldn't live such a life. Cinematographer Aldo Tonti declares that he has never seen Rossellini idle, as we see footage of him driving racing cars. They would soon set off together for India, after Rossellini had met Jawaharlal Nehru at a reception in London and pitched a film idea. Making his will before he left, Rossellini wondered if he would ever return, leaving Bergman with their children after her efforts to broker a deal for him to direct in Hollywood had fallen through (largely because Rossellini felt uncomfortable in the spotlight and wanted control that the studio was unwilling to afford him).

A digression recaps how Bergman had written to Rossellini asking to make a film with him. They had fallen in love and their adulterous affair had caused a scandal that virtually resulted in Bergman being blackballed in Hollywood. While she loved her husband's free spirit, Bergman found his need to possess her like his Ferrari more problematic and she resisted his insistence that she worked only for him. We see a clip from a French interview after she had won a second Oscar for Anastasia (1956), in which she confides that Rossellini would be back in the summer after completing his assignment on the subcontinent.

Each suspected the marriage was already over, but Bergman was reluctant to quit something she had given up so much to achieve, especially when Rossellini wrote so fondly to Isabella, Ingrid, and Roberto. He told them about meeting the Dalai Lama and flying over forests full of elephants and tigers, with Tonti and his French assistant, Jean Herman. Before embarking upon a tour of the country, they had spent much of their time in Bombay (as it was) meeting the great and the good because Rossellini was so famous in India. All the while, however, he was observing and noting comparisons between the new republic and postwar Italy and he wanted to reflect this potential in his film.

Herman had been recommended by Truffaut because he had taught in Bombay and he recalls in an interview how challenging it was working for Rossellini because he went on impulse, shooting stories that had yet to be written on 16mm and 35mm film. If he didn't feel inspired, he would stay in bed. On others, he had a ferocious energy that swept Tonti and Herman along, even though they didn't always know how the footage they were capturing would piece together. We see clips of fishermen rowing on a lively tide and a monkey cowering next to the body of its beggar owner, as a vulture circles overhead.

Meanwhile, Bergman was racking up 300 performances in Tea and Sympathy in Paris, after Rossellini had told he it wouldn't run a week. She hopes his film is going well and wishes he would reply to her. But she suspects he struggles to cope with her success and she gently chides him for not having more faith in her.

In fact, the 51 year-old had become distracted after meeting Sonali Dasgupta, the 27 year-old wife of film-maker Late Harisadhan Dasgupta, who had encouraged her to help Rossellini discern how authentic his footage was. She was reluctant to get involved, but soon became the co-scenarist of India: Matri Bhumi, although Herman reckons this was merely an excuse for them to spend time together. He was still in Kerala with Tonti, who had invited his son to assist him in shooting footage of tigers and monkeys that he hoped Rossellini would factor into the film. Herman noted how devoted the cinematographer was to his director and hints that he was rather exploited by him, as they were left high and dry when the news broke that Dasgupta had thrown the pregnant Sonali out of their home.

The scandal prompted the Indian authorities to refuse permission for Rossellini to leave with his footage and he rang Bergman to ask her to go to London to intercede on his behalf with Nehru. He was permitted to leave with his rushes and Bergman met him on the tarmac in Paris surrounded by paparazzi. That night, however. she asked him for a divorce. Sonali comes to Paris and they hide in Henri Cartier-Bresson's apartment, where Tinto Brass helped Rossellini edit India: Matri Bhumi, which proved to be such a surprise success at Cannes that the director's reputation was restored overnight.

He made General della Rovere (1959), with Vittorio De Sica and 18 year-old son, Renzo, as his assistant. He claimed it was a `food' film to pay off his debts and he was rather frustrated that it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival because he knew other offers for conventional films would come in. In an English-language interview, he explains that he doesn't like to be bored and, consequently, he moved into television to work on his own terms on topics that interested him. Ettore Bernebei from RAI allowed him to make programmes to educate and entertain and he relished the research involved in The Iron Age (1965), which he could never have made for the cinema (which he now considered `dead').

Irked by interference by RAI middle managers, Rossellini starts trying to raise money privately before being invited to make The Taking of Power By Louis XIV (1966) in colour on a tight budget. He followed this by scripting The Fight For Survival (1970), a 12-part history of civilisation from prehistory to the present that was directed by Renzo. However, Rossellini was so unhappy with the terms for his next RAI assignment that he resigned. As he told an interviewer, he found it impossible to compromise and could only work on his own terms. He went to teach at the Centro Sperimentale film school instead and met Beppe Cino, who was impressed by his determination that knowledge was power and that cinema should instruct not dumb down.

Cino admits to being scared of Rossellini and we see him losing his temper on the set, while making The World Population (1974), which was made with Renzo for UNESCO. He felt making cinema was a matter of morality and urgency, as he wanted to capture things as they happened. In 1971, he had gone to Santiago to make Interview With Salvador Allende: Power and Reason (1974), which was released in the aftermath of the coup in which he was murdered. However, he also regularly visited the University of Houston to meet with scientists to see what the world of tomorrow might look like. Ultimately, Science (1975) went uncompleted, but the desire `to reduce the land of my ignorance' kept Rossellini active.

In September 1973, Anna Magnani died at the age of 65. Screenwriter Silvio D'Amico explains how she fell in love with Rossellini because he had insited on doing Magnani's make-up before the funeral, as he knew from their love affair how much she valued looking her best. She was 33 when she started working with him, although this was merely a pretext for her always being around on the set, along with his costume-designing first wife (and Renzo's mother), Marcella De Marchis, as well as various grandchildren.

She talks about his ambition to keep working until he was 80 and how he had only agreed to become president of the jury at Cannes if he could stage a debate about the relationship between film and television. Having presented the Palme d'or to the Taviani brothers for Padre Padrone (1977), he drove home and died on 3 June after his heart stopped. Over footage of the funeral, Isabella Rossellini says she wishes people knew her father's films better today and sighs that she still doesn't know if he was a genius or mad.

Over a clip from Undersea Fantasy (1940), Rossellini admits that he is not a film-maker. His job is to be curious, study, and learn - `the job of Men'. He says he doesn't love anything, but is fascinated by everything. No one can stop him from being who he is and that suits him fine, as freedom is all that matters.

This is a fine summation of a man who could be selfish, reckless, chauvinist, and a little cruel and an artist who never got over the fact that backers didn't want to pay for the films he wanted to make and that audiences didn't want to see them. It was a tragic situation for someone so passionate about sharing knowledge and coaxing people into understanding where they had come from and how they needed to get along to make the most out of life and our planet. What a shame it is that so few of the titles referenced are readily available to view, with even the murkiest corners of the Internet drawing blanks when it comes to items like The Fight For Survival and the Allende interview.

That said, it's odd that the directorial triumvirate should mention the Louis XIV film and then make no reference to such similar outings as his TV series on the great philosophers; his mini-series, The Age of the Medici (1973); Anno Uno (1974), his study of the immediate post-Fascist era; and his New Testament swan song, The Messiah (1975). Obviously, this isn't a filmographical exercise, but such projects reinforce the point about Rossellini being restless and avowedly non-commerical.

Sergio Castellitto and Kasia Smutniak do a nice job of voicing Rossellini and Bergman, while Ilaria de Laurentiis's editing of the various film clips and archival snippets is masterly. Indeed, this merits a wider release, but it forms a key part of the 5th Cinecittà Italian Doc Season presented by Bertha Dochouse in conjunction with Cinecittà, Archivio Luce, and the Italian Cultural Institute. Sadly, time restraints have prevented coverage of Giacomo Boeri's Stories For Sandro or Gianluca Matarrese's I Want Her Dead.