Everything Sucks: 'Pavements' | SF Indie Film Festival 2025
A most important critical assessment for the most important band. Wink wink.
Dear Moviegoers,
Likely, there won’t be a more creative docu-criticism flick released this year than Pavements. “Docu-criticism?” Maybe I’m being flippant or downright dumb by NOT referring to the movie as an essay film (or docu-essay), but it’s just how I feel. Pavements is a full-blown criticism of musical biopics and run-of-the-mill documentaries, and its subject - the band Pavement - was/is a criticism of egotism and self-congratulatory artists, among other things. Does this mean that both elements are mocking everyone? Does this mean that their truths are flying over the heads of fans and audiences?
I think yes and yes.
And it’s brilliant to be so antagonistic.
Pavements comes from the craft of independent director Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell, The Color Wheel), who in years past has expressed frustration with filmmaking and breaking through to the next phase of his career. With this entry in his catalog, Perry is at his most fanciful and fun, perhaps shedding dramatics and embracing the whatever. Or maybe Pavement and its leader Stephen Malkmus rubbed off on him. Or maybe he’s now stuck in a 1990s time warp, flannel and all. He has remade Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind by molding clay from a musical era of angst and apathy/lethargy, and to that point, his film says “sure.”
Where Welles’ final film had impressions of documentary filmmaking and some facade of meta-narrative on top of magical fakery, Pavements is, indeed, an actual documentary. And a play. And a movie within a movie. And an art piece. These four parts run simultaneously to the point of moshing into one another gloriously. Despite the visual noise, there is no madness to Perry’s method or some such speak. Everything makes sense.
He casts Joe Keery (Stranger Things, Spree) as Stephen Malkmus in a fake and almost prank biopic, performed in a satirically traditional and misread manner. He produces a musical play, turning the tunes of Pavement into an honestly sentimental and truly talented stage show. He showcases an oddity of a museum showcase of Pavement history, where artifacts and props are displayed with false importance and are gazed upon with true admiration. And then, there’s the documentary of the band itself, using archival footage travel backward and forwards, centered on an infamous appearance at Lollapalooza that came to represent the band in more ways than one. All of this earns Pavements a bonafide kudos and a round of applause, as I haven’t seen a movie before that tears itself apart and puzzles itself into a new shape in, really, ever. I think.
Could it be that Pavements will turn off fans of the band? I doubt it. The tone and attitude match the music to perfection. Could it be that fans of Alex Ross Perry will be confused? I…doubt it? It’s a curveball of a movie, both in general and for him to have made, but hopefully, those who recognize his name and have enjoyed his other films will sit down, listen, and watch attentively. I loved Pavements, but I’ll also admit to being a bit confused. That is likely a built-in wish from a film so filled with layers upon layers of reality, fiction, commentary, and criticism. What is true? What’s the intent?
Intent is irrelevant, but it can help to know. A little, anyway.
Orson Welles on his best day wouldn’t dare touch what Alex Ross Perry has done with Pavements. Come at me, film bros. 5/5
Pavements screened at the 2025 San Francisco Independent Film Festival.
Sincerely Yours in Moviegoing,
⚜️🍿
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