MOVIE TIP

The Iron Claw

I was a big wrestling fan for a very brief time when I was 12 or so. I watched Hulk Hogan fight Greg “The Hammer” Valentine at New Haven Coliseum. I saw the Killer Bees at Grasso Tech. I cried when Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat got DDT’d by Jake “The Snake” Roberts. Literal tears. But again, very brief. This is all to say that I didn’t have much more than a passing knowledge of the Von Erich family story until watching “The Iron Claw.” It’s incredibly tragic and incredibly American. Golden boys raised on a farm drinking gallons of milk in Texas to be wrestlers like their daddy was before them. It was Fritz Von Erich’s dream come true. And the boys did it. Zac Efron probably won’t get an Oscar nomination for this, but he should. He’s the lifeblood of the film. Holt McCallany also stands out as the family patriarch. The Von Erich boys, for a time, were the biggest thing in the wrestling world. Then they started dying.

— Owen Poole

MOVIE TIP

Immediate Family

There have been a lot of great documentaries about musicians who aren’t front and center but who have had a great impact on the best music of the modern era: “20 Feet from Stardom,” about backup singers; “Count Me In,” about drummers; and “The Wrecking Crew,” about session musicians who played on countless 1960s and early ’70s hits. Well, add “Immediate Family” to that esteemed list. It’s a fascinating and fun film; hearing, say, just the drum part on “Fire and Rain,” until the rest of the familiar tune fades in is an illuminating moment. The musicians here played on some of the most iconic songs of the 1970s and ’80s, from James Taylor’s early work to Don Henley’s solo hits. You might recognize the names if you used to read albums’ liner notes: guitarist Danny Kortchmar, guitarist Waddy Wachtel, drummer Russ Kunkel, and bassist Leland Sklar. The movie boasts interviews with impressed stars, from Keith Richards to Phil Collins. My only complaint: The occasional use of animation to cartoonishly portray a situation a musician is describing looks chintzy. No need for something like that in a movie that’s this informative and entertaining.

– Kristina Dorsey

BOOK TIP

Sleepless City

Reed Farrel Coleman

Coleman is another one of those fine crime writers whose career reached a vast new audience when he signed on with the estate of Robert B. Parker to continue one of the late master’s series (in this case, the Jesse Stone books just as Ace Atkins wrote Spenser). This was an honor, I’m sure, but the painful truth is both Atkins and Coleman should have been superstars based on their own work. In any case, Coleman is starting a new series featuring New York City cop Nick Ryan, who’s so distinctive at his skills that he has a secret job distinction known only to the mayor and the highest brass in the department. Of course, his ex-cop father is a disgraced “rat,” so Nick faces that fallout, too. Overall, Coleman skillfully establishes a slight but tantalizing quality of comic book superhero to Ryan and “Sleepless City,” but the overall tone is grim and the dialogue and plotting so dark that it balances wonderfully. If you pick this up, other books you may have started will be tossed in a corner somewhere.

— Rick Koster