Watch online: Pleased to Meet Me, Better Living Through Chemistry, Chi

The Posts critics highlight original movies that are being streamed and made available on demand. Here are this weeks picks.

A scene from "Pleased to Meet Me." (180 Degrees)

PLEASED TO MEET ME

In 2002, the radio program This American Life broadcast a memorable episode showcasing a group of musicians all previously strangers who were recruited from classified ads to head into the studio for one day to cover Elton Johns Rocket Man. Featuring a sultry jazz vocalist, an earnest Christian rocker and an electric violinist with anger-management issues, the deliberately mismatched band managed to churn out a rendition of the pop classic that was surprisingly endearing even rousing.

Those adjectives could just as easily be applied to Pleased to Meet Me, a new feature film inspired by the radio experiment. Directed and co-written by Kentucky filmmaker Archie Borders, the film makes some minor plot and character adjustments here and there: Rocket Man is replaced by an original ditty by Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Joe Henry (who also plays a sound engineer), and the violinist (Timothy Morton) now has a drug problem. But its a very similar tale with more meat on its bones.

Thats not to say that theres much at stake here, dramatically speaking. Personal and professional entanglements between old and new flames, and among sometimes insecure musicians, do not necessarily make for fierce conflict. But the comedy like Henrys song, an easygoing blues shuffle has a shaggy, ambling charm.

Borders who co-wrote the laid-back, naturalistic script with Henrys brother, Dave wisely has cast musicians who can act, rather than actors who may or may not be able to play an instrument. Headliners include former X frontman John Doe and singer-songwriter Aimee Mann playing former lovers who pull the stunt together as well as Loudon Wainwright III as an antisocial theremin player. Other notable performances musically as well as dramatically include vocalist Karin Bergquist of the band Over the Rhine, playing a tentative lounge singer who learns to let loose; and Adam Kramer, formerly of the Louisville band Broken Spurs, playing a metal-head-turned-Christian-rock guitarist.

Filmed in just two weeks at Louisvilles Lalaland recording studio (here called Funtown) and shot with a modest budget that included money raised via Kickstarter, Pleased to Meet Me seems inspired as much by the radio show as by an anecdote: As told in the film, Tom Waits is said to have observed that his favorite moment while waiting in the audience at a concert is while the musicians are still tuning up.

The climax of Pleased is, of course, the big song at the end. It delivers all that it should. But its really also just fun to watch and listen as some musical sausage is made. -- M.O.

Unrated. Contains obscenity, drug use and brief, non-graphic sex. 88 minutes. Available on iTunes and other on-demand platforms in late May.

View post:
Watch online: Pleased to Meet Me, Better Living Through Chemistry, Chi