A clip from A Night to Remember playfully salutes the downhill night to end all nights for The Roaring 20s, while a scene of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable in The Misfits poignantly evokes sympathy for characters marinating on the periphery of society.
The Rosses embellish their casually chaotic action with pointed jukebox tunes and TV movies (notably, 1961’s The Misfits ) without ever underlining anything.
The result is still something closer to documentary than, say, the work of Sean Baker, whose The Florida Project and Tangerine rely heavily on the performances of nonprofessional actors in stories based closely on their actual lives.