The United States vs. Billie Holiday: Audra Day soars as a decidedly not-so jolly Holiday.

There is so much fact-fudging going on in The United States vs. Billie Holiday that for all the good it did screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, she could just as easily have fabricated a character out of whole cloth based on the life of a famous jazz-singer whose heroin addiction paved the way to an early grave. But that would have denied director Lee Daniels (Precious, The Paperboy) the privilege of reacquainting, and in many cases introducing, the world to “Strange Fruit,” Holiday’s bitterly haunting signature song, which forms the heart of the piece. It might also have robbed viewers of the preternatural beauty on display in Andra Day's electrifying transformation. The Grammy-winning singer and San Diego native (her family relocated to SoCal when Day was three) is making her acting debut as the First Lady of the Blues.

From the outside, the band of oddball adjutants that answer to Holiday’s beck have what it takes to make it in the cast of cast-off characters living inside the best of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, Dolemite is My Name). Leslie Jordan opens the show with a dollop of good ol’ Southern boy sleaze as Reginald Lord Devine, a wigged out radio host who is equal parts Rip Taylor and televangelist Ernest Angley, topped by a Karastan pile of curls. Dolemite alum Da’Vine Joy Randolph appears as Holiday’s one-eyed aide de camp/traveling companion Roslyn, Tyler James Williams plays Lester Young, the pork pie-hatted Jazz messiah credited with hatching the “Lady Day” handle, and Natasha Lyonne shows up as Tallulah Bankhead. Together they go nowhere, despite being all dressed up.

Other than a stock troupe of white faces in high places — Garrett Hedlund’s depiction of Federal Bureau of Narcotics Harry Anslinger borders on cartoon overstatement — Holiday’s worst enemies were her own people. The plot flutters forward with the chaotic rapidity of a VU meter that peaks in the red every time Trevante Rhodes appears. The most disputed member of her inner-circle is Jimmy Fletcher (Rhodes). According to Slate, “Very little is documented of Fletcher’s life,” leaving the filmmakers ample room to sketch with a free hand. Fresh from the service, Fletcher shows up in full uniform to catch Holiday’s show at Cafe Society. Even his mother is outraged to learn that Jimmy is a Fed working on the side of whitey to take down a prominent African-American. A romance with the married Holiday is as inevitable as it is unverified: Fletcher was in fact ordered to follow Holiday’s tour, but there’s no record of him boarding the bus. And how preposterous is it to have Fletcher — an officer who, according to the script, wanted nothing more than to keep drugs out of the black community — turn a blind eye to Candyman dropping off a vial of Holiday’s “medicine”? The only thing more outrageous is Fletcher’s sudden desire to ride the horse with Holiday. Rico and Youngblood would be more likely to share a needle with The Untouchables’ Eliot Ness.

“All of Me” was to Holiday what “Over the Rainbow” was to Judy Garland. As grateful as she was for the attention it brought, Holiday and her audience wanted “Strange Fruit” to be a regular in her nightclub act. The more “people in high places” who cautioned her to drop the number the more important it was that it be included. Her connection to the song gives the film its bite, even when the cogs of the plot prove to be toothless.★

Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry

Let us make a smooth transition from Billie Holiday’s last decade to five years in the meteoric rise of self-made teenage song sensation, Billie Eilish. Prior to watching Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, the singer meant little more to me than the girl with the Prestone antifreeze-tinged locks whose name frequently appeared on TMZ. The same way people now have the capability to shoot a movie on a phone, Eilish and her brother/producer/performer Finneas O’Connell recorded a song in the latter’s bedroom and posted it online. A week passed and the recording received radio airplay. Three years later she was an international star.

I was skeptical at first, particularly upon discovering that the film’s 140-minute running time includes a built-in intermission. But anyone who has amassed enormous success at such an early age can afford to be a little full of themselves. And anyone who can work the term “Oxford comma” into her lyrics deserves attention.

As an artist, Eilish is quite the contrarian. Finneas compares the writing process to walking a minefield. The head of A&R at Interscope records desires another hit, and a compliant Finneas aims to pen their best (read: most accessible) song to date. He’s been told to keep his plans a secret from Billie who catches on quickly and replies, “That’s stupid! I’m never gonna do anything ever if I think that way.” Looking to tell her she’s full of shit while managing to make it sound like a compliment, Ambassador Finneas diplomatically counters with, “You don’t have to think that way, but I can.” When mother Maggie Baird chimes in with the suggestion that her daughter follow her voice down a more commercial path by writing more commercial fare, our tortured teenager counters by including lyrics that imply jumping off a roof as an option to living. According to Billie, incorporating such thoughts into her art is her answer to not doing it.

Despite her success. the family continues to live in the same house in which Billie grew up. As much as she embraces her fans as part of her extended family, nothing compares to the real deal. It was Maggie and husband Patrick O’Connell who passed on their love of music to the children. They began as a family quartet, like a smaller Partridge Family: same values, different cool tour bus. Where is it written that all teenage singing sensations must flirt with drugs? Both parents act as reminders that their home-schooled duo have an army of people dedicated to ensuring that neither make bad decisions.

Those who have been fortunate enough to meet their idols will take great pleasure in Billie’s devotion to Justin Bieber. Watch as the adoring fan melts in the presence of her musical hero. The film’s biggest laugh comes when her people inform Billie that Bieber has expressed interest in appearing on her latest album, masking sure to end the proposition with, “Not that you need it.” The second biggest chuckle is when Patrick looks at his daughter’s freshly manicured press-on nails and asks, “How do you wipe with those?” Surrounded by material like this, one can’t help but question just how much of her gloom and doom angst is real and how much is showbiz.★★★

—Scott Marks