Posts Tagged ‘biography’

« Older Entries
When You’re Strange

When You’re Strange

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

I have to admit, though I have been and for the most part remain a huge Doors fan in my time, my expectations weren’t huge for this, not least because of Mark Kermode’s quite fair knocking of the whole Doors “thing” on his BBC Five Live Friday review show. I’m one who always wants to believe there was a spiritual and poetic resonance to Jim Morrison’s life even beyond what the likes of Oliver Stone’s movie portrayed, but I find it hard to defend him all that passionately when someone like Kermode points out the reasons why it was all just a joke… and Kermode did it pretty darn well in that review of this.

The movie is not helped at all by Johnny Depp’s narration. Apparently he was brought in to simply redub the narration already in place by the film’s writer-director Tom DiCillo because first audiences found DiCillo’s reading too monotonous. Considering how disinterested Depp sounds in the final version, I dread to think how the first take was.

But to be perfectly honest, this for me is where the movie’s failings end (the silly “omg Mr Mojo Risin is an anagram of Jim Morrison” moment notwithstanding). While the fact remains that there’s little of actual information here that as a Doors fan I hadn’t known before, all the anecdotes, stories, controversies and of course the music, the footage they have gathered is almost without exception extraordinary to behold and despite the presentation and packaging we should really be grateful to see it in any form.

I also read that this was meant to be an “anti-Oliver Stone” take on The Doors story, as Stone’s ’91 movie apparently offended as many fans as it created (count me in the latter set). I have no idea what’s wrong with the Stone movie and would gladly stick it together with this and maybe one of the concert DVDs to a make a full night of Doors viewing in the future. It’d be even better if they just released the footage sans-narration on a special edition Blu-ray, though. You should find this more than worth your time if you have anything more than a passing interest in music of the time.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews | No Comments »



The Runaways

The Runaways

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

I seem to be alone on this, but it’s not been a good 5 years for Dakota Fanning fans. After the kinda-sorta farewell to her true “child” performances in the wonderful Dreamer, the killer War of the Worlds, and the kinda heartbreaking Charlotte’s Web it was then a long wait for the release of the ultimately disappointing Hounddog and mediocre The Secret Life of Bees. True Fragments and Push were good, and she was good in them, but they weren’t exactly “her” movies.

Then she signed up for the sequels to Twilight (review of New Moon to follow shortly – preview, to be honest, marginally better than the first…). She did the “all growed up” photo shoots that all young actors and singers seem to have to do now. And here we have her big “I’m not a kid anymore!” role, playing second fiddle to an actress far beneath her. Luckily, the disappointment ends right there.

I will give Kristen Stewart this: she’s way easier to watch in this than she is in the Twilight saga or, god forbid, when being interviewed or presenting awards as if on Ritalin in real life. But I remain entirely unconvinced of why people think she can act in anything she’s done since Panic Room, and it’s even a long step down from Catch that Kid in my opinion to anything she’s done in the past few years.

Dakota, however, thank goodness still has it. I knew little about the band The Runaways and Cherie Currie but I’d seen the wonderful costume/make-up job they’d done on everyone in this movie in promo pictures etc and was excited to see what looked to be a pretty authentic Seventies biopic. On the whole, it is fairly standard stuff… kinda The Doors-lite with young girls. There’s a scene where we witness the flash-writing of the hit “Cherry Bomb” in a garage that almost exactly mirrors the “Light My Fire” scene in Oliver Stone’s movie. There’s a whole underline of drugs and a final parting of the ways etc… it’s very standard stuff but Dakota rises above it. I actually watched Cherie Currie in Foxes the day after and was even more amazed by how much she nailed the real Currie (I need to update that review some day, btw, I liked it a lot more a second time around…) I’d probably watch this movie again just for her. It’s not her best by far but it really shows that even without the “precocious child” thing, she can still seriously command the screen, and I can’t wait to see what she does once Twilight is out of the way and she no longer feels the need to “prove” she’s not a kid anymore…

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews | No Comments »



The Music Lovers

The Music Lovers

Monday, September 7th, 2009

I keep stopping myself since watching this and being like, “wait have I really finally seen that movie now?” because, to be honest, it didn’t really strike me the way, after years of wanting desperately to see it, I expected it to. My mum has always called this one the most awful movies she had ever seen and that, combined with its seeming hard-to-findness, had kind of given it some kind of cachet for me that maybe no film could live up to.

I’m inclined to go with one of the first IMDb reviews that came up for me when I visited its page while watching, that simply stated that it had many boring moments but many brilliant ones too. I talked to my mum since watching it and found out that I correctly guessed the exact moment which for her was the “too far” point, a moment during a final scene in a mental asylum that she described, 36 years later, almost perfectly. I can’t deny that the best images in this movie are truly that vivid and memorable but I think that fact speaks volumes more than I could guess. I think, too, the real impact of this movie for those who would react in such a way is that it genuinely begins and continues for almost a whole hour as a perfectly decent musical biography … tamer even than Milos Forman’s Amadeus. Any nauseating sensations until Ken Russell really piles on the makeup come from dizzying camerawork and editing. It’s a movie I would certainly watch again and would almost certainly benefit from a freshly scrubbed up DVD or Blu-Ray release. This was a very worn VHS copy, though I must admit when you get those long forgotten tracking lines on a movie as infamous as this it kinda adds to the experience.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews | 1 Comment »



Che: Part One / Two

Che: Part One / Two

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Though this certainly isn’t a movie I’ll be returning to any time soon, like a lot of Steven Soderbergh’s less mainstream efforts, I find it pretty easy to admire. When the two parts here were merged from “The Argentine” and “Guerrilla” to simply “Che”, it of course became subject to my “if you use a definitive title, you better be definitive” rule – and I also wondered how the two parts would differ … would they differ, even, in tone and substance, eg, and should I review them as separate entities?

Well, I was pleasantly surprised. The work as a whole is pretty definitive. Benicio Del Toro is Che and I can forgive the length of the whole thing because it kind of turns it into an endurance test. You’re mentally exhausted by the end of watching both parts in succession as I did, and I believe you should be. The parts do feel very much like separate films but also work perfectly well watched as a whole. Clearly the biggest difference between the two parts is that one deals in success while the other deals in failure; the latter being much more subdued and with far less dialogue than the first part.

The ending is powerful, a POV view of Che’s very last moments on this plane of existence – one feels almost like the audience itself is being put out of its misery, so much does it feel as though we’ve followed each one of the hundreds of days accounted for in title cards. I’ll admit I know little of the history involved here, and one of the failings of the movie I found was that either it plain didn’t clearly enough explain the context or it never engaged me enough for me to pick up on it. This isn’t a front to back telling of Che’s life, focusing more in the separate films on his greatest triumph and his final failure. But there are nuggets of wisdom imparted in the dialogue, and it certainly left me wanting to know more. Technically I can’t fault it, and though it’s not entirely my cup of tea it shows that Soderbergh is still a guy who makes a movie pretty much exactly what it should be.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews | No Comments »



Mommie Dearest

Mommie Dearest

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

“… Jesus Christ.”

Well, if nothing else, this is an unforgettable experience. I didn’t know much about this movie at all until only recently when a little birdy piqued my interest without so much as even mentioning the stunning young performance by Mara Hobel, who plays the young Christina Crawford for a much larger portion of the movie than I would’ve expected.

If there’s a problem, it’s that though Faye Dunaway is undeniably fascinating in the title role as Joan Crawford, she’s still Faye Dunaway and not Joan Crawford. I don’t know if that quite makes sense to anyone else. The movie opens with a series of shots of fragments of her body and face, and they convey an impression of Crawford that is almost creepily convincing … until the reveal of the face, which belongs to Faye Dunaway. Maybe it’s because I’ve not seen any of Crawford’s movies outside of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (not a bad preparation for watching this, incidentally), but I’d count Dunaway as as great a movie star as Crawford … and for me that kind of got in the way somehow.

Henry Mancini’s score is great, as is the actress who plays the older Christina. It’s a little TV-ish … I’m almost inclined to recommend the Shirley Temple biopic I watched recently as a perfect double bill companion, though the two couldn’t be more different in mood. It’s a movie I’ll certainly watch again and probably even add to my DVD collection sometime. It really is perfectly encapsulated by that quote I began with, lol, it’s another I’d really rather just say, “Just see it!” than strain to fill 3 paragraphs over.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews | No Comments »



Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story

Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

In the hopes of enhancing my enjoyment of the remaining films in my little Shirley Temple “season” lol … okay, the planned programme was delayed for technical reasons … I decided to finally watch this that’s been gathering dust in my room for quite some time. I was immediately more interested when I saw director Nadia Tass’ name in the credits but couldn’t quite remember why – looking up on the IMDb I was reminded, she did two of the American Girl movies including the best one, Samantha, and the even better (non-American-Girl) Amy.

Being TV bound, this production is closer in quality to the American Girl movies than anything, but that’s not bad company to be in. The script feels like it’s really just been culled from snippets of memories and anecdotes (a book by Shirley is credited as the source) and really just breezes through the more notable movies with occasional dips into her homelife which is almost clichéd, daddy spending her money, mommy being stage mommy, brothers being brothers.

I can’t imagine any actress could’ve done a better job than Ashley Rose Orr as Shirley. There’s something kind of tacky and cheap I find about movies like this from the outset (especially when they’re made for TV) and there’s something inherently “wrong” in seeing a young actress in the 21st century in those costumes in full colour*, not to mention how ridiculous it would be easy for the then 10-year-old Orr to feel prancing around in them, but she does it all, from the dancing to the “Good Ship Lollipop” (doing all her own singing), at times (particularly with the singing) almost startlingly well. The faithful reproduction of the movie sets etc, especially considering it’s a TV production, deserves mention too. At times if you caught in in your peripheral vision you’d almost be forgiven for thinking a colourized version of the real thing was on. For what it is, I really can’t fault it, and I personally enjoyed it more than a couple of the actual movies.

* Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with it – but at a time when just about every day now I read about someone somewhere going crazy about pre-teens being oversexualised, I feel like the only way to beat them is to join them.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews | No Comments »



The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

The most extraordinary thing about this movie to me is the humanity in it – the kind of humanity that it would be so easy to think insensitive and to exclude from such a story. Almost from the very moment “Jean-Do” realises his condition, we’re laughing with him at the strangest things even while sharing his most private despair. It’s often said when tragedy strikes how, “it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” or words to that effect. There’s a weird sense in which, here – and this can’t help but come out the wrong way – it couldn’t have happened to a more perfect guy, a fashionista who didn’t know what life was; and there couldn’t be a more perfect director than Julian Schnabel with his background and style to find this odd tone in the story.

It’s impossible to be insensitive about locked-in syndrome; the hard thing is in building the life and reality around it. I don’t know if that makes sense; I wish I had more time to write this review, I guess, but this weekend’s busy. In any case, that’s why I only just made one final adjustment in my Oscar predix and I’m rooting for Schnabel in the directing category; and not just in retrospect for Basquiat (which I for one loved) as I’d expected.

I was really surprised by just how much of the movie is seen through Jean-Do’s one eye – it’s really amazing how consistently interesting the whole thing is in the visual department despite this. It’s just a unique, compelling, and surprisingly funny movie I can’t wait to watch again in less hurried a fashion than “must watch before the Oscars!” lol.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in 5 hearts, Movie Reviews | No Comments »



La Môme aka La Vie En Rose aka The Passionate Life of Edith Piaf

La Môme aka La Vie En Rose aka The Passionate Life of Edith Piaf

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

“You’re playing with your life.”
“So? You’ve got to play with something.”

I remember seeing the trailer for this, seems like ages ago now, before anyone was really talking about it much at all, and I was really excited despite, I realise even more now having seen it, not really being such a huge fan of Edith Piaf, and not really knowing all that much about her life. And though I’d seen Marion Cotillard in a lot of stuff, like Innocence and more recently A Good Year, she’d never struck me either as a particularly outstanding actress nor, as here, as knock-out beautiful as she is.

It’s a beautiful film that kind of closes in on the sorrow in Piaf’s life, cutting in between her close to death and at two stages of her childhood (played by two absolutely wonderful girls both rightly given more screentime than I expected), with her in her prime scattered in between. At the end, an interviewer asks her about each phase we’ve seen: “What advice would you give a woman/a young girl/a child?” to which her every answer is “Love.” The structure first strikes one as jumpy, but the more I think about it now, the more phenomenally coherent I find it. To someone who knew so little about, basically, “what was she so sad about?”, the delivery of information is perfect.

Marion Cotillard is as perfect as “they” say. I really didn’t expect it, and much as I’ll love it if Julie Christie gets the Oscar, Cotillard’s performance is simply so much more. It’s in the later scenes of Piaf’s life that my heart simply drops out of my chest at how much Cotillard vanishes in the role. The make-up, of course, helps; but it’s a two-way effort of make-up, Cotillard working with it as much as it works with her. It’s truly astonishing.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in 5 hearts, Movie Reviews | No Comments »



« Older Entries