Movie Review: The Velvet Underground (2021)

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Dig the scene. In the middle of the 1960s, a former New York Polish wedding and social hall nicknamed The Dom could for weeks at a time be the musical residency of The Velvet Underground as they played night after night with the experimental films of Andy Warhol and company projected larger-than-life on the wall behind them. Colorful, spinning psychedelic lights that bounced off surfaces in all directions were usually operated by the first person who volunteered when Warhol asked if anyone knew how to work the equipment. Occasionally this led to mishaps where bulbs broke and spotlights fell from the balcony when they were operated by someone with more confidence and amphetamines than any real technical know-how. 

Ignoring this, on the ballroom floor below, patrons danced – not just people, but a wide cross-section of East Coasters. Filling The Dom, you could find bikers, drag queens, juvenile delinquents, Harvard professors, art collectors, poets, leftover Beats who hadn't gone west to San Francisco, the kind of arty junkies who flooded in and out of The Factory throughout the decade, future “Chelsea Girls,” as well as Warhol's influential friends like Jackie Kennedy and Walter Cronkite. On a given evening, they'd be there side-by-side, milling and dancing next to some broken lights, next to someone with broken dreams, listening to some intentionally broken chords as they struggled not to break amid the overwhelm of polka dots, spirals, mazes, and avant-garde imagery going on around them.

It was a scene of too much too-muchness. But strip away the visual spectacle and "anti-elite elite" hobnobbing, just focus on the sound, and the same can be said for the music of the Underground. A sort of dissonant bubble-gum rockabilly filled with viola strings that sounded like saws, drums straight out of Bo Diddley,  the droning, deliberate delivery of guest vocalist Nico, a searing guitar, and stream-of-consciousness lyrics about drugs, sex, and the New York streets outside, the sound alone was brutal, beautiful, bold, brilliant, and played on all the senses at once. 

With so much to take in, is it any wonder it didn't last? Is it any wonder it was chaos? And is it any wonder that it still sounds so fresh – so much like the act of creativity in process – that it still inspires us fifty-five years later?

Seeking to not only encapsulate and explore the roots and history of both the band and the scene from the people who lived to tell the tale but also do so in a way that brings a night at The Dom or The Factory to viewers watching it today, with “The Velvet Underground,” director Todd Haynes has released his first full-length musical documentary. And fittingly, especially from a man who once told the Karen Carpenter story with Barbie dolls and made the nonlinear, arty film “I'm Not There” about Bob Dylan, it's much more avant-garde than it is VH1 Behind the Music.

It opens with dueling yet complementary narratives of The Velvet Underground's own version of Wilson and Love, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, and Page and Plant. In Haynes' film, portraits of the band's eventual founders Lou Reed and John Cale as emotionally and creatively frustrated young artists emerge, which foreshadow both their future promise as well as the way that their two titanic personalities will only temporarily harmonize in mutual dissonance before they can hold that note no longer.

Paying the most attention to those two figures, with the scales tipping more in favor of the man who was with the band the longest in Reed, the documentary chronicles the way they came with ample baggage from vastly different backgrounds before impossibly finding one another in New York. Reed, then working as a fast songwriter and musician for hire, first collaborated with the Welsh-born multi-instrumentalist on an insanely catchy forgotten dance single called “The Ostrich,” but rather than a one-off thing, their passion for improvisational composition bonded the two right from the start.

While Reed, who sought inspiration in poets like Ginsberg and Rimbaud, longed to translate his raw, gritty, profane poetry into rock hits in a way similar to The Rolling Stones, Cale loved experimenting with new modes of expression using tones, drones, and dissonance, and spent his time studying with the avant-garde musicians of the day. Bonded by their otherness, their loathing of the mainstream, and determination to go against the status quo, once they got together with guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Maureen “Mo” Tucker (replacing Angus MacLise), they sought to bring high art to the gutter, and still make it something people wanted to hear, whether they could dance to it or not.

From the in-name-only Warhol produced “Banana Album” with Nico to Reed eventually firing Warhol (without the band's input) so they could go on to push the limits even further with “White Light/White Heat” and more, this lineup was as revelatory as it was combustible.

Ego, attitudes, communication breakdown, and infighting – all accelerated by drugs, insecurity, posturing, jealousy, uncertainty, and the era – in the film, we're given an engrossing “he said," "she heard," "I think," "you recall,” overview of the band. And along the way, Haynes worries less about fact-checking, follow-ups, or sourcing certain claims than he does in making his “Velvet Underground” vibrate on a darkly intoxicating, dissonant frequency that we might've expected to come from Cale's viola or Morrison's guitar.

Like something straight out of The Dom, it's filled with art, imagery, and colorful flashing lights to the point that it should come with a warning for those with epilepsy or migraine light sensitivity. While admittedly, there are times I longed for more details about certain songs (“Heroin” gets the lion's share of the screen-time) as well as the post-Nico and Cale albums or more analysis of the personnel changes, it's all told with so much affection, color, and vigor that it immediately draws you in with its too much too-muchness. An exhaustively covered period in music and pop culture journalism, Haynes' version of the events adds more humanity, humor, and warmth to the proceedings than one might expect when contrasted by the coolly detached handling of the Velvets in past docs.

Feeling like we're with the band rather than just dryly reverential of Warhol, Cale, or Reed, there are no villains in “The Velvet Underground.” To this end, I applaud the decision here to invite Reed's sister to weigh in about the often biased chronicling of the shock treatment era in her brother's adolescence. Similarly, the film gives Nico more respect as a poet and professional than she normally receives, and treats Warhol as more of a friend, facilitator, and minor figure rather than the driving force behind the band, in a way that feels right and overdue. Also welcome is the way Haynes refuses to gloss over the drugs or the misogyny of The Factory that treated women as currency where their value came only in their physical appearance. Even if the latter gets a brief mention, it's reassuring that he's unwilling to simply romanticize all things Warhol as other filmmakers have done in the past and instead allow some of the degradation and darkness – incidentally the two things Reed liked in sex – to rightfully permeate this chronicling of events.

A labor of love by a filmmaker who's so enamored of the band and era that one of his earliest big studio movies for Miramax was the unfairly maligned glam rock opus “Velvet Goldmine,” “The Velvet Underground” is a documentary that, in tribute to its subject, is as artful as a film as it is experimental. Neither as dryly objective as a more academically minded PBS doc nor as full of insider-only information that those unfamiliar with the band won't still be able to appreciate, it's a seductive mix of both approaches plus something wholly its own. And to Haynes' great credit, “The Velvet Underground” plays halfway between a night of excess and broken glass at The Dom and the after-party where you leave the lights and the dance floor behind you to just hang – somewhere in NY, somewhere underground, somewhere dangerous – with the band.

 

Text ©2021, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review - Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band (2019)

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"Whatever happens," Bob Dylan told The Hawks when the folk singer went electric in 1965, "don't stop playing." A maxim that helped the guys hired to back him up keep playing through scores of boos, jeers, and occasionally projectiles launched onstage, when Bob Dylan thinks back on his bandmates in Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, he says, "they were gallant knights for sticking behind me."

As we learn in Daniel Roher's documentary, however, it turns out that one knight in particular — Robbie Robertson — had been living that adage since he joined his first band at thirteen, just weeks after he discovered rock 'n roll music in a vivid experience he calls "his own personal big bang." Quickly evolving beyond the few chords he'd learned from his maternal ancestors at the Six Nations Indian Reserve, the guitar prodigy went from playing in a Toronto based band to writing songs for Ronnie Hawkins at fifteen to joining his backing band The Hawks one year later. When he auditioned for Hawkins, he promised the "Bo Diddley" singer "you'll never have to tell me to work harder," and Hawkins knew from experience that this was true.

Learning the ropes of the band and the road from drummer Levon Helm  —  who Robertson calls so gifted that "he just seemed to glow in the dark"  — shortly into his tenure with The Hawks, he and Helm took on the responsibility of hiring new musicians to join the group including Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson. Soon surpassing their leader, the five Hawks eventually went off on their own. And after a detour serving as knights of Bob Dylan's electrical round table, they reunited once more, moving into an ugly big pink house in Woodstock, New York (chosen by Dylan's manager Albert Grossman) where they recorded their legendary 1968 debut Music from Big Pink, not as The Hawks this time, but The Band.

Chosen both for its lack of pretension and the fact that they were getting known around town by the same description, the story of this band of five brothers is given the premium documentary treatment in Canadian filmmaker Roher's first feature length work (beyond one sixty-three minute doc he made a few years earlier). Lovingly crafted, it's a wonderful stepbrother to one of the all-time greatest rock docs in the form of Martin Scorsese's 1978 release The Last Waltz, which chronicled the final concert The Band ever performed on Thanksgiving night at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom in 1976.

Sharing one particularly memorable Hawkins related anecdote with Waltz, in Once Were Brothers, Scorsese talks about the reason he made his doc the way that he did. Choosing to shoot the band from the stage and largely ignore the the audience, Brothers executive producer Scorsese notes that he wanted to tell the story of The Band through the way that they related to one another as men and musicians.

Once Were Brothers is missing Waltz's communal feel, unintentionally, yes, as sadly there are only two remaining members of The Band still alive (Robertson and Hudson) but also, largely by design. In a way, perhaps it's best appreciated as not only a companion to Waltz but also a continuation of Robertson's critically acclaimed bestselling memoir Testimony (which I found myself requesting from the library as soon as I pressed stop on the film). Although it doesn't take away from the beautiful craftsmanship of the movie, which features thoughtful interviews with subjects ranging from Hawkins and Dylan to Scorsese and Springsteen, rare performance videos, and gorgeous, candid, often unreleased archival photos (mostly shot by their first and most vital photographer Elliott Landy), its scope is largely limited to Robertson as well as his contemplative wife Dominique.

With the revelation that Garth Hudson was interviewed for the doc but "for reasons that are difficult to discuss," Roher explains he couldn't use the footage in the final cut, the film's production notes offer more questions than answers about its overall construct. An exciting discovery as a Band fan nonetheless, I'm really hoping that Hudson's scenes will be included as Blu-ray bonus material, along with a tie-in book featuring all seven hundred pages of interview transcripts Roher compiled, since only sixty were used in the one hundred and two minute film. (I mean, talk about a testimony right there!)

Wisely subtitling the documentary Robbie Robertson and The Band to acknowledge its Robertson-centric perspective, at the start of the movie produced not only by Scorsese but also Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Robertson seems as wistful as he is resigned. Playing in The Band was "a beautiful thing," Robertson acknowledges, before following it up with "so beautiful it went up in flames," as he ponders their inevitable, tragic end.

And while it would've benefited from additional points-of-view, especially as their relationships grew more tempestuous due to alcohol and substance abuse — resulting in car wrecks, tour drama, and loss of creativity — Robertson is such a charismatic and articulate interviewee that Roher should consider making a follow-up film devoted to his post-Band career as a solo artist, film composer, and music producer. Including a fascinating anecdote by Springsteen about the first time he heard Music from Big Pink (and had what sounds like his own big bang experience with the record) as well as a thrilling oral history from Robertson on the origins of their beloved hit "The Weight," this substantive film delivers the goods.

Instantly reminding me of Ernesto Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries description that, rather than "a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic," it tells the tale of "lives running parallel for a time with similar hopes and convergent dreams," the moral of Roher's film is one of perseverance, passion, as well as loyalty, and brotherhood indeed.

Having played together over a sixteen year period where, even at the toughest of times, music was the glue holding them together, Once Were Brothers puts us right there — not only onstage with The Band but offstage through Robertson's eyes  — where, no matter what happened, they kept right on playing, until they finally had to stop.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Echo in the Canyon (2018)

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The second film released so far this year that was at least partially inspired by Jacques Demy's 1969 English language debut Model Shop, just like Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Echo in the Canyon is a love letter to L.A. in the 1960s.

And while Hollywood turned fact into fiction, as a documentary, Echo deals strictly with the facts. Or if not facts then the stories people have told themselves often enough to become facts, as Wallflowers front man Jakob Dylan discovers when he interviews landmark figures in the music scene who created the iconic California sound responsible for luring so many people from all over to the hills of Hollywood like a siren song.

Talking to the living members of The Byrds, The Mamas and The Papas, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, and more as well as next generation artists Tom Petty and Jackson Browne, Echo in the Canyon is at its most compelling best when it allows the voices of the era — including British imports Eric Clapton and Ringo Star — to speak for themselves and control the narrative.

Filling Echo with the gorgeous sounds of some of the Laurel Canyon scene's most definitive musical poems, we learn the story behind a few of the era's ubiquitous hits, including one confession by Michelle Phillips about her affair with bandmate Denny Doherty, which inspired her other bandmate — her husband John Phillips — to write "Go Where You Wanna Go."

Wanting to pay tribute to these songs and artists (and undoubtedly save a bundle on music rights fees) in a modern day narrative that is unfortunately far less engrossing than Dylan's interviews, the film follows the passionate Jakob Dylan as he gathers other musicians and records new covers of the songs he then performs in a live show.

A veritable jumble that has us jump from an engrossing interview with somebody like the great Brian Wilson to Dylan performing "In My Room" with Fiona Apple onstage and/or in the studio, the entertaining, if admittedly strained work, tries to cover too much ground and — like wind chimes blowing in the breeze — sounds lovely in the moment but fails to leave a lasting impression.

Nonetheless well-intentioned, Echo in the Canyon feels like it should've been made into two separate films — the first, a historical look at the music scene and the second, an affectionate concert filled with talented artists like Beck and Norah Jones celebrating the music they love in song.

Underplaying some of the big conflicts of the era including the Vietnam War and the protest anthems that came out of the late 1960s and ignoring some of the major voices of the era including the glaringly overlooked Joni Mitchell and The Doors, Echo, it seems, protects egos by picking and choosing the stories it wants to tell.

Directed by the former President of Columbia Records, Andrew Slater, who dreamed up the idea with Dylan after the two viewed Model Shop, which they felt was the visual equivalent of what The Mamas and The Papas or The Beach Boys sounded like, the film works very well as a promotional video for its catchy, star-studded soundtrack. As such, I defy anyone to watch Echo and not instantly become a new fan of Jade Castrinos, who, in accompanying Dylan, sings her absolute heart out.

However, brief scenes where Dylan sits around with artists and talks about their influences feel forced, as though they're eating up screen time that would've been better utilized by the original artists as they reveal their own influences and experiences writing, recording, and sharing songs with their neighbors in the artistically welcoming environment.

Though it feels like a California hangout movie, in the end, Echo in the Canyon is a missed opportunity to either delve more deeply into the subject at its core or focus purely on the impact that the music had on generations of other artists.

Anchored by the admirably knowledgeable Dylan and Slater, Echo shines brightest in its interviews and in some truly rousing performances. Yet instead of dividing the chorus from the melody to separate the music of the past from the sounds of the future, Slater's film plays like a passionate cover band album. A pleasant but empty experience, Echo in the Canyon brings back the memory of a concert you've never been to before but it could've — and indeed should've — been so much more.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Nico, 1988 (2017)

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"Looking for a sound that isn't a sound" or something she heard at the end of World War II as a child that sounded like defeat – when she isn't shooting up in bathrooms or playing gigs in Europe with a band of misfits – the now nearly fifty year old Nico a.k.a Christa Päffgen spends her time wandering around Europe with a recorder, searching for the past.

A recurring theme of this contemplative slice-of-life docudrama, with its square format and muted color scheme, Italian writer/director Susanna Nicchiarelli transports viewers to the late 1980s right along with Christa (played by Trine Dyrholm) as she tries to balance past wrongs in the present and set things right for the future by reuniting with the son she'd lost custody of decades earlier.

An above average passion project that's dependent upon the viewer having more than just a cursory familiarity with its subject, Nico, 1988 jumps over the most publicized period of the icon's life with Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground when she was famous mostly for her legendary beauty and the men who shared her art or bed.

More than just Warhol's Muse or Lou Reed's Femme Fatale, the filmmaker makes her point clear shortly into Nico, 1988 that the Nico we knew doesn't live here anymore when, in the first of several interviews which focus solely on her time with The Velvet Underground, Päffgen tells the radio host her name isn't Nico but Christa.

Painting a portrait of – as Nicchiarelli explains in the press notes – "one the most beautiful women in the world who finally becomes happy when she gets rid of her beauty," as well as "an uncompromising artist who finds satisfaction in her art only after having lost most of her fans," Nico, 1988 replaces that era's oft-depicted male gaze with a female one twice over.

Living a simpler life in Manchester, when she isn't on the road, the Christa we meet (whom Dyrholm and Nicchiarell based on extensive biographical research and witness accounts from those who knew her best) is a conflicted artist with as many ideas as she has regrets.

Persuaded to try kicking the habit once again by Richard, the manager who loves her from afar (played by a terrifically understated John Gordon Sinclair), the two track down her beloved son Ari (Sandor Funtek), who shares some of the same demons as his mother despite years apart.

Having established early on that there are at least two – if not more – sides to her subject, Nicchiarelli wisely opens up the admittedly loose narrative to let us see Christa/Nico through the eyes of those in her orbit, from her bandmates (including a violinist played by Anamaria Marinca whose storyline is fascinating enough to inspire a follow-up film) to her manager.

In a riveting turn by Dyrholm (who performs all of the singer's vocals), as much as we see Nico come alive in her passionate musical performances, now that she's filled with more purpose than ever before as both a musician and mother, it's with Ari where Christa truly lights up.

A film of moods and feeling as well as a distinct time and place, which is easily attributable to the flawless '80s visuals of frequent Céline Sciamma cinematographer Crystel Fournier, while it's far less structured than traditional biopics, Nicchiarelli's Nico is exceptionally well made to the point that it would be easy to mistake some scenes for authentic footage.

Collaborating with the Italian band Gatto Ciliegia contro il Grande Freddo, the film includes some of Nico’s best known numbers including a haunting rendition of "Nature Boy," along with new works in the spirit of the singer that, to the band's credit, manage to blend in seamlessly with the rest of her catalog.

Weaving in a beautiful through-line about Christa's search for the sound (or gateway) from her past as a young girl in Berlin who could've taken an altogether different path as opposed to her time spent with Warhol, although it's inevitably less interesting the less you know about the rock goddess, in Nico, 1988 Nicchiarelli and Dyrholm do their best to give viewers a Christa we won't forget.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Hearts Beat Loud (2018)

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Having flirted with original songs and musical moments in his two previous pictures – perhaps most notably in the moving ensemble dramady more deserving of a bigger audience, I'll See You in My Dreams – writer/director Brett Haley decided to fully embrace the genre that made him fall in love with theatrical storytelling back in high school with this summer's feel great indie, Hearts Beat Loud.

Sure to be a word-of-mouth hit, although it's not a traditional musical in the song and dance sense of the word, much like John Carney's recent works Once, Begin Again, and Sing Street, Hearts Beat Loud is centered on the art of making music.

However, much like taking a song we've heard before and putting it in an entirely new key, the fact the characters in the film are father and daughter as opposed to simply two members of a band sets this effort from Haley and co-writer Marc Basch apart from the pack.

Giving it added urgency, Hearts is set during the last summer that Nick Offerman's widowed father Frank Fisher has to spend with his brainy seventeen year old only daughter, Sam (played by Dope's Kiersey Clemons in a star making role) before she's set to trade Red Hook, New York for med school at UCLA.

More than just a mere hobby, as explained by Haley in the press notes, music is Frank and Sam's preferred “mode of communication.” In impromptu jam sessions, Frank's guitar, Sam's keyboard and the lyrics she scribbles in her journal (the same way her rocker turned record store owner father did before her) allow the two speak “the language they know best.”

An obsessive High Fidelity level music encyclopedia, since Frank is clearly the more enthusiastic of the two, initially we get the sense that Sam might just be indulging her father in his favorite ritual. But once we hear her record and mix the song they'd pieced together like a puzzle, we understand not only how tremendously talented the seemingly introverted overachiever is but also just how much she thrives on a musical outlet because it gives her the opportunity to process thoughts to her father she otherwise might not.

Having met a beautiful aspiring artist (played by American Honey star Sasha Lane), it isn't until Frank helps Sam decipher the lyrics she's written which she sings with such earnest soulfulness that she realizes she's fallen in love.

Enjoying her new summer romance even though she's set to leave in the fall, Sam's future is complicated even more after Frank submits the film's infectious title track to Spotify and it begins to catch on.

While, like Once, Hearts is ultimately light on plot, there's much more going on in the film than meets the eye. Perhaps best epitomized near the beginning of the movie – given that we're first introduced to Sam in a class discussion on medical symptoms of the heart right before she meets her love interest – in addition to showcasing the creative process, in Hearts, Haley pays tribute to the way that life inspires art.

Filled with symbolism, the film makes the most of its character driven plot in big ways as Frank faces a future without Sam and/or his failing record store (both of which Haley and Basch inform us are approximately the same age) or small ones as witnessed in a lovely sequence where Sam learns to ride a bike, move forward, and let go.

Complete with a standout soundtrack, the movie boasts four terrific original songs by its composer Keegan DeWitt, who much like Basch has collaborated with Haley on his last two films which premiered at Sundance, much like Hearts.

One of my favorite films of 2018 so far, Hearts Beat Loud achieves the darn near impossible feat of telling the story of a relationship between parents and teens that's not only positive in its tone but also feels real.

And while a great deal of the credit for that goes to the believable chemistry between its two stars, it's buoyed by great character performances from its supporting players throughout, including Toni Collette as Frank's landlord with romantic potential, Ted Danson as his local bar owning friend, plus Haley's I'll See You in My Dreams leading lady Blythe Danner as Frank's dementia laden mother.

Reminiscent of his Cheers days, as the purveyor of bartender wisdom, Danson steals scenes with ease. And although admittedly some of Danson (as well as Sasha Lane's) quotable lines of advice could qualify as signposting – which in most movies could threaten a viewer's suspension-of-disbelief – the reason Hearts gets away with it is owed as much to its genre as its plot.

At a pivotal crossroads in both of their lives, it's safe to assume that both father and daughter could use some guidance. Plus there's something absolutely musical about the brevity of lines such as "you have to be brave before you can be good." And who knows? Their lines just might end up in a song so good that, as with Hearts you'll find yourself wanting to sing along.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Jersey Boys (2014)

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Midway through the performance of their first number one song, the members of The Four Seasons led by the angelic voiced Frankie Valli (played by John Lloyd Young in his Tony award-winning role) momentarily stop singing to break through cinema’s fourth wall to address the camera — and by extension the viewer — directly.

It's an innovative if admittedly stagy technique that's often employed on the Netflix series House of Cards to mixed results. However in the hands of Jersey Boys director Clint Eastwood, it livens up the otherwise over-rehearsed feel of the film adaptation of the long-running biographical Broadway show with a rock 'n roll version of a Shakespearean soliloquy.

Narrative experimentation is so effective here that — when you consider the fact that Boys centers on the dueling memories of four very different bandmates — it’s a shame that changes in point-of-view weren’t used much more often to better connect us with the characters and conflicts, especially given Jersey’s fluid relationship with time.

Likewise, the perceived spontaneity that occurs when the Boys temporarily break free from Jersey's regimented stage show choreography helps transports us away from the production’s overt performance pieces by supplanting it with the same street corner improvisation that initially inspired the sound of the Seasons from the start.

Although fortunately it's far more successful than early critical reaction would lead you to believe, Jersey kicks things off on an uneven footing while embarking on the same uphill battle that all musicals do when trying to be more than just gorgeously filmed versions of preexisting shows.

And given that Jersey is a global success eight years running, Eastwood and company certainly had their work cut out for them while attempting to make something not only old but also very familiar seem new again.

Immediately identifiable, Boys is filled with the infectious soundtrack of the a capella doo wop meets early rock and roll magical musical blend that the Boys made their own in their goal to be New Jersey's greatest cultural export since Frank Sinatra.

And while it’s sure to make you leave singing “Sherry,” the film chronicles the humble beginnings of neighborhood tough Tommy DeVito (a terrific Vincent Piazza), who looks after the golden voiced young Valli as a favor to the local mobster Gyp DeCarlo (Christopher Walken) who loves listening to him perform the Italian classics cherished by his mother.

Explaining that the only way out of their perceived deadend life was through the military, the mob, or fame, the guys aim for and eventually achieve the latter two when in the 1950s, bowling pinsetter (and future Oscar winner) Joe Pesci put them in contact with up-and-coming "Short Shorts" songwriter Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen).

With homebody Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) rounding out the group, the guys do the rounds singing backup on a number of records until Gaudio locks himself in his room out of desperation before reemerging days later with the quartet’s first hit, "Sherry."

While it's missing the razzle dazzle of Chicago and Dreamgirls, Jersey aims for the same realism of Walk the Line and Rent, unfortunately not realizing that what we want more than just toe-tapping tunes and a few edgy and/or funny anecdotes is to be genuinely drawn into the journey undertaken by these Boys.

And by not letting us get to know the guys on a deeper level than just their harmonious swagger, Eastwood's film misses the invaluable emotional connection needed to hook us into the Jersey world truly inhabited by The Four Seasons.

While the film does strike a chord when it hits reset midway through and breaks up the band — causing the Seasons to scatter in a million directions — Jersey doesn't sustain our interest for long.

Speeding through the toll their ‘60s success and subsequent failure took on the men's professional and personal lives, Jersey Boys instead fixates on trying to fit the broken puzzle pieces of The Four back together by the end of the film for a rousing closing credits number worthy of a Broadway curtain call.

Had those working behind-the-scenes (including the film's two editors as well as the stage musical authors turned scripters Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice) broken up the chronology or shifted focus to give us the same sequence from the perspective of another source, Jersey might not have had to work so hard to make try and elicit the response it desired during the film's dramatic highs and lows.

For example, in what should have been an impactful life-altering event late into the picture (regarding one of Valli's loved ones), the payoff comes off as predictable and cliched rather than appropriately heartbreaking given that we barely knew the character in question until they were re-introduced onscreen just to tug at our heartstrings as if on cue.

Desperately in need of the cinematic equivalent of a stroll on the boardwalk to give the claustrophobically insulated, stagy film some much-needed fresh air, Jersey remains a likable, good-natured piece of Broadway movie musical nostalgia nonetheless. And thankfully, a few of its flaws are smoothed over by clever decision to combine the group’s sing-along worthy hits with some boldly postmodernist touches.

An above average achievement for anyone else given that the acting and the ambiance elevates it from its by-the-numbers paradigm, while it undoubtedly would've impressed us much more if made by a relative newcomer, Eastwood's reputation precedes him in this case in making the result a double-edged sword for the filmmaker.

Though it doesn't hold up next to some of his most extraordinary achievements from the haunting chamber piece Million Dollar Baby to the symphonic brilliance of Letters From Iwo Jima, Jersey Boys still warms us with the comfort food like rhythms of a pop song built on the same foundation that's swayed us thousands of times before.

However, while we're able to sing along with the guys from the first chorus, we just wish the rest of the work could’ve been as catchy as the playful hook that surprised us early on and broke up the narrative for a glorious beat or two before it continued on in familiar 4x4 time.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

TV on DVD Review: China Beach - Season 1 & 2

Now Available to Own   
 
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“Reflections of the way life used to be…” may have been the pitch-perfect Supremes tune that led viewers back into the world of Vietnam via TV’s China Beach from 1988 to 1992 but upon watching the series today on DVD, I realized these reflections have inherited a second meaning with time.

More precisely, for this viewer who was just seven years old when the show began (but distinctly remembers watching with her parents anyway), taking in China Beach today from the point of view of an adult offered up “Reflections of the way” television used to be.

Simply put, in an era of Full House and Knight Rider, when you look back on China Beach, you realize that – much like Northern Exposure and Twin Peaks – it’s a miracle that it ever found its way onto the air.

While basic and premium cable are the exception, even in today’s TV Renaissance dubbed the Golden Age of Television, you still have to wonder if network executives would still make the same decision to order a series run given their overreliance on singing competitions and police procedurals.

Needless to say the fact that it was on network air over twenty-five years ago is proof that this Golden Age Renaissance television hyperbole is nothing new. Exceptional television series come around once in a blue moon but in the era of China Beach we were in the midst of a creative high that was all the more admirable because (unlike the otherwise brilliant Northern and Peaks) China Beach was steeped in truth as the wounds of Vietnam hadn’t yet healed and probably never would to the fullest degree but certainly not a mere decade after the remaining troops were brought back home.

Honestly, the most daring thing about China Beach wasn’t that it focused on Vietnam as in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Hollywood had given us countless cinematic narratives about the war from Coming Home to Platoon and in fact just one year earlier, CBS had kicked off their own visceral, emotionally charged Vietnam based series Tour of Duty in 1987.

But instead of cashing in the recent Best Picture winner Platoon with a male dominated combat plotline, China Beach gave us something we had yet to see thoroughly explored onscreen about any war. Namely co-creators John Sacret Young and William Broyles Jr. served up a series which primarily focused on the role of women during wartime with the action set at an Evacuation Hospital on Da Nang’s My Khe beach that was nicknamed China Beach in Vietnam.

While women had definitely played a part in earlier battles, the fact that Vietnam coincided with Women’s Lib made this all the riper for exploration in a democratic yet largely female-centric narrative that brought some previously unknown points-of-view and realities of the war to American living rooms like never before.

Centered around a conflicted, hard-working Army nurse named Colleen McMurphy (Dana Delany) who spent her days and nights dodging mortar attacks and patching up wounded soldiers, civilians and locals, China Beach is steeped in authenticity.

Stemming from the real-life remembrance of Broyles Jr. who recalled the calm professionalism of the brave angelic nurse he remembered swiftly going about her job (that would go onto help inspire the beautiful, brainy McMurphy along with a nurse’s eye-opening autobiography of her service), everything about China Beach feels right.

Likewise, as music played such an important role in the war – whether it was in helping vets get through the day, offering them the words they can’t come up with on their own or as just a welcome distraction from the sound of gunfire, China Beach is filled with wall-to-wall music.

Released as a complete series collection in the fall of 2013 and in individual seasonal sets starting with the first two complete seasons kicking off the 2014 new release calendar in the first week of January, StarVista Entertainment and Time Life’s China Beach discs offer multiple special features including cast interviews, episode commentary, behind-the-scenes footage and featurettes and more.

And thankfully by transferring the same memorable musical cuts that elevated some of the show’s most epic scenes, StarVista and Time Life helped preserve the magical quality of the series in its long-awaited DVD release decades later to bring Beach to life once again.

But more than just the music, it’s the people who have stayed with us thanks to an incredible cast that embodied their fully realized, human portrayals of individuals enduring highs and lows go along with their life during wartime.

And once again, whether it was in setting events during the highly publicized Tet Offensive of '68 or when a race riot almost escalates into a mini war following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. that the show really flourished by rooting the action in as much reality as possible to keep it grounded even when the events depicted are anything but.

This attention to detail was chronicled in an unprecedented way when in the powerful season two episode “Vets,” the editors intercut series footage with the onscreen recollections of the women and men who were there.

While sharing their stories, we realize that some of Beach’s most unforgettable moments were based in fact including the pilot episode’s heartbreaking, against-all-odds coincidence where a bomb-blinded victim tells the woman holding his hand about the beautiful USO singer whose photo he keeps in his pocket, not realizing the two individuals are one and the same.

Yet far from just heartbreaking, the richly layered China Beach defied its genre and subject matter multiple times per episode with some unexpectedly funny moments. Celebrating the gift of friendship, China Beach's other main interest was in applauding the ingenuity of those in 'Nam who had to think fast on their feet.

A main through-line of the series centers of creative, quick-thinking solutions that are employed to counter the unlikeliest problems from building a Virginia Woolfian “Room of One’s Own” for the women to just hang out alone without being ogled or bothered to creating a prom night in honor of so many troops that had missed their own.

Not only about the hospital, the show (which matured and grew into its own in Beach’s masterful second season), developed a signature style of laughter with tears and shocking moments melded with something bittersweet that would become the show’s trademark of an ever-changing tone that series scribe John Wells would eventually springboard off of once again when he created ER a half-decade later.

Although it was anchored by Delany’s wondrous turn, the show is augmented by a gifted ensemble of talented actors that can still be seen on television today in everything from The Good Wife to Sons of Anarchy.

Robert Picardo is an undeniable standout as the boyishly funny, sardonic drafted OB-GYN Dr. Dick Richard whose full name sums up his maturity level in the first season until the husband and father back in the United States grows up and becomes a surrogate father and “work husband” overseas.

Looking after McMurphy when she’d rather work a full week without sleep to avoid thinking about her missing pilot boyfriend whose disappearance nearly sends her to the brink of insanity, we see Dr. Richard’s priorities shift from golf and good times to fighting for his patients (including those not even wearing a uniform) and as his character deepens, so does the show.

Marg Helgenberger’s enterprising hooker/businesswoman whose tough façade covers up a painful past remains one of the show’s most enigmatic creations and her ever-changing dynamic with the rest of the characters sums up a truism about  both life in wartime (and life for an expatriate far away from home), which is that you find yourself becoming bonded to people you’d probably have nothing to do with back in the states.

Constantly challenged and constantly judged, K.C. is just one of many China Beach outsiders and one who learns that loyal friendships shouldn’t be dependent upon what someone can do for you after the sudden, devastating loss of one of Beach’s sweetest first season characters shortly into the second season.

While it takes awhile to adapt to a few of the newer cast members including Megan Gallagher’s annoyingly energetic politician’s daughter and Saigon weathergirl turned ambitious journalist Wayloo Marie Holmes and Nancy Giles’s Army DJ Frankie Bunsen, the expansion of female points-of-view from the first season is important as the amount of plot potential for season one’s aspiring singer Laurette (the amazing Chloe Webb) was minimal at best.

Still far from just centering on women including World War II no-nonsense veteran Lila Garreau (Concetta Tomei) and Elizabeth Lindsay’s hardworking Vietnamese beauty Mai, Beach is a war show after all and never lets us forget how many men served in Vietnam.

While this is best exemplified in the haunting stare of Dodger, Jeff Kober’s diehard soldier who’s been out in the bush staring death in the face one too many times to ever go home again physically or psychologically, we also see through the easygoing, practical joking façade of the likable Boonie (Brian Wimmer) who uses his smile to cover up anything he doesn’t want to talk about.

But perhaps Beach's most fascinating or at least the most certainly unsettling, memorable male character is in the form of Michael Boatman’s death registrar Beckett, who takes care of and inventories the patients that can’t be saved by Dr. Dick Richard and Colleen McMurphy.

The son of a preacher man, Beckett has let his Christian devotion take over his life and provide him with meaning in the madness. As such, he not only talks to the men who temporarily reside in his facility as though they are his buddies alive and having a Happy Hour drink in Boonie’s bar but also plays cards, asks their advice and does his best to show respect and ensure they have not died in vain.

Just one in a long line of coping mechanisms evident on the show that the vets use to try and prevent themselves from giving into the insanity of war that surrounds them, China Beach is one of the most thoroughly engrossing, ever-changing network series on broadcast television.

So arresting that in this – my first viewing of the show on its long-awaited, newly available DVD release since I originally saw it broadcast in my childhood, I was amazed by how much I was still able to remember more than twenty-five years later from memorable musical juxtapositions to character revelations.

Though the visuals are indeed dated as warned by StarVista via an onscreen notation revealing that the age of the materials might explain the flaws (and I only hope someone takes the time to restore it down the road in 1080p high definition), the impact of the series more than makes up for any photographic issue bar none.

Obviously, it goes without saying that I can’t possibly fathom what it was like for Vietnam veterans who’d been so poorly treated on their arrival home to now find their sacrifices and experiences honored on two television series on the small screen at the same time.

However as revealed in the first season DVD booklet essays, the fact that Delany was sent a soldier’s purple heart in thanks for her fiercely moving portrayal goes a long way towards summing up what having this series on the air meant to them.

In fact, the release of this monumental series to DVD at the very time that once again far too many young people are losing life and limb in faraway lands overseas during wartime makes China Beach’s debut on DVD timelier than ever, with its tales of bravery serving as a living testament to those who’ve served our country in the past and continue to do so today.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.