I'm a huge fan of the late country singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. I could listen to him everyday, all day. A lot of people I know appreciate Townes, but they tell me he's too sad to listen to for very long...I disagree. Well, if you love Townes, or even just appreciate him, or if you are interested in country music, or specifically the Texas Outlaw Country scene of the 1970s and 80s, you will probably quite enjoy Blaze. Blaze is a new film from actor/director Ethan Hawke. It's about the late country singer-songwriter Blaze Foley, a lesser known contemporary and close friend of Townes. Not a heck of a lot is known about Blaze so the film only loosely considers itself a "sort-of" biopic. It's really just creates a feeling and gives an impression that is rich and authentic. To achieve this, a good deal of the film is devoted to telling stories about Blaze, rarely allowing the audience in on Blaze's own perspective. The film dedicates itself to blatant myth building, using the spot-on incredible Charlie Sexton as Townes spinning yarns as Townes was well-known to do. It's explicit that we're being told about Blaze and Blaze is not speaking for himself. The film leaves large gaps instead of trying to fill in every aspect of Blaze's life, history, and experience. We tend to be always watching him while he's often making a spectacle of himself. A word on the casting: Hawke did very well here, using real musicians who are not actors in two of the three lead roles. Musician Ben Dickey is absolutely astonishing in his first role, as Blaze. I heard him explain in an online interview that he for the role he learned Blaze's entire 60-ish song catalogue and indeed played live on set throughout the film--most notably in the sections devoted to the entire performance and recording of Live At The Austin Outhouse album, including all the banter. Meanwhile, musician Charlie Sexton is incredible as Townes. It's uncanny; he nails Marie, and it is so exactly perfectly Townes. Alia Shawkat is terrific and rounds out and grounds the film as Sybil Rosen, Blaze's one known, longtime girlfriend whose memoir 'Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley' inspired a large portion of the film. I highly recommend this raw, beautiful sort-of, kind-of biopic. 5/5 |
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By no means am I reviewing Apocalypse Now after seeing it for the first time. I've seen the film many times, but I'm revisiting it once again. If I space it out right, by the time I rewatch this next time, it'll be like new all over again. I'm really surprised at how much seems new to me today. Strange. In any case, this film is genius. It's an absolute masterpiece, and if you've never seen it you should fix that immediately. If you don't know anything about Apocalypse Now, I guess I could at least say that it's essentially Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness retold as a Vietnam War picture. This is an important piece of American cinema. Do it. 5/5 The Mother and the Whore is Jean Eustache's 3 1/2 hour unlikely masterpiece about a love triangle during the summer of 1972, in Paris. This film is comprised of a lot of talking. Talking, talking, and more talking, and yet somehow, I was completely rapt at 9am the last day of the Telluride Film Festival this year. Like Cocksucker Blues, it took me many years to see The Mother and The Whore and it was so completely worth every second. This film transcends everything I ever thought about cinema and will remain one of the most profound movie going experiences of my life. Trust me. If you ever have the chance to catch this one, do not pass it up! 5/5 This is one of the best films I have ever seen. No, seriously. It is for real one of the best films I have ever seen. Mes Petits Amoureuses is a French coming-of-age film from the early 1970s. Young Daniel lives with his grandmother, until his mother and her new boyfriend come to visit and he goes to live with them for a year. His mother doesn't want to pay for school books, so she sends Daniel to work instead. He dabbles at a bike repair shop, but mostly he wanders around, smoking cigarettes on park benches, and watching people make out--I don't know if that sells the film at all, but it was astonishingly perfect. Mostly Daniel is fascinated by and driven to understand the mystery of girls. Jean Eustache only made two feature films in his brief career. The Mother and the Whore is widely considered his masterpiece, and while I give both 5/5 I'm more inclined to re-watch and re-watch Mes Petits...again and again... 5/5 This is a delightful film. I'm partial to, and have a personal interest in, movies about mental illness particularly bipolar/manic depression. This was of particular interest to me because it is about a parent with bipolar and about the kids of a bipolar parent. These movies tend to focus on young single people, so this was refreshing and different. Infinitely Polar Bear is a family drama about a sorta single bipolar dad struggling to raise his two daughters while his sorta wife earns her MBA in New York City. The film is set in Boston in the late 1970s and told mainly from the perspective of the two daughters. Mark Ruffalo is the heart and soul of the film, and the girls are excellent. I love Zoe Saldana, so really, this little film is stacked. I would have like the film to be a little bit longer and slower, it could have taken its time but at the same time its manic pace was more than well-suited overall. Ruffalo manages to play the manic panics, the frantic desperation, and the rages with mastery. This is not easy to pull off without veering into overly melodramatic "danger" and "violent" territory. I liked that it focused on the mania and not so much the depression. I was also so pleased to not be really scared at any point during the film. There are some reckless events, but nothing too dire and I appreciate that. That said, the film could have dug in a bit more and fleshed some things out especially in terms of race and poverty. I also highly recommend Mr. Jones starring Richard Gere as another stellar rendering of manic depression. It's quite remarkable. 4/5 Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox, UK, 1986) I'm a big Alex Cox fan. Repo Man and Straight to Hell are stellar little punk rock movies. Cox's Sid and Nancy, however, is more than that; it's a remarkable piece of cinema. Don't be mistaken, while based on real people and actual events, this is not really so much a bio-pic as a portrait of self-destruction. Cox did little research and fictionalizes quite a bit. The result is the raw and poignant story of young love through a drug and alcohol fuelled haze. Oldman and Webb are brilliant. 5/5 A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, US, 1974) This is a most exceptional example of stellar Independent American cinema--it was made with no studio money and Cassavetes mortgaged his home to make the picture. Mabel is the mother of three school aged children and wife of construction worker Nick. Mabel clearly lives with some kind of mental health issues--the specifics of which are irrelevant. After a breakdown Mabel voluntarily goes for in-patient treatment at a psychiatric hospital while Nick stays home with the kids. This film is remarkable for so many reasons not in the least the stellar performances all around. It's a raw, volatile, chaotic portrait of motherhood and of mental illness. Gena Rowlands was nominated for the Oscar and won the Golden Globe amongst others. The film was a critical success and won many awards. It is protected on the National Film Registry in the USA. 5/5 It's impossible to say how many times I have seen Harold and Maude. When I worked at a video store I often put it on repeat during 8 hour shifts. It's my all time favorite and I have to admit that there's nothing that notable about the aesthetic of the filmmaking. For me, this is all heart and soul. My love goes back much further than the video store. It was a favorite as a kid, albeit hard to come by. This is the story of a May-September type, unusual relationship between morbid and depressed young Harold and the much much older fun-loving, eccentric Maude. This movie is super quirky and all around delightful. 5/5 |
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