Begin Again

For F*** Magazine

BEGIN AGAIN

Director : John Carney

Cast : Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightley, Adam Levine, Hailee Steinfeld, Mos Def, James Corden, CeeLo Green, Catherine Keener

Genre : Drama, Romance

Opens : 3 July 2014

Rating : NC16 (Coarse Language) 

Running time: 104 mins

Lovin’ a music man ain’t always what it’s supposed to be, and that goes for the music men behind the scenes as well. In this musical romantic comedy, Mark Ruffalo plays Dan Mulligan, the down-and-out exec of music label Distressed Records, who has an estranged wife (Keener) and daughter (Steinfeld). While drowning his sorrows at a bar one night, British singer-songwriter Gretta (Knightley) catches his attention and he immediately sets about getting a hold of her so they can collaborate on a record. It turns out that Gretta’s long-time boyfriend and songwriting partner Dave Kohl (Levine) has strayed after letting stardom get to his head. Gretta tries to leave Dave behind as she, Dan, her best friend Steve (Corden) and a motley crew of session musicians embark on recording an album on the streets of New York, guerrilla-style.

            Begin Again, formerly titled Can a Song Save Your Life?, is written and directed by John Carney of Once fame. The micro-budget Irish indie flick became a cult favourite after netting a Best Original Song Oscar for Falling Slowly and was adapted into an acclaimed musical running on Broadway and the West End. Begin Again can be seen as Carney “going Hollywood”, trading in a cheap video camera for a fancy Red Digital and having Hollywood names and pop stars in the cast. While Begin Again is certainly a glossier, slicker affair, it still retains a good measure of earnestness and sweetness and is sure to appeal to fans of music movies. In what might be somewhat meta commentary, the theme of “indie vs. big record label” crops up. There’s also a rather surprising bit of anti-product placement: Dan takes a sip of Pepsi and wonders aloud “God damn, how do people drink that?!”

            Many of the elements in Begin Again can be described as “formulaic” – there’s the maverick music producer who has been reduced to an unkempt mess but who gets a second wind upon discovering an ingénue, the disapproving ex-wife and the rebellious daughter and the ingénue’s unfaithful rock star boyfriend. An early scene has a frustrated Dan tossing demo CDs out of his car window, fed up with inane pop and in search of “real music”. However, the film does possess enough self-awareness such that it doesn’t drown in a morass of clichés and that there’s a still a soul to it. Carney also has a little fun with the structure of the first half of the film, starting in medias res before rewinding to the start of that day, telling the story from Dan’s point of view – and then rewinding further and telling it from Gretta’s. There’s also a wonderfully whimsical moment of visual invention, when upon first hearing Gretta sing, Dan begins to imagine possible arrangements for the song; the piano, drums, cello and violin sitting on stage suddenly playing by themselves in his imagination.

            Mark Ruffalo is pretty much scruffy-sexy incarnate. Once again, he looks like he badly needs a shower and a shave, but perhaps that is part of his charm. He convincingly essays a man who has fallen on hard times but who clearly once had drive and inspiration, and when that returns to him he comes alive again. Keira Knightley’s role was originally intended for Scarlett Johansson – while we don’t get the Hulk and Black Widow making sweet music together, Knightley is a perfectly acceptable substitute. Her singing voice is very pleasant and she consciously avoids turning Gretta into an idealised “manic pixie dream girl” type. When she says “I’m not Judy Garland off the greyhound bus looking for stardom”, this reviewer believes her – but wants to see her make it in the music biz all the same.

            When it comes to the casting of established singers like Adam Levine and his fellow The Voice coach CeeLo Green, it’s a Catch-22 situation: on one hand, having actual musicians in your music movie gives it credibility but on the other, it can be distracting enough to pull one out of the experience. Green’s appearance in the film is more tolerable because as hip-hop star and old pal of Dan’s nicknamed Troublegum, he could well be playing himself. However, Levine is not a brilliant actor and this reviewer happens to find his high-pitched whine of a singing voice somewhat grating. We’re also 90% sure that the name “Dave Kohl” is some kind of a dig at the similarly-named Foo Fighters frontman.

            Begin Again is a great date movie because it isn’t yet another a production line rom com and it never becomes unbearably cheesy and sappy. It won’t redefine the music flick genre, but it does have its share of sweet moments. The songs, co-written by New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander with Danielle Brisebois, Nick Lashley, Rick Nowels and Nick Southwood, Once star Glen Hansard and Carney himself, are all very listenable if not especially memorable or catchy. And this is quite possibly the first movie to make splitter cables seem like very romantic objects.

SUMMARY: Begin Again’s formulaic elements are offset by its measured sweetness and charm.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Captain Phillips

For F*** Magazine

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Michael Chernus, David Worshofsky, Corey Johnson, Chris Mulkey, Catherine Keener, Max Martini, Omar Berdouni
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Run Time: 134 mins
Opens: 14 November 2013
Rating: PG (Some Violence)

Forrest ain’t no shrimpin’ boat captain no more.

In this film based on the book A Captain’s Duty, a memoir written by the Richard Phillips of the title with Stephan Talty, Tom Hanks as Phillips is in charge of a much larger vessel than the Jenny – the MV Maersk Alabama. What was to be a routine voyage from Oman to Mombasa for the freighter turns extremely dangerous, the area living up to its notorious reputation as a hotbed for piracy. A crew of pirates from Eyl, Somalia led by Muse (Abdi) hijacks the Alabama in search of a payday. Captain Phillips, his first mate Shane Murphy (Chernus) and the rest of the crew have to avoid death at the hands of the pirates. The marauders eventually kidnap Captain Phillips, holding him hostage aboard a lifeboat as a Navy SEAL rescue mission is put in motion. Frightened for his life and trapped in a confined space, Captain Phillips has to tough it out as a full-blown crisis quickly unravels around him.

Director Paul Greengrass, who comes from a documentary filmmaking background, has become known for films that put the audience right in the thick of it with cinéma vérité-style handheld camera work, tight closeups and grain and noise-filled nighttime scenes. You can almost smell the seawater, feel the heat of the engine room and might emerge feeling a wee bit seasick. This is absolutely the right approach for Captain Phillips, Greengrass’ hand in the proceedings ensuring that this feels authentic and visceral as opposed to glossy and embellished. It’s a “based on a true story” type deal that unfolds in a way that does seem very close to how the actual events might have went, though nobody except those directly involved can say for certain. 

The film has attracted a degree of controversy in the form of some sailors aboard the Maersk Alabama filing suit against the Maersk Line and the Watership Steam Corp, claiming that Captain Phillips was not the hero the film made him out to be and that the hijacking was caused in part by his negligence and arrogance. Director Greengrass has defended the depiction of Captain Phillips in the film, having done the research and making judgement calls in his direction, saying he stands by the movie’s version of events “100%”. At the end of the day, the story has been told in a gripping, engaging manner and for those who appreciate Greengrass’ other films based on true events, Bloody Sunday and United 93, this is a must-watch.

Tom Hanks is an actor who has been much-celebrated over the course of his career and who has become a much-beloved figure in the movie biz. He has attracted well-deserved Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Richard Phillips; if there’s anyone who can do the “everyman thrust into a life or death situation” thing, it is Tom Hanks. He isn’t an actor who jumps around onscreen, waving his hands and proclaiming “look at me, I’m a movie star” – this could well have been the case were it a different actor in the captain’s chair. Hanks’ Captain Phillips works hard at containing his fear and is calm and even in his interactions with his captors; Hanks’ layered performance working all these emotions in. There’s a particularly shocking moment during the movies denouement that Hanks plays extremely well. 

Aside from Catherine Keener, who has a brief appearance as Phillips’ wife Andrea, the cast is bereft of “name actors”, which definitely keeps the movie from getting distracting as an overly familiar face in a supporting role might well pull one out from the moment. Wiry-framed Somali-American actor Barkhad Abdi who plays the leader of the pirates is intense, intimidating and naturalistic in his portrayal. He totally holds his own against Tom Hanks; Hanks has said he was “truly petrified” acting opposite Abdi and the other actors who played the pirates. The film is commendable in giving them just enough backstory for the audience to grasp their motivations, instead of portraying them as cackling movie monsters.

The film does take a while to get into gear, it’s probably a good 40 minutes before the pirates board the Alabama. That said, Greengrass’ pacing is impeccable, the events taking on a true unpredictability in spite of the procedure and protocol of the rescue mission shown. It certainly doesn’t feel like a vainglorious military propaganda piece the way something like Act of Valor was. The focus stays square on the title character even when SEALs and military figures enter the fray. It may seem like a cliché, but this is one of those movies simply about men and women going about their jobs - it’s just that said jobs can take on stakes far higher than most of us can imagine. 

Henry Jackman’s soundtrack can be pretty generic at times and there at moments when the computer-generated imagery used to create long shots of the ships is a wee bit conspicuous, but this does very little to take away from the genuine tension that fuels the film. It’s no mean feat to make an audience feel stuck in a harrowing situation alongside the protagonist – that’s exactly what Greengrass, Hanks, screenwriter Billy Ray and crew have done with Captain Phillips.

SUMMARY: It’s nail-biting suspense on the high seas as director Paul Greengrass and star Tom Hanks bring a “ripped from the headlines” story to riveting, involving life.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Enough Said

For F*** Magazine

ENOUGH SAID

Director: Nicole Holofcener
Cast:  Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener, Toni Collette, Ben Falcone, Eve Hewson, Tavi Gevinson, Tracey Fairaway
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 93 mins
Opens: 7 November 2013
Rating: PG13 (Some Sexual References)

          Over the years, “chick flicks” have gotten a bad rap. Sure, classics like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Terms of Endearment probably are considered chick flicks, but recent entries in this film genre headlined by the Katherine Heigls and the Kate Hudsons of the world aren’t exactly examples of quality cinema. Adjectives like “shallow”, “materialistic”, “frivolous” and “saccharine” come to mind. Well, if you’ve grown weary of films like that, Enough Said is the romantic comedy-drama for you.

Eva (Louis-Dreyfus) is a hardworking massage therapist who has found a new client in the form of Marianne (Keener), a poet. They form a friendship over the course of several massage sessions, and Eva notices that Marianne persists in speaking disparagingly about her ex-husband. Eva is a divorcee herself, and embarks upon a relationship with Albert (Gandolfini), an oafish but charming television history archivist. At the same time, Eva’s daughter Ellen (Fairaway) is about to leave for college, and Eva just doesn’t know if she can cope. She also inadvertently draws closer to Ellen’s friend Chloe (Gevinson), drawing the ire of her own daughter. Once Eva starts picking up on Albert’s little idiosyncrasies, their relationship begins to strain and Eva must get a grip not only as a masseuse, but in her personal life as well.

 

It’s always nice to see a romantic film with a cast that isn’t populated entirely by idealized, impossibly beautiful 20-somethings. Films like Something’s Gotta Give and last year’s Hope Springs that skew towards those of a certain vintage do indeed have something a lot of films about young, reckless love lack. In Enough Said, the characters tackle a mid-life romance from a place of experience, their struggles and foibles well-developed and immensely relatable. The film’s sweet, grounded nature makes it very palatable; there aren’t outrageous slapstick set pieces or wacky hijinks. A good part of the film is just people sitting on steps, talking – that’s even the image used for the poster.

Now, a movie consisting mostly of people sitting on steps and talking might sound boring, but Enough Said draws one into the relationships it depicts and proves entirely engaging, thanks to Nicole Holofcener’s screenplay and direction. Her films, which include Walking and Talking, Lovely & Amazing and Friends with Money, have garnered praise for their approach to romance and relationships. Evident in those films and very much so in Enough Said is Holofcener’s understanding of the feelings and concerns women face; something ironically lacking from a good deal of chick flicks.

A film of this sort live or dies by whether the audience is willing to accept its leads as a couple – no need for concern here. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late James Gandolfini are wonderful together. She handles the role of the funny everywoman with ease, putting on an array of hilarious expressions whenever a reaction to something is required. Gandolfini is probably best-known as the imposing Mafioso Tony Soprano, but he embodies the gentler, loveable Albert just as well. Albert isn’t the stereotypically “perfect” rom com leading man, but that definitely adds to the believability of the character and Gandolfini brings a lot of heart to the role. Quite touchingly, the simple dedication “for Jim” appears during the end credits.

Holofcener’s oft-collaborator Catherine Keener is also good as the poet Marianne. The character definitely has the potential to come off as snooty or unlikeable, what with her perfectly put-together home, penchant for growing her own chervil and, well, her being a poet – but Keener never plays that up and you’ll genuinely want Eva and Marianne to stay friends. Toni Collette is a hoot in her uncomplicated role as Eva’s friend Sarah, who doesn’t hide her disdain for sheepish, malapropism-prone husband Will (Falcone). The young actresses who round out the cast, including Tracey Fairaway, Eve Hewson and teenage fashion magazine editor Tavi Gevinson (who bears quite the resemblance to Scarlett Johansson) make for realistic teen characters, never overly sulky or insufferable.

Holofcener’s mastery of tone is also admirable. Oftentimes, romantic comedies tumble wildly into ungainly melodramatic territory. Here, the film’s dip into relationship troubles and empty nest worries doesn’t feel like an arm-twisting and even then, Enough Said stays a safe distance from being sappy and emotionally manipulative. Perhaps it helps that the film doesn’t fall over itself trying to “upend the formula”, and that it’s lovingly painted instead of scrawled on the wall by a cynic. The setup may sound rather sitcom-ish, some might perceive it as "mundane" and perhaps there is a predictability to the proceedings, but Enough Said emerges as one of the finest romantic comedies in recent memory.

SUMMARY: Subtle, sweet, honest, relatable funny and very well-acted by two convincing, likeable leads, Enough Said is also a terrific movie to remember the late James Gandolfini by.

RATING: 4 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong