A Star Is Born

First Hit: First part of the film is engaging, however towards the end it less fetching and with a 135 minute running time, needed to be trimmed.

This felt like two separate films. The first part is engaging, and buying into the characters is easy. We are introduced to Jack (Bradley Cooper), a boozing leader of a popular band, in concert delivering raspy singing and playing wild guitar in-front of a huge adoring crowd.

Driving away from the concert he wants another drink and finds a bar. In the bar, he watches Ally (Lady Gaga) sing a fantastic rendition of La Vie En Rose. Jack is enthralled and heads backstage and after conversation they head to another bar to talk.

Jack discovers that Ally also writes songs, good ones. They begin a romantic relationship, and he invites her to sing one of her songs with him in front of an audience of thousands. Her insecurities, which are explored when she and Jack are hanging out in a bar, stem from what she says is her too-large of a nose. This reason for her insecurity wasn’t believable to me. A quick review of others who played this role, Barbara Streisand, has a far more unique nose. This wasn’t the best thing to select for Ally’s anxiousness. However, this is where the audience is hooked, and also where the movie begins to meander.

As the film journeys onward, we’ve bought into their love because their chemistry is excellent and Lady Gaga as an actress is fully believable. Cooper, we know, can act his pants off, and for the most part he’s good here, but I couldn’t help but sense there was some struggle with him directing himself.

The last half of the film is where this film begins its decline. For me, Jack never really seems to, or appears to, clean up from his drinking and drug use, although he supposedly does. When he finally cleans up, Ally’s music and business manager Rez Gavron (Rafl Gavron) tells Jack, that he’ll be the reason for Ally’s downfall if he continues to associate musically with his wife Ally.

At this point it becomes obvious what’s going to happen, as the clues are poignantly spread out during the course of the film.

Cooper as an actor was excellent more towards the beginning of the film, but it seemed to fall off towards the end. I have no idea of the sequence in which the film was shot but there is a noticeable difference between the beginning and end of this movie. As a director and producer, there seemed too many scenes and prudent trimming would have helped to overall presentation. As an aside, he did a great job of playing a musician on stage. Gaga was extraordinary. She is a natural on the screen and this part was perfect for her to introduce acting into her repertoire. Gavron was strong as Ally’s career guiding manager. Sam Elliot (as Bobby, Jack’s older brother) was wonderful as the older brother who did his best to raise Jack. Andrew Dice Clay (as Andrew, Ally’s father) was sublime. I’m happy to see him in this role without the “Diceman” attitude. Anthony Ramos, as Roman, was wonderful as Ally’s best friend. Eric Roth and Bradley Cooper wrote a good script, although it needed to be trimmed. Cooper, as previously stated, directed this film.

Overall: The singing was terrific, and it showcases the talent of Lady Gaga

Juliette, Naked

First Hit: A funny and enjoyable story about how people can awaken enough to create a second chance with their life.

The thing I like most about films that feature Ethan Hawke is that often the dialogue is thoughtful. In the Before series of films he and Julie Delpy have such spirited, insightful, and engaged dialogue that one couldn’t help but really care about the characters.

Here as Tucker Crowe, a 1960’s, retired, aged out rock and roll musician, he’s living in a garage just off his ex-wife’s home while helping to raise one of his children Jackson (Azhy Robertson). His most fervent fan is Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) who is a professor at a small English college. He posts and runs a website where the sole focus is Tucker Crowe’s music and career. He regularly blogs about his hero and there are a few hundred people that regularly follow him. He’s such a fan, he’s got an entire room dedicated to Tucker that is filled with posters and other memorabilia.

His long time live-in girlfriend, Annie (Rose Byrne), runs the local historical museum in this small coastal town in England. Her life is, day in and day out, the same old thing. There is a slight resignation in voice when she speaks and in her eyes. It especially comes out in conversations with Duncan. Her sister Ros (Lily Brazier) is gay, works with Annie at the museum, and keeps prompting Annie to expand her closed in life.

Duncan receives a bootlegged copy of the “Juliette, Naked,” an acoustic version of Tucker’s seminal album. The album was created after Tucker’s breakup with a woman he loved. After listening to it, Annie decides to write a critical review of the blog Dunan wrote of the album. Of course, Duncan is deeply hurt as she is criticizing his hero.

She gets a response to her post from Tucker who says she’s exactly right. This turns everything upside down as she begins to have an email relationship with her husband’s hero and he doesn’t know it.

Eventually they meet, and their lives unfold more fully with each other and the world around them. For him, he’s got 5 kids, and Jackson is the only one he knows or has been active with. Events will have him meet most of them.

For Annie, she realizes she wants children, although her and Duncan vowed never to have children, and she wants to expand her life more. This is the crux of the film, with their lives being so small, meeting each other, their lives begin to open to themselves and the world around them.

Byrne is fantastic. Her subtle looks of desperation belied the deeper anguish she was living. Hawke was wonderful and perfect in his role. The dinner conversation he had with Duncan was pointedly perfect. I loved his rendition of the Kinks song Waterloo Sunset. O’Dowd was great as the star stuck follower of Tucker who got seduced by a young fellow teacher at his college. Robertson was super as Tucker’s son. His quizzing of Tucker’s other children was divine. Ayoola Smart was amazing as Tucker’s daughter who was pregnant. Evgenia Peretz and Jim Taylor wrote a very strong script. Jesse Peretz did a wonderful job of directing these characters in a funny, yet smart pointed story.

Overall: I thoroughly enjoyed this film and the meaning behind it—it’s never too late to change.

Whitney

First Hit: Although the film is strong, I didn’t learn much about Whitney and learned a fair amount about her enabling family and supporters whom she financially supported.

One doesn’t need to be a Whitney Huston fan to acknowledge her amazing voice. It is also true that not everyone who has an amazing talent also has the ability and presence to manage their life in a productive mindful way. This film shows this.

The film states that her mother (Cissy) pushed her hard, as a young girl, to learn to use her voice. Music ran throughout her family and extended family with relatives Dionne Warwick and her sister Dee Dee Warwick. At family gatherings the interviewees discussed having singalongs instead of conversations.

Religion was also a backdrop in their lives as both Cissy and Whitney sang in the church choir.

The film shares some Whitney’s early singing as well as her adult singing and when it shows one of her last concerts, where her bloated body tried to belt out “I Will Always Love You” with her tired drug addled cigarette hampered raspy voice, the sadness of her life and her lack of preparedness, for life itself, was astoundingly sad.

As the story is told, Whitney’s parents were gone a lot and that meant they, Whitney and her siblings, were not raised in an environment that allowed them to grow mindful of the workings of the world. When her brother Gary bragged about how he and Whitney could out drug use Bobby Brown, he was stating it with pride – really, he felt good about this. That both Gary and Whitney indicated they were abused by a woman at very young ages only tells part of why they were ill prepared to deal with the complexity of wealth and fame.

What the film lacked was depth and maybe this was because Whitney lacked depth. The film stated, she liked to party, she liked to sleep, she liked sex, and she liked that she was fawned over. Maybe that was the point, Whitney had a talent that she didn’t have to work at and then rode this talent into the depths of insolvency. Her lack of practiced effort to be in-charge of her talent and life was born out by how the film showed that her amazing rendition of the Star Spangle Banner at the Super Bowl was the first time she ever sang it. What made this notable was that her arranger had the music switched from 3/4 time to 4/4 time to take advantage of her voice. Although an amazing rendition and feat to sing it for first time in this way, it also showed that she didn’t work at her gift and relied on it to make her money to support her lifestyle which was loaded with hangers on who ended up bankrupting her.

Proof of this such greed by her team was when her father sued her for $100 million dollars for his part in securing a record deal. Everybody ignored her rampant and public drug use. Her father even told her she didn’t have to go into a treatment center.

Her real only friend, Robyn Crawford, with whom she had an intimate relationship with, was canned because her overbearing and measly talented husband Bobby Brown was jealous and gave Whitney an ultimatum.

What the film didn’t show, and it could have been true, that Whitney was capable of anything much more than singing. Proved out by the people she kept around to do things for her and she even farmed off parenting of her daughter Bobby Kristina.

We all know the end. It was very sad and an end to the life of a major powerful singing talent. However, as this film unfolded, seeing her life as was filmed it could have only ended this way.

All told, the film was well done. Great intersperses of Whitney singing brought some joy and reflective pauses to a film about self-destruction. The interviews were to the point and allowed for and showed the interviewees emotive pauses. When Bobby Brown was asked about drug use, he stated that this film wasn’t supposed to explore this and had nothing to do with Whitney’s life. Bobby’s objective stupidity and his harm on Whitney and their now dead daughter, reign as proof.

Kevin McDonald did a great job of splicing together interesting material about this incredibly voiced person. But who was Whitney? I’m still left with that question.

Overall: I liked the film and the opportunity to hear Whitney’s talent, but who was she?

Hearts Beat Loud

First Hit: It was an obvious feel good movie and it worked reasonably well.

Frank Fisher (Nick Offerman) is a failing vinyl record store owner in Brooklyn, NY. He’s raising his biracial daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) alone and she’s just about to go away to UCLA enrolled in their pre-med program.

He seems stuck in his record store and in an early scene, he lights up a cigarette while standing behind the cash register. When his only customer points out that it is against the law to smoke, Frank doesn’t care. The customer leaves and in view of Frank and the audience, he makes the vinyl record purchase from Amazon via his phone.

Frank is staying in Brooklyn because his mother Marianne (Blythe Danner) is struggling in her old age. At one point, early on, he’s called to pick her up from a small store because she was caught shoplifting. His Brooklyn store is also near where his wife died while riding a bicycle.

Frank and his wife were in a band together and his first love is performing music. To satisfy his urges, he and Sam do jam together when she’s not studying. The audience gets treated to some of their work together.

Besides having strong, yet mixed, feelings about heading to UCLA for school, Sam is leaving her dad in his failing record store, and is falling in love with Rose (Sasha Lane) who is a local artist. Rose is her first love and is encouraging Sam to follow her passions.

Jamming one day, Frank and Sam tape a song Sam has written. Frank, without Sam’s permission, uploads the song onto Spotify under the band name of, “We’re Not A Band.” Somehow the song ends up on the Spotify Indie Play List.

Encouraged that Sam has real talent, Frank attempts to keep his daughter around by telling her she has a real talent and they could make a go of it in the music business.

Because the store is failing, he decides to tell his landlord Leslie (Toni Collette) that he’s vacating the space. His closest friend, local bar owner Dave (Ted Danson), tries to help Frank get over the hump of closing down the business.

The stories and sub-plots in this movie are: Frank's failing record store and inability to support Sam’s college tuition, Marianne’s failing health, Sam moving to California, Rose and Sam’s relationship, Frank’s feelings for Leslie, Dave’s love of trees, and most of all the music that Frank and Sam make together.

Offerman was OK as the father. For some reason it was difficult for me to really feel his angst towards his situation. This difficulty could have been partly due to the script and direction versus his ability. I did sense his character's love for music. Clemons was wonderful. I thought that she did a great job of showing her love for her father, leaving home for the first time, and falling in love. Danson was fun as the long time Brooklyn barkeep and Frank’s friend. Collette’s role was interesting because she was very cagy about her feelings for Frank, as a friend and landlord. Lane was fantastic as the struggling artist who fell in love with Sam. Danner was excellent as Frank’s mom who was slowly losing her ability to function in the world. Marc Basch and Brett Haley co-wrote this script that lacked some background story but created wonderful interactive dialogue. Haley also directed this effort and it was generally on target.

Overall: The songs brought forth joyful emotion and were definitely a bright spot in this film.

Horn from the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story

First Hit: Outstanding film of an enigmatic man who played the best mouth harp ever.

I recall seeing Paul Butterfield in 1969 at Fillmore West prior to my heading into the service. What an experience. It was like a cheetah making its final pounce into the meat that will keep him alive.

“Butter”, as the interviewed Elvin Bishop called him, attacked and coerced sounds and music out of the 6-inch instrument that sounded as if it came from another world. This film excellently captured the man and his path of becoming the best harp player ever.

The film tracks through his life as a musician. This wasn’t surprising, however, what was surprising was that by the film’s end, I realized I learned very little about the man himself. What drove him to be the best harp player ever.

Yes, the film briefly touches on his abrupt and short first marriage to Virginia McEwan and that they had a child named Gabriel. She offered to marry him to keep him from being drafted because the Vietnam war was ramping up.

We also meet the love of his life Kathy, with whom he had a son named Lee. Even though this film dedicates numerous minutes to interviews with Kathy, Lee, and his brother Peter what I learned is that he loved his wife and child, they loved him and he and his brother were once close, not much more. Paul was an enigma a stranger to those around him except when he blew.

His playing was concise, strong, clear, and very intense. It was if he was the sound he made, no more and certainly no less.

I loved how they tracked through his beginnings as the only white guy in a black blues club in the South Side of Chicago, getting asked to sit in by Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. When he blew, everyone knew he was powerfully pure. He blew and sang from his entire body and soul. It wasn’t long before he became the featured performer in these small Hyde Park blues clubs.

Creating a band of his own, two of Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm players bassist Jerome Arnold and drummer Sam Lay, joined him along with guitarist Nick Gravenits, and eventually guitarists Elvin Bishop, Michael Bloomfield, and keyboard player Mark Naftalin. The lineup of the band fluctuated as people came and left. One this is for sure, his sound brought the blues into the mainstream ears of young people everywhere.

A couple things to note, he was probably the first rock and roll blues band to be integrated and he told drummer, when they started touring, if they don’t accept you, we won’t be playing. He never understood racism or segregation.

This film uses a ton of archival footage of “Butter” playing his heart out. One thing I noticed as he played, that he played the harmonica backwards from the standard way. High notes were on his left and low notes on his right. He was left handed. The music choices in this film are excellent as they show off his versatility.

The interviews were well done and intermixed really well with the archival footage. I was so surprised and happy to see shots of the “Golden Bear” nightclub, where I grew up, in Huntington beach as this club was closed and destroyed in 1986 but Paul’s band played there.

Sandra Warren produced and John Anderson co-produced and directed this film. It was outstanding and the audience can see the care and love they put into this effort.

Overall: A wonderful experience in learning about an amazing musician.