Posts tagged Movie Reviews
“Country Strong” Country Cliche
Jan 27th
“Country Cliche”
COUNTRY STRONG is the story of a six-time, Grammy-winning, country-music superstar who starts off the movie in rehab for alcohol addiction, and thus the audience thinks, “So, what else is new?”
Unfortunately, that comment can be applied to the whole movie, as well.
Gwyneth Paltrow plays Kelly Canter, and we are told that she fell off the stage the year before in Dallas at her previous concert when she was drunk, disorderly, and pregnant.
Well, Kelly has become close friends with one of her sponsors in rehab, Beau Hutton, who is also a country-music singer and songwriter, but he is happy to perform just at local bars and clubs.
Then James shows up to get Kelly out of rehab a month early in order to start performing again. James is Kelly’s husband and manager, he is played by Tim McGraw, whose name country-music fans might recognize, and yet he is the only experienced professional singer who doesn’t sing any songs in the movie.
At one point, Kelly says to James, “I’m sorry about Dallas. We should talk about it sometime.”
Unfortunately, they don’t talk about it, and if they had, this might have been a better movie, but at least the music is pretty good.
Kelly wants to give Beau a break and let him be the opening act for her comeback tour, but James–in addition to being suspicious about Beau–has a new singer in mind to open for Kelly, a young and pretty beauty winner named Chiles Stanton, who is so new in the business that she gets stage fright and freezes up during her chance to audition for James.
Well, you can see that this story is headed for a love triangle if ever there was one, or more likely a love rectangle, and a square one at that.
So, there are the obligatory stops and starts and stops and restarts on Kelly’s comeback tour that James has lined up for her, which of course either helps or hurts the chances of Beau and Chiles to become successful and fan favorites.
In addition, there are the obligatory advances and setbacks in the love aspects of the characters, not unlike what the stories of most country songs say in music.
COUNTRY STRONG is more like “Country Cliche,” but at least the music is pretty good.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Blue Valentine” Biggest Disappointment
Jan 19th
“Biggest Disappointment”
BLUE VALENTINE is a searing look at the rise and fall of a short-lived marriage, and although it has received a lot of praise for its excellence, it just might be a big disappointment to you.
Ryan Gosling plays Dean, and Michelle Williams plays Cindy, and we watch them in scenes of their present-day marriage, as well as scenes of when they first met and fell in love about six years earlier, but in distracting jump cuts back and forth instead of in chronological order.
In fact, this film looks as if the filmmakers finished making the film chronologically and then decided that it was so bad that in order to make it more interesting, they reedited it and rearranged all the scenes to be out of chronological order.
Unfortunately, that only made it worse.
The film begins in the present, Dean and Cindy have a little five-year-old daughter named Frankie, and a family crisis occurs when their dog runs away.
Dean tells Frankie that maybe the dog moved out to Hollywood to become a movie dog, and then they take Frankie to stay with Cindy’s parents for a reason that we don’t know until later.
Then we get a time switch to six years earlier and see Dean working for a moving company and moving an old man named Walter out of his apartment and into an assisted-living home.
Back in the present, Dean tells Cindy, “We’ve got to get out of this house.”
This is the reason they took Frankie to Cindy’s parents, and they book a night in the Future Room of a theme motel, where they have a night of drinking and sexual carousing.
And then it is back and forth to their meeting, falling in love, a nasty encounter with Cindy’s old boyfriend, having dinner at the home of Cindy’s parents, as well as what happens to them after their night in the Future Room.
In the present, Dean is a free-lance painter, a job he admits that he likes because he can start drinking at 8 o’clock. In other words, Dean doesn’t have any big ambitions.
Cindy, on the other hand, works as a nurse and wants to become a doctor.
BLUE VALENTINE is a film I was looking forward to, but so far it is the biggest disappointment of the year.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The King’s Speech” Bertie’s Greatest Test
Jan 6th
“Bertie’s Greatest Test”
THE KING’S SPEECH portrays the unusual events in 1930s England that led to the coronation of the father of the current Queen Elizabeth to become King George VI, but more importantly the difficult personal struggle that the king went through in order to be able to speak in public.
As hard as it is to feel sorry for a king, this delightful film makes the audience feel sorry for the stammering monarch who was known as Bertie to his family, as well as to feel admiration for the three actors who portray Bertie, his speech therapist, and his supportive wife.
Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter play the three roles, and all of them have been mentioned for awards for their fine acting performances.
The story begins in 1934, and Prince Albert, the Duke of York, has been asked by his father, King George V, to give an address at Wembley Stadium in London. To watch him struggle is as painful to the audience in the theater as it must have been to the crowd in the stadium.
So, Bertie and his wife, Elizabeth, see various speech therapists with no success until Elizabeth finds Lionel Logue, an Australian self-taught therapist.
Elizabeth tells him that her husband has a terrible stammer and is required to speak in public, to which Lionel says, “Perhaps he should change jobs.”
Elizabeth tells Lionel that her husband cannot change jobs and then reveals her husband’s identity by saying, “And what if my husband were the Duke of York?”
Lionel’s methods are controversial, he and the duke must treat each other as equals, and all sessions must take place in Lionel’s rooms–no exceptions.
When King George V dies, Bertie’s older brother, David, becomes king, but he shirks his duties and doesn’t want to be king if he can’t marry the woman he loves, which he can’t, because she is twice divorced, and as head of the Church of England, the king cannot marry a divorced woman.
And, of course, the winds of war are increasing in Europe, and when England declares war with Germany, the new king, that is to say our old Bertie, must be able to give a stirring speech on live radio to the British people.
THE KING’S SPEECH is an excellent film all around of Bertie’s greatest test.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”