“It’s impossible to talk about N.W.A without talking about South Central LA in the late 1980s.”
Straight Outta Compton is the legendary album by gangsta rap group N.W.A, released Aug. 8, 1988. It’s a sonic blast that plays, as Rolling Stone said, like a “bombastic, cacophonous car ride through Los Angeles’ burnt-out and ignored hoods.” It became the first platinum album to reach that status with no airplay or major tours and now it’s also the title of a biopic that documents the group’s beginnings and turbulent history.
Writing for theverge.com, Lizzie Plaugic observed, “It’s impossible to talk about N.W.A without talking about South Central LA in the late 1980s.” Infected by crack and gang violence, the area was so rough the LAPD created a special unit known as CRASH — Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums — and it was these surroundings that helped birth the ferocious beats of Straight Outta Compton and a genre known as gangsta rap.
Music is unavoidably influenced by the surroundings of those who make it and music biopics have always been quick to use location as a shorthand to help the audience understand how and why musicians produced the music they did.
Just as South Central sets the scene for Straight Outta Compton, Manchester’s drug-fuelled “Madchester” club scene of the late 1980s and early ’90s informs 24 Hour Party People and the mean streets of Brooklyn set the stage for the meteoric rise of rapper Notorious B.I.G. in the 2009 film Notorious.
There is no shortage of John Lennon or his birthplace on celluloid. There are five official Beatles movies, documentaries like The U.S. vs. John Lennon, a 2006 movie that focuses on Lennon’s transformation from musician into antiwar activist, and even experimental short films like the John and Yoko shorts Two Virgins and Apotheosis.
Portrayed by everyone from Paul Rudd (in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) to Monty Python’s Eric Idle, rarely has any actor captured both Lennon’s rebelliousness and vulnerability as Aaron Taylor-Johnson does in Nowhere Boy, the story of the musician’s formative years.
Taylor-Johnson, recently seen in blockbusters like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Godzilla, is aided in his performance by a gritty portrait of Lennon’s lower-working-class neighbourhood in Liverpool, England. You can almost smell the bangers and mash coming off the screen and the vivid Merseyside backdrop provides subtle clues about the man Lennon would become.
Set back when you could still drink a bottle of stolen booze in the shade of the Hollywood sign without being arrested for trespassing, The Runaways focuses on two glue-sniffing, glam-rock obsessed tough girls named Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning). Disaffected SoCal teens, they see an exit from their mundane suburban lives through rock ’n’ roll.
Unfortunately their ticket out comes in the form of impresario Kim Fowley, a record producer and self proclaimed “King Hysteria.” He cobbles together the band, trains them to be rock stars, convinced that they will “be bigger than the Beatles.” Before they can play Shea Stadium, however, the band breaks up — knee deep in ego, drug abuse and bad management. Set in and around the Sunset Strip’s late 1970s seedy underbelly, the movie perfectly captures the sun-dappled decadence that illuminated the time.
In the movies, like real life, it’s about Location! Location! Location!
“Straight Outta Compton,” the new biopic of original gangster rap band N.W.A. and their turbulent rise and fall, is at once a very specific look at the birth of a musical genre and a universal music industry story about how money, ego and bad management will break a band a part faster than you can say, “Boyz-N-The Hood.”
We first meet MC Ren (Aldis Hodge), Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), DJ Yella (Neil Brown, Jr.) and Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson, Jr) as young men growing up in Compton, the most notorious neighbourhood of South Central Los Angeles. Dre and Cube are music obsessed teens, trying to avoid getting “locked up or laid down.” Dre is a genius DJ, a master of beats, while Cube is a journalist of sorts, writing rhymes that report on life in the hood. Their reality is near constant police harassment, casual violence and intimidation by gangs.
Eazy-E, a local drug dealer looking or a way out of the life, puts up the seed money to start a record label and soon he moves from banker to frontman and NWA is born. A couple local hits later they’re approached by Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti in another role, following this year’s “Love and Mercy” that sees him exploiting a Californian musician) an old school manager with a plan to make them famous and himself rich. They become a sensation, birth gangsta rap and fall to pieces under the weight of their success. Heller, Eazy-E and the shards of NWA on one side, Dr. Dre and Suge Knight (R. Marcos Taylor) on another with Ice Cube completing the triangle. Bad blood and bad business deals blow apart their once tight relationships and it isn’t until they consider getting back to basics that old wounds begin to heal.
“Straight Outta Compton” plays like dozens of music bios that came before but despite featuring music industry clichés—sometimes the clichés of cheating managers, ego and excess are clichés because they’re true—it spends more time on the characters than the situation. It’s funnier and warmer than you might anticipate a movie about the ferocious and profane beginnings of gangster rap, a music born out of frustration and a need to be heard, but the emotional truth of the film is based in the relationship between the leads, particularly Dre, Eazy and Cube. A palpable sense of camaraderie is present throughout, and it grounds the film during its more excessive moments.
Mitchell’s Eazy-E has the widest emotional arc and he pulls it off, bring a steely vulnerability to the character that humanizes him and makes his (SPOILER ONLY IF YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT N.W.A.!!) early demise all the more devastating.
Jackson Jr., Ice Cube’s real life son, dispels any talk of nepotism, handing in a performance that captures the familiar mannerisms and essence of his father.
Also strong are Hawkins as the budding megaproducer Dre and Keith Stanfield as the young Snoop Dogg.
On the downside the movie doesn’t have much use for its female characters unless they are playing stern mothers, compliant groupies or supportive wives. We may have to wait for the Salt-N-Pepa biography for a look at the female side of hip hop.
At two-and-a-half hours “Straight Outta Compton” is a detailed look at the band that, although it takes liberties with the facts in favour of drama, grabs the rhythm of the time by the throat and doesn’t let go. Echoes of the Rodney King trial reverberate throughout the film giving the movie, in light of Black Lives Matter, a timely feel that showcases the prescient nature of Ice Cube’s rhymes.
How to describe “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” to someone who wasn’t alive during the TV show’s mid-sixties heyday? How about James Bond with jokes? Or a less funny “Get Smart”? Perhaps as a Bizarro World CIA show that once saw the heroes prevent a stink bomb attack on Hollywood?
It was all those things and had two of the coolest character names in television history, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum.
The new Guy Ritchie film, his first in four years, aims to grab the freewheeling spirit of the original show without dropping a stink bomb in theatres.
Set in 1963, it’s the origin story of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, the super secret spy organization who recruit CIA agent Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB agent Kuryakin (Armie Hammer). They’re an odd couple, enemies from the opposite sides of the justice system. Solo is suave and unflappable, Kuryakin is a hothead with a sensitive side who lets his fists do the talking.
“Don’t kill your partner on your first day,” they’re warned by their superiors.
Their mission is to infiltrate and dismantle a cartel of baddies who plan on selling nuclear weapons and technology to the highest bidder. The key to cracking the case is Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), the estranged daughter of Hitler’s favourite rocket scientist. The trio set off on an assignment that will take them to exotic locations, confront glamorous villains and see the establishment of the fashionable crime fighting organization United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.
The “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” reboot is ripe with double-entendres, spy lingo, Solo’s off the cuff attitude—“Damn, I left my jacket in there,” he says when a room bursts into flames killing its occupant—and cool 1960s clothes. Ritchie and cast get all that stuff right. Cavill and Vikander look as though they have stepped out of a time machine from the Cold War especially to take on these roles, but what is missing, by and large, is the wild action we expect from our spy movies.
“U.N.C.L.E.” opens with a chase scene, complete with stunts and gunfire but it doesn’t have the spark we associate with Ritchie’s work. His frenetic whiplash editing is missing in favour of a much more subdued feel. Even Kuryakin mostly beats up people off screen. Perhaps it’s a new kind of anti-action cinema that tries to put the focus on the characters instead of the fireworks.
There is an inspired sequence that puts the action in the background while Solo enjoys wine and a sandwich and watches the carnage from the safety of a stolen truck. It’s stylish, funny and hints at the tone Ritchie was trying to achieve in the rest of the movie.
On the upside, it captures 60s cool with perfectly curated clothes and set decoration. Cavill glides through this, more Roger Moore than Sean Connery, nailing the arch delivery of a 60s super spy. Hammer lays it on thick with the Russian accent but pulls off the less showy role. If Ritchie was to have Frankensteined an actress for the role of Gaby in the mould of 1960s starlets, he could not have topped Vikander as a picture perfect representation of mid-century cool. She looks like she was born to wear the oversized sunglasses and Mary Quaint frocks but she isn’t simply the romantic interest. (SPOILER ALERT) With an ending that sets up a sequel don’t be surprised if there is a “Girl from U.N.C.L.E.” in theatres soon.
“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” is a treat for the eyes—it looks fantastic—but will not keep you on the edge of your seat. To paraphrase head of U.N.C.L.E., Mr. Waverly (Hugh Grant), “for a special agent [movie] you aren’t having a very special day are you?”
Lorne Michaels, creator and guiding light of “Saturday Night Live,” said he was, “infuriatingly talented.” David Letterman called him “the human thunderball” while Dan Aykroyd noted his, “automatic charisma.” The “he” is Matt “I live in a van by the river” Foley and “Tommy’s Boy’s” main character, Chris Farley, the heavy-set comedian and subject of a new documentary, “I Am Chris Farley.”
Executive produced by Farley’s brother Kevin, this loving tribute is an affectionate look at the guy who “always looked like he was having the most fun.” Michaels and Aykroyd are joined by Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, David Spade, Bob Odenkirk and a variety of childhood friends to paint a picture of a man who was ruled by his excesses.
After an all American upbringing in Madison, Wisconsin he joined a local improv group and later trained at Chicago’s fabled Second City, where he fine-tuned his wild, out-of-control style under the tutelage of improv king Del Close, who gave him the same advice he gave another of his famous students, “Attack the stage like a bull you have that power.”
And attack he did, quickly becoming a star on “Saturday Night Live” and in films like “Wayne’s World” and “Tommy Boy.” Offstage his behaviour was as frenetic as his onscreen persona. Spade and others say whatever Farley did he did wholeheartedly. If he liked you, he loved you. If he went for a laugh, he would do anything to get it. By the same token, when he let loose, he attacked the bottle, and later drugs, with the same gusto. He was, as one talking head says, “a sweet guy before midnight.”
It’s hard not to compare Farley to another doomed “Saturday Night Live” cast member. John Belushi was another similarly driver performer who left scorched earth behind, on stage and off. Both men died at age 33, the victim of their own overindulgences.
“I Am Chris Farley” doesn’t have the same gut-wrenching impact as “Amy,” the recent doc about the tragic life and death of singer Amy Winehouse. That film has less warmth, and is more an examination of how Winehouse’s world spun out of control. The Farley doc has a kinder, gentler tone and doesn’t dwell on his final moments. Perhaps it’s just as well. As the film makes clear, Farley lived to make people laugh. He wouldn’t want to leave behind a legacy of heartbreak and misfortune.
“She’s Funny That Way,” Peter Bogdanovich’s first theatrical film in twenty-four years is a screwball comedy that plays like Woody Allen’s interpretation of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” It’s filled with Allen’s farcical mainstays like therapy sessions, young women, obsessed old men, show biz in jokes and even a character described as an ”existential cab driver.” Trouble is, Allen had nothing to do with the script. She may be funny that way, but she’s not funny this way.
Imogen Poots is Izzy Beatty, a Broadway star sitting down for a no-holds barred interview. She tells of reinventing herself, from “muse” to older men—ie: high priced call girl—to star by way of a chance meeting—ie: paid encounter—with married Broadway director Arnold Albertson (Owen Wilson). Arnold is prepping his next show, a new play called A Grecian Evening, by playwright (Will Forte) Joshua Fleet. The show is set to star Arnold’s wife Delta (Kathryn Hahn) and movie star Seth Gilbert (Rhys Ifans) as a couple who, in real life, had a fling years before while co-starring in London’s West End. Add to that cast of characters Fleet’s girlfriend, the edgy Dr. Jane (Jennifer Aniston), a psychologist who describes her patients as “crazy old loons,” then mix-and-match romantic allegiances and you have a celebration—but not celebratory story—of urban neurosis.
The idea of Bogdanovich returning to the big screen with a fleet-footed comedy is a welcome one. He’s tread similar ground before in films like “What’s Up, Doc” and “Noises Off” with interesting results which makes the flatness of “She’s Funny That Way” all the more puzzling.
What should be a soaring story of romantic intrigue and slamming doors is, instead, a mannered movie that feels like second rate Woody Allen. Of the sprawling cast only a handful are given anything to do. Why cast the hilarious Kathryn Hahn and not give her laugh lines? Why cast Cybill Shepherd and give her what can only be described as half-a-cameo? Those who eat up the majority of the screen time try hard to bring the material to life but Poots, normally an engaging performer, is hampered by a grating Noo Yawk accent that makes Fran Drescher sound refined and overwritten interview scenes which look and sound like acting school monologues.
Wilson fares better but Ifans, as a teen heartthrob, is poorly cast. He pulls off the degenerate Lothario schtick well enough but doesn’t pass muster as a superhero movie star.
What could have been a wistful “if you don’t let go of your past it will strangle your future” look at personal reinvention, or an Allenesque farce, or both, turns out to be neither. Despite a laugh or two it falls flat and works mostly as a cameo parade for faces like Richard Lewis, Joanna Lumley and Michael Shannon without ever working up a real head of steam.
At one point in “She’s Funny That Way” Arnold says, “We have a tornado coming up in the elevator and it is about to touch down.” Trouble is, it never touches down.
Kids’ movies come in all shapes and sizes. This year there’s been the introspection and action adventure of Inside Out, Minions mayhem and Paddington’s cuddly cuteness. For something completely different, there’s the Shaun the Sheep Movie, a stop-motion animated film with virtually no dialogue but lots of fun.
Shaun is a resourceful, if mischievous, sheep who lives with his flock at Mossy Bottom Farm. When he accidentally sets off a chain of events that sees his Farmer get amnesia and become a successful hairdresser in the big city, Shaun tries to bring him back home. Wallace and Gromit fans may recognize Shaun the Sheep from the 1995 short film A Close Shave or his self-titled television series.
Animation fans will also recognize the unmistakable style of Aardman, the British animation studio responsible for bringing the Plasticine inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit to vivid life one frame at a time. Time called their Claymation promo clip for Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer one of the greatest music videos ever and their first full length film, 2000’s Chicken Run, is the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time.
The beauty of their work is that while it’s generally aimed at kids it tickles funny bones young and old. What’s the secret to their success?
“We don’t make animated films,” says founder Peter Lord. “We make films that happen to be animated.”
Here’s a look at my favourite Aardman films.
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
The story takes place days before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition. Wallace and Gromit’s pest control company — Anti-Pesto — must do battle with a floppy-eared mutant rabbit who is nibbling on all the oversized vegetables.
The film is loaded with fanciful Rube Goldberg-like contraptions, visual gags, bad puns — the cheese-loving Wallace’s bookshelf features titles like East of Edam and Grated Expectations — and double-entendres for the parents in the audience. There is at least one pretty good in-joke in there for film geeks too — a snippet of Art Garfunkel’s song Bright Eyes, from the rabbit-themed cartoon Watership Down, is heard on a car stereo. Park also tips his hat to the British love of gardening, King Kong and the Hammer Horror movies.
Pirates! Band of Misfits
It’s not every kid’s flick that features Queen Victoria, the Elephant Man and Charles Darwin. Pirates! Band of Misfits, however, isn’t like most kids’ movies. It’s splendid side-splitting swashbuckling fun that mixes gentle family friendly humour, with some absurdist Monty Python style gags and Aardman’s usual whimsy. There is so much going on here you may want to see this more than once to catch all the sight gags and throwaway lines on offer.
Flushed Away
For the first time ever, Aardman put their clay figures into storage and took a step into the 21st century, making a film that looks a great deal like one of their homemade stop-motion extravaganzas, but is actually computer animated. Flushed Away, the story of an upper class pet mouse flushed down the loo by a bullying rat, features great animation, an all-star British voice cast and something that all kids love — toilet humour.
It swirls along at quite a clip, effortlessly mixing literate verbal and visual jokes — we glimpse a cockroach reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis — with potty humour that’ll appeal to the kids.
The title of the new Meryl Streep movie, “Ricki and the Flash,” sounds like a comic book flick about a regular, but spunky teen and the DC Comic character known for super human speed. No, Streep hasn’t joined the ranks of elder actors lending credibility to superhero movies and there’s not a skintight red superhero outfit in sight. Instead, there’s the black leather and fringes of Meryl’s rock ‘n’ roll Ricki, lead singer of bar band The Flash.
Ricki is a rock ‘n’ roll road warrior who never cracked the big time. Twenty five years ago she left behind her comfortable Midwestern life and family—husband (Kevin Kline) and three kids (including Julie, played by Streep’s real-life daughter Mamie Gummer)—for a shot at stardom in Los Angeles. Her one album didn’t chart and now she staves off bankruptcy by day as a grocery clerk, by night playing Golden Oldie covers in a seedy San Fernando Valley bar.
Out of the blue her ex gives her a ring with bad news. Julie’s husband has left her for a younger woman and he’d like her to come to Ohio to comfort her distraught daughter. Despite not having seen Julie in years she returns. Cue the family drama as Ricki tries to make amends for choosing rock and roll over her family.
Streep may not be playing a superhero in “Ricki and the Flash,” but she does a superhuman job of carrying the movie. Ricki is a raw nerve who says what’s on her mind whether she’s on stage or off, and Meryl rocks it. She strums and hums her way through a contrived script by “Juno” writer Diablo Cody that doesn’t add much to the family drama or rock movie genres.
Kline, Rick Springfield and Gummer hit the right notes, but are saddled with dialogue that sounds melodramatically overwritten—“My heart is dead and rotten,” sobs Julie.—or like a Successstory platitude—“It doesn’t matter if you kids love you,” says Springfield, “it’s your job to love them.” Missing are Cody’s usual wit and director Jonathan Demme’s careful examination of his characters. Instead they’ve opted for a blandly crowd-pleasing movie that isn’t as crowd-pleasing as they might have hoped.
“Ricki and the Flash” is about the power of music to break down barriers and bring people together, but as well shot as the music scenes are—and they should be, Demme made one of the great music films of all time, “Stop Making Sense,” among many others—the movie hits the wrong notes when the music stops.
“Fantastic Four,” the reboot of Marvel’s original superhero gang starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell, should have had a subtitle. I’d suggest “Fantastic Four: Prologue!” or perhaps “Fantastic Four: Failure to Launch.” The latest entry into the superhero sweepstakes is a leaden affair that seems to exist only to set up a sequel and doesn’t even do a good job at that.
Miles Teller stars as Reed Richards, a boy genius who started working on his interdimensional travel device when he was in grade five. Cut to years later at his high school science fair. He’s still slogging away on the machine with the help of his best friend Ben (Bell). His science teacher disqualifies him—“This is a science fair, not a magic show!”—but a visiting scientist (Reg E. Cathey), the living embodiment of the “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach” maxim, offers him a job at research lab Baxter Industries.
There he works with Johnny and Susan Storm (Jordan and Mara) and Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell)—can you guess which one becomes the bad guy?—to build a proper teleportation device. After successfully sending a monkey to Planet Zero the core group, plus Ben but minus Sue, make the trip themselves. Much Saturday morning cartoon dialogue later they are forced to leave Victor behind and make a desperate dash for earth. Once back home things have changed. Reed has turned into Stretch Armstrong, with elastic arms and legs, Johnny is a literal fireball of energy, Ben is a rock star now known as Thing and Sue, who soaked up some radioactive rays now “shifts in and out of the visible spectrum.”
There’s more, but really, who cares? From this point on “Fantastic Four” becomes a studio superhero franchise film, regurgitating situations and visuals we’ve seen before in better movies. There’s the giant ray of matter shooting from an interdimensional portal into the sky, the maniacal bad guy and terror here on earth.
Been there, done that.
Director Josh Trank makes an effort to distinguish the movie with an hour of character development off the top but the pace is anything but fantastic—there’s a low energy chase scene that feels like the cars are driving through molasses—and the movie plays more like an emo indie than a superhero flick. The serious tone is appreciated after the smirky “Avengers: Age of Ultron” but the empty millennial platitudes—“We can’t change the past but we can change the future!”—and lack of any really compelling characters make it a slog. The beauty of the “Fantastic Four” comic books was the chemistry between the characters, an element, despite good actors, missing from the reboot.
Maybe “Fantastic Four” doesn’t need a subtitle. Perhaps it simply needs a more accurate title, like “Qualified Quartet” or “Fair Four.”
Kids movies come in all shapes and sizes. This year there’s been the introspection and action adventure of “Inside Out,” “Minions” mayhem and “Paddington’s” cuddly cuteness. For something completely different there’s the “Shaun the Sheep Movie,” a stop-motion animated film with virtually no dialogue but lots of fun.
“Wallace and Gromit” fans may recognize Shaun the Sheep from the 1995 short film “A Close Shave” or his self-titled television series. He’s a resourceful, if mischievous sheep who lives with his flock at Mossy Bottom Farm. When he accidentally sets off a chain of events that sees his Farmer get amnesia and become a successful hairdresser in the big city, Shaun tries to bring him back home.
The simple story is embellished with marvellous stop motion animation and delirious set pieces. Shaun and his livestock clan disguise themselves as humans in an overcoat while Bitzer the dog passes as a surgeon—only to be distracted by the delicious looking bones of an operating room skeleton—all while trying to stay clear of animal control officer Trumper.
Those looking for subtext will find a deeper meaning in Shaun’s adventures in the big city as the flock leaves the country for the considerably more dangerous city, but the film primarily plays as a treat for your eyes not your brain.
With no dialogue to fall back on “Shaun the Sheep Movie” has sight gags galore. Aardman Animations, the studio behind this and “Chicken Run” and the Wallace and Gromit movies, know that the small details can lead to big laughs, so every frame is filled with lovingly crafted slapstick. It’s aimed at kids but should tickle funny bones young and old.
