I sit in with Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to go over some of the week’s biggest entertainment stories and let you know what’s happening in theatres. We talk about Alan Hamel’s new project, an AI clone of his late wife Suzanne Sommers, the career of Chuck Spadina and have a look at the new rock biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I joined CTV NewsChannel to have a look at new movies coming to theatres including the rock biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” the Broadway drama “Blue Moon” and the psychological drama “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with guest host Stefan Keyes to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the rock biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” the Broadway drama “Blue Moon” and the psychological drama “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I review the Guillermo del Toro’s gothic retelling of “Frankenstein” and suggest a cocktail to enjoy while watching the movie.
Click to HERE to listen to Shane and me talk about hioit ice cream, Jimmy Kimmel and more!
For the Booze & Reviews look at “Blue Moon” and some of Broadway’s best cocktails to enjoy with the movie click HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the rock biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” the Broadway drama “Blue Moon” and the psychological drama “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: An inside look at the creative process of an iconic performer, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is an up-close-and-personal look at the making of his 1982 album “Nebraska,” a turning point in Bruce Springsteen’s career. “It’s like he’s channeling something deeply personal and dark,” says Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong).
CAST: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Gaby Hoffmann, Marc Maron, David Krumholtz. Directed by Scott Cooper.
REVIEW: Compared to other rock bios “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is unlikely; as unlikely as Bruce Springsteen following up his biggest hit to date, the upbeat, jangly “Hungry Heart,” with the stark, downbeat “Nebraska.”
Set in the early eighties in the weeks and months after the close of the phenomenally success tour for “The River,” the film begins as a standard rock biography. Springsteen’s manager John Landau (Jeremy Strrong) is the buffer between a record company hungry for another record, preferably laden with big hits, and an artist (Jeremy Allen White) struggling to find himself in this wake of fame that came with his new, widespread success and the pressure to “hit it out of the park again.”
Springsteen’s journey “to find the real among the noise” leads him to a rented house in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Equipped with only a lo-fi Teac Tascam 144 four-track cassette recorder, he records the sparse demos inspired by the meditative crime drama “Badlands” intertwined with memories from his troubled childhood. The songs are stark, introspective and the polar opposite of what the record company is expecting.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is a quiet, minor chord portrait of an artist at a crossroads. But what begins as a story of an artist struggling with the pressures of fame and a greedy record company soon turns to the fight for artistic integrity as depression and isolation take hold.
“I know who you are,” says a car salesman, recognizing the rock star. “That makes one of us,” Springsteen replies with a straight face.
Director Scott Cooper, who also wrote the script based on the 2023 book “Deliver Me from Nowhere” by Warren Zanes, avoids most, but not all, of the rock bio genre’s trappings to deliver a brooding character study of a man battling depression as he is cut loose from the world he came from and thrust into an uncertain future.
It sounds like a cliché, but Jeremy Allen White channels Springsteen. His singing voice doesn’t quite match the Boss’s power, but in the film’s contemplative moments, and there are many, White is not afraid to leave space around the performance. His take on Springsteen is a vibe, as reliant on the character’s unspoken moments as it is on what the character actually says.
The movie does rock out from time to time with some randomly inserted concert footage (While “Born in the U.S.A.” was written for the “Nebraska” album, the inclusion of the full-band rave-up here may please fans but feels out of place) but works best when it focusses on White’s stripped-down performance.
The film is really a solo act.
The singer’s relationships are given a short shrift. His courtship of Jersey girl Faye Romano (Odessa Young) is underwritten and, considering how large The E Street Band looms in Springsteen’s mythology, they are barely a presence here. It’s in his bond with longtime manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) and the complicated relationship with his father (Stephen Graham) that he shows the kind of emotional vulnerability that lies at the heart of the performance.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is a solemn movie that drags in its latter section as Springsteen fights for the release of the starkly poetic “Nebraska.” The tortured artist’s insistence on musical integrity is commendable but feels repetitious by the film’s end.
Still, Cooper’s focus on the artist’s path, on resilience, on forgiveness and not simply Springsteen’s Wikipedia page, is admirable.
SYNOPSIS: “Blue Moon,” the new biographical comedy now playing in theatres, stars Ethan Hawke as legendary Broadway figure Lorenz Hart, songwriter of “Blue Moon,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Manhattan,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “My Funny Valentine,” on one long, melancholy night at the bar at Sardi’s.
CAST: Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott. Directed by Richard Linklater.
REVIEW: Anchored by a tour-de-force performance from Ethan Hawke, “Blue Moon” is a deceptively simple character study of an artistic genius who was equal parts brilliance and frailty.
Set at the bar of the legendary Broadway restaurant Sardi’s, the action takes place on a single evening, March 31, 1943, opening night of “Oklahoma!” A triumph for composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein, the show’s success left Rogers’s previous partner, lyricist Lorenz Hart, isolated, alone at the bar, save for the company of a bartender Hart nicknames Dr. Bacardi (Bobby Cannavale) and the restaurant’s piano player (Jonah Lees).
“We write together for a quarter of a century,” Hart says, “and the first show he writes with someone else is gonna be the biggest hit he ever had. Am I bitter? Yes.”
Charming, witty but with a deep sadness, Hart props up the bar, slowly losing the battle with the bottle, waiting for 20-year-old Yale student, Elizabeth Weiland (a sparkling Margaret Qualley) to arrive. Though closeted, he loves her, and she loves him, “just not in that way.”
As the evening unfolds, liquor flows in Hart’s direction as he pines for Elizabeth, lobs jabs at his former partner’s use of an “!” in the title of “Oklahoma!” and inspires essayist E. B. White (Patrick Kennedy) to write his novel “Stuart Little” as the evening takes a decidedly bittersweet turn.
A chamber piece—pretty much the whole thing takes place in the downstairs bar at Sardi’s—“Blue Moon” is a complex, humanizing slice of Hart’s life.
Hawke’s remarkable performance embraces the extremes of what Hammerstein and cabaret performer Mabel Mercer said about Hart. Hammerstein commented, “He was alert and dynamic and fun to be around,” while Mercer called him, “The saddest man I ever knew.” Hawke embodies those polarities and touches on many things in between in ways subtle and overt.
An extroverted introvert, Hart put on a brave face, spitting out witticisms—“Leave the bottle,” he tells the bartender, “it’s a visual poem.”—but each barb and every funny line betrays an undercurrent of insecurity and torment.
Hawke is in virtually every frame of the film, reciting pages of dialogue—“Who are you talking to?” asks the bartender. “Me,” Hart replies. “I gotta talk to someone interesting.”—and yet his stream of consciousness always engages because each speech, every word illuminates part of this complicated character.
“Blue Moon” is a showcase for a Hawke—he uses an elaborate combover and director Richard Linklater’s shoots him to reflect Hart’s diminutive stature—but the performance doesn’t rely on the physical transformation. Instead, it is Hawke’s nuances that create this sometimes funny, sometimes sad valentine to Hart.
SYNOPSIS: In the surreal psychological drama “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” an overwhelmed mother and therapist played by Rose Byrne grapples with her child’s mysterious illness, an absent husband and the giant hole in the ceiling of her apartment.
CAST: Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater, ASAP Rocky. Directed by Mary Bronstein.
REVIEW: Rose Byrne has a singular ability to play people teetering on the edge. Sylvia, the tightly wound character she plays on the Apple TV+ series “Platonic” plays those anxieties and familial crisis for laughs. The tone of her work in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” however, is pitched several shades darker than her TV work.
Shot in tight, claustrophobic close-ups, we meet Linda (Byrne), a therapist whose life is crumbling around her. Her young daughter (Delaney Quinn) has a mysterious illness and needs to be fed through a tube. Her Navy officer husband (Christian Slater) is on deployment and, to cap it all off, a pipe in their apartment’s blew a giant hole in their ceiling, dumping hundreds of gallons of water into their living space. Battling anxiety and depression Linda and daughter are forced into a cut rate motel as their landlord takes forever to fix the damage.
Self-medicating with alcohol and drugs, Linda is a coiled spring, tense and unpredictable and Byrne crawls into her head, delivering a raw nerve of a performance that impresses and devastates.
Director Mary Bronstein opts to shoot Byrne in extreme close-up for much of the runtime, examining the performance in detail. Without a false note, Byrne plays it straight, internalizing the societal pressures, shame and guilt that drives her to extremes. Linda is vulnerable and erratic, but the performance is all behind Bryne’s eyes. Without resorting to histrionics or big gestures, she illustrates Linda’s inner torment in subtle but distressing ways.
Rapper-turned-actor ASAP Rocky follows up his very strong work opposite Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” with another natural, interesting performance as James, the motel superintendent who gets drawn into Linda’s web.
A study of a relentless panic attack, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is a vital, intimate, but difficult, watch.
I’m quoted in a newswire story about the late, great Diane Keaton’s lifelong dream of becoming a singer.
Read the whole thing HERE!
