“Sing Street” is a Fantastic Irish Musical Comedy

For my latest movie review, I’m going to critique a movie that was released a few months ago in my native country of Ireland, and features a copious amount of Irish actors and was filmed in Dublin- “Sing Street” (2016), directed by John Carney. It deviates from my usual reviews in that it’s a recent movie which takes place in the 1980’s, as opposed to being released in that decade. The movie has drawn comparisons to Alan Parker’s 1991 musical comedy, “The Commitments”, which is also a movie about a group of youths based in Dublin who put a band together. Despite both of them including actress Maria Doyle Kennedy in a supporting role, the plots of both flicks are vastly different.

The Plot in a Nutshell: The year is 1985. 15 year old Conor Lalor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) doesn’t have the most enviable home life. His parents, Robert (Aidan Gillen) and Penny (Maria Doyle Kennedy) are constantly at each others’ throats. While his sister Ann (Kelly Thornton) copes by burying herself into her schoolwork,his college dropout brother Brendan  (Jack Reynor) smokes pot and makes wisecracks.  Due to the downsizing of the economy, Conor is transferred from his private school to Synge Street Christian Brothers School, a rough Catholic establishment. After running afoul of both schoolyard bullies and Brother Baxter (Don Wycherley), the school’s oppressive principal, Conor spies mysterious budding model Raphina (Lucy Boynton) from across the street. Willing to impress her, he offers her the chance to star in his band’s music video. The slight catch? The band doesn’t exist.

Nevertheless, Conor gathers a motley crew of musicians, who remarkably have all the skills needed to create a band. Guided by Brendan, he starts to write original songs for the group, now called “Sing Street” after their school, in a bid to distract himself from his crumbling domestic life. Along the way, he starts to become closer to Raphina, and he begins to embark on a path that he never quite anticipated…

Character/Actor Observations: For starters, the young ensemble cast was very expertly cast. I felt that all of the teenage band members had a natural presence, and that they would be the type of youths that I would run into on a daily basis. As someone who is used to seeing actors in their twenties and beyond portray teenagers on screen, it was refreshing to see real teenagers take on these roles. I especially liked the prominent relationship that Conor has with Brendan, as they reestablish the bond through their love of music. Reynor steals many of the scenes that he appears in, and has excellent brotherly chemistry with newcomer Walsh-Peelo. Lucy Boynton is well cast opposite Walsh-Peelo, and many of their scenes together were tinged with the appropriate amount of tenderness required.

My Favourite Scene in “Sing Street”: Two scenes vie for being my favourite in the movie. The first comes about when Sing Street are shooting their first music video, entitled “The Riddle of the Model” (definitely NOT inspired by Raphina). The video looks amateurish, exactly as if a group of kids had filmed it, with the band sporting garish costumes. The song is additionally catchy to boot!

The second scene appears much later in the movie, when Sing Street are scheduled to preform a concert in their school gym. Conor fantasizes about the whole school breaking out into a dance, to their song, “Drive it like you stole it”, clearly influenced by “Back to the Future”, with the students decked out in 1950’s attire, much like that movie. Beneath the humour, however, there is an undercurrent of sadness to this sequence, but it still manages to be entertaining and visually stunning to look at.

My Least Favourite Scene in “Sing Street”: If I’m being completely honest, I was on board with this film and the characters until the climax. Without giving too much away, I felt that the end didn’t quite mesh well with the rest of the movie, and frankly seemed a little rushed in my opinion. Some of you may hold different opinions on the ending, and I’d be interested to know how anyone feels regarding it.

Actors Before They were Famous: The jury’s still out on whether any of the young cast will amount to greater things in the future. However, it still contains supporting performances from many notable Irish actors, such as Aidan Gillen from acclaimed Irish gangster drama “Love/Hate”, and the aforementioned Maria Doyle Kennedy, who has appeared in such works as “Downton Abbey” and “Jupiter Ascending”.

Ratings and Recommendations : If you’re a fan of 80’s bands such as Duran Duran, The Clash, A-Ha and Hall and Oates, then I’d suggest watching this movie, as it makes for a trip down memory lane of sorts for those who grew up in the 1980’s. For those who were not as fortunate to grow up in that era, such as myself, it can give an insight to how people lived in Ireland in that period.

In summation, “Sing Street” receives a grand total of 4 and a half stars out of five. If you enjoyed this movie, I’d suggest watching some of John Carney’s other directorial projects, such as the Academy Award winning “Once” (2006), or 2013’s “Begin Again”, for some more tales of musical triumphs and pitfalls. Highly recommended!

 

Join Peggy Sue on an Adventure 25 Years into the Past…

Hi, everyone! I don’t know about any of you, but I have always been entranced by stories which feature the characters either time travelling to the past (likely before they were born) or to the future. When it comes to time travel movies, there are the classics (“Back to the Future”), the abysmal (the 2002 remake of H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”, starring Guy Pearce), and the tremendously goofy ones (“Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”). That brings me to today’s movie, “Peggy Sue got Married” (from 1986), where Kathleen Turner gets the chance to relive her high school years.

The Plot in a Nutshell: Life isn’t looking too bright for Peggy Sue Bodell (Turner). She’s on the cusp of divorce from her wayward husband Charlie (Nicolas Cage), whom she married at the end of high school when she got pregnant. When she goes to her 25th high school reunion with daughter Beth (Helen Hunt) in tow, she meets up with her old school friends, including Richard (Barry Miller), former class nerd turned billionaire inventor. When she, alongside Richard as her King, is crowned as “Reunion Queen”, she ends up fainting on the stage.

When Peggy comes to, she’s shocked to discover that it’s 1960, and she’s been transported into her senior year of high school. After her understandable shock, Peggy is determined to do things right the second time around, as Peggy Sue Kelcher, where she’s expected not to drink, have sex or experiment with drugs. Peggy confides her  dilemma to the teenage version of Richard, and in turn for his solution to her time travel conundrum , offers him advice about future inventions in the 1980’s.   She becomes closer to her parents (Don Murray and Barbara Harris) and little sister Nancy (Sophia Coppola), fools around with mysterious Bohemian poet Michael (Kevin J. O’Connor), and attempts to prevent herself from getting tied down by Charlie at an early age. But will Peggy discover the reason she fell for Charlie in the first place, or does destiny have other plans in store for Peggy Sue?

Cast and Acting Observations: Kathleen Turner was 32 years old when she made this picture, yet she convincingly plays both a high school teenager and her 42 year old self. This isn’t an easy feat to achieve, but Turner pulls it off with enough charm to make this unlikely scenario plausible by just her performance alone. Nicolas Cage adopts a dodgy accent as Charlie, but nevertheless delivers all the right notes as a character who has more layers to him than Peggy or the audience initially gave him credit for.

Actors Before They were Famous: When I first watched the movie, I was greatly amused to see Jim Carrey in a supporting role as Charlie’s goofball of a best friend, Walter. In addition, future “Lost in Translation” and “The Virgin Suicides” director Sofia Coppola is Peggy’s preteen sister Nancy, five years before she become known for her less than stellar, but not downright horrible, turn as Mary Corleone in “The Godfather Part III”, which, like “Peggy Sue”, was directed by her father, the legendary Francis Ford Coppola.

My Favourite Scene(s) in the Movie:  I (and those of you who may detest Maths as much as I always have) got a kick out of the scene where Peggy awesomely lectures her sadistic teacher on how she won’t have have any need for Algebra in the future. But the real scene that makes the movie for me is when Peggy answers the phone in her home, only to realize that she’s talking to her long deceased grandmother (Maureen O’Sullivan). Overcome with emotion, she hurriedly flees, with her mother having to comfort her without realizing the true instigation behind her daughter’s outburst. Anyone who has ever lost anyone close to them can easily empathize with Peggy’s plight.

My Least Favourite Scene(s) in the Movie: While this may just be a ridiculous nitpick in an otherwise enjoyable movie, there was one scene that I found to be a little awkward. After Peggy has revealed her strange situation to Richard, they’re confused as to whether she’s in limbo or dead. Then Richard proposes testing out the “dead” concept, and proceeds to shove Peggy onto the path of an oncoming fire engine to determine this theory. While it’s rather short-lived (with Peggy leaping out of the way just before the engine hits home), it still unsettled me. If she hadn’t jumped away just in the nick of time, then Richard would have been accidentally, but directly responsible for her demise. I know that it’s not meant to be taken seriously, but still.

My Take on “Peggy Sue got Married”: I immensely enjoyed the movie, as I felt that it was a fantastic representation of time travel movies. It may inevitably draw comparisons with the similarly themed “Back to the Future”, which was released just a year prior to this this flick. However, “Peggy Sue” is a remarkable film in its own right, and an unexpected picture from the man who directed “The Godfather Trilogy”.

My Rating and Recommendations: “Peggy Sue Got Married” gets 4 out of 5 stars in my book, as it’s a compelling movie with sympathetic and engaging characters. If you’re intrigued by movies concerning time travel, then please feel free to check out my reviews for “Back to the Future” and “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure“.

Michael J. Fox is just your Average “Teen Wolf”

Happy October, folks! My apologies for not blogging much as of late. However, I look forward to bringing you some fantasy themed 80’s flicks over the coming month, to prepare for Halloween. Today’s first flick is 1985’s “Teen Wolf”, which later became one of the inspirations for the hugely popular MTV TV show of the same name.

This movie stars Michael J. Fox in one of his most notable outings in the 80’s, albeit one in which he doesn’t travel to the past or to the future in a time-travelling Delorean. He’s Scott Howard, a picked on, socially awkward nice guy, who, of course, pines after blonde cheerleader Pamela (Lorie Griffin), while being oblivious to his best friend Boof’s (Susan Ursitti) affections for him. He is far from the best on the basketball team, with the rival player on the opposing team, Mick McAllister (Mark Arnold), taking particular relish in routinely taunting him. Scott just longs to be seen as special.

And that’s just what he becomes when he involuntary grows hair all over his body during a full moon ,thanks to a hereditary condition possessed by his family in which all the members gradually undergo a complete transformation into (you’ve guessed it) werewolves. Scott confronts his father, Harold (James Hampton), who explains that the curse sometimes passes by a generation, and was hoping that it would be likewise for Scott. (“Well Dad, it didn’t pass me by. It landed on my face!” he exclaims).

After Scott’s secret inevitably gets found out,he almost immediately becomes the host of his high school, due to a teenage wolf being a rarity in a sleepy, suburban town, naturally. But with his friend Stiles (Jerry Levine) looking to exploit him beyond his limits, and Pamela suddenly becoming interested in his wolf persona, can Scott tame his wolf side and win the major basketball game?

First things first, “Teen Wolf” is a silly, at times unrealistic, movie, but it has enough laughs and one-liners that make up for the overall absurdity that is the plot, mainly in the form of Michael J. Fox. “Teen Wolf” came out a month after “Back to the Future”, after Fox was just basking in the success of the latter movie. He has gone on to say that he regrets being part of the former movie, and wisely refused to come back for the sequel, “Teen Wolf Too” (1987), which features a young Jason Bateman as Scott’s cousin, Todd, who tries to balance college life with the trials of being a werewolf (seriously, don’t waste your time with this sequel).

Nevertheless, “Teen Wolf” is a feel-good flick. I’d recommend it if you love seeing Michael J. Fox act as someone other than Marty Mc Fly, and if you want to see a werewolf surfing on a moving van to the strains of the Beach Boys’ “Surfing USA”, or if you like your movies to have a bit of a bite! This flick earns three out of five stars from me!

Great Scott! – 30 Years of Back to the Future

Several renowned movies are celebrating milestones anniversaries this summer, whether it’s “Jaws” (40 years), “Clueless” (20), or “Ghost” (25). But the anniversary I’m sure that even the most hardcore movie fans will be anticipating is the commemoration of the 30 year release of Robert Zemickis’ enchanting science fiction classic, “Back to the Future”, which was first introduced to us on July 3, 1985. Everybody should know the basic premise of the trilogy, seeing as it’s been around for quite a while now. But for those of you who aren’t as familiar with the story, I’ll give you a brief overview of the trilogy as a whole.

Michael J. Fox stars as our skate-boarding teenage protagonist, Marty McFly. Despite being the epitome of teenage coolness, he mostly hangs out with his much older friend, the delightfully eccentric scientist, Doctor Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd). Naturally, Doc has assembled a time machine out of a Delorean (yet another reason to favour these car brands above others). As we all know, Marty gets inadvertently transported back to 1955, where he has a run in with both of his future parents- passionate, outspoken  Lorraine (Lea Thompson) and the meek, nerdy George (Crispin Glover). While he learns some home truths about what each were like when they were his age, he must not only convince them that they are each other’s “density”, but try to rebuff the advances of his infatuated mother in order to ensure his own existence, and contend with Hill Valley bully, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson). Will Marty ever get back to the future?

Part II is famous for having the characters travel to the future as opposed to an excursion to the past, where they end up in the far out year of 2015! In this installment, Marty and Doc must prevent nasty Biff Tannen from winning big on a sports almanac, thus risking the McFlys’ own blissful lives in 1985. It is hilarious to  look at the character’s outfits in the 2015 universe and realize that in the 1980’s, people depicted that those would be the clothes we’d be wearing regularly in that era!

Finally, “Part III” takes us to the old Wild West in 1885, where Marty faces a showdown with Biff’s identical great-grandson, Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen. Meanwhile, Doc falls for schoolteacher Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen), where he has to pluck up the courage to inform her that he’s a time traveler from 100 years into the future…

The “Back to the Future” franchise still continues to be just as timeless (no pun intended) to contemporary audiences just as it was to viewers in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. What keeps the series so fresh to me is the sheer likability of Michael J. Fox as Marty, as he makes us root for him. He has an iconic sidekick in Doc Brown, who defines zany, unconventionality to its core. Thomas F.Wilson delivers an outstanding performance as Biff, and by extension, his equally despicable family members (though it’s worth noting that Wilson actually based his role on his experience of being bullied, and he’s perfectly affable in real life). Lea Thompson is fantastic playing various versions of Marty’s mother, and Crispin Glover, at least in the first movie, has his character grow an abundance of ways.

For the entire trilogy, I give it a rating of five out of five stars, as it manages to remain as fresh and compelling as ever. It still manages to entice new audience members after all these decades, without losing the quality that made it fresh and exciting. I’d recommend it to kids of all ages, as it’s perfect for family viewing. Remember, the future’s what you make it, so make it a good one!

Take a trip through History with Bill and Ted

Whenever anyone mentions 80’s time travel comedies, the first movie everyone will immediately think of is “Back to the Future”, of course. But while “Back to the Future” is undeniably my favourite time travel series, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” is easily on par with that franchise, in my opinion.

The plot concerns Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan(Keanu Reeves), best friends who reside in San Dimas, California,and who co-found their own rock band “Wyld Stallyns”. However, they’re at risk of failing their History class if they don’t get their grades up. (Among other things, they believe Napoleon Bonaparte to be a “short, dead dude” and Julius Cesar to be a salad dressing). And to complicate things even further, Ted’s stern colonel father plots to ship him off to military school if the aforementioned grade problem doesn’t improve.

As their prospects look grim, Bill and Ted have a chance encounter with the mysterious Rufus (George Carlin), who offers them a way to ace their history report- via travelling back in time in a phone booth time machine (Doctor Who, anyone?) and meeting historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, Joan of Arc, Billy the Kid, Socrates, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Beethoven, in order to help them with their assignment. Along the way, Bill and Ted become besotted with “princess babes”, Elizabeth (Kimberly LaBelle) and Joanna (Diane Franklin) when they travel back to medieval England, and the historical figures run amok in a local mall, and get arrested, causing much hilarity. Will Bill and Ted be able to round them together in time to give their history report?

“Bill and Ted” is a hugely wacky, yet enjoyable movie from 1989. For me, it features one of Keanu Reeves’ best performances in his career (well, possibly next to his role as Neo in “The Matrix” movies, that is). Whenever I was supposed to be studying for a history exam, I would “study” by watching this movie. It not only gave me an insight to the historical figures depicted in this movie, but a vision of how they might have behaved were they inserted into modern times. For instance, the film sees Joan of Arc taking over a Jazzercise class, Napoleon causing chaos at a water park (appropriately called “Waterloo”),Beethoven jamming out in a music store, and Freud foiling Billy the Kid and Socrates’ attempts to pick up girls in the mall in the most hilarious manner possible.

“Bill and Ted” was followed by a sequel, “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey”, in 1991. While it’s just as good as the first movie, and has its share of laugh out loud moments, I have always preferred the original movie just a little more. While “Bill and Ted” might be a little too goofy and silly for some kids, I’d recommend this movie to most kids. The content is mostly appropriate for kids, even though there’s a few jokes that may pass them by (namely, any jokes involving Missy, Bill’s young stepmother who is married to his father).

However, I predict that kids will immensely enjoy this movie, regardless of this, and that’s why I give “Bill and Ted” 4 and a half out of 5 stars, as it’s a hilarious trip trough time. Remember, “be excellent to each other, and party on”!