Tag: Blythe Danner

John Carney is an amazing director. From Once, to Begin Again, to Sing Street. Great films, great songs, a lot of heart and love.

This movie, Hearts Beat Loud, is not made by John Carney, but it looks like it could have been.

Instead it is directed by Brett Haley, who did The Hero. It is a film I meant to watch and didn’t, that also probably didn’t have music in it so whatever. Basically, I know little of his work, but by golly, with a movie like this, I guess I should go back and check them out.

With smiles and beards like this, you know this film is infectious. In multiple ways.

Frank Fisher (Nick Offerman) is a man who has run a record store in New York City for 17 years. He loves music. He loves making music. He wanted to be a star. But he did not reach his fame.

Sam Fisher (Kiersey Clemons) is his daughter, in the summer before college, and she is taking pre-med classes to get ahead. She is going to UCLA, which is far away from NYC. She also enjoys music, but doesn’t have time for it anymore.

And her mother / his wife? Well, she is gone. She has been for some time. It has been hard. Hell, Frank was performing with her. Maybe they would have made it big together. Maybe. They just never got the time to make it fully work. And now they are about to be separated. Things are changing. This is sad. It feels sad. I’m sad.

But in a last hooray, in a jam session between the pair, they make a song finally just work. It is emotional, it is a good mix of pop and soul. And it is about to take off on the internet.

Also starring Ted Danson, Toni Collette, Sasha Lane, and Blythe Danner.

Also some stories of love, those are the ones that really get you.

I already mentioned how this feels like a movie by an acclaimed director. I am so surprised that this director tackled these heartfelt song and jam session scenes so wonderfully. They draw the viewer in, and as long as there are good speakers, you will feel like you are there and just want to jump for joy.

My audience actually had people cheering after they finally finished their first song, and this isn’t some midnight release crowd, so it was odd to see.

Hearts Beat Loud is emotion. It is hope, it is sadness. It is loneliness and anxiety. It is fear of change, and fear of trying something new. It is excitement, joy, and of course, love. Offerman and Clemons just feel so realistic in their roles that it is hard to not go on the roller coaster with them.

I loved the music in this movie. Surprisingly it only made me cry once. I am guessing because my own daughter is a decade and a half before moving out and being an adult, so those scenes didn’t take as much of a hold on me.

Hearts Beat Loud is a feel good movie overall, and just a movie that feels like it needs to exist right now.

Ah, Valentine’s Day.

Does anything mean love and sadness more than Mr. Nicholas Sparks? Shit, he has written 14 books since 2000, and probably half of them have turned into feature films. He is just writing money at this point, and probably making sure his stories can be turned into film.

In honor of that, let’s talk about The Lucky One, shall we?

Strangely enough, I am fine with him playing a soldier. Go figure.

In the War (you know which war I mean), there are people who end up dying. Dying for any number of reasons. Friendly fire. Enemy fire. Bad conditions. Who knows! But with that same train of thought, people survive for just as random reasons. Marching a step too slow. Disobeying orders. Or finding something on the ground, putting it in the pocket, and having that get shot instead.

Private Logan Thibault (Zac Efron) (No, I don’t think he is a private but they didn’t tell me) is returning home from his third Iraq tour thanks to that very thing. He found a picture of a random woman in a small frame, and it saved his life. Heck, after it saved him, it also gave him extra luck in surviving other deadly things. He really loves this random woman, but has no idea who she is, but he wants to thank her. When he gets home, he is too busy getting his PTSD on to do any real work, so he sets off around the country to find that missing woman.

And he finds her! Of course! Beth (Taylor Schilling) works at a dog obedience house with her mother (Blythe Danner) while both raising her son. She used to have a brother, but you know, he died in the war. Awkward.

So of course he gets down there, and quickly tells her that she saved his life and he wants to thank her. Right? Hells to the no. He panics, and says he is there for the job opening. Oh okay yeah, work and live in a completely different state to eventually tell her your secret. That’s not weird at all. Many movies before have told us that keeping big secrets like this always ends up positively.

Also featuring Jay R. Ferguson as a town sheriff and father of her child. Weird.

“I want you here in front of me, always, and forever…to continue to stop bullets flying in my direction.”

How does this rank in the Sparks spectrum? Well, it ain’t no Notebook. But it is better than The Last Song. But it is about another guy in the army, Dear John did that like, two movies ago. Why army again? Not to mention the entirety of most of the plot is about his inability to tell her why he traveled all this way, instead of a long journey finding the woman who saved his life.

Seriously, if it focused more on finding the woman, this movie would have been a lot better. But I guess it wouldn’t be Romancey enough if she wasn’t there most of the movie? I guess. Romance made this movie worse. I demand someone make a similar movie, focusing on the journey and finding the woman, and then it ends awkwardly as he pulls up to her doorstep or something. That is what I want.

This just doesn’t seem like romance at all to me. Type of thing is so creepy, even I can see that it is creepy.