Basically, a family drama with a dose of supernatural dropped into it in the form of a cello.
Not a fan of people who trash Alcoholics Anonymous, especially when taking its very concepts and distorting them for their own gain. This flies directly in the face of the principles of anonymity, on which Alcoholics Anonymous is based.
The book was somewhat interesting, despite the ill-informed AA references. But there wasn't enough supernatural to warrant the supernatural.
And there was too many unanswered questions: what happened to Evan? Why did the oaths and magic work? Does the father ever play again? Do what happened to the relationship between the father and the music store owner?
Joon-ho Bong is fast becoming one of my favorite directors. His latest, Parasite, won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, proving that I'm not alone in my thinking.
Clever, beautiful and genre-bending, this film stars Kang-ho Song, who plays the patriarch of a poverty-stricken family that includes actors So-dam Park, Woo-sik Choi and Hye-jin Jang. Song is a favorite of Bong's and has appeared in five out of Bong's eight films.
This is a film about a poverty-stricken but clever family that entrenches themselves into a wealthy home. One by one, each gets the next hired into the "castle in the sky" through trickery and cunning. The wealthy family, with an air of naïveté, glides through life, tossing decisions, groceries and orders with abandon into their shopping cart of a life, with little thought towards consequences.
There are real moments of humor--possibly my favorite was Jang's imitation of the North Korean dictator.
One of the most perilous scenes was wrought with a tunnel of a stairway that radiates the unknown and the unacknowledged. Turning metaphors on their heads, a tunneled staircase with its looming light is a portent of doom and water becomes a carrier of stench and disease. Trigger warning: if you were a victim of Harvey or similar events, beware.
With Escher-like stairs taking us up and down between subterraneans and the high place this mythopoeic warning cautions us of the space between the haves and the have nots and what exactly supports who.
If you don't have a library card, get one. Why? Because you need to access Kanopy. Now. If for no other reason than to stream Hearts Beat Loud.
In their own words, Kanopy "stream[s] thoughtful entertainment to your preferred device with no fees and no commercials by partnering with public libraries and universities."
With Kanopy, I never would have seen this little gem, Hearts Beat Loud.
Father Frank (Nick Offerman) is a failed musician who owns a dying record store. Daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) is sensibly pursuing a career as a doctor despite ludicrously real musical talent.
The story examines the space between a parent and a child after high school graduation and before college. Father Frank and daughter Sam are learning to let go: adulthood, dreams, ambitions, relationships.
Although I'm not a big Parks and Recreation fan, I have come to adore Nick Offerman, particularly after watching him as the pontificatingly drunken barrister, Karl Weathers, in the second season of Fargo (Rhinoceros was my favorite episode). His leathered face and pugnacious eyes never quite prepare me for his irony-filled drawl.
Couple him with his onscreen daughter, Kiersey Clemons, and his maybe/maybe not lover, Toni Collette, and you have quite a trifecta. Then for a real throwback, Ted Danson resurrects his Cheers chops as a loopy bartender. Round out this unexpected ensemble with Blythe Danner as the klepto grandma.
The music is unexpectedly good and Kiersey Clemons voice, in and of itself, is worth the watch.
Director: Brett Haley
Writers: Brett Haley, Marc Basch
Stars: Nick Offerman, Kiersey Clemons, Blythe Danner
Country: USA
Language: English
Release Date: 8 June 2018 (USA)
Filming Locations: Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York City, New
York, USA
Everything You Are by Kerry Anne King
