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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

thedullwoodexperiment

Tag Archives: Singer

Whitney (2018)

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Biography, Bobby Brown, Cissy Houston, Documentary, Drugs, Kevin Macdonald, Music, Review, Singer, Whitney Houston

D: Kevin Macdonald / 120m

With: Cissy Houston, Bobby Brown, Michael Houston, Gary Houston, Mary Jones, John Houston III,  Donna Houston, Debra Martin Chase, Nicole David, Rickey Minor, Kevin Costner

Born into a family with a musical background – her mother, Cissy, was a backing singer for the likes of Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley, before embarking on a successful solo career – Whitney Houston was blessed with the gift of an amazing singing voice. As a youngster she sang in her local church, and at the age of nineteen she was signed to Arista Records; three years later she released her first album: it went to number one on the Billboard 200. Further success followed, and she became the only female artist to have seven consecutive number one singles in the US. 1992 was a banner year for Whitney, with her starring role in The Bodyguard, and her marriage to rapper Bobby Brown. She had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, and continued success with albums and movies. But towards the end of the Nineties, it became clear that Whitney was struggling with a drug addiction that was interfering with her work, and affecting her voice. Public appearances showed a woman who seemed adrift from herself and unable to find her way back, and in 2012, aged just forty-eight, she died in tragic circumstances…

Watching Whitney, the latest documentary from Kevin Macdonald – Touching the Void (2003), Marley (2012) – you’re almost waiting for that moment, the one where the acclaimed singer took the wrong path, the point where it all started to go horribly, terribly wrong. But as the movie progresses, and several moments appear as if they could be the one, Macdonald reveals a sadder truth: the somber tragedy of Houston’s later life and career was caused by a number of problems that the singer never faced up to or properly dealt with. That’s not to say that Houston was the author of her own downfall, but instead she was someone who was taken advantage of in different ways – by her family, her friends, her various collaborators, her husband – and because these problems were both incremental and consistent, she found herself unable to deal with them. Escape through drugs was her only, perceived, option. As this becomes clearer and more obvious through the testimonies of the people who were with her during the Nineties, another, even sadder truth emerges: no one did anything to help her. Through all the highs and lows of Houston’s life, and despite all the attention she had, and all the success, her loneliness is made undeniably apparent.

Much has been made of the movie’s “revelation” that Houston was molested by her first cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, when she was a child, but Macdonald wisely acknowledges it and the anecdotal nature of its provenance, and doesn’t allow it to take up too much of the running time. He’s too intent on examining her life and career from the arms-length distance of an observer, allowing those who knew her to provide bias or clarity or their own self-interest as appropriate – except for Brown, who is challenged when he asserts that drugs had nothing to do with Houston’s life, or what eventually happened to her. But though the tragedy of Houston’s life is revealed in broad, unhappy swathes that are sometimes hard to watch (a comeback show in Australia is particularly hard to bear), this is still a celebration of a musical talent that touched the lives of millions around the world. Using archival footage, Macdonald shows the impact Houston had, and how deserving she was of the success she achieved. Her talent may have been a blessing and a curse, but what is certain from this sensitive and deftly assembled documentary, is that her talent is what truly defined her, and that’s something that a tragic end can’t erase.

Rating: 8/10 – an absorbing, entertaining, and thoughtful movie, Whitney makes no judgments about the singer’s life and career, or the choices she made, but it does highlight the various ways in which she lost control of her own destiny; a heartfelt mixture of joy and sadness, with powerful reminders of her prodigious talent, it’s a movie that also reinforces the notion that success and fame aren’t always precursors to happiness.

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Amy (2015)

24 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Alcohol, Amy Winehouse, Archival footage, Asif Kapadia, Back to Black, Blake Fielder-Civil, Career, Documentary, Drugs, Frank, Grammy's, Mitch Winehouse, Review, Singer, Tony Bennett

Amy

D: Asif Kapadia / 128m

With: Amy Winehouse, Juliette Ashby, Nick Shymansky, Mitch Winehouse, Blake Fielder-Civil, Lauren Gilbert, Sam Beste, Raye Cosbert, Andrew Morris, Lucian Grainge, Tyler James, Yasiin Bey

One of the most talented singers of her generation, Amy Winehouse “arrived” on the music scene in 2003 with the release of her first album, Frank. Eight years later she was dead from alcohol poisoning. She was in the public eye so often, and so often for the wrong reasons, that a lot of people felt they knew her. Unable to deal with the fame and fortune she so justly deserved, she retreated into a life of alcohol and drug addiction and repeated, unsuccessful attempts to throw off the demons that plagued her. One of her idols, Tony Bennett, said of her, “she was the only singer that really sang what I call ‘the right way’ because she was a great jazz-pop singer”. But why did she die at the age of twenty-seven, alone and with only her bodyguard checking on her occasionally?

Sadly, Amy doesn’t provide any answers. Nor does it probe too deeply into why the singer had such an addictive personality, or why she had been bulimic for most of her life (a topic which is mentioned partway through then dropped as a point of fact that needs no further investigation). It also fails to explore the differences between Amy Winehouse the world-famous singer/celebrity, and Amy Winehouse the private person. While there are times when her friends and family comment on her behaviour, and there’s a large amount of regret that can be felt, no one seems to have really known what made Amy tick during those brief eight years when she was so well known and so highly regarded.

Amy - scene3

The reason that Amy fails to do this is partly due to the very cleverly constructed way in which it recounts Amy’s life, charting her teenage home life and early success with Frank, through to her increasing use of drugs and her alcohol dependency before the further success of Back to Black. From there the pressures associated with such an unexpected and meteoric rise were compounded by her poor choice of partner – step forward, Blake Fielder-Civil – and the lack of support gained from her family, in particular her father, Mitch, whose lack of empathy for his daughter is incredible to witness. All this led to repeated, and entirely predictable relapses following stays in various rehab clinics. With no one attempting to deal with her bulimia – or get her to – Amy’s health was so compromised by 2011 that those close enough to her knew that her drinking would eventually kill her.

But Amy is effectively reportage, a trawl through the singer’s life that relies on a great deal of archival footage of Amy and her friends, Amy and her working relationships, Amy on stage, Amy in the public eye, and the contributions of many of the people who knew her personally and worked with her professionally. And while some of the early, pre-Frank footage is beguiling to watch, and fascinating in a morbid way (knowing how she would look in later life), the later footage, once her demons have made themselves felt, leads the movie into darker, more disturbing territory. It’s at this point that Amy moves away from bittersweet reflection and becomes a rehash of the public and private life we all saw develop over those eight years. We see the public appearances where she seems overawed and/or overwhelmed, the sight of someone with the light in their eyes slowly dying out, and we gain the sad realisation that this person’s life can only end in tragedy.

Amy - scene2

Did we always know this? Certainly Amy’s friends knew this, and it’s likely that her colleagues in the music industry knew this, and the movie, while not pointing any fingers directly (or with any intention of doing so), does however make one thing clear: no one did enough to stop it. Her friends stepped away because they couldn’t bear to watch her destroy herself, and her record company wouldn’t work with her unless she was clean (reasonable in itself but for Amy an ultimatum she was never going to achieve, not in the long-term). In the end, that’s why Amy died alone and with only her bodyguard occasionally checking in on her: she had nobody she could rely on to protect her.

The sadness and the largely unavoidable tragedy of all this is brought out by Kapadia’s firm control over the movie’s content, and while some people, particularly Mitch Winehouse, have subsequently decried Amy as having produced “an inaccurate narrative of Amy’s story”, there’s little doubt that in the last three years of her life, when her problems became insurmountable, that she was desperately unhappy and struggling to find direction in her life. You can see this illustrated best when she’s seen recording a duet with Tony Bennett, one of her life-long idols. The confidence that has seen her give outstanding vocal performances time and time again has deserted her; she keeps apologising for getting things wrong. Bennett continually reassures her but you can see from her eyes that Amy isn’t convinced; when the session is done, you can see how relieved she is that she’s got through it all. It’s moments like these, when she clearly wants to be at her best, but her best is too far away for her to grasp, that prove the most disturbing and the most upsetting.

Amy - scene1

Could Amy Winehouse have conquered her demons and still be making great records today? We’ll never know, but one thing we can be sure of: her short career gave us many wonderful recordings, and it’s these lasting treasures by which we should remember her, not as the drunk, confrontational, tragically lost figure she was in her last few years. She was talented, incredibly so, and Amy reminds us of that constantly, even as it charts her downward spiral. She was always about the music, always about the irresistable pull of it, and thanks to Kapadia’s inclusion of several of her most iconic and meaningful songs, Amy is still a reminder of just how talented she was, and how much she will be missed.

Rating: 8/10 – a fascinating documentary that tells a fascinating story, even if we think we’ve seen it all before, Amy mixes archival footage of the singer along with candid commentaries from the people who knew and worked with her to create a devastatingly human story of tragedy borne out of success; that it doesn’t make judgments (except very cleverly) or arrive at any conclusions are the only things that stop this from being any better than it already is.

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Danny Collins (2015)

15 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Al Pacino, Annette Bening, Baby Doll, Bobby Cannavale, Chime magazine, Christopher Plummer, Comedy, Dan Fogelman, Drama, Jennifer Garner, John Lennon, Letter, Review, Romance, Singer, Steve Tilston, True story

Danny Collins

D: Dan Fogelman / 106m

Cast: Al Pacino, Annette Bening, Jennifer Garner, Bobby Cannavale, Christopher Plummer, Katarina Cas, Giselle Eisenberg, Melissa Benoist, Josh Peck, Nick Offerman

In 1971, young folk singer Danny Collins is on the verge of stardom. His first album, featuring songs he’s written himself, is about to be released, and he’s about to give an interview for Chime magazine that will attract the attention of one of rock music’s most well-known performers (and one of Danny’s idols).

Fast forward to 2014 and Danny is touring in support of his third greatest hits album. He no longer sings his own material, and hasn’t written a song since he made his first album. His signature song is a track called Baby Doll, and his fans want him to sing it before anything else. With his audience aging as much as he is, Danny relies heavily on cocaine and booze to get him through his day, and he has a young girlfriend, Sophie (Cas), he’s thinking of making his fourth wife. When his birthday comes round, his manager and long-time friend Frank Grubman (Plummer) hands him a special present: a letter written to him by John Lennon in response to the Chime interview. In it, Lennon offers the young Danny help in avoiding the pitfalls of being famous in the music business, and even includes his phone number.

Danny is shell-shocked by the idea that Lennon could have changed the course of his career. Feeling that he’s wasted the last forty-plus years, he decides it’s time to make some changes. He catches Sophie with another, younger man, but isn’t angry; instead he tells her he’s going away for a while and to enjoy their home for a little longer (though he makes it clear their relationship is over). He travels to New Jersey and stays at a Hilton hotel with the intention of going to see his son who lives nearby but with whom he’s had no contact. He also begins writing a new song, while attempting to woo the hotel manager, Mary Sinclair (Bening). And when Frank comes to visit him, Danny tells him he doesn’t want to continue with the tour either.

Danny visits his son’s home, and meets his daughter-in-law Samantha (Garner) and his granddaughter Hope (Eisenberg). When his son Tom (Cannavale) arrives home he makes it clear he doesn’t want anything to do with Danny. But Danny perseveres, both with his new song, wooing Mary, and by arranging for Tom and Samantha to have an interview for a special school that will deal with Hope’s ADHD. As he begins to make headway with his new life, Danny learns that he’s not as financially secure as he thought, and going back on tour is his best option. But then Mary challenges him to play his new song at his next gig…

Danny Collins - scene

The idea of Al Pacino playing an aging singer trying to reconnect with his lost youth and aspirations seems like the perfect excuse for a stark, emotionally compelling drama, but writer/director Dan Fogelman has other ideas. Instead of dark and challenging, he’s gone for wistful and comic, with a side order of restrained sentimentality. Add in slices of romance, personal regret, misdirected anger, and selflessness, and you have a comedy that pokes fun at Danny’s lifestyle and sense of himself – “No, I’m sharp!” – but does so without laughing at him.

When we first meet him in 1971, Danny is anxious, mildly confident, but absolutely terrified of the thought he might be famous. When we see him again he’s a tired, unhappy man going through the motions of being famous, and his terror has given way to a weary resignation; this is his life, for better or worse. When he’s given the letter by Lennon, it opens his eyes both to the life he’s living, and the life he could have had. Pacino effortlessly portrays the sad realisation that Danny has in that moment, and the viewer can feel the sense of self-betrayal coast off of him in waves. It’s the movie’s most effecting moment, and Pacino is flawless. And from that, Danny regains a sense of purpose, a drive he’s not had in years, and the new Danny is funny, immensely likeable, supportive of others to a fault, and willing to own up to his mistakes. It’s a sea change that could have appeared unlikely or unconvincing, but Pacino, ably supported by Fogelman, brushes aside any apprehensions the viewer might have, and strides on imperiously like a rejuvenated force of nature.

With Pacino giving one of his best performances in recent years, Danny Collins is a pleasure to watch from start to finish, with equally impressive supporting turns from the always dependable Bening (perhaps too dowdily attired and coiffed to really attract a major singing star), Garner and Cannavale, and the sublime Plummer, who gets some of the movie’s best lines, and who is drily memorable throughout. It’s a movie that is very easy to watch as a result, as the cast go about their business with the surety of veteran performers, but it’s Fogelman who’s the real star here, effortlessly poking a stick at the ridiculous nature of celebrity, and imbuing the movie with a heart and a warmth that reaches out to the viewer and envelops them in its heartfelt embrace. Thankfully, this is one screenplay – based on the true story involving folk singer Steve Tilston – that he’s judged exceptionally well, and the confidence he and the cast have in the material is evident in the finished product (Fogelman has had a somewhat schizophrenic career as a screenwriter: for every Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011), there’s been a Fred Claus (2007) to balance things out).

Shot with a preference for bright, sharply delineated colours by Steve Yedlin, and with a score by Ryan Adams and Theodore Shapiro that is overwhelmed by the inclusion of several of John Lennon’s solo works (some of which feel more intrusive than complementary), Danny Collins is a romantic comedy drama that is a great deal of fun, and well worth your time, even though it’s sadly apparent that Pacino, great actor though he is, is no great shakes as a singer.

Rating: 8/10 – surprisingly good and with the kind of warm-hearted approach that puts a smile on the viewer’s face throughout, Danny Collins is bolstered by a great performance from Pacino, and a very astute script from Fogelman; with as many visual gags as verbal ones (though none can beat Plummer’s offloading of a Steinway piano), it’s a movie that is continually entertaining, and definitely one to watch with a group of likeminded friends.

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