My One and Only
Director: Richard Loncraine
With: Renee Zellweger, Logan Lerman, Mark Rendall, Kevin Bacon
(At the Fox Theater)
A pleasant surprise. Zellweger, once America’s sweetheart, has chosen lame parts in bad movies lately, and I wasn’t expecting much. This one is worth seeing.
Loosely based on the memoirs of George Hamilton (Lerman), actor and sun worshiper, it tells how his mother, Anne (Zellweger), walks in on his father (Bacon) in flagrante with another woman. She packs up the kids, raids their safe deposit box, buys a new 1953 Cadillac El Dorado, and takes off for parts known and unknown, starting with Boston.
George’s older brother, Robbie (Rendall) is a talented gay kid who wants to be an actor. George just wants to finish school and become a writer.
They bounce form Boston to Pittsburgh to points west. At each location, Anne finds a new beau, each inappropriate. Drunks, tyrants, exploiters or barking mad. They are chronically broke and at the mercy of others.
Dad, a successful band leader, makes half-hearted tries to reconcile, and offers them money, which Anne rejects. Finally, they run out of land in Los Angeles, and therein begins the life of the Hamilton we know.
This is Zellweger’s best work in years, and all of her mannerisms have been toned down or put in the service of the character. A witty script and appealing actors, especially Rendall as Robbie, make this one to see.
B+
All About Steve
Director: Phil Traill
With: Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, Thomas Haden Church, Ken Jeong
(Opening everywhere)
I don’t go see romantic comedies because they are not romantic or funny and have become tone-deaf exercises in humiliation. I don’t go see Sandra Bullock movies because she is reliably awful in almost everything.
So, you may ask, why did I go see this one? Because I forgot it was all of the above until I got to the theater. Well, said I, who knows? Maybe this will be the exception. And it was.
Not content with having a mediocre script full of the usual rom-com cliches, this movie reaches for new levels of terrible. Bullock’s character creates crossword puzzles for a Sacramento paper. She is socially inept and emotionally immature. These are her better qualities. She is also a shrill, overbearing, narcissistic know-it-all with no impulse control.
As a puzzle maker, she Knows Stuff, and will not hesitate to bore the crap out of you on any given (or not given) topic. On a fix-up blind date with a cable-news cameraman (Cooper), she practically rapes him before he starts the car. Then, she gets the idea that he wants her to follow him wherever he goes.
She meets his egomaniac reporter colleague (Church, at his most sleazy) and nervous producer (Jeong), and a bunch of other misfits along the way. None of them are funny, all of them are obnoxious, even the nice ones.
A bad script, a hideous over-the-top performance by Bullock, and amateur acting. A triple threat.
I have been thinking about this for a couple of days, and I conclude that Bullock’s part was so badly written that no actor could do much with it. But, she makes us want to kill her about 15 minutes into the movie. Surely, some of this (all of this?) Is the director’s fault.
Sandra, get a grip. You’re still young.
D
It Might Get Loud (Documentary)
Director: Davis Guggenheim
With: Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White
In 1968 I was recuperating from the world’s most boring disease, hepatitis. Among the rock albums that helped preserve what was left of my sanity was Led Zeppelin’s first LP, with the flaming Hindenburg zeppelin on the cover. Jimmy Page became one of my fave guitar shredders.
A few LPs later, and I was bored with the band and on to something else.
I never got into U2. I found them easier to admire than to like. So, I never formed an opinion of The Edge.
Hearing the buzz, I bought the White Stripes first CD, and sold it a month later. Never did understand what the excitement was about.
So, a film featuring the guitarists from these three bands struck me as ho-hum, and it some ways it is. But, it is also a lot of fun for most of it.
There is archival footage (a 15-year-old Page in his skiffle band, White in a 2-man with an upholsterer, Edge in a fashion-victim 70s band) and a lot of performance stuff. But, there is mostly three generations of rock stars shooting the breeze and trading licks.
Page was truly the gray eminence here, and has sold more records than the other two guys combined, back to the Yardbirds. He still plays the hell out of his instrument. His roots are in skiffle, 50s R&B and Link Wray.
The Edge has his roots in 70s punk, and a performance of The Jam on Top of the Pops was his defining teenage moment. He is a very competent, if not inspired, player.
White, who rose in my esteem because of his reverence for black bluesmen, is am exceptional guitarist, if a bit more of a striver than the other two. There is footage of him playing guitar with such ferocity that his pick hand bleeds all over the guitar face. It occurred to me that he was the only one of the three who needed to show that kind of thing.
Not just for fans only, but if you admire one or all of these musicians this should be a great experience.
B