tick, tick... BOOM!

 Year:  2021

Director:  Lin-Manuel Miranda

Screenplay:  Steven Levenson, based on the stage musical tick, tick... BOOM! by Jonathan Larson

Starring:  Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens, Robin de Jesús, Joshua Henry, Judith Light

Running Time:  121 minutes

Genre:  Musical, drama

New York City, January 1990:  Jonathan Larson (Garfield) works in a popular Manhattan diner but his true passion is musical theatre.  For the past eight years he has been working on his passion project, a dystopian science-fiction musical called Superbia.  In a few days time he has the opportunity to put on a workshop product of Superbia, which he hopes will attract the attention of producers and investors as well as proving his talent to friends and family.  Jonathan also feels intense pressure to become successful before he turns 30, which is just over a week away, and so he feels that this production is his last chance to "make it".  He also has to deal with personal tragedies, severe financial troubles, and the fact that he still has to write one of the key songs for his musical, and he has no ideas at all. Meanwhile the clock keeps ticking away.

This is a biographical film telling the early career of playwright and composer Jonathan Larson, who is best known for writing the hit musical Rent, which ran for 12 years on Broadway.  The film is based on a semi-autobiographical "rock monologue" Larson wrote in 1990.  The title refers to an incessant ticking sound that Larson says he hears in his head, referring to his feeling that time is running out.  The film cuts between Andrew Garfield, as Larson, performing the monologue in front of an audience, with a full band, and the musical drama which makes up the bulk of the film.  It's a hugely enjoyable film about the sacrifices, pressures, hopes and joys of making art.  Andrew Garfield gives a great performance in the central role, and also shows that he is a very good singer.  Alexandra Shipp is good as Susan, Larson's long-suffering girlfriend, and Robin de Jesús gives a fantastic performance as Michael, Larson's best friend who gave up his own acting dreams for a career in advertising.  The film acknowledges the AIDS crisis, which claims several of Larson's friends, and that casts a strong shadow over Larson's various problems.  The film marks the directorial debut of actor, writer, singer, songwriter, producer Lin-Manual Miranda, and it is a very accomplished debut, with a huge sense of style and visually spectacular.  The songs are very good.  This is one of the best films that I have seen about writing and the creative process.

Andrew Garfield in tick, tick... BOOM!

Viva Las Vegas

Year of Release:  1964

Director:  George Sidney

Screenplay:  Sally Benson

Starring:  Elvis Presley, Ann-Margaret

Running Time:  85 minutes

Genre:  Musical

Racing driver Lucky Jackson (Presley) arrives in Las Vegas to compete in a Grand Prix Race.  However, his car needs a new engine.  Lucky manages to raise the money fairly easily, but loses it in a hotel swimming pool.  In need of money to not only buy the engine but to pay his hotel bill, Lucky and his mechanic sidekick Shorty (Nick Blair) end up working at the hotel.  However, Lucky soon finds himself distracted by the hotel's swimming instructor Rusty Martin (Ann-Margaret).

Elvis Presley acted in 31 films in his career, and the quality could be politely described as... variable.  In his early roles, such as Jailhouse Rock (1957), he showed real talent as a dramatic actor, and he always had a lot of charisma, but the films soon deteriorated into formulaic vehicles, as Elvis himself admitted.  Viva Las Vegas is one of his better films, however.  You'll pretty much be able to guess how everything is going to work out five minutes after the opening credits, but it's an enjoyable ride.   Elvis' considerable screen presence is on show here, and he has very strong support from Ann-Margaret, as the swimming instructor who manages to resist the King for about five minutes.  There is real chemistry between them, and allegedly they did have an on-set romance.  There are ten musical numbers, of which the title number is the best, although the others range from "passable" to "pretty good".  The climatic motor race is pretty exciting even if the end is never really in doubt.  The racing scenes and the musical set pieces are well-staged by veteran director George Sidney, but the dialogue scenes are mostly flat, although lifted by Elvis and Ann-Margaret.  Even if your not a fan of Elvis, it is a fun, inoffensive, time-passer.  

 

Elvis Presley and Ann-Margaret in Viva Las Vegas

Climax

Year of Release:  2018
Director:  Gaspar Noe
Screenplay:  Gaspar Noe
Starring:  Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souhelia Yacoub, Kiddy Smile, Claude Gajan Maull, Giselle Palmer
 Running Time:  96 minutes
Genre:  Horror, musical, drama

Winter, 1996:  A company of dancers preparing for an international tour, hole themselves up in an isolated,  abandoned boarding school in the middle of a thick forest.  After three days of productive rehearsal the dancers cut loose with a booze fuelled party, however someone spikes their sangria with LSD.  Soon the existing tensions within the group turn much more sinister, paranoia takes hold, and the dancers are soon trapped in a hallucinatory nightmare.

If you are familiar with enfant terrible Gaspar Noe's previous work: I Stand Alone (1998), Irreversible (2002), Enter the Void (2009) and Love (2015), than you will have an idea of what you are in for with Climax.  Noe tones down his typical sex and violence, although this is still graphic and disturbing.  The film opens with it's end-credit crawl, and has it's opening credit sequence at about the half-way point, there is bravura mobile camera  work, skewed angles (a lot of the film is intentionally shown upside down), point of view shots, odd title cards and weird colours.  Lit in red and shadows, a lot of the latter part of the film is almost incomprehensible.  It features extended dance sequences, which are very well choreographed, and then movies on to dark, intense horror.  While this is mild for Noe, this may be strong for anyone else. 

Yellow Submarine

Year of Release:  1968
Director:  George Dunning.  Animation Directors:  Robert Balser and Jack Stokes.  Live-action Directors:  Dennis Abey and Al Brodax
Screenplay: Lee Minoff, Al Brodax, Jack Mendelsohn, Erich Segal and Roger McGough (uncredited) from a story by Lee Minoff, based on the song Yellow Submarine by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Starring: Paul Angelis, John Clive, Dick Emery, Geoff Hughes, Lance Percival, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison
Running Time:  87 minutes
Genre:  Animation,  Fantasy,  Comedy, Musical

The colourful, magical world of Pepperland lies deep beneath the sea.  A cheerful, music-loving paradise, it's very existence enrages the music-hating Blue Meanies who live in the mountains just outside Pepperland and decide to take it over, paralysing the inhabitants and draining them and their land of colour, joy and hope, as well as forbidding all music and encasing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in a music-proof bubble.  Just before his capture, Pepperland's Mayor sends Old Frank (Percival) to the surface to get help.  Arriving in Liverpool, Old Frank recruits the help of the Beatles, and they set off on a surreal, music-filled journey save Pepperland.

This is still an astonishing film, colourful, joyfully strange and psychedelic, and filled with many classic Beatles songs.  The story is pretty basic, but it's not about the story, it's about the music and the visuals.  The script however is very funny and smart, full of jokes, puns and clever wordplay.  The film is packed with invention throughout, from the cast of weird and wonderful characters and creatures, including the strange but lovable Nowhere Man, to the imaginative background design, utilising a variety of animation styles and techniques.   Although this is technically a Beatles film, the Fab Four themselves had very little to do with it, aside from contributing the songs, they do not voice their animated characters, although they do appear as themselves in a brief live-action sequence at the end of the film.
If you're a fan of the Beatles, of course you won't want to miss it, but it is also a colourful, imaginative, hilarious, joyful and surprisingly sweet adventure for young and old alike.  It really hasn't dated much either.  Cleaned up and restored for it's 50th anniversary, it still feels as fresh and fun as ever.

   

"It's all in the mind, y'know":  Yellow Submarine

The Singing Detective

Year: 2003
Director: Keith Gordon
Screenplay: Dennis Potter
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Robin Wright Penn, Jeremy Northam, Katie Holmes, Adrien Brody, Jon Polito and Mel Gibson
Running Time: 109 minutes
Genre: Drama, crime, thriller, mystery, musical, fantasy

Summary: In the present day United States, Dan Dark (Downey Jr.) is an author of pulp detective stories centering around the character of the "Singing Detective", a private detective in the 1950s who moonlights as a singer in a rock 'n' roll band. Dark is in hospital with severe psoriasis and is in constant pain and unable to move. To escape his situation he reworks the plot of his first book, imagining himself as the Singing Detective and people from his own life as the characters. In the hospital he often escapes into surreal musical fantasies and experiences disturbing memories of his childhood. As Dark's paranoia and bitterness increase, reality and fantasy begin to collide.

Opinions: This film is an adaptation of Dennis Potter's controverisal and hugely acclaimed 1986 miniseries The Singing Detective. The movie attempts the almost impossible task of effectively condensing a six hour television series into a one hour forty nine minute movie. The film updates the story from 1980s England to 2003 USA, and the fantasy sequences (and musical numbers) are updated from the 1940s to the 1950s also the name of the lead character is changed from Philip Marlowe (played by Michael Gambon) in the original. Dennis Potter, who died in 1994, had been very enthusiastic about the idea of a film version and the script had been circulating around Hollywood for a long time with various directors including Robert Altman and David Cronenberg, and actors such as Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino attached at different times.
The thing is that despite the film being savaged by critics, it isn't really all that bad, it's fast moving and entertaining with most of the themes and incidents of the original cropping up, it also features some good performances from a talented cast (including Mel Gibson looking almost unrecognisable as a bald psychiatrist). The problem is that it feels rushed. Lacking the time that the TV series had, various parts of the story just feel rushed, for example the "Singing Detective" mystery just seems abandoned part way through and the childhood memories which are a key part of the story or reduced to just a few brief scenes. The thing is that the film is frustrating because so much of the show survives that it just makes you miss the show.
By the way, if you've never seen the 1986 series dio yourself a favour and check it out as soon as possible.

"There are things in that book, doc, that are reaching out to grab me by the throat."
- Dan Dark (Robert Downey Jr.) in The Singing Detective