Sing Street

Yes, I know that Sing Street has already had its theatrical run, but considering the fact that it's now available on pretty much all digital streaming platforms as well as DVD and Blu-ray, I figured I had to write a review of it as it is without question the best movie I have seen in 2016 so far (and that says a lot, considering how much I loved Nuts! and Life, Animated, among others).

Throughout my life, I have always seen music as having the power to allow people to connect with each other and to communicate messages more than simple words can. I often turn to classic rock acts like Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, and U2 as being artists who allow their words and melodies to carry stories and messages of hope and, in some cases, sociopolitical commentary that give their listeners greater insight into the world around them. Even some modern pop artists like Taylor Swift and the up-and-coming indie pop band Echosmith are using stories and meaningful lyrics to communicate with their listeners. Either way, music has been a big part of my life and a huge part of what's shaped the way I see the world (along with film, obviously, and theatre). And I don't think any filmmaker has quite captured the power of music as well as John Carney has in the few movies that he's done. As much as I absolutely loved Once (I haven't seen Begin Again yet but I intend to very soon), this film hit me on an emotional level unlike any other film I saw in the first half of 2016 and it reminded me of why I'm going into film as a career.

Set in 1985 in inner-city Dublin, a young boy named Conor Lalor is just starting his freshman year at a conservative prep school known as Synge Street CBS. After the first couple of days are complete hell, by the third day he meets a teenaged orphan girl named Raphina who lives across the street in a home for other orphan girls. Instantly infatuated with her, he tries to impress her by falsely saying that he's in a band and they need a girl to play a model for their new music video. After she agrees to it, he tells his new friend Darren that they need to immediately go and form a band. Putting together a ragtag team of amateur musicians from the school, they start out rough but eventually turn out to be quite good, drawing influences from numerous MTV bands at the time such as Duran Duran and The Cure, all as a part of forming their own style and (of course) impressing the girl. 

What an incredible film this is. And when I use the word "incredible," I don't necessarily mean in terms of deep hidden meaning and subtext and symbolism or anything worthy of film scholars. I mean simply in terms of the sheer joy that eminates from every frame and every performance and every line of dialogue in this movie. I wasn't even born in 1985. Heck, I've never set one foot in the country of Ireland. But after viewing this film months ago, I felt like I knew this era and this world like the back of my hand. I felt like I knew Conor and Raphina and Conor's co-songwriter Eamon (who's kind of the Lennon to Conor's McCartney) as if I had been friends with them my whole life, and I wanted to see those characters again and hang out with them long after the film ended. Lucy Boynton (having seen her in this and The Blackcoat's Daughter within a short timespan) is one of my favorite newcomer actresses of the past several years and she dazzles in this film, as do Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as Conor, Mark McKenna as Eamon, and Jack Reynor as Conor's brother Brandon (who's perhaps this film's equivalent to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lestor Bangs in Almost Famous).

But perhaps the part of the film that struck me the deepest is its emphasis on "happy-sad." It stems from a brilliant conversation with Conor and Raphina when he's depressed about how crappy his home life and school life have become and how it's resulted in him writing sad songs, but Raphina tells him that his problem is that "he's not happy being sad," and that love by nature is "happy-sad." He quickly begins to channel that into his art, writing various "happy-sad" songs with a forward-thinking "futurist" mindset (even his piano ballad about being "friend-zoned" by Raphina, "To Find You," has glimmers of happiness and hope). This was a huge awakening for me personally as a creative writer and also in my outlook on love in general, because in reality, nothing is ever "all happy" or "all sad". The rush that I get when I have intense love-like feelings for a girl is happy, but then the blow when I realize she just wants to be friends is sad. The highs of a first date and a first kiss with a girl are happy, but the pains of the break-up phone call are sad. I've already begun to channel this into my writing, as hard as it is not to paint things as "all happy" or "all sad" depending on how I'm feeling at that moment. 

I absolutely adored every frame of this film, and I walked out of the theatre feeling the best that I've felt after a movie since Brooklyn last November (yet another Irish film). John Carney has crafted a masterpiece of a music-based script unlike any since Once while channeling the best things about School of Rock and Almost Famous into it as well. Now that it's widely available on video, everybody reading these words right now who didn't get a chance to see this film in the theatre should rent it immediately. If you're not impressed by your summer theatrical options now, stay home and watch Sing Street. Well-made feel-good movies like this don't come around very often anymore, and this is not only the best of 2016 so far, but it's one of the best movies I have seen in at least the last five years, with a soundtrack that I listened to for a long time afterward. It's a masterpiece of music-based filmmaking and filmmaking in general.

The BFG

It's fascinating to see how stories change over time as one gets older. I read Roald Dahl's The BFG in fourth grade, at a time in my life when I was literally consuming every book that I could. To demonstrate how much I loved to read, my parents and I were actually vacationing in Los Angeles for my tenth birthday and I would stand in line for a ride at Disneyland and read the book, often making comparisons between things in the book and rides we would go on or even things we would eat at the park (i.e., I would eat a "BFG-sized corndog" lunch). At the time, I saw Dahl's book as a beautiful story of friendship at a time when I didn't have very many true friends. It had the same dark quirkiness of my other favorite books of his like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda but also just being very sweet and funny.

But that was obviously nine years ago and I haven't been able to plow through books nearly as much since my AP English classes in high school. It's easier for me to watch films based on literature and judge them from a cinematic and critical standpoint versus as a fan of the literature the film is based on. And even as much as I loved Dahl's book in fourth grade, the nine years that has passed since I read it allowed me to go in with as clean of a slate as possible.

So, for those of you unfamiliar with the story, here's the basics: In early 1980s London (the only way you know this is by hilarious throwaway reference to Ronald Reagan about two-thirds into the film), a young orphan girl named Sophie is grabbed out-of-the-blue from her cruel orphanage by a 24-foot-tall giant, who calls himself the Big Friendly Giant (or "BFG") and is whisked away to Giant Country. There, the BFG sticks her in his cave and tries to befriend her, but it isn't until young Sophie sees the BFG being crudely bullied by the bigger cannibalistic giants that she actively becomes his friend and does things such as going out and collecting dreams with him and watching him deliver a dream to a young boy in his London home.

I was amazed watching this film how much details I had forgotten of Dahl's story. I knew the all-around plot, but I almost feel like I should read the book again to see how different it was. Because this film played out like a great Dahl story, and it shut down any suspicions I might have had going in about how Spielberg's sentimentality might affect it, because as it turns out, Spielberg was the absolute perfect director to take on this source material. Many critics have pointed out comparisons to E.T. (the unlikely friendship between a child and an otherwordly creature, a screenplay by the late Melissa Mathison), and to be honest, I had a lot of the same emotions watching this film that I did the first time I watched E.T. While the Sophie character isn't as fully fleshed out in this film as Elliott was in E.T., she was still a compelling young female protagonist with defined emotions and a spunkiness that's only elevated by the wonderful newcomer Ruby Barnhill (who I can't wait to see more of). And while I never have really been a fan of the whole motion-capture technology thing, Mark Rylance brings such a humanity and warmth to his portrayal of the BFG that he transcends the technology that he uses to perform in a way that I've never seen in a film.

One of the things I was talking to my parents about as we left the theatre was how different this movie could have been in the hands of a director like Tim Burton or a lead actor like Johnny Depp playing the BFG. And to be honest, I think the fact that it's Steven Spielberg and a lesser-name actor like Rylance on the poster for this film is one of the reasons why this film is bombing as badly as it is. But I also think one of the reasons is how (as sad as it is to say) old-fashioned the style and the story of this film are. Rather than being plot-focused and loud and snarky and full of gags, this movie is a simple, quiet friendship story. It puts equal focus on the characters and the wonder of the world that we're in. It doesn't use scatological humor as a crutch or as a desperate plea for little kiddie laughs. Heck, even the inevitable fart humor is strange and witty and quirky in the best possible way, a way that I'm sure would make Dahl smile if he were alive today.

Just before the film started I saw two trailers, one for Ice Age: Collision Course and The Secret Life of Pets. While I haven't seen either of those movies and thus can't comment on them, if the trailers are any indication they will likely be loud and snarky and gag-focused and reliant on cheap potty humor for shock value. For a film like The BFG to sneak in as a reminder of the children's films I responded to as a kid and continue to respond to now...I just pray that young children will be able to see this film and go on this journey and just get wrapped up in the wonder and the characters. Because if anybody has an understanding of the power and the wonder of cinema, it is Steven Spielberg. He understands the wide-eyed adventurous storyteller inside of everyone, the child that I was growing up and the child that still exists inside me and comes out as soon as my fingers hit a keypad. I hope that there are still children out there that can watch a Spielberg movie (whether it's this or any other one) and are inspired to embrace their inner storyteller and write or shoot or whatever it takes to tell their stories. And I truly hope that Disney doesn't take this film bombing as an excuse to churn out even more cash-grab sequels and remakes. Because films like The BFG are the ones that introduce young writers and storytellers to new worlds and inspire them to create worlds of their own. That alone should be enough to get people to give $11 of their money to this film. If it's not, then just go see it because it's a beautifully filmed, old-fashioned adventure and friendship story that brings out the best in Spielberg's directing and Dahl's storytelling. It's almost as if the movie itself is a dream concocted by the BFG of the kinds of family films that kids should be seeing instead of ones about a squirrel who can't get to an acorn for fourteen years. And that alone should be enough for anyone to shill out $11.