Music builds bridges in 'Flora and Son'

 

Director John Carney (Once, Sing Street) seems to make movies about the way he wishes the world were, a place where ordinary people communicate through song and where troubled souls  can be soothed with poetic lyrics. Carney’s Flora and Son doesn’t match Once but it has its charms and boasts a strong performance from Eve Hewson.  Hewson plays Flora, the tough Irish mother of a 14-year-old son (Oren Kinlan) with a penchant for trouble. Separated from her musician husband (Jack Reynor), Flora spends too much time drinking, clubbing, and having sex with strangers. Both Flora and her son Max need a touch of redemption. Carney's fans won’t find it surprising that growth comes through music. Flora begins an online guitar course with Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an American teacher.  Max turns to rap. The relationship between Flora and Jeff flirts with long-distance romance, but Carney isn't a romcom guy. He  uses music as a means for personal growth and connection. Although he travels in Dublin’s working-class milieu, he’s hardly a social realist. Carney qualifies as a musical fabulist operating in real-world settings. He flavors his fantasies with the stale smell of overpopulated pubs. Don’t be surprised if, at times, Hewson and Gordon-Levitt appear together, even though they're separated by more than 5,000 miles. Carney allows them to break their online chains as a way of suggesting that distance needn't preclude harmony. Flora and Son never quite achieves the jewel-like glow that Carney may have been after and the speed of Flora's musical development challenges credibility. That doesn't mean the movie isn't pleasant and rewarding. You may want to think of it as an easy-listening experience in a movie world dominated by harsh notes. Take that as a compliment.

 

When a mom tries to be a detective

Hilary Swank is 49 years old. Jack Reynor is 31. That means if Hilary Swank is going to be believable playing  Reynor's mom, she would have had to given birth to him when she was 18. Possible of course, but Swank doesn't exactly look like the mom of a 31-year- old police officer, which is what Reynor plays in The Good Mother. Confused about the relationship at first, I adjusted. But was it worth the bother? A misfire of a thriller, The Good Mother tells the story of Swank's Marissa, an upstate New York journalist who tries to solve the murder of her younger son, a troubled kid who seems to have gotten lost in the drug trade. Turns out the late son's girlfriend (Olivia Cooke) is pregnant with a baby that will be Marissa's grandchild. It's always a bad idea for reporters to play cop, especially if the reporter happens to be drinking too much, which is the case with Marissa.  That doesn't stop Marissa from joining forces with Cooke's Paige as they try to find the killer. Director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte takes a down-and-dirty approach to Albany, the city where this dime-a-dozen drama occurs. But atmospherics can't mask an increasingly unbelievable story that, at one point, finds Marissa racing through the streets carrying a baby in a car seat. Not the best way to trail someone. Might as well ask someone to play football while pushing a stroller. The movie's central mystery remains murky, even after a big reveal, and The Good Mother joins the ranks of darkly hued thrillers that vanish into their own gloom. 

Danger lurks in a Swedish commune

Director Ari Aster’s Midsommar:: a long (and sometimes repellent) journey toward ... well ... I’m not sure what.

Midsommar could be many things.

-- The movie might be a satire on the preposterous rituals of weird cults.

-- It could be a straight-ahead horror movie about a group of Americans who find themselves in mortal danger when they visit an isolated region of rural Sweden.

-- Or it could be a riff on the ways in which preoccupation with certain concerns (in this case cultural anthropology and careerism) might blind someone to dangerous realities.

-- Perhaps it's about what happens when someone in a dying relationship feels slighted.

I could go on, but let me get to the point: Whatever Midsommar wants to be, it’s also bloody, excessively graphic in its depiction of horror and more than a bit muddled about its intentions. That’s an unfortunate combination for a movie that follows what has been touted as a promising debut feature from director Ari Aster. Aster’s last film, Hereditary, won both audience and critical favor.

This time, Aster begins by establishing an atmosphere of dread in which he sketches the personal dynamics of his characters. A young woman (Florence Pugh) loses her parents and her mentally disturbed sister. She’s distraught. Already needy, her latest catastrophe pushes her toward even greater reliance on her boyfriend (Jack Reynor).

Pugh's Dani feels abandoned when she learns that Reynor's Christian plans to travel to Sweden with friends to visit the commune where another friend (Vilhelm Blomgren) was raised. Reluctantly (and to the dismay of his male buddies), a guilt-ridden Christian invites Dani to tag along.

When the group arrives at the commune, their initial impression seems favorable. The members of the Swedish group all dress in white, freely dispense hallucinogenic drugs and seem like harmless (if slightly out-of-touch) flower children.

Aster slowly follows through on what we expect from the outset. He undermines the promise of a tranquil environment with a ritual of alarming (though highly predictable) lethality. When the group gathers for one of its rituals or even for a meal, the atmosphere turns austere and serious, so much so that the movie often becomes laughable.

Tensions within the American group punctuate the proceedings. Josh (William Jackson Harper), one of Christian's fellow students, argues with Christian about who's going to use this bizarre mini-society as the basis for a thesis.

All of this builds toward a finale that only the most gullible of viewers won’t suspect will be weird, brutal — and perhaps even repulsive.

Aster leaves signs of what's to come along the way: the weird shape of some of the wooden buildings and a pyramidal structure no one is allowed to enter. The visitors sleep in a dormitory-like hall where the sound of a baby's ceaseless crying can be heard at night. Did I mention the caged bear that resides in the middle of the settlement? Well, there is one. As you can tell, Aster points a large finger at his ominous target.

Lighting becomes one of Midsommar's distinguishing features. Most of the action takes place in the prolonged daylight of the Swedish summer. I’ve been in Sweden during the time when there’s little darkness and it can take some adjustment. In this case, the near-constant daylight creates a visual blandness that serves as an ironic counterpoint to the movie’s darker ambitions.

At two hours and 20 minutes in length, Midsommar takes too much time getting to the point, whatever the point might be. The movie's portentousness becomes oppressive.

For some, Midsommar’s violence, a bizarre sex scene, and a grotesquely punishing finale will be enough to turn thumbs downward. But for me, the most alarming thing about Midsommar is the distance it keeps from its characters. I didn’t fear for these characters but spent more time wondering just how Aster was going to wring a conclusion out of all the weirdness. Just how strange would things get?

The movie builds toward a May Day celebration that precedes a violent finale. Aster knows how to concoct bizarre images — the cult’s May Day Queen hauling herself around the village in a weighty cloak made of flowers, for example — but I couldn’t shake the feeling that all this weirdness was as hollow as the members of the cult that had produced it. Some of the images may linger in your head, but you also may find yourself asking what (if anything) can be derived from their presence?

'Sing Street:' a familiar song

Director John Carney has invented his own genre, movies that gently poke their noses into social issues while building stories around young, aspiring musicians. Carney's latest, Sing Street, follows a pattern you'll find in Begin Again (2013), the movie that followed his first (and still best) movie, Once (2007).

Sing Street centers on 15-year-old Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a high school student who starts a band as a means of worming his way into the life of a pretty, 16-year old girl (Lucy Boynton). Boynton's Raphina hangs out on near Conor's school, looking desirable and unattainable, an irresistible combination.

As luck would have it, Conor quickly learns to sing. He also takes on a new rocker's persona, calling himself "Cosmo" instead of Conor.

With the help of a runty manager (Ben Carolan) who happens to be a classmate, Cosmo recruits a band of kids who actually have skills.

The group begins developing what can sound like a boy-band repertoire, although sometimes its music sounds a bit more punkish. More polished than you'd expect, the music becomes the centerpiece of a mildly gritty look at Irish youth during the 1980s.

Troubles loom from the start. The movie begins with a family meeting about financial problems: Money issues force Cosmo to leave the relative comforts of a Jesuit school for a less expensive but tougher Christian Brothers institution, where he's bullied and where the head priest might be inclined toward sexual abuse.

To add to the family's money woes, Cosmo's parents -- Aidan Gillen and Maria Doyle Kennedy -- are going through a bad patch; their arguments occasionally can be heard in the background of scenes set in Conor's home.

Cosmo's older brother (Jack Reynor), a drop-out from a previous generation of rockers, smokes pot and coaches his younger brother. He may be the movie's most sensible character.

Troubles aside, the band's development tends to dominate the proceedings. Cosmo offers dream girl Raphina, who says she's a model, a part in a video he's shooting with the band. She agrees, and the band members gather to make videos that seem considerably more amateurish than the music they play. The band's signature song: "Drive It Like You Stole It."

Costume designer Tiziana Corvisieri gives band members -- a genial group of characters -- a succession of evolving looks that become part of the fun.

Carney has yet to match what he achieved with Once, but his commitment to a genre populated by young people with dreams proves as durable as those dreams themselves.