Sometimes a little corn helps

 Calling a movie corny usually qualifies as a condemnation. Let's call Song Sung Blue an exception to the rule. Starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, the mostly buoyant Song Sung Blue tells the story of a Milwaukee couple that finds its calling with a Neil Diamond tribute act.

  And, yes, the movie makes heavy use of Sweet Caroline, a Diamond anthem that fans can't get enough of -- even if the movie's characters think overuse diminishes Diamond's other achievements.

   You'll hear lots Diamond tunes, all packaged with verve and presented by Jackman and Hudson with crowd-pleasing gusto that doesn't tarnish when the movie takes a shockingly dark turn involving Hudson's character.

    Director Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Dolemite is My Name) gets the most out of a pairing in which Jackman, as an alcoholic auto mechanic with musical ambitions, and Hudson, as a single mom and hairdresser who begins her career doing spot-on Patsy Cline impersonations.

    Jackman's Mike and Hudson's Clair soon dub their act Lightning & Thunder, and become local sensations. He's Lightning. She's Thunder.

   At one point, the duo even serves as the opening act for Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder (John Beckwith), Pearl Jam's frontman, recognizes that Lightning & Thunder can energize crowds with liberating verve.

    It doesn't take long for Mike and Claire to form a family that includes her teenage daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson) and her younger son (Hudson Hensley). Mike's daughter (King Princess) also fits into the family, though with a bit more difficulty, and the two teenage girls form a convincing bond.

    The film has its oddities. Mike's manager  (Fisher Stevens) also happens to be his dentist. Jim Belushi appears as a booking agent who lands Lightning & Thunder jobs at venues that don't exactly qualify as glamorous. Michael Imperioli plays a Buddy Holly impersonator who joins the Lightning & Thunder band.

     In a disarming turn, Shyaporn Theerakulstit portrays  the owner of a Thai restaurant who hires Mike to run karaoke nights when a horrific accident leaves Claire depressed and slipping into a fog induced by painkillers.

     Brewer keeps things humming, skimming through incidents that might have sunk the movie. Rachel's unplanned pregnancy, for example, is dealt with a little too breezily.

      Based on a 2008 documentary by Greg Kohs, the movie feels authentic enough, though, and Brewer isn’t afraid to jerk a few tears. Even if you haven't been yearning to take a plunge into Neil Diamond nostalgia, Hudson’s dynamism and the movie’s high spirits make for a rewarding diversion.

     

     

Lies, deceits and a final reckoning

   With the movie Oh, Canada, director Paul Schrader adapts Foregone, a novel by Russell Banks, who also wrote Affliction, which Schrader turned into another of his movies in 1997. Schrader's latest movies (First Reformed, The Card Counter, and Master Gardener)  have had a strange stillness, as if the director has moved beyond storytelling into a near meditative state. 

  Full of fraught memories and soul-wrenching torments, this meditative state isn't marked by calm or clarity. It's full of reckonings.

   Richard Gere, who starred in Schrader's American Gigolo (1980), reunites with the director to play Leo Fife, an American-born documentary filmmaker who fled to Canada during the Vietnam War. 

  Riddled with cancer, the aging Fife has agreed to allow two of his former students (Michael Imperiole and Victoria Hill) to make a documentary about his life and work. Fife insists that the interview -- really an extended deathbed confession -- be conducted in the presence of his wife Emma (Uma Thurman).

   Gere has been made to look gaunt and wasted. Cancer devours Leo's body, but lies and deceits eat away at his soul. He hopes to set the record straight. But Schrader has too much integrity to turn the story into a tale of last-minute redemption.

  Schrader fragments the story so that we see Gere playing Fife at various stages of his life. For the most part, though, a younger Fife is played by Jacob Elordi. Gere and Elordi create an account of Fife's life that may be distorted by memory but nonetheless makes a mockery of the director's reputation as a filmmaker of courage and conviction.

   An early episode illustrates the point. Fife, then married to his pregnant wife (Kristine Froseth), agrees to run the family business of his wealthy father-in-law, abandoning dreams of teaching and writing. He soon employs his modus operandi concerning women, he flees.

   Because Fife makes films, it's tempting to look for spiritual kinship between Fife and Schrader, but such speculations can be dicey. Leo Fife built a reputation by being a good filmmaker, but he has no laurels on which to rest. The scaffolding that upholds his vaunted stature has been subject to rot. Exposing it doesn't make it a less bitter pill to swallow.