Tag: Bella Heathcote

Not Fade Away

notfadeaway

There have been plenty of coming-of-age stories about kids who started a band and made it big. “Not Fade Away” is the movie about the kids who didn’t, but you would hope that you would at least be rooting for their success.

David Chase, the creator of “The Sopranos,” is making his film debut with this homage to the 1960s, and it’s a stylish, messy and musical look at a decade that shared all those attributes.

The film follows Douglas (John Magaro), a New Jersey Italian who hears The Rolling Stones on TV and decides starting a band is the life for him. He starts as the drummer in his group of friends playing blues covers and soon graduates to lead singer and head songwriter, winning the affections of his high school crush Grace (Bella Heathcote) along the way.

For a guy who admires the boyish, goofball charms of the Beatles and the effortless cool of the Stones, Doug and his band mates are shockingly unlikable. His demeanor is more modern hipster insouciant than hippie free spirit, and it gets in the way of the band’s talent and his romantic chemistry. Continue reading “Not Fade Away”

Dark Shadows

I didn’t know “Dark Shadows” was based on a soap opera until my friend amusingly explained this: “It was this kind of boring soap opera that no one watched until one season they introduced a vampire to the show and everyone’s minds just exploded.”

The problem then with Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows” is its inability to just make my mind explode.
Burton has always been a unique director. It’s possible that none of his films can be strictly classified into one genre, and “Dark Shadows” is no different. This one begins on a note of period piece horror fantasy with scents of the original “Dracula” in the film’s gorgeous CGI iconography.

This opening takes place in 1772 with the Collins family establishing a thriving colony on the American coastline. The son Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is cursed by the witch Angelique (Eva Green) when he gives up her for his true love, Josette (Bella Heathcote). Angelique turns Barnabas into a vampire and imprisons him for 200 years, only to wake up in the swinging 1970s. Now Barnabas returns to his surviving ancestors and fights to rebuild the family business, taking down Angelique, also now two centuries old and running strong, in the process.

The fish-out-of-water game is old-hat no matter what setting or mythical creature you put into the formula, and although Depp revels in manipulating everything with an elegantly antiquated misunderstanding of modern technology, slang and etiquette, Burton never knows how to own any of these jokes.

The film and its dialogue constantly teeter on understated comedy and a haunted house ghost movie without ever dipping into campy, absurd or soapy territory. Burton will instead play an Alice Cooper song or some other ‘70s rock staple to suggest the change of tone, and the film never has go for broke laughs or campy charm. Continue reading “Dark Shadows”