09. TURBO KID – There are a great number of people that aim to do throwbacks – films that that are made to feel just like the films from the 1970s and 80s. Some of them capture the basic style while coming off as broad parodies. Others use the vintage hook as a gimmick that only hurts the story. And then there are rarities like TURBO KID. No matter the style, this doesn’t feel like a film from the 1980s. Instead it feels like what we often wished those films could be.
Better than that, while TURBO KID offers plenty of laughs and nostalgic thrills, it also offers interesting characters and a hero’s journey that you are genuinely invested in. It’s packed to the breaking point with plenty of action, gore, lasers and all that fun stuff. And by itself, that would have been enough to recommend the film. But what pushes TURBO KID a notch above the rest is how it’s a real movie, not just a ninety minute joke.
Of special note is Laurence LaBeouf who gives a touching and hilarious acting performance as Apple. While TURBO KID might not be the number one film on this list, Apple is by far my favorite character from any film of last year.
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08. COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK – I still remember where I was when I found out Kurt Cobain had passed away. I was recording an episode of a weekly music show I had on cable access and by some strange coincidence, I was playing one of his songs – “About a Girl” from the BLEACH album. While it was playing, I left the editing suite and turned on the television in the neighboring studio. The same song was playing followed by the news that Cobain was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It struck a chord with many from my generation, as much as Morrison or Hendrix’s passing struck the children of the 1960s. Hell, I had just seen Cobain in concert a few months prior.
Using journal entries, old recordings and archive footage, MONTAGE OF HECK paints a tragic portrait of a musical genius. The insight we get is more personal than any other music doc of last year (even the similarly themed but woefully overrated AMY). It’s a fascinating and painful look at a man who was already a clinically depressed junkie before fame added a new facet to his struggle with himself.
MONTAGE OF HECK drives home a painful reality that is ignored in more sensationalistic documentaries that will go unnamed here. And that is sometimes we relate to figures without grasping that they are as haunted as the rest of us. And sometimes in fighting their own demons, they lose.
07. LOVE & MERCY – Another look at a tortured musical genius, LOVE & MERCY follows Brian Wilson (John Cusack), visionary songwriter for the Beach Boys in the period while he was under the spell of a corrupt psychiatrist, Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). When we first meet Wilson, he is a shadow of his former self, over-medicated and constantly shadowed by the doctor. Wilson falls in love with a woman (Elizabeth Banks) who tries to free him from Landry’s grasp even as she is unsure if she can be with him. Along the way, we get flashbacks to a younger Wilson (Paul Dano) during the period in which he started his wild musical experimentations and began losing his grip on reality.
LOVE & MERCY makes no attempt to make Landry a complex figure that might have had any nobility behind his manipulations. He is a total antagonist, presented as an exploiter (his recounting of a counterculture dictionary is at once boastful, clueless and pathetic) who took advantage of Wilson to seize control of his fortune, forcing the musician to sever all ties in the process.
Cusack and Dano complement each other so well, it’s incredible to find out they did not look at each other’s work. It is two actors giving one great performance. Some credit for that should be given to Bill Pohlad, directing what is only his second film in 25 years. LOVE & MERCY is an entertaining, illuminating and heartfelt film on one of music’s most misunderstood geniuses.
MOVIOCRITY 