Nowhere Boy

Okay, I admit it.  I am a huge Beatles fan.  Seriously, it's ridiculous.  Being a fairly eccentric indie rock fan, I sometimes get a little crap from my buddies when I list the Beatles as my favorite group, but what can I do?  They were just so good!  I have every album, know almost every song by heart, have read books about the band...I have a genuine overload of Beatle information.  In fact, I am such a fan that I cannot stand hearing others play their songs.  Call me a purist, but Beatles covers make me grind my teeth on a good day; on a bad day, I leave bodies in my wake.  Needless to say, I've avoided watching Across the Universe, if only for the health of my loved ones.  Nowhere Boy is a little different.  It chronicles a chapter in the early (pre-Beatles) life of John Lennon.  I'm not usually a fan of biopics, especially for historical figures I am familiar with, but this is an interesting concept.  Can a complete story be told about a boy that would soon become a superstar?

John Lennon (Aaron Johnson) is living with his kinda stuck-up Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her fun-loving (AKA mostly drunk) husband, George (David Threlfall), when George suddenly dies.  At George's funeral, John notices Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), his mother in attendance.  That tragedy serves as a gateway to John's artistic birth.  He meets and befriends the mother that abandoned him, rebels against the only woman who raised him, and begins to dabble in the nascent art of rock and roll.  And that's it.  This is the story of John meeting Julia after being raised without her, and how that shaped him on his way to fame.

Like I mentioned before, I hate Beatles covers.  Thank goodness this movie focuses accurately on the songs that John sang and wrote in this time period.  Yes, there are some familiar songs for casual fans ("Maggie Mae," one of the worst tracks from Let It Be), but the rest of the soundtrack is either vintage 1950s rock or Beatles Anthology 1 early tracks.  I can live with that.  Actually, I really like the first generation of rock music, so this soundtrack is pretty hep by my standards.

Why is the kid from Love Actually teaching Buddy Holly the guitar?

But enough with the music.  What about the acting?  Aaron Johnson does a surprisingly good job of emulating John Lennon.  This isn't an impression, like in so many other biopics (Jamie Foxx, I'm looking at you), but a performance that clearly took a few cues from Lennon's habits and based a performance off them.  Johnson doesn't really look or sound all that much like Lennon, but I think that make shis performance seem more natural and less forced; besides, he totally captures the spirit of the man, from his oftentimes dick-ish behavior to the way he formed questions-that-aren't-really-questions.  Since this is the story of John Lennon, Johnson obviously carries the majority of the film's dramatic weight, but his supporting cast is pretty good.  Kristin Scott Thomas manages to convey guarded affection and traditional British properness.  Anne-Marie Duff was a little unsettling in her portrayal of Julia, indicating that she was both a free spirit and (probably) a manic-depressive; I am still a little weirded out by how sexually tempting she was shown to be around teenage boys, but I don't know enough facts to cry foul, so I'll just leave it at weird.  I thought David Morrissey did a good job as John's not-quite step-father; he managed to indicate concern for his family without being outright hostile with the young John.  I was particularly impressed by Thomas Sangster's performance as Paul McCartney; it's always nice to see a small but powerful role underplayed.

This is the first film directed by conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood, and she did a pretty good job.  I thought the actors were all handled well, with only a few moments leaning toward overacting (but at least they were the appropriate moments).  I loved how the soundtrack fit in with the film.  Aside from that, the movie was pretty standard, as far as direction and visuals go.  A lot of the credit for the movie should go to Matt Greenhalgh's tight script; he managed to include significant character development in both emotional and visual terms, which isn't always easily done.

Now, you might wonder how historically accurate Nowhere Boy is.  After all, it is a biopic, right?  The answer is...pretty accurate, which is damn good for a movie.  As far as I can tell, from my hours of reading as a teenager and the two minutes of internet research I conducted today, the only crime this film commits is by seriously condensing the timeline of the movie.  In real life, these events took place over seven years, but the film makes it feel like less than two years.  Still, the basic characters and their flaws are included, so I don't really mind.

There was some minor controversy surrounding this movie at its release, but it had nothing to do with the film itself.  Aaron Johnson and his director, Sam Taylor-Wood, got pregnant and engaged shortly after the movie finished filming.  What's the big deal?  He's 23 years younger than her, which is against the natural order of things (right, Jack Nicholson?).

When did Demi Moore dye her hair?

As for the movie itself, I actually liked it, despite my personal inclinations to hate anything Beatle-related that happened after 1970.  What does that mean for the average (non-Beatle-psycho) person?  This is an interesting drama with some good performances, and it provides some insight onto one of the 20th century's most famous people.  I won't argue that the story arc is totally satisfying, or that the movie is full of nuance or powerhouse performances, but I liked it.

Kick-Ass

I love it when a movie comes out and a supporting character gets all the attention.  Remember how horrible and racist Jar Jar was?  Or how awesome and tragic Heath Ledger was as the Joker?  Kick-Ass has a supporting role that overshadows the main character in a similar fashion.

Kick-Ass is yet another adaptation of a comic book, although it doesn't have a lot of the common problems and strengths of that movie sub-genre.  For one, this is a comic that just finished its run in February of 2010.  Two months later, and here's the movie.  This isn't a longtime fan favorite, either; it only has four issues, and their release was spread out over two years.  Clearly, this is a film that was developed in coordination with the comic, which makes the adaptation less of a concern for fanboys.  Sure, some things were changed for the big screen, but they were relatively minor and make it more palatable for movie audiences.  Also, with so little source material, there is not the typical question of what plot or characters will be featured in the film.  In that, I applaud this movie.  It's faithful to the source material, but is willing to change enough to appeal to a broader audience.

That said, this is not a movie for everyone.  It is extremely violent, both in an over-the-top fun way and a viciously brutal way.  Which type of violence just depends on whether a good guy or bad guy is getting hurt at that moment.  One aspect of this violence that a lot of critics have seized upon is that the best over-the-top stuff comes from a then eleven (now thirteen) year-old girl.  I don't necessarily blame you if you don't find the notion of a teenage assassin awesome, but you're missing out on a lot of fun.

This movie stars Aaron Johnson as a typical semi-nerdy kid that is neither too smart or too popular.  One day, he realizes that nobody has ever tried to be a super hero in the real world.  His friends (Evan Peters and perennial nerd Clark Duke) reason that it is because A) super powers don't exist and B) anybody trying to fight crime while wearing a costume is destined for a beat down.  Not one to listen to logic, Johnson's character orders a wetsuit online and presto...!  the crime fighter Kick-Ass is born.  His first time out, though, Kick-Ass gets his ass kicked.  Once out of the hospital, though, he keeps at it and is eventually filmed doing his good deeds and becomes a Youtube sensation.  That's all fine and good, but Kick-Ass is a small-scale vigilante; he'll try to find your cat or break up a beat down, but he doesn't have the brains or skills to attack crime on a larger scale.  Kick-Ass influences others, though, including some that are on his skill level (like Christopher Mintz-Plasse, AKA Red Mist) and some of whom are way, way, way more qualified to take the law into their own hands than him.  In the latter category are the father-daughter team of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz).  The movie really hits its stride when Kick-Ass gets mixed up with these two and sees how scary and violent comic book-style violence is in the "real world."

For the first half of the movie, viewers are going to be primarily focused on Kick-Ass and his problems with girls and being taken seriously as a hero.  Most of the time, you're supposed to be laughing at him or, at least, sympathizing with him.  To his credit, Aaron Johnson does a good job in this role.  Unfortunately, the movie doesn't feel deep enough to make you care a lot about him.  On the bright side, these scenes are still entertaining, but they're basically cinematic fluff.  Yes, it's funny seeing an ordinary person act so bizarrely in ordinary circumstances, but there's not really any emotional repercussions for any of the actions taken.  For a story that shows how people would react to a real-life superhero, the main motivation for Kick-Ass in naivety and boredom, which seems like it would run out very quickly.

That might sound like I didn't enjoy the movie, but that's just a fundamental problem I have with the story at its core.  This movie is a lot of fun, and it's almost entirely due to Hit-Girl.  Sure, Christopher Mintz-Plasse is good as Red Mist and the other teen actors Clark Duke and Lyndsy Fonseca (both from Hot Tub Time Machine) are fine; in particular, I enjoyed Red Mist and Kick-Ass rocking out to Gnarls Barkley in Red Mist's Mistmobile.  It's not a huge moment, but it's a cute touch.  Fonseca is better than most teenage actresses here, but her role isn't too demanding.  Clark Duke successfully portrays a slightly chubby nerd.  Again.  Mark Strong plays the movie's villain and makes a pretty good bad guy.  I don't know exactly what it is about him, but he doesn't come across as very nice.

But this isn't their story.  Kick-Ass is all about how a normal guy like Kick-Ass compares with Hit-Girl, who has been trained since birth to fight crime and kill criminals.  Chloe Moretz is fantastic in this role.   I'd tell you some of the things that she does and says, but the surprise is half the fun.  She kills lots of people in a uber-stylish comic book fashion and is very entertaining in the process.  Nicolas Cage delivers an awkward performance as her father and mentor, but even his William Shatner-esque dialogue cadence doesn't detract from the film.  The film isn't all fun and laughs, though.  When Kick-Ass, Hit-Girl or Big Daddy gets hurt, it is graphic.  There is a torture scene, and that is both gruesome and uncomfortable.  The worst shots (in terms of being hard to watch, not quality) feature Hit-Girl getting punched and kicked in the face by a grown man. 

The brutality is used to show some consequences for the characters' choices, but this isn't meant to be a cautionary tale.  It is fun, dumb, and very, very violent.  Director and co-writer Matthew Vaughn does a great job with the action in this movie and delivers the humor well, too.  The only problem is with the story itself.  By opting against a psychological profile of would-be superheroes, this movie turns up the fun but leaves the potential for heart behind.  That's not a bad thing, mind you.  Sometimes, there's nothing wrong with enjoying an eleven year-old girl take on organized crime.