Laurel Canyon
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Movie Reviews of Laurel Canyon
Movie Review: Subtle and Provocative
Summary: 4 Stars
Frances McDormand delivers a superb performance as a middle-aged, free-loving record producer; with a believable sixty's laden sensibility, dragging on joints, sipping on non-stop cocktails and making love to the young English rock star in her swimming pool. Life for this fun-loving hippie seems to be one big party until her son, Sam (Christian Bale) arrives with his girl friend, (Kate Beckinsale) and two lifestyles clash creating some interesting results.
Sam begins his residency at a local hospital as an aspiring psychiatrist. He is a serious young man with something to prove. Having been raised by a flower child mother, sex, drugs and rock and roll all around him, surprisingly, he ends up a Harvard Medical School graduate with definite goals. Sam's girlfriend is also a serious type, a PhD student writing her dissertation on the reproductive behaviour of fruit flies, this beautiful though inhibited young woman begins to enjoy the free-loving lifestyle at the house, revealing a side to her personality that even she was not aware of. This character's transformation from a shy girl to a woman exploring her sexuality is a subtle one but with profound implications.
The relationship between Sam and his mother is strained though on the surface fairly amicable. It is obvious that he thinks she's irresponsible and a bit left-of-centre yet has more or less accepted her for what she is...however, mother complains several times throughout the film that they don't have a "relationship" which Sam cannot understand. This film is about relationships that exist on many levels, but more importantly, it is about acceptance, granting people the space to be who they are and to develop into what they could be.
Sam's ordered life is also challenged when he meets a beautiful fellow resident and begins a subtle game of flirtations and innuendo, which drives him to feel guilt for even entertaining the idea of an affair. His guilty behaviour is played-out one night when he comes home after kissing the beautiful doctor, and complains to his girlfriend why they never married and that her father hates him, etc. Bale is an excellent actor, over the past 19 years he has developed a style and method all his own. I believe he is just getting better and better.
Laurel Canyon is certainly no blockbuster or an art house film, but lies somewhere comfortably in the middle. The performances are all first-rate, revealing a subtle transformation in all the characters, leaving the viewer with something to think about.
Movie Review: Drawn into an enjoyable limbo
Summary: 4 Stars
As a rule, I don't post reviews of films I feel ambivalent about, but I liked the director's previous film "High Art," and I want to like this one. There are some similar elements here, an independent woman involved in a creative career (Ally Sheedy's photographer vs. Frances McDormand's record producer), and drawn to each, like moth to flame, is a younger woman with some kind of attachment to a young man. Here the young man is the record producer's son, and the younger woman is his fiance. Meanwhile, the son is being drawn, hot and heavy, to an attractive professional colleague. So there are opportunities here for greater complexity and deeper betrayals. The setting of the film is Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon, a leafy curving cleft in the Santa Monica Mountains with homes perched high and hidden off the twisting road, where someone with money and a reclusive, free-wheeling lifestyle might very likely build or buy a house with swimming pool, where time (in this case the druggy 1970s) can stand still. And it's an evocative setting for the story that takes place there. (Ironically, we learn in the DVD commentary that the house where the film was shot is actually many miles away in another canyon.)
Finally, the strength of both films lies in the performances of Sheedy and McDormand. The other characters tend to be less well defined, and the moth-to-flame younger woman probably the most ambiguous. And because we learn so little of her interior life, her behavior begins to seem predictable. Like the crowd of hangers-on in "High Art," this film has the members of a band, who pass through the scenes without becoming individuals. Only the lead singer emerges as clearly defined, a snake-in-the-garden figure who teases, tantalizes, and is seldom more than an indulgent boy in a man's body. He's an entertaining foil to the handsome but wooden son.
The narrative of the film becomes pretty much one of who's going to have sex with whom, while curiously, the only sex comes in the first scene, and then only to show us something about the power relationship between the son and his fiancee. (She's in charge.) Making judgments about pop music is easy, McDormand's character says at one point. It draws you in or it doesn't. Like the recording that the band is trying to make in her studio, the film hovers on the edge of that cusp -- drawing you in and sometimes not.
Finally, the film ends in that same limbo, and the director sets up the comic-drama of the last scene so well, you have the choice of just enjoying the limbo. And I did.
Movie Review: Rock N Roll!
Summary: 4 Stars
"Laurel Canyon" may not be a classic film, but it is a most enjoyable evening's entertainment. Certainly, Frances McDormand showcases her versatility as an actress with this wild record producer Jane who likes to rock & roll! From her supporting actress Oscar nomination for "Mississippi Burning" and her Oscar for Best Actress for "Fargo," McDormand has pushed the envelope with a variety of roles. Her easy going smile and manner here is utterly charming, despite the fact that much of the movie is spent in self-medication of one kind or another. The biggest hoot in the movie Alessandro Nivola ("Face/Off," "Jurassic Park 3") who is from Connecticut, but who manages a British accent with ease. He has a great number of levels in the film from singing star to lover to motorcyclist, and manages it all with an intoxicating joy. One of the funniest moments is when his little derriere goes floating by on the inflatable dingy, much to Christian Bale's consternation.
Kate Beckinsale who was so charming in "Serendipty" gets to play Alex, the straight-laced doctor who gets caught up in a sexually free drug-tinged lifestyle. One wonders what exactly makes her change from studying the sex life of fruit flies to kissing her boyfriend's mother. But whatever her reason, she looks lovely.
Christian Bale is assigned the difficult role of being boring. The movie starts out with he and Alex making love, and that is about the end of their intimacy. The film telegraphs that this is a couple that will break up before the end of the movie; and perhaps they do. While Christian doesn't have quite the variety of emotion as in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" or even "Captain Corelli's Mandolin," he does have one very interesting scene in a car with Sara, an Israeli intern (Solaris, The Truman Show, Ronin), played by British actress Natascha McElhone where they describe how they would like to make love to each other.
Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous and the band Folk Implosion do a nice job of playing Ian's band, musically, with Shudder to Think's Craig Wedren doing the score. As a music collector, I loved seeing the house with numerous shelves of records and CDs!
The film's ending is a bit murky. So what happens? Whatever's up with the ending, this is not a fast paced flick, but one that has some engaging personal relationships. McDormand & Nivola are worth watching! Enjoy!
Movie Review: Briefly touching serious subjects but pleasure to watch
Summary: 4 Stars
I believe that the time you spend thinking about a movie is some indication to how good it was; well, I did spend time thinking about this movie and especially about the characters - what's going to happen next...what is the meaning of the ending... Sara's directness and beauty.There is a lot of beauty in this film, starting from the physical beauty of the characters moving to their inner beauty and to the fact that they are all "whole", complete characters. I agree with other viewers that these characters are somewhat cliched but they seem to develop or unfold as the movie proceeds. Finally there is the beautiful photography of this movie on which the director and screenwriter (Lisa Cholodenko) elaborates in the DVD additions part. An important great asset is "Laurel Canyon" ability to handle difficult issues with just a touch, hinting an array of feelings with body gestures and few words (Sam touching Jane toes as an act of reconciliation, Sara's eyes following Sam in the car scene). In this regard I have to add that the movie is very blunt and direct in one sense and quite subtle on the other hand; or maybe it is always easier to be blunt and direct about sex and subtler about other issues of the heart.
I guess the film belongs to Frances Macdermond who is able to put light to every character she does (and what a variety that is). Here she plays Jane, the bohemian musician type who is a living proof to every stereotype there is about the music industry. Still, Frances McDormand is able to give us a fuller person of Jane with a lot more depth to her character. Another fact that I reminded myself during the viewing was that she indeed is the parent of Sam... this means that in spite of Sam' accusations and negative feelings she seemed to have done at least a few things right. Sam is not only very intellectual (Harvard graduate, cool and calculated) but is also a kind human being who is able to give meaning to his role as a doctor. I also liked Natascha McElhone as Sara and thought she was definitely more "alive" then Alex.
The film includes one of the hottest sex scenes ever, although not including anything physical only a conversation between two people sitting in a car.
Movie Review: (In Fact 3.5) Flawed But One Notch Up for McDormand's "Babe"
Summary: 4 Stars
"Laurel Canyon" has a simple premise. It is about a pair in love, young doctor Sam (Chrstian Bale) who is going to work in hospital, and Alex (Kate Beckinsale) who is working on a paper (doctorial) about the reproduction system of flies. The couple are going to marry soon, and fly to the West Coast where Sam's mother lives. And it's Laurel Canyon, the place of Joni Mitchell song.His mom Jane (Frances McDormand) has her own studio where she produces records; lots of golden records are decorated; and Jane and the band led by Ian (Alessandro Nivola, giving his own voice) are still dreaming of Summer of Love, rolling joints as if that's usual. Alex, serious student of insects. cannot be free from the influence, finding another side of her personality. In the meanwhile, Sam meets a beautiful Israeli doctor (Natascha McElhone), who is attracted to him, and he to her.
The story is nothing new, and the characters are not particularly interesting except Jane, thanks greatly to McDormand. Few can play the role of mother, lover, and seducer in one, and McDormand does it so easliy that you may forget that "Laurel Canyon" is basically the story about the younger ones, Bale and Beckinsale. And they are not bad, though I cannot understand the producers' decision of casting two British faces in American situation.
The locations play the vital role. And they are attractive, including that of Hotel Chateau Marmont. But somehow there is something off-putting about them, perhaps they are essentially the places for celebrities, where not many ordinary people can approach casually. I know the story cannot be nowhere else; but the overfamiliar plot and the weak ending betray that except for McDormand's, the characters lack something substantial, like the place the film shows. In other words, we care little about them.
See this film as Frances McDormand's, and you will not be disappointed. Lisa Cholodenko is no doubt a talented director, and her previous film 'High Art' starring Radha Mitchell and Ally Sheedy is a quite impressive film about the two lovers, about which we really care. That was far better than "Laurel Can." and the place you should go first.