a&e | FILM REVIEWS
2014
AIN’T NO DRAG Get on Up. Chadwick Boseman, Dan Aykroyd, and Viola Davis star in a film written by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth and directed by Tate Taylor. Reviewed by D.J. Palladino
Y
ou could easily build the case that this film belongs to Chadwick Boseman. The actor who embodied the clear-eyed nobility of Jackie Robinson in completely transforms himself from within for this role, which requires not just a dancer’s grace and an egotist’s pomp, but an almost obscene ambitiousness burning at the edges. It’s fair to say Boseman manages all that and more. His song performances are gorgeous — from the patented toe step slide to the funky chug of his carriage. He’s all about the finger pops and splits. If it was just a matter of trance-channeling Brown, who always exemplified sexed-up pride, Boseman would deserve high accolades for this show. But such an exclusive focus leaves out half of what really makes this movie compelling: its intricately rewarding structure. It begins with a hazy bummer — Brown’s druggy 1980s arrest after shooting up a sales meeting, ending in a car chase and imprisonment. But then we spin. The story is told in great interrupted loops that move with a dreamlike logic from Brown’s dirt-poor youth to those pinnacles of self-made fame and wealth. Director Tate Taylor showed no chops like this in his plodding film The Help, but here it all coheres into a thing of beauty. It seems more likely that writers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, who cowrote the time-hopping script for Edge of Tomorrow, may hold the
GODFATHER OF SOUL: Chadwick Boseman captivates as the living, singing embodiment of James Brown in Get on Up.
key to this marvel. The film moves point counterpoint and builds in a roundabout way, like real memories do, until it ends like an emotional firecracker string. Most musical biopics linger too long on the vices of their protagonists, as if the director’s assignment was to unearth and expose. But really, who cares if Johnny Cash popped diet pills? He sang “Ring of Fire.” This film, which begins with Brown whacked out and ends with him a lost little boy, may not be as dark a portrait as some vultures require, but it’s all the evidence that future folk will need to know that this troubled man was not just Soul Brother ■ Number One; he was a famous flame.
OUTER-SPACE MIXTAPES
Santa Barbara ®
ReAders' Poll
Guardians of the Galaxy. Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, and Dave Bautista star in a film written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman and directed by Gunn. Reviewed by D.J. Palladino
D
irector James Gunn showed great promise with Slither eight years ago, but nothing prepares you for how sure-handed this film feels. Even before images appear, we hear the impeccable strains of cc’s “I’m Not in Love” as a troubled boy sitting in a hospital is about to be drawn into a room where his head-shaved mother is surrounded by teary-eyed relatives. When the OOGA-CHAKA: Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, starring Chris Pratt (center), is a rip-roaring sci-fi sensation that will leave you chanting scene ends, however, the appearance of massive ’70s Swedish rock songs. extraterrestrial intervention not only swallows up the sad song, wounded boy, and us but also lavishly sets the table for what’s to come — an almost ridiculous movie’s great pleasures come from character revelations. serving of unexpected thrills. Pratt plays a wise guy with a large soft spot, the snarky The young boy turns into one Peter Quill (Chris raccoon is literally marked by his cruel past, and Groot Pratt), a galactic picker who has combed dead worlds for the big tree is clearly destined for cult fame. The phrase “I decades until his involvement retrieving a MacGuffin orb am Groot” will one day vie with such cliché formulations runs him into the sidekicks of an evil, hooded obsessive as “May the Force be with you.” Comparisons with Star Wars seem inevitable. Lucas’s named Ronan the Accuser. Meanwhile, Quill accidentally accumulates a ragtag gang of wisecracking sidekicks that universe was more obviously beholden to movie serials includes a lissome green assassin (Zoe Saldana), a talking and Jung; this one rides on the blankets of it and all the raccoon tech genius (voiced by Bradley Cooper), and a space westerns, with Han Solo breeziness and hints of a walking plant named Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), who is lost father from some angelic realm. What’s different is the as full of surprises as the film. Mostly, it’s a parade of outer- connection to pop culture Earth — Quill’s in-jokes and space spectacles, but the story also includes nonstop action his Walkman obsession rule the soundtrack and the plot. and jokes that transplant American pop culture (Kevin This film has rayguns and Groot, but it also has Blue Swede Bacon as mythological hero) into deep space. Yet the singing “Hooked on a Feeling.” ■
CAST YOUR VOTE BY AUG. 13 @5PM
INDEPENDENT.COM
august 7, 2014
THE INDEPENDENt
63