Once Was Lost But Now We Can See: Aretha Franklin In "Amazing Grace"

Amazing Grace
produced by Alan Elliott
starring Aretha Franklin

If you love and appreciate true American "soul" and gospel music, not to mention one of the greatest to ever perform it -- Aretha Franklin -- then there is no better document than the long-hidden film treasure Amazing Grace, just making the rounds of film festivals now.

Originally shot in 1972, Amazing Grace is a film document of the live recording of the late Aretha Franklin's seminal 1972 album of the same name, a collection of gospel and gospel-inspired tunes that put on dazzling display its performer's prodigious vocal talents and went on to sell some 2 million copies and become the best-selling gospel album of all time. The two-night performance was originally shot by the late director Sydney Pollock for a Warner Bros. release, but problems with the footage and disagreement between the studio and its star left it unfinished for 46 years.

Thanks to a long overdue agreement between the Franklin estate and producer Alan Elliott, who was able to piece together Pollock's footage and complete the gargantuan job of synching the audio to the images, Amazing Grace is finally seeing the light of day. It is being show Nov. 12 at the DOC NYC Festival, has been shown in Los Angeles, and will likely get a theatrical release in early 2019. And thank goodness. Beyond its title being associated with the much beloved gospel hymn, its central performance is just that: Amazing.

The action takes place in Los Angeles at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, with backing from a crack band of session musicians: Cornell Dupree on guitar, Bernard Purdie on drums, Chuck Rainey on bass, with Kenny Luper on church organ. The Southern California Community Choir, led ably by choir director Alexander Hamilton, in typically animated choir director form, provide requisite vocal support. Both nights are emceed by noted gospel eminence the Reverend James Cleveland, who alternates with Aretha on piano and lends his powerful vocal on several numbers.

Just 30 when this project was recorded, Aretha appeared to be in full possession of the soulful melodics, harmonics, dynamics, improvisation, and sheer inspirational fervor that have been her trademarks throughout a long career that spanned a broad range of musical styles. Watching Aretha in a church setting, throwing back her head and opening her golden throat, I couldn't help but imagine that the very angels themselves were being arrested by the glorious sounds that emerged. Whether standing at the podium or seated at the piano to accompany herself, Aretha is composed, confident, and in control. Beautiful in her flowing shifts, glorious afro, and vibrant eye makeup, she is in command of the music, the choir, and even the audience at every moment.

It seems strange that Aretha herself does not directly address the audience, instead demurring to Rev. Cleveland, who amiably introduces the tunes and instructs the audience to be lively in their responses (encouragement that wasn't really necessary). We only hear Aretha speak when asking for water, or to clarify the key for a tune. But somehow this distance only adds to her mystique as not only an artist but almost an oracle. Not a second-night appearance by her father, the renowned Rev. C.L. Franklin (who makes a speech of pride in his daughter's accomplishments), nor a flowery entrance by mink-coated gospel great Clara Ward, nor the enthusiasm of special guests like Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger in the back row, nor the hot lights, nor a steady stream of perspiration puddling her eyeliner can deter Aretha from the preternatural composure and skill with which she delivers beloved classics like "What A Friend we Have in Jesus," "How I Got Over," "Precious Memories," "Mary Don't You Weep," and the enduring title anthem "Amazing Grace."

Indeed, by the time Aretha arrives at the seminal title hymn, stretching its melody a cappella, and emphasizing the thankful fervor of its lyrics, members of the audience -- not to mention members of the backing choir and even the film production crew -- are enraptured, many of them visibly moved, some to tears, others seemingly to visitation by the Holy Ghost. Watching Aretha in her element, the Black Church, in what is universally acknowledged as her greatest recorded performance, the film dares you not to renew your own faith -- if not in a higher power, than certainly in the power of music to salve the soul.

Amazing Grace is a visual and aural baptism into the wellspring of African American gospel music by one of its most revered practitioners. In simple terms, this often rough-hewn film is nothing short of a blessing.



All photos are screenshots.

Skateboards, Hip-Hop and S**t: Growing Up "Mid90s"

Mid90s
written and directed by Jonah Hill
starring Sunny Suljic, Kate Waterston, Lucan Hedges, Na-Kel Smith, Olan Pranatt and others

Recommended? With reservations.

I wandered into Mid90s out of sheer curiosity. This coming-of-age tale was written and directed by Oscar nominee Jonah Hill, the onetime chubby comic relief in a number of comedies like SuperBad, Get Him To the Greek, This Is The End and Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- movies that I lowkey enjoyed -- who has since repositioned himself as a serious actor in Moneyball, The Wolf of Wall Street, and the Netflix stumper Maniac with a sleeker physique. Mid90s is his attempt at a cinema bildungsroman, but while he's wrangled some strong performances out of his young actors, the results are mixed.

Shot almost documentary style, Mid90s centers on diminutive 13-year-old Stevie (an astonishing Sunny Suljic), a middle schooler growing up in LA with a single mother (Katherine Waterston) and an emotionally stunted older brother (Lucas Hedges) who frequently beats and abuses him. Desperate to come out from under his brother's thumb, while simultaneously studying everything bout him, and grow up fast, Stevie insinuates himself into a group of teen skateboard enthusiasts at the local skate shop.

Spending hours on their skateboards perfecting tricks, often in prohibited enclaves of the city, and listening to hip-hop, these boys are seeking to escape whatever they feel is oppressing them (poverty, familial abuse, parental expectations, or neglect). This new crew gives Stevie -- dubbed Sunburn by the others -- a sense of family and belonging he doesn't get from his distracted mother and repressed older brother. Except that, other than dreadlocked ringleader and skateshop proprietor Ray (Na-Kel Smith), the rest of this crew are clueless, questing kids who engage in raunchy debates, give each other bad advice, and drink and drug at escalating rates. Ray's best friend and the charismatic center of the film is a character called Fuckshit (Olan Prenatt), so named for his favorite expletive, a blonde-ringleted slacker whom Stevie admires as being the ultimate in "cool." There's also Stevie's friend-turned-foe Ruben (Gio Galicia) and the laconic Fourth Grade (Ryder McLoughlin), named for his intellectual level, who dreams of being a filmmaker and carries his camera everywhere.

Stevie is ready to put himself out there, prove himself any way he can, and he's willing to risk life and limb to do it. Already the brunt of his brother's violence, Stevie cracks his head open falling off a rooftop in a skateboarding dare, a move that gains him the admiration of the crew, and privately engages in self-harm to toughen himself further. "You take the hardest hits of anyone I know," muses Ray toward the film's conclusion. "You know you don't have to do that, right?"

The film showers affection on the era before computers riveted teen culture: skateboards, party hip-hop, oversized jeans, and the kind of aimless angst that made "Smells Like Teen Spirit" a breakout hit for Curt Cobain and crew. Mixed by race and ethnic origin, the group likes to freely throw around the n-word. For a film about the mid 1990s, key scenes are driven by music outside of that era, as in a sequence as the crew skates down the median of a busy thoroughfare to strains of the Mamas & the Papas' "Dedicated To The One I Love" from 1967 and Herbie Hancock's version of "Watermelon Man" from 1974. Trent Reznor contributed original music, and there are a number of other 90s hip-hop tracks quoted.

The film casts a reminiscent glow on Stevie's pubescent milestones, like his first cigarette, first drink, first sexual encounter, and first drug experience. Viewing this as an adult who came of age two decades earlier, I had significant trouble watching the child-sized Suljic in a sexual encounter at a party with a girl who looked to be way over 16, ingesting drugs freely handed to him by Fuckshit while Ray merely shakes his head, and climbing into a car driven by an obviously too-high Fuckshit with predictable results. (My inner thoughts: This has got to be illegal, this is child abuse, where is this actor's mother, etc.)

The movie tries to tie everything up with a bow. Stevie's mother Dabney, alarmed by Stevie's behavior and this new group of friends, at first tries to prohibit her son from associating with them, but Stevie rebels and resists. Mom finally relents once she sees how devoted they are as Stevie lands in the hospital. Stevie's brother attempts a form of reconciliation with his sibling. And the mostly wordless Fourth Grade finally shares the video documentary he's been working on, appropriately titled "Mid90s."

Watching this I was reminded that every generation thinks its teen years were deeply poignant, significant, and unique. I certainly have felt that way about my own experience, but watching Mid90s, with which I couldn't really relate, I realized that it's a universally human conceit. But Mid90s did show me -- who grew up in a household of females -- how often boys are conditioned to masculinity through the idea that they must cultivate their ability to not only survive physical challenges and violence, but to seek them out.

Not bad for a first effort, but Hill should turn his directorial vision outward for his next project.

"Bohemian Rhapsody": Music-Soaked Story of Queen Crowns Star Rami Malek

Bohemian Rhapsody
directed by Bryan Singer (though he reportedly walked off before finishing)
Starring Rami Malek and … some other people

The song "Bohemian Rhapsody," originally released as a single in 1975 and rereleased 16 years later, made me love the British band Queen.

I loved the clear timbre of Freddy Mercury's voice and the compelling emotion it held in the early verses, telling the story of a condemned young man who must pay for a murder. I loved the song's many genre shifts, it's allusions to opera buffa (Ialian comic opera), early English musical theater as well as straight up rock in its scorching "So you think you can stone me and leave me to die ..." segment. The uniquely striated guitar chords and Brian May's screaming solos added grit. I loved that it had an absolutely nonsensical aspect to it -- which gives it more charm. Once you hear this six-minute gem, you can't forget it.

When this tune was first a hit, I was an impressionable teenager, listening to everything on pop and R&B radio. I was riveted by the tune, and it quickly became nearly every music fan's fun singalong. Some scorned it as trash or comic relief, but it entranced more than one generation of fans.

Certainly I had heard other pieces of Queen music, including crowd favorites "We Are the Champions" and "Another One Bites The Dust." But about the band itself, its roots, its influences, its raison d'etre, I knew very little. So I was really looking forward to the Bohemian Rhapsody film that debuted in theaters nationwide last Friday.

After seeing it, I can't say that I really know that much more about Queen as a band other than the facts that have long been public. There's a disturbingly shorthand, 20-20 hindsight, TV-movie-of-the-week treatment of many events in the band's formation and career that left me wanting more. How did the other three members first get together? What was their inspiration? How did the each develop their musical skills? Instead the plot tends to tick off narrative milestones without really making those moments come alive.

The most fleshed out portrait among those in Queen is that of the late Freddie Mercury, the band's dynamic and flamboyant lead singer. It seems the living members of the band, who approved this film, kept a tight rein on how their characters could be portrayed, while the screenwriters could run riot with the story of the one who can no longer speak up. Critics have lambasted the filmmakers for this, as well as for altering the chronology of events for dramatic effect. Indeed, by making it seem that Mercury was well aware of his AIDS diagnosis just before his appearance at the Live Aid concert, his performance of certain lyrics becomes that much more poignant. Reportedly, Mercury wasn't diagnosed until more than a year later.

Where the film absolutely wins is in the portrayal of Freddie Mercury by Rami Malek, which is nothing short of brilliant.

With a set of outsized teeth resembling Mercury's signature overbite, Malek struts, pouts, creates, loves, performs the band's signature songs and rivets our attention for most of the film. It's a bravura piece of work, considering he had to alter his voice, sing (or appear to sing), approximate Mercury's style, walk, and stance, and portray the singer's early struggle to define his sexuality. Malek, who has proven to be a capable actor, outdoes himself here, doing a stellar job of conveying a complicated man with a sensitive soul and a firm and well-warranted belief in his own talents as singer, songwriter and stage performer.

The other big win of this film is Queen's music itself, even recreating the band's iconic performance at Wembley Stadium during the global Live Aid Concert of 1985 nearly beat for beat.

The other actors in the film tend to fade into the background, though Gwilym Lee ably sports Brian May's cascade of curls and wrangles his guitar convincingly, and Lucy Boynton is sweet as Mary Austin, Mercury's one-time paramour and the inspiration for his song "Love of My Life." Mike Myers is nearly unrecognizable as a record executive who declares that "Bohemian Rhapsody" will flop; his casting is something of a stunt since Mike and fellow SNL alum Dana Carvey ably breathed new life into the track in their 1992 film Wayne's World.

Bohemian Rhapsody the movie will leave you with renewed appreciation for the song, the band that created it, the singer who fronted it, and again, Rami Malek's starmaking turn as Mercury. And that's not just radio gaga.

Don't miss the podcast The Words On Flicks Show with Janine Coveney, movie talk from a fan perspective.

"Bad Times At The El Royale": Good Acting, Good Music, Rough Ride

Bad Times at the El Royale
directed by Drew Goddard
starring Jeff Bridges, Jon Hamm, Dakota Johnson, Cynthia Erivo, Chris Hemsworth

Recommended? Depends on your taste. A showcase for some fine acting.

I was pulled into the theater to see Bad Times at the El Royale after viewing the previews, I was intrigued for a few reasons: Jeff Bridges, who has become one of the most watchable actors around (loved his turn in the Coen Brothers' remake of True Grit, among other roles). Cynthia Erivo, who I knew to be an incredible Broadway performer and singer from The Color Purple but whom I had never seen on the big screen. Jon Hamm, who seems to have built on his Mad Men experience by portraying a wide range of challenging characters on screen (the nasty villain of last year's Baby Driver comes most immediately to mind). A shirtless Chris Hemsworth as a villain. A twisty and deviously concocted plot that sparked dim echoes of Pulp Fiction. What appeared to be vividly gorgeous sets depicting a Rat Pack-era motel and crisp cinematography capturing it all.

I definitely got all that and more. Probably more than I anticipated, or wanted, really. But I'll get to that.

Bad Times at the El Royale is a film noir crime drama, set in the 1960s. A rustic themed motel straddling the California/Nevada state line, the El Royale has seen better days, and few travelers stop. Guests can stay on the Nevada or the California side, and the expansive lobby with its timbered walls resembles a ski or hunting lodge. This deceptively hospitable outpost is where several characters check in, almost none of them who or what they appear to be.

Erivo plays Darlene, a fired girl group singer determined to make it own her own, heading to a gig in nearby Reno. Her gorgeous vocalizing in many of the scenes are a bright spot in a mostly dark film. Bridges is Father Flynn, an ex-con bank robber masquerading as a priest to find the loot his murdered partner buried in one of the rooms decades earlier. Hamm, posing as loquacious salesman Laramie Sullivan, is a federal agent trying to clean up evidence of a longtime surveillance operation at the motel. Dakota Johnson, a bitch for no discernible reason, demands a room far from the others; seemingly a ruthless kidnapper who pulls a girl from her trunk and ties her to a chair in the room, Emily is actually trying to save her brainwashed younger sister from a charismatic hippy cult leader, who ultimately turns up at the motel to claim her with unpleasant results. As played by Hemsworth, Billy Lee is a sexy nutcase, spewing new age jargon, sparking mayhem and dancing, in mesmerizing Jim Morrison fashion, between bouts of violence. There's also Miles, the motel's sole employee, played by Lewis Pullman, a seemingly mild mannered young man hiding a number of unpleasant personal and professional secrets.

As each of the characters slowly discovers what Miles has long known, which is that the rooms aren't exactly private, complications ensue. Assuming that he is witnessing a kidnapping, Hamm attempts to enter Johnson's room and she guns him down. Stray buckshot breaks the mirror, revealing the surveillance corridor behind all the rooms and the fact that she's also wounded Miles, perhaps fatally.

Bridges and Erivo, after a bumpy start where he tries to drug her and she knocks him cold, make a pact; she'll help him find the money in exchange for a cut.

And then there is a sort of McGuffin, similar to the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, concerning a reel of film from the hidden surveillance camera in the motel, documenting an unnamed big shot doing God Knows What in one of the rooms, a film that could net big bucks if peddled to the right media or government outlet. Though it wasn't clear, I got the feeling that Erivo's character might also have appeared in that film. The story is lurid, grimey, violent, and a perfect example of the contemporary noir genre in vivid color.

This is the second film I've seen this year, after A Star Is Born, where the pacing seems to follow a more natural rhythm than the whiz-bang editing and rat-a-tat dialog of other films. Which isn't to say that Bad Times doesn't have some great lines. It does. Hamm's opening monologue as he blusters into the motel demanding the best room in the place, is a showpiece of acting as he paints a false picture of himself as a hail-fellow-well-met, twisting his tongue around old-fashioned terms such as "hidey-hole" for the hotel, and "fortnighter" for his impressive piece of luggage. It's this speech, in fact, that lets us know that this film is going to be something of a rollercoaster and that we should buckle up. Bridges is spellbinding as a desperate, aging outlaw with degenerative memory loss. His character's unlikely partnership with Erivo's streetwise singer Darlene is the heart of the film.

As I watched this colorful, suspenseful, unusual tale where no one is who they say they are, I was briefly reminded of the classic Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall flick Key Largo, a 1948 film noir crime drama that also centers on a rundown, out of the way hotel where some desperate characters meet. The Hotel Largo has seen better days when Bogey arrives, looking for the family of an old army buddy. He finds his buddy's widow and father trying to keep the hotel going as they host a disparate group of folks, one of them a homicidal gangster on the run (Edward G. Robinson) who holds the others hostage as a hurricane barrels down on them. But as a product of its times, Key Largo doesn't ever get as down and dirty as what Bad Times director Goddard has in store.

Bad Times has numerous plot twists and turns to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. In the meantime, it's a total delight to the eyes -- and to the ears, as much of its soundtrack comes from a steady infusion of 60s hits and the characters' frequent references to them. The film takes its time in unspooling the characters and their motivations, and then sets them on a collision course that begins to feel tedious and overwrought by the final quarter of the flick, to the point where I started to wonder, "when will this be over?"

The blood-soaked fire-torched finale of the film was a little much for me, but that doesn't erase the fact that overall this a compelling and suspenseful story with the talents of some incredible actors on display.