Hearts Beat Loud is your classic summer indie film that's fresh off the film festival circuit. I screened this movie, in June, 2018 at the Charles Theater in Baltimore.
The premise behind this movie centralizes around a single dad, whom is about to close a few chapters in his life: sending his smart, hardworking daughter off to college, and closing his music store. Nick Offerman, who plays Frank Fischer, lives in an up and coming neighborhood, Red Hook, of Brooklyn. His bonding moments with his daughter comes from their love for music and weekly jam sessions.
The driving force of this movie is the solid soundtrack and the fun simple moments between Offerman, and his daughter, Sam played by Keirsy Clemmons. The budding relationship between Sam and Rose (played by Sascha Lane) left some desires of being developed a bit more, as well as the backstory of Sam's mother.
Tuesday 3 July 2018
The Seagull
The Seagull is a movie adaptation of Chekhov's work of the same name. I was able to screen this version at The Chekhov's work is often laden with a large cast with multiple connections to the other characters. Over the years, I've often wondered with seeing different staged versions of Chekhov's work done for college thesis projects, I often wondered if my confusion or aversion to his staged productions where the translations presented. I was on the fence about screening this movie for much of the same reason. I thought, is the translation going to be decent? Am I going to be able to pick up themes or how each character is connected? Or am I just going to be lost in scenery for 100 minutes.
The Seagull, as a film, has something that many stage productions lack: original live set. By filming this outside in a lake village, it made it far easier to visualize and pick up on smaller references that frequently get lost in stage sets. Despite me not seeing a staged production of the Seagull, I think many of the other staged versions of Chekhov's work I got lost in trying to relate the set design to the natural ideas that were trying to be conveyed within the work. It is a bit of a loss that the Seagull is filmed it in upstate New York, rather than a small lake village in Russia, the scenery and cinematography for this "production" eased some of the viewing needs. It made the play productions within the film, easier to comprehend, and it incorporated many of the natural elements, which made it easier to tie the overall themes and the micro-scenes within the movie, which can easily
The cast for Seagull was a star-studded European cast, some of whom had theater experience, which I think lead to the overall well dramatized versions, but it would have been nice had there been some Russian leads, whom may have been able to add something other than what westerners are familiar with seeing on the screen. Despite this, I found most of the cast that had been selected for the film had other character study type rolls under their belts, so I felt that acting was a stronger carrying point of this film. The group played well together and I felt that the director managed to keep all the different love triangles tight and managed well, in a 100 minute film, so you weren't trying to take notes in the movie of how Character X was connected to Y.
I am not one that is an avid proponent of Chekhov's work, but I can appreciate a well done version of his work. With that regard, it is also important that you take my review with a grain of salt much for that reason. I enjoyed this film rendition more than I thought I would, and I find that it was a good early summer film to take in on a hot summer's day.
The Seagull, as a film, has something that many stage productions lack: original live set. By filming this outside in a lake village, it made it far easier to visualize and pick up on smaller references that frequently get lost in stage sets. Despite me not seeing a staged production of the Seagull, I think many of the other staged versions of Chekhov's work I got lost in trying to relate the set design to the natural ideas that were trying to be conveyed within the work. It is a bit of a loss that the Seagull is filmed it in upstate New York, rather than a small lake village in Russia, the scenery and cinematography for this "production" eased some of the viewing needs. It made the play productions within the film, easier to comprehend, and it incorporated many of the natural elements, which made it easier to tie the overall themes and the micro-scenes within the movie, which can easily
The cast for Seagull was a star-studded European cast, some of whom had theater experience, which I think lead to the overall well dramatized versions, but it would have been nice had there been some Russian leads, whom may have been able to add something other than what westerners are familiar with seeing on the screen. Despite this, I found most of the cast that had been selected for the film had other character study type rolls under their belts, so I felt that acting was a stronger carrying point of this film. The group played well together and I felt that the director managed to keep all the different love triangles tight and managed well, in a 100 minute film, so you weren't trying to take notes in the movie of how Character X was connected to Y.
I am not one that is an avid proponent of Chekhov's work, but I can appreciate a well done version of his work. With that regard, it is also important that you take my review with a grain of salt much for that reason. I enjoyed this film rendition more than I thought I would, and I find that it was a good early summer film to take in on a hot summer's day.
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