Reviews by JxSxPx

Nico is an artist who doesn’t get the credit she deserves. Her albums are often too pretentious, artsy, weird and proto-punk for most people. Outside of The Velvet Underground & Nico, actually finding her material is criminally difficult. I firmly and completely believe that it is well worth the search. Her albums are pieces of art.

Yes, there is the matter of her voice. I think it works for her chamber-folk-noise rock-cabaret-pop hybrid, but it is an acquired taste. At times too deep, too strained in others, she over enunciates and tries too force the pronunciations of her words. Oddly, this leads to her cutting off her syllables (example: “I’ll be your mirror” became “I be your mirror”). She did have a knack for picking collaborators though. Jacksone Browne, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan are just a few of the songwriters credited to the album. The girl knew how to pick great material.

And, yes, the studio did tamper with the material. Upon hearing the title track, rumor has it, she broke down and cried, attributing this to the flute that added onto the record. It wasn’t just the title song, but according to Nico that was the biggest offense. I think the strings sound quite pretty, but I wonder what the material would sound like without the tampering. Her husky voice would probably sound quite beautiful with a sparse and simple arrangement. Of course, there is the noise rock song “It Was a Pleasure Then.” She nails it. That’s another great thing about a Nico album, since she was part of the Factory, a Warhol muse, and part of the Velvets for a short period of time, you can hear her influence on the alternative scene. The most obvious spiritual child would be Patti Smith – a combination of punk noise rock with a folk music foundation – but other offspring would be Kim Gordon and Leonard Cohen.

Find Chelsea Girl, it will blow your mind. It’s a companion piece to The Velvet Underground & Nico, just try your best to ignore the flute. DOWNLOAD: “It Was a Pleasure Then”

Dream of Life is not an ambitious comeback album in the way that Gone Again is. This is Patti Smith peaking out of her house, waving hello and saying that she’s still here. I think that this could have been a great record, if someone didn’t go into the studio and polish everything within an inch of its life. Smith always sounds at her best and most exciting when she’s got at least a little bit of dirt on the track. She started life as one of the many punks at CBGB’s, give her that edge.

That’s not to say that there are no great moments on the record. There are, they’re just few and far between. “People Have the Power” is a cliché, but a cliché can have a tremendous amount of power when given the right amount of fury and passion behind it. Patti Smith obviously believes in what she is saying. The music is a little bland, but her delivery and lyrics elevate the song behind it’s too polished production and into one of her classic tracks. “Looking for You (I Was)” is a nice rocker. Nothing too crazy, it does sound a little like a Pretenders song too often though. That’s a problem throughout the entire album, Smith sounds too much like her spiritual daughters (Chrissie Hynde being the most obvious example), instead of leading the pack and charging ahead holding the white flag.

It’s alright though, a bad Patti Smith album is still better than most albums of the era. Or any era, really. While this might be a slight effort, she came charging back with passion, emotion, purpose and ambition with Gone Again. Dream of Life just serves as a reminder that Smith was still kicking around some ideas and still had some drive as an artist, just needed to let go of the MOR sound. DOWNLOAD: "People Have the Power"

Not even the great and wonderful Patti Smith is immune from the sophomore slump. Radio Ethiopia is great in pieces but lacking as a whole – too many half-formed ideas and not enough of the song quality that made Horses so classic. It keeps the ambitious song lengths and rambling poetic nature of the songs, but forgets to give them a structure to be built on. This may have been her intent, but it makes for a difficult listen.

The straight headed punk rockers like “Ask the Angels” and “Pumping (My Heart)” are fantastic. Smith’s ferocious delivery and guitar wails show you why she’s the grand dame of punk. The hyper-literate and religious minded lyrics tell you why she’s the poet laureate. But it’s once we venture out into songs like “Radio Ethiopia” and “Distant Fingers” that things start to get murky and difficult, even for me. I love a good noise rock song, I even like “Radio Ethiopia,” but at times, the record gets way too pretentious and insular. It’s hard not to blame her for wanting to do something darker after Horses, deservedly, caused every rock critic to fire their loads and proclaim her the greatest thing to happen in American music since Dylan.

I keep practically the whole album on my computer, I’ve even given it a few listens the whole way through. I respect her artistry and intent, but I don’t quite like the whole. Still, it’s better than Wave and Dream of Life, which were just too polished and bland. I prefer Patti Smith being pretentious and batshit crazy while noise rock blasts behind her Beat poet-like rantings. She’s more exciting that way, and it’s why I fell in love with her in the first place. DOWNLOAD: “Ask the Angels”

Patti Smith’s fourth studio album, Wave, is missing some of the messy, anarchistic folk-punk that made her previous albums so compelling (even if some of the songs worked better as experiments than as actual recordings). Yes, this is the album that began her move towards more radio-friendly sounds. Yes, it’s the most polished and pop oriented album she’s ever cut. But that does not mean that it is without it’s charms and merits.

“Dancing Barefoot” at first sounds like a redo of “Because the Night,” but builds upon that song's promises of mystery and sexuality to become something even more beautiful and rich. It’s no wonder that it’s become one of her biggest songs, if not one of her more defining cuts. “Frederick,” a love song to her future husband, is also soft and AOR friendly, but just as quirky and slightly strange as any other Patti Smith song. And “Revenge” might just have one of the greatest lyrical intros to any song: “I feel upset/Let’s do some celebrating/Come on honey, don’t hesitate now.” If that’s not a call to arms and a kinky-dangerous come on, I don’t know what is. “So You Want to Be (A Rock & Roll Star),” a Byrds cover, and “Wave,” an imagined conversation with Pope John Paul I, are the only other tracks worth a listen on the album.

Sadly, the rest is just too bland and polished for any album, but especially for a Patti Smith. As a follow up to almost-as-great-as-Horses Easter, Wave fails to impress. It would be roughly twenty years until she came back with a vengeance, armed with an album anywhere as exciting or crazy as her greatest works. This always has been and always be one of the lesser works in her canon. DOWNLOAD: “Dancing Barefoot”

The Specials is a frantic skank-romping good-time, More Specials is the subdued follow-up. It also branches out into more styles than the debut, which focused on the 2-tone/ska revival craze that they had helped usher in. Like the previous disc, More Specials opens up with a rocking cover of an older song, this time “Enjoy Yourself,” which gets a reprise at the end with the Go-go’s as guest vocalists. It was around this time that Terry Hall and Jane Wiedlin got into their affair and wrote “Our Lips Are Sealed,” but that’s another story and album. The sophomore effort is almost as good as, if slightly more uneven and less cohesive than, the debut. How did they manage this feat? Through sheer force of will, one would imagine. The bite and snarl of their music isn’t lost in the more pop leanings that debut here, and would come out in full-force on their next record. The most interesting new territory explored isn’t the Latin-tinged instrumental “Holiday Fortnight,” but the spaghetti western sounds of “Stereotypes.” Its familiar lyrical territory for the group, but it’s not less evocative or interesting. And Terry Hall could snap and put-down with the best of them. If Hall and Staples hadn’t had left the band shortly after this, who knows what the third record could have been like. DOWNLOAD: “Hey, Little Rich Girl”

I never thought that I would type these words: I wanted Mickey Rourke to win the Oscar. After years of slumming his quirky and strange talent in B-movies and straight-to-DVD trash, he has returned in a big way. He looks like hell, he sounds like hell, and he's lovable for being so simplistic. Yet he is handicapped emotionally, and, should he continue to wrestle, physically. It is not quite the autobiographical film that everyone claims it is, although that is there, but a complicated, moving and depressing portrait of someone who time passed by. It is not entirely a one-man show since Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood have big emotional impacts, despite very limited screen time. Wood only has two scenes, but they are both emotionally devastating for very different reasons. The first is during Randy's hopeless bid to reconnect with his daughter, she seems receptive to it. They talk about the past, her general uneasiness about his latest promise, his tears to show that he is genuine. They agree to meet for dinner and begin to rebuild. He fails to show up after partying too hard. She is let down once more and casts him out of her house, and life forever. Tomei, bravely bearing all in her mid-forties and looking damn fine still, plays the stripper, who functions as the female equivalent to Randy. Time has passed her by, she is in a career that is more artifice then reality, and, at times, she seems to forget which is which. Their scenes are humorous, sad, touching and complicated.

Darren Aronofsky is very easily the next contender for auteur director of his generation. His aesthetic shows the pain in life. Violence is in escapable in this film, for obvious reasons. But it's the emotionally damaging scenes which hit harder. But Aronofsky is also adapt at showcasing the quieter moments. The horrifying reunion of former wrestlers, an assemblage of Frankenstein's monsters rejects complete with medical devices and steroid caused misshapen bodies, shows the eventually horrors to come. But it is not played for shock or for laughs. Randy is looking around and begins to notice that his fate will be theirs if he doesn't stop soon. Or the scenes where the wrestlers gather backstage, listen to the roster, go over what is plausible in the fight and what is not, and practice certain moves. There's a strange balletic movement to all of this, and it is endlessly fascinating.

This was easily one of the greatest films of the past year, and it's a shame it didn't get as much recognition as it deserved. But it is not the underdog-conquers-all storyline that some think it is. I have a feeling that while Randy wins the rematch, he won't be basking in glory for much longer. Rocky this is not.

To watch Doubt is to engage in a mental game of "Who do you believe? And why?" and to watch some of the greatest actors currently working playing off of each other. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep do, at times, resort to Acting! but it comes from a very natural place. Their characters are distrustful of each other, and are quick to engage in banter, fights and explosive arguments before this movie even begins. The history of the characters, the way the actors imbue the characters with a sense of a fully lived life is remarkable. The most obvious showcase of this being Viola Davis as Mrs. Miller. She has two scenes, and is the most crucial character in the movie. She comes in from the outside world, and shows that sometimes things appear one way, but are infinitely more complex then what we think they really are. And Amy Adams holds her own, finding the perfect balance between the naive, sweet Sister James and the more complicated, sad, disturbed emotions she feels beneath the nun clothing. Did Father Flynn do it? I don't think so. What is Sister Aloysius doubting at the end? I think it could be several things. I love that this movie engages you and makes you think from the very beginning of the first frame to the last. How rare is that these days? Now that is a question worth discussion.

For me, Milk was easily the best film of last year's Academy Awards run. Slumdog was an overrated Indian version of a Charles Dickens story, and Frost/Nixon and The Reader were inexplicably nominated, in my opinion. Only Benjamin Button and Milk touched me out of the top five, but Button didn't touch me as much as Milk did. Sean Penn smiles! That alone should have gotten him the Oscar nomination. And while he did win, and I have no problem with his win, a part of me did want to see Mickey Rourke take it home. But that is getting away from the main point. Penn delivers not an impression, which would have been too easy for an actor his depth and talents, but an immersion into Harvey Milk. Emerging close enough to the real person to make us believe that he is him, but creating enough of a character to make us understand why he was so beloved. The rest of the cast follows his lead, and every person involved looks like their real-life counterpart and captures enough of their charm, intelligence, bravery, etc. and uses that to form their own character. How did this lose the Best Ensemble SAG?

But a cast is only as good as the direction and writing of the film. And a good director can make them rise above even a below average script. Luckily, Gus Van Sant is a fantastic director. Gus Van Sant proves himself, once more, to be a modern day master. An auteur, if you will. He is a virtuoso. Yes, for a few years his wunderkind indie-kid cred was dented by a string of mainstream lackluster fair, but after going back to his roots he has come out swinging and delivers one of his greatest films. The integration of real-life footage (Anita Bryant's vitriol speaks for itself) and the filmed footage is seamless.

And, luckily, they also have a wonderful screenplay to work with. Human Rights are still an issue. It will be a timeless issue. Harvey Milk is but one of the numerous players in the movement of change and hope. Obama consciously, or unconsciously, evokes much of this film's message. Audacity of hope, indeed. The emotional uplift at the end, a combination of tears and a yearning for a better tomorrow, could have been given to these actors and this director from a great screenplay. It's a shame that everyone drank the Slumdog kool-aid.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, or Woody Allen’s loving tribute to Spain. And neurotic and screwed up artists. If the movie had focused on Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) and Juan Diego (Javier Bardem), we might have had a neo-Woody classic, but instead he chose to focus on his latest masturbatory nubile young obsession. It’s not that Scarlett Johansson isn’t talented, she is, the same goes for Rebecca Hall, but the characters they’re stuck with just aren’t as engaging as the two artists (they're like two female versions of Woody). Or perhaps a film about the two of them would have been too sexual and dangerous? I don’t know. Penelope Cruz did justly win her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her committed take on Sophia Loren-as-Frida Kahlo, I mean, Maria Elena. She comes into the film towards the very end, but she packs a crazed, delicious energy which the rest of the breezy, but too light film could have used.

Let’s get the big elephant in the room out of the way first: no film adaptation will ever be as good as the novel Lolita. The first half hour, give or take, does come close to matching the seductive, sumptuous, comic and doomed narrative of the novel. And shortly thereafter, Adrian Lyne decides he wants to stop making a luscious and vivid adaptation and make an overly stylized intriguing mess of a film instead. It’s not Jeremy Irons’ fault, he seems expertly cast as Humbert. Something about his posh, clipped tones and deep rumbles in his voice suite the character. His hollow eyed gloom also works wonders. And he’s made a career out of playing sexual creeps. And Dominique Swain is decent enough as Dolores Haze, a.k.a. Lolita. She’s precocious and tomboyish enough to fit the bratty contours of the character, and was a pretty enough child actress yet something is still wrong about her. Perhaps it’s that she was closer to fifteen when the film was made, and dangerously close to being out of nymphet range. Something about her seems too old and world-weary. Their relationship is a good symbol for what is wrong with the movie. Irons representing the surface perfection involved and Swain how everything is slightly off despite being so expertly realized, or maybe Lolita is one of those books that is just not filmable. Heaven forbid anyone should pick up the novel.