HoneydripperA hot sticky mess January 16,
2008 3:24:59 PM
Danny Glover and Lisa Gay Hamilton
|
John Sayles’s first clunker is a threadbare yarn about the emergence of rock and roll that substitutes clichés for character development. Danny Glover plays a juke-joint owner in ’50s Alabama whose past is playing karmic catch-up, with the law (a greasy Stacy Keach), the landlord (smooth Vondie Curtis-Hall), and his lady (Bible-toting Lisa Gay Hamilton) on his back. There’s also his troubled conscience, in the persona of Grammy winner Keb’ Mo’ as Possum, a blind blues singer who spouts hackneyed dialogue. Only anachronistic blueswoman Bertha Mae Spivey, played by Stax Records veteran Mable John, seems real, but her death early on buoys Sayles’s simple strategy for portraying the succession of musical styles. Glover saves the day with the Little Rascals Maneuver: he puts on a show. Its star is newcomer Gary Clark Jr., a real-life musician from Austin. Clark’s innocence is endearing, but only the era-appropriate soundtrack makes this fractured fairy tale tolerable. 123 minutes | Boston Common + Fenway + Kendall Square + Circle/Chestnut Hill + suburbs
|
|
|
- Never mind its tough-girl alt-porn feminism: SuicideGirls has already moved on to a new generation
- Some Things at Trinity
- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains the punishing cost of staying any longer
- A last-minute Emperor at the BSO, Gatti and Ohlsson, BLO’s Elisir, and Brahms meets Weill with the Cantata Singers
- Janet’s Discipline and Badu’s New AmErykah
- If you want to lose the ‘fright wig,’ try ditching your shampoo
- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains the punishing cost of staying any longer
- Now more than ever, this is Marty Baron’s newspaper
- Julian Kuerti leads the BSO and Leon Fleisher, Stockhausen’s Mantra at Harvard, Emmanuel’s St. John Passion
- Free speech trumps Boston cops
- Al Basile is still groovin’ onThe Tinge
- The Left Bank meets the West Side
|
-
Girls Sing | Geometriya
-
ECM
-
Lost Highway
-
The 25th anniversary of Thriller
-
District Line | Anti-
-
Dirt Farmer | Vanguard
-
The classic sounds of the Mars Volta and Louis XIV
-
The music’s other life
-
Beneath the Blues | Loud, Loud Music
-
Underground | Ruf
|
- Clever, clever conceit
- Dutifully soporific
- Leftovers from the '80s
- Two-hour nihilistic melee
- Call it American Ugly
- From crude to cute
- Borderless realm of love, loss, and reconciliation
- Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz at the ICA
- Artfully done soap opera
- Courage and naïveté
|
|
|
|