“Hearts Beat Loud” is a warm, sad, sweet hug of a movie. It’s got catchy music, genuine adult relationships and a wise heart.
Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons play father and daughter living in in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. He’s a mopey widower who runs a failing record shop and used to be in a band. She’s about to go off to college to become a doctor. They genuinely love each other, but they’re at that stage in life where their gravitational pulls are going in different directions.
Frank (Offerman) does insist that he and Sam (Clemons) still hold their semi-regular “jam sesh” where they punk around with their instruments. One evening it’s especially fruitful, their noodling condenses into an actual song, which Frank records and, on a whim, uploads to Spotify.
He’s astonished when the tune gets a lot of airtime. A record label guy even shows up at the shop talking about a contract and an LP. Soon Frank’s head is buzzing: maybe Sam can take a gap year while they go on the road, deepen their bond and let him live out his rock god dreams?
Ted Danson is Dave, the silver-tongued bartender who dispenses wisdom and spirits to favored friends. Toni Collette plays Leslie, the landlord for their shop, and also a very available lady Frank has his eyes on. Maybe all his hopes and dreams are suddenly coming to fruition?
Directed by Brett Haley (“The Hero”) from a screenplay he wrote along with Marc Basch, “Hearts Beat Loud” is poignant and heartfelt. It’s a movie about having dreams, but also knowing when it’s time to let go of them and form some new ones.
“Hearts Beat Loud” is a very different take on the familiar “putting together a band” movie. This band consists of just a middle-aged father and his teen daughter, the latter of whom has such disregard for their musical abilities that she insists, “We’re not a band” -- which becomes the group’s name.
And while there are the usual tantalizing dreams of cutting an album, topping the charts, going on tour, etc., we know pretty much from the get-go that this is not really in the cards.
This is not a film about finding fame, but learning to embrace the life you have.
Director Brett Haley, who co-wrote the script with Marc Basch, made the wonderful and (alas) little-scene drama, “The Hero,” last year. Both that film and this one have sadness and regret at their core, but also a strong sense of love and even a smidgen of hope. And they boast not a little humor, with “Hearts” being closer in form to an overt comedy.
It’s probably the best film role that Nick Offerman has had. A TV comedy king (“Parks and Recreation”), he’s been very busy with small supporting parts in mostly smaller movies (including “The Hero.”) Here he gets a chance to play the lead, in a meaty role as a guy going through life with a smirk on his face, but only to hide his pain and disappointment.
Frank Fisher had it all: he was young and in a hot band with a tremendously talented lead singer, who also became his wife and bore them a daughter, Sam (the absolutely radiant Kiersey Clemons). When his wife was killed in an accident, Frank came off the road and opened up Red Hook Records, a dive-ish shop in Brooklyn catering exclusively in LPs.
Seventeen years later, Sam is about to go off to UCLA to study medicine. The store is foundering, as Frank still loves music but is profoundly indifferent to people who want to buy music.
In the opening scene, be blows off a customer, preferring to listen to Jeff Tweedy on his headphones, refusing to put out his cigarette and generally annoying the guy enough he buys the record he had been looking at on Amazon, then taunts Frank, showing him the phone with the transaction. Frank probably deserved it.
What’s worse, Frank has come to realize that Sam sees him as deeply uncool. In fact, as she confides to Rose (Sasha Lane), a quirky artist’s assistant with whom she begins the bloom of first love, she chose a school in Los Angeles primarily to get away from home.
They’ve always dabbled in playing music together, he on guitar and she on keyboards, though these days Frank has to needle Sam to get her nose out of the books long enough to share their semi-regular “jam sesh.” One night, Sam pulls out a hook she’s been noodling with, Frank lays a guitar track on top of it, she sings a few lines and before you know it, they’ve got a song.
Frank is thrilled at this chance to make music and spend time with his daughter. He puts the song on Spotify and is astonished when it makes an indie playlist and gets lots of airtime. A record label guy stops by the store to chat him up. Soon his head is filled: maybe Sam could take a gap year while they go on tour and become rock gods?
Toni Collette is Leslie, Frank’s landlord, who’s also a friend and, he hopes, maybe something more. She cherishes the friendship but is wary about the more. Ted Danson plays Dave, silver of hair and tongue, who runs the neighborhood bar, dispensing “the good stuff” to favored patrons along with sage counsel. “We don’t always get to do what we love, Frankie, so we’ve got to love what we do.”
The music, by Keegan DeWitt, has a slightly dreamy quality, pulsating beats that build upon themselves as plaintive, almost whispered vocals crescendo into cascading emotional peaks and valleys. Clemons is a gifted singer; Offerman is not, though his vocals in a couple of songs have a genuine, rough poignancy.
“Hearts Beat Loud” is a portrait of a father and daughter coming together while at cross ends. Frank knows what he loves, but it’s remained elusive his whole life. Sam is smart enough to know she can’t live her dad’s dream for him, yet isn’t ready to walk out of his life just yet. Together, the music they make isn’t the means to stardom, but the ends of fortifying their bond.
"Dope" is a crazy, funny, smart film. It's got a terrific batch of young actors, a brash original story and style from writer/director Rick Famuyiwa, and an urgent vitality that demands our attention.
It's about Malcolm, a smart kid from South-Central Los Angeles who adores 1990s hip-hop culture and dreams of getting into Harvard. You probably know that South-Central is a tough area rife with guns and drugs, and may have heard that Inglewood is at its core. The Bottoms, Malcolm's neighborhood, lives up (or down) to its nickname.
Malcolm is played by Shameik Moore, who should be on the list of every casting director in Hollywood after this. He announces himself as a performer in much the same way the cast members of "Boyz n the Hood" did nearly a quarter-century ago.
This is a bit ironic, since Malcolm is self-professed geek who regularly gets trounced upon by the school bullies and can barely speak to girls.
Life is challenging but good for Malcolm and his two best buds, Jib (Tony Revolori) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons). The trio wears vintage clothes ranging somewhere between Fresh Prince and Ice T, and Malcolm's got an impressive flat top/fade that makes his whole head stand up, and out. They're typical horny boys who yearn after girls but never get them, even Diggy, who is one herself.
They share a passion for academics and '90s music, jamming upbeat tunes in the music room after school about getting good grades, dubbing themselves Awreeoh. That's as in "Oreo," a nod to their multiracial makeup and embrace of cultural values deemed too white by their fellows.
The setup is that Malcolm is invited/cajoled by a local drug dealer, Dom (A$AP Rocky), into attending an underground party. He would probably stay away except for Nakia (Zoë Kravitz), a local stunner who is kinda/sorta linked to Dom. Malcolm, Diggy and Jib make the scene and are having a good time until a deal goes bad and bullets start flying.
Long story short, Malcolm finds himself with his backpack stuffed with Dom's heroin. The dealer wants it back, while his competitors demand the dope for themselves. Malcolm and his pals begin a confusing, scary but also uproarious journey through L.A.'s seedier parts, trying to figure out how to dispose of the stash while keeping their skins intact.
Meanwhile, Malcolm still needs to ace his S.A.T.'s and make a good impression at his interview with a Harvard alumni.
If all this sounds a little like "Risky Business" mixed with "Boyz," that's because it is. But Famuyiwa's script, while liberally borrowing elements from other movies, synthesizes them into an original and engaging pastiche.
In general I'd call it a comedy, poking fun at aspects of black and white culture, and the in-between spaces where Malcolm and his friends are trying to carve out a spot for themselves. But it's got some serious and poignant moments, too, often arriving with surprising juxtaposition to each other.
It's a hard tonal balance to strike, but Famuyiwa and his cast pull it off. It's odd to see common themes from the gangsta genre, like a strutting stand-off between two men with guns, played for chuckles. But "Dope" helps us look at familiar things in new ways, and laugh while doing it.
