Tag Archives: Marc Maron

Her Propers

Respect

by George Wolf

As cliched and formulaic as music biopics can get, they’ve always got a Get Out of Jail Free Card: the hits. They can turn a stale, overly safe narrative like Bohemian Rhapsody into an Oscar contender, and elevate a joyous risk-taker such as Rocketman into another exhilarating dimension.

Respect certainly has some legendary music on its side, but the sublime cast and intimate perspective are plenty valuable as well.

Is Aretha’s the single greatest voice popular music has ever known? She’s certainly in the team picture, which means Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson has a tough gig in bringing Ms. Franklin to life with more humanity than impersonation.

She’s fantastic. A powerhouse vocalist herself, Hudson alters her phrasing only slightly, wisely channeling the breadth of Franklin’s gift over an unnecessary impersonation. But make no mistake, when Hudson starts digging into the Queen’s songbook, there will be goosebumps.

Director Liesl Tommy and screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson – both TV vets making their jump to the big screen – seem cognizant of the tired formula so brilliantly skewered nearly fifteen years ago by Walk Hard. They keep Respect focused on a twenty-year period from ’52 to ’72, and the personal struggles that saw Aretha take control of her life and her music.

Aretha battles to step out from the shadow of her father Rev. C.L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker), her husband/manager Ted White (Marlon Wayans) and record exec Jerry Wexler (Marc Maron), and Respect gives her story the feminist propers it deserves. Tommy keeps the grandness on the stage and in the studio, opting for an understated tone to the human drama that – one or two hiccups aside – gives it depth.

The finale takes us to Aretha’s live recording session for her landmark gospel album, and the film ends as both a celebration of a legend and an invitation to visit (or re-visit) the transcendent experience that is the 2018 documentary Amazing Grace.

Respect. Sock it to you.

Turtles, All the Way Down

Sword of Trust

by Cat McAlpine

On a hot summer day Cynthia (Jillian Bell) and Mary (Michaela Watkins) walk into an Alabama pawn shop with a sword to sell. Shop owner Mel (Marc Maron) listens in disbelief as the women explain: This isn’t just any sword. This Union officer’s sword, and its accompanying documents, can prove that the South actually won the Civil War.

Sword of Trust pokes at what and who we believe in, and why. What leads people to believe that the world is actually flat or the deep state is actively erasing battles from history books? How many times can we forgive someone before we simply can’t anymore? Filmed on location in Birmingham, the pace of the film matches the speed of summer in the south. No one moves too fast, talks too loud, or quite gets to the point.

Penned by Lynn Shelton (who also directed) and Mike O’Brien, the dialogue is almost too natural, suggesting that most of the script was largely improvised. The frame work is a little choppy, with a focus on Cynthia and Mary at the start that suggests more of an ensemble focus than is delivered.

As the action picks up Cynthia, Mary, Mel, and pawn shop assistant Nathaniel (Jon Bass, loveable) all warily agree to pile into the back of a moving van with an unknown destination.

“This is definitely how people die.”

“This is how individual people die. There’s four of us.”

Then, we’re hit with a momentum bait and switch. The longest scene of the film takes place in the back of the van where the characters explain exactly how they came to this point in their lives. This is when realize the real film is about Mel, and his ability to find satisfaction in life despite its disappointments.

As the emotional epicenter, Maron is a marvelous star. Not dissimilar from his performance in Netflix’s GLOW, Maron has the beautiful, stuttering delivery of a man who can admit his life is “tragic” without ever truly contemplating that reality. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t rise to meet his performance.

The action is predictable and anticlimactic. Mel is worrying over bad decisions and a woman he’s still in love with, but his only onscreen interaction with Deirdre (Lynn Shelton, again) is early on and devoid of context. There are bright spots, like Nathaniel’s patient diligence in trying to explain to Cynthia how the world is actually flat, but the film doesn’t quite shine.

The Sword of Trust skims over the top of conspiracy theories and their cult followers. Every believer is either a backwoods idiot or a loveable idiot, both easily dismissed. There’s an opportunity to explore the cultural black holes that create these communities, but Mel isn’t really interested in them, so the narrative isn’t either.

Ultimately, this is a worthy effort to highlight the people and stories that find themselves in small, southern towns. But the film would’ve benefitted from either more evenly distributing its focus on the lives of all of its players or narrowing the narrative sharply on Mel.