Movie Review: "Ricki And The Flash"

"Ricki And The Flash": B+.  I have always felt that movies about sports and movies about musicians generally suffer from similar flaws.  Sports movies tend to have weak on-the-field action shots.  An example is Hoosiers from 1986, a highly acclaimed film in almost all respects save for the fact that the basketball scenes are ridiculously fake.  The players look more like they're going through a choreography than actually playing hoops.  The football action in 1993's Rudy appears more like an intra-mural powder puff scrum.  Likewise, music films need good soundtracks, but the weaker stories are those where you might hear the same song repeatedly, or sub-minute snippets of a few other songs purportedly played by the actors.  I suspect reconciling the payment of expensive royalties with the movie's budget has a lot to do with it. Eddie And The Cruisers from 1983 is a film which received lukewarm reviews.  The story is about a band but, ironically, the music is a weakness in most critics' views.

Happily, Ricki And The Flash does not suffer that defect, and it's one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much.  One could easily make the argument that the music is the best part of the film.  I found myself foot-tapping throughout.  Meryl Streep is the title character, the leader of, and only woman in, a five person band, the Flash.  They're the house band at a blue collar bar in Tarzana, California, playing old school rock covers.  The role of lead guitarist Greg is rendered nicely by Rick Springfield who, in real life, is a rocker who has enjoyed a long career as a performer.  Ricki is dirt poor, living in a one star motel but fulfilling her dream of being a "rock star," at least in her eyes.  She is not delusional, but she enjoys what she's doing and that's all that counts.  She's living the life she has always wanted to live.

That enjoyment is disrupted when she receives a phone call from her ex-husband, Pete (smooth Kevin Kline), the father of her three adult children who all live in Indianapolis.  Their daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer, Streep's real life daughter) is distraught and depressed because her husband is leaving her for another woman.  At the behest of Pete, Ricki uses her entire meager savings for plane fare to Indy.  Upon Ricki's arrival at Pete's house, Julie storms down the stairs to the kitchen and greets her mother with this question: "Do you always dress like a hooker from Night Court?" Yes, the middle aged Ricki's appearance does resemble that of a poor man's Joan Jett.

At this point we get filled in on Ricki's history.  It is she who walked out on her family when her kids were in grade school, so that she could pursue rock stardom in LA.  Her real name is Linda.  She's making so little money at her music gigs that she desperately needs her day job as a cashier at Whole Foods, where her twenty-something male boss is dissatisfied with her conversations with the patrons who come through her line.  "You need to enhance your customer's experience."

Meanwhile, Pete has done extremely well for himself and lives in a sprawling house in an upper-crust neighborhood.  After Ricki walked out on Pete and the kids twenty years ago, he soon remarried.  His second wife, Maureen (Audra McDonald), is everything Ricki is not: classy, dignified, refined, elegant and educated.  And unlike Ricki, she is a cook extraordinaire.  It is Maureen who has raised the kids, while Ricki found little time from two thousand miles away to stay even tangentially involved in her kids' lives.

On the second night of Ricki's return, Pete unwisely decides to host a family dinner at a white tablecloth restaurant.  The mercurial Julie will be there, along with her gay brother and her engaged brother and his fiancé.  As they are seated in the center of the elegant room, you know this is a bad idea, and things will not go well.  It is fun to watch the uneasiness at the table, which only gets worse when the engaged brother and his fiancé make attempts to rationalize Riki's omission from the invited wedding guests list.

The movie was written by Diablo Cody, who has won an Academy Award, Best Original Screenplay for 2007's Juno.  The Ricki script has two particularly well-written dialogue scenes.  The first is a reserved showdown between Maureen, who has just returned from Seattle to tend to her ailing father, and Ricki, who the day before convinced Julie to skip her much-needed therapy session so the two could hang out at the salon.  It is noteworthy and laudable for McDonald that the viewer can't tell which of the two actresses on the screen is appearing in her first major motion picture and which is a veteran actress who has been nominated for nineteen (!) Oscars, more than any actor or actress in film history.

The second scene with especially good dialogue is a short one between Ricki and her lead guitarist, Greg.  He is attempting to convince Ricki to eat some humble pie and accept a last-minute invitation to her son's wedding, even though she feels unloved by her family.  "Your kids' job is not to love you.  But it is your job to love them."  Springfield may be a rocker, but he's a convincing actor too.

From the opening barroom song, Tom Petty's American Girl, to the last scene, Ricki And The Flash provides what I'm most interested in when I plop down in my theater chair, viz., entertainment.  Kudos to the actors for playing their own instruments on ten songs, and doing their own vocals. 

Easy Ev

Three months after graduating from college in 1969, I was teaching the twenty-seven member sixth grade class at Most Holy Trinity School.  I was still twenty-one years old, and my students were, for the most part, eleven.  That group has always held a special place in my heart because they were my first class.  I recently found out the sad news that one of "my kids," Evan Bower, died unexpectedly at age 57 on July 31.  Evan lived most of his adult life in Colorado with his wife and son.  He worked as a trouble shooter for a computer company, which sent him on projects all over the country.  To my knowledge, Evan is the only student from that cherished class to have passed away.

A celebration of Evan's life was held two weekends ago at the Gearty-Delmore funeral chapel.  The "ceremony" was hosted by Evan's twin, Kevin, who was also in that sixth grade class.  Most of Evan's five siblings spoke, recalling incidents especially from their young lives growing up together on France Avenue in St. Louis Park.  The stories were lighthearted and heartfelt, and laughter filled the small room several times.  Many of the siblings affectionately referred to their departed brother as "Easy Ev," a fitting nickname given his laid back personality.  After the brothers and sisters spoke, Kevin invited any of those present to share a story or a memory about Evan.  One person, who I believe was their neighbor, spoke briefly and haltingly.  Afterwards, notwithstanding Kevin's repeated invitation, it did not appear that anyone else was going to step forward.

I did not go to the service intending to speak, but I did have a story in mind which I thought folks might enjoy hearing.  After waiting for what seemed like thirty or forty seconds, I put up my paw, Kevin smiled and told me I had the floor.  This is the little story I told.

***

I was Evan and Kevin's sixth grade teacher during the 1969-70 school year.  Having just finished college, I was only ten years older than my students and this was my first class.  The principal who hired me, Sister Ruth, thought a first year teacher like me could use some advice, so she offered these two recommendations before the first day of school.  First, establish your rules from Day One, and be strict in enforcing them.  Then, as the school year goes by, if your good judgment tells you that you can relax the rules a little, go ahead and do so incrementally.  But starting out leniently, thinking you can get tougher if need be, is not a good strategy.

Her second pearl of wisdom was this: Don't play favorites.  It is a long school year and you will have twenty-seven students.  On most days during the course of the year there will be something that either happens or doesn't happen which, due to human nature, will make you want to treat certain students either more favorably or less favorably than most of their classmates.  That is a bad policy, and don't think the kids won't notice.  You must deal with all of your students even-handedly, regardless of their academic achievement, behavior, attitude, or what-have-you.

Sister Ruth's advice -- warnings might be a better word -- made perfect sense to me, and I did my best to adhere to them.  My job was to get these kids ready for junior high.  I knew a rookie teacher would not have all the answers, so I welcomed this guidance from my veteran principal.

It was common in those days for a lot of the kids to hang around after school and have, more or less, a bull session right there in the classroom.  One of the hot topics that fall and winter was the phenomenal season the Minnesota Vikings were having.  The Vikes ended the regular season with a record of 12-2, and their first playoff game was scheduled to be played in old Metropolitan Stadium, with a seating capacity of only 47,900.  It would be the first time in their young history they'd ever hosted a playoff game.  The opponent would be the Los Angeles Rams, and many fans were eager to see how those softies from tropical southern California would fare in the brutal cold of Minnesota.  The home games were not televised locally due to the seventy-five mile radius blackout rule imposed by the NFL.  The demand for tickets was so high that the team could easily have sold out a stadium nearly twice the size of The Met.

On the second-to-last school day before Christmas vacation, and a few days before that playoff game, Evan and Kevin were in a large group congregated around my desk after school, and the discussion turned to Christmas presents.  The kids were telling me what they bought for their family members, and what they hoped to receive.  The twins told me that their father worked for Triple A, and if I wanted anything from there they could get it for me as a present.  I figured they were talking about something like a state highway map, a key chain, or perhaps a window decal.  I jokingly replied, "Okay, how 'bout two tickets on the fifty for the Rams game?"  Everyone laughed and the gabfest continued.

The next morning I arrived in my classroom about fifteen minutes before the bell.  Eight or nine students, including the Bower boys, were already there.  On top of my desk was a business envelope with the Triple A logo in the corner.  In the middle of the envelope the following was handwritten: "Mister P, 2 on the 50."  It wasn't until I opened the envelope and found two fifty yard line seats to the big game that I realized the writing on the envelope was not a hoax.  There they were, two playoff tickets that thousands of die hard Vikings fans would have given anything to possess.  I was astonished and flabbergasted.  Evan and Kevin had smiles from ear to ear, as did I.

Class resumed two weeks later.  During that respite I thought about those two guiding principles Sister Ruth had given me.  I concluded that it was going to be pretty tough for me to comply with her second warning for the remainder of the school year.      

Movie Review: "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Second verse, 
Same as the first

-  I'm Henry The VIII, I Am
   Herman's Hermits (1965)

"Mad Max: Fury Road": B.  Mad Max: Fury Road is the fourth film in the Mad Max series, the franchise which boosted Mel Gibson to international star status.  This time, thanks to more than a decade of production postponements,  Mel has given way to Tom Hardy to play the title character, Max Rockatansky.  Getting at least equal time on the screen is Charlize Theron, who takes on the role of Imperator Furiosa.  Furiosa is a kick-butt warrior who more than holds her own against all comers.  When she dukes it out with a male foe, her ability to send him flying with a right uppercut comes as no surprise.

If you were to place plot, acting, cinematography and stunts in order of their importance as attributes of this film, those four categories would be listed exactly inversely.  The plot, such as it is (or isn't), makes little difference.  This is a film where we tip our collective hat in awe of the action sequences, which occur virtually nonstop for two hours against the backdrop of a magnificent, strangely beautiful post-apocalyptic desert.  At times it was hard to decipher whether the movie was shot in color or black and white.  The desert contains sparse vegetation, the sky is almost never blue, and the expansive sands melt into the horizon with a grayish hue.  The film was shot mostly in the southwestern African nation of Namibia.

When the story opens, Max is being held prisoner by a madman, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who is a tyrant showing little mercy over his water-deprived subjects.  He teases them by releasing a few gallons of water from the mountain storage tanks, then is amused at how they nearly stampede over one another in a vain attempt to fill their buckets before he shuts down the taps.  Meanwhile, he has sent Furiosa on a trip over the desert to retrieve more water and gas from Gas City.  Unbeknownst to Joe, Furiosa has granted refuge to Joe's five "wives," one of whom is preggers.  They are hidden in Furiosa's battle wagon, and naturally, all five are baberahams, as is Furiosa in an athletic/masculine sort of way.  Before she gets half way to Gas City, Furiosa steers her vehicle hard left off course.   Destination: The Green Place, the homeland of the six women.  As soon as Joe gets wind of what's happening, i.e., desertion by Furiosa and her perceived kidnapping of the concubines, the chase is on.  Max, who is fully chained and fitted with an iron face mask, is brought along against his will by Joe as a human blood supply.  Too bad for Max that he's a universal donor!

As one of the initial battles rages, Max escapes and reluctantly joins forces with Furiosa as they continue down Fury Road in the battle wagon, heading for The Green Place.  A little later, one of Joe's soldiers, Nux (Nicholas Hoult), ends up in Furiosa's wagon as well.  Nux is something of a village idiot, not sure whose side he's on.  He is comforted and consoled by the red haired wife, Capable, played by Riley Keough who in real life is the eldest grandchild of Elvis and Priscilla Presley.  Their pairing is the only relationship remotely approaching a love connection

The evil pursuers catch up to Furiosa's battle wagon from time to time, but are never quite able to conquer her or her comrades.  The staging of the close range combat is amazing.  It's all done while traveling at very high speed across the sands.  Some characters seem to have nine lives, as combatants I thought sustained a fatal blow reappear in the next sequence.  Enemies are able to balance with ease standing atop a careening battle wagon.  Some are dozens of feet above the ground in what appear to be super flexible pole vault apparatus attached to high speed war machines.  Different people in Furiosa's group get behind the wheel of the wagon, but they don't stay long in the driver's seat.  While the vehicle is in motion they step out on a running board or the hood just as calmly as if they were getting off a bus,and someone else takes over the driving duties.  My favorite touch in all this is the soldier, hitched to the rear of one of Joe's trucks, who is playing a double-neck electric guitar belting out a metal tune, somewhat analogous to a bugler exhorting the cavalry.

What is shown doesn't always make sense.  For example, in one scene a rock formation resembling Utah's famous arches is blown up to prevent Joe's army from catching up.  But several scenes later, we see the same passageway through the mountains, and the formation is still intact.  Maybe director George Miller just wants to see if we're paying attention.

A recent article in Rolling Stone Magazine tabbed Fury Road as the best movie to be released so far in 2015.  If post-apocalypse action flicks is your bag, you just might agree.  Incidentally, I can't tip you off on the connection between the lyric from the Herman's Hermits song I chose to introduce this post and the story itself, as to do so would constitute a spoiler.  But, you'll understand the appropriateness of the choice near the beginning of the movie's final act.  

Suburban Exploring

In recent weeks there have been a number of local stories about people getting seriously injured, or even killed, inside abandoned mills, silos, grain elevators and deserted buildings.  These places are not in the boondocks; they are within the city limits of Minneapolis.  One University of Minnesota sophomore, twenty year old Emily Roland, was killed on June 6 when she fell thirty feet inside the Bunge grain elevator, a boarded up facility which has stood abandoned near campus since 2003.  She was with two other friends late at night when tragedy struck.  That was not their first such excursion, some of which were posted on Instagram accounts.  Six days ago, the city of Minneapolis decided to demolish the Fruen Mill near Theodore Wirth Park as a safety precaution, because the uninhabited structure was attracting not just vagrants and hobos, but curiosity seekers too.

Other sites frequented by these adventurers include underground tunnels, sewer systems, culverts and industrial complexes.  The name attached to the practice of rooting around in these structures is "urban exploring."  Prior to the past twelve month period, I had never heard that term.  It seems akin to box car jumping.  There is a combination of at least two things in play here, the rush of trespassing and a sense of taking the path less traveled.  What is more exciting, being among a bunch of tourists taking an elevator to the observation deck of a downtown skyscraper, or breaking into a dark spooky warehouse in the middle of the night?  Reading these sad stories brought back some memories.

In my youth I was an urban explorer, or more accurately, a suburban explorer.  I was introduced to this craziness by a classmate of mine, Charles Poorhus.  We were both seventh graders at St. Joe's in Libertyville, a town of 6,600 thirty-five miles north of Chicago (hence, the "suburban" modifier).  I was not really a friend of Chuck, although after being under the thumb of the Sisters Of Mercy ever since first grade, I secretly admired some of the "bad boys" like him in my class.  If compliance with the good sisters' rules was too inconvenient for them, they simply blew them off with total disregard.  Somehow those guys managed to avoid expulsion and got to live mischievously for another day.  Of course, unlike me they probably did not have parents whose code of conduct for their children mirrored that of the nuns.

My family lived on Cook Avenue, four blocks west of the main drag, Milwaukee Avenue.  The Pook did her grocery shopping at Jewel, also on Cook but a block east of Milwaukee.  One day while I was assisting my mother at Jewel, I ran into Chuck.  I was surprised to see him in there.  He seemed more like a dumpster diver than a patron of a civilized supermarket.  He had that Dead End Kids aura about him. Chuck pointed across the street over to Coy Lumber and asked me if I'd ever been over there.  Up until that point, I may not have even realized there was, in fact, a lumber yard across from Jewel.  The Marquis, from whom I inherited my complete absence of handyman talent, would have had no reason ever to set foot on Coy's property, and therefore neither had I.  (My dad did, however, make a trip or two to Schanck's Hardware Store each year!)  After replying "no" to Chuck, he did an impressive sales job on me, telling me Coy's was the best kept secret in Libertyville, with mysterious treasures yet to be discovered and wondrous spectacles to behold.  Trap doors, hidden rooms, fake walls, concealed tunnels.  It sounded too good to be true, but my curiosity was piqued to the point where I needed to find out what I'd been missing.  There was also a factor of getting to behave in a manner much more daring than I would ever have been willing to try in a school or household setting.  We agreed to meet the next evening after dinner so he could show me around.

 

I must admit that, from the perspective of this twelve year old, the results came pretty close to, though short of, matching Chuck's hype.

 

I didn't dream of requesting permission from my folks to go exploring the lumber yard.  There's no question what their answer would have been.  I never even told them when I'd play flashlight tag or hide-and-go-seek at Lakeside Cemetery, a mere quarter mile from our house.  In retrospect, partaking in such frivolity on burial grounds was in poor taste on my part.  But at least the cemetery was public property, while Coy's was not.

 

The main building on the lumber yard was like something out of a Stephen King novel.  A shadowy, creeky and rickety old wooden structure, it seemed out of place in a pleasant burg like Libertyville.  The eerily quiet premises was the antithesis of bustling Milwaukee Avenue, only a block away with cars and pedestrians making their way through Libertyville's classic downtown.  Coy's was not abandoned, but apparently business was not brisk enough to run more than one shift.  By 5:00 p.m. there was nobody left on site, not even a watchman.  Other than a yellow light above the main entryway, the ominous place was dark inside and out. Gaining access through a rear garage door was a piece of cake.

 

Twilight came fast, and we had one flashlight between the two of us.  Our mission was, quite simply, to see what we could see.  I had just finished reading The Tower Treasure, the first in the famous Hardy Boys mystery series.  In contrast to those sleuths, Chuck and I had no crime to investigate -- in fact, we were the ones breaking the law by trespassing -- but my imagination got carried away thinking he and I were Frank and Joe Hardy!

 

We did not discover anything out of the ordinary.  No secret passageways, ghosts or skeletons.  There were stacks of wood everywhere, sharp dangerous tools and equipment in every corner, and piles of unswept sawdust.  We could hear invisible four legged critters scampering behind the boxes and barrels.  The place was giving me the creeps within minutes of our arrival.  When we climbed two sets of stairs to the loft I was afraid the wooden slats would give way.  Adding to my anxiety was my distrust of Chuck.  Why hadn't I thought of that earlier?  I figured if trouble arose, either by injury or upon being found out, he would bail on the theory of "every man for himself."  Thankfully my theory never got tested.

 

The lumber yard also included several out buildings which, ironically, were locked.  It struck me as weird that they would padlock sheds and yet not secure the main building.  Additionally there were a number of what I'd call three-sided huts, cheaply built relatively tall rectangular structures which, although covered by a roof, were missing a fourth exterior wall.  My guess was that the company used those huts to store large pieces which would not fit in the main building.  We checked out all of them.  Most fascinating to me was the Milwaukee Road rail spur, terminating right in the middle of the yard, on which a half dozen flat bed cars and box cars were parked.  I had always wanted to see the inside of a boxcar; this was my chance.  Most of them were empty, but it was cool nonetheless.

 

After an hour we mutually determined that the outing was a rousing success.  We had not been arrested, nor had we tripped any alarms or accidentally amputated any limbs.  We made a pact not to tell anybody about our escapade.  I kept my end of that bargain, but as I wrote above, my faith in Chuck was shaky, so I could not be sure whether he would blab.  But as I considered what we'd done, the following thought occurred to me:  What good is having a unique and exhilarating experience like that if you have to keep it to yourself?  Good thing I have this blog.  The truth now comes out after hibernating for fifty-five years.

 

A month or two after our memorable night, Chuck approached me to suggest another visit to Coy's.  He had been back there in the interim, and once again made it sound like our next visit to the forbidden sanctuary would be more fun than a day trip to Chicago's Riverview Amusement Park.  I politely turned him down.  I figured we'd gotten away with one caper but did not want to press my luck. He was left to explore Shangri La on his own.