Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  What do we want from a musical biopic? First, we want to see a contemporary star as near as damn impersonate or at least embody a long-dead musical artist. Second, we want to know something about the subject. Where did they come from? Who spotted their talent? How did they get their big break? What happened afterwards? Third, we want to be uplifted. The subject is redeemed for all of their lousy life choices by their music, a musical choice. Biopics sometimes end tragically but the performer invariably leaves something behind. Invariably, we leave the cinema humming or singing the artist’s songs. Biopics can be award magnets. Sissy Spacek, Jamie Foxx and Renee Zellweger won Oscars for playing Loretta Lynn, Ray Charles and Judy Garland in Coal Miner’s Daughter , Ray and Judy respectively. They can make stars out of unknown actors like Gary Oldman (who played Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy ) and Sam Riley (who starred as Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis in Control ). The British...

  In Sofia Coppola’s seventh film, the New York-based comedy-drama, On the Rocks , the writer-director is reteamed with her male muse, Bill Murray. Murray is the father Coppola never had, great with kids in small doses if this film is anything to go by but incapable of marital fidelity. Coppola’s actual father, Francis Coppola, the director of three Godfather movies as well as of Apocalypse Now and The Conversation , has been married to Eleanor for 57 years, so clearly this film is not autobiographical. Coppola apparently put some of her father’s somewhat outrageous opinions into the mouth of art dealer Felix Keane, played with relaxed é lan by Murray. You find yourself asking: ‘did he really know a tribe of women in Canada who kidnapped men and placated them by having sex?’ ‘That sounds like your fantasy,’ blocked novelist daughter, Laura (Rashida Jones) tells him. On the Rocks is what some people call a ‘low stakes’ drama, by which is meant that there’s barely any drama at all...