whitbyscallyred

This is basically a movie about two teenagers on the run. They meet for the first time. The girl is streetwise and assertive. The boy is geeky and naive. They drive off through an America with lots of great scenery, and there's humour and romance and some feel good music. This is what is at the heart of the movie and it works well.

What doesn't work well is the back story, about the boy being born on mars. It makes for a pretty uneven film that starts out as a sci-fi movie with a crew of astronauts heading out to the stars, then morphs into something completely different. The special effects in space are wasted, because this part of the story didn't really need to be shown. Plus, some of the incidental music doesn't work too well.

The makers should've just stuck to the story of a lost boy who wanted to see the world, and a girl who just didn't fit in and was willing to show it to him.

This movie is brilliant. Go watch it! It is moody, atmospheric, powerful and emotional. In fact I cried lots! It also has rolling, rustic countryside (if countryside can be described as rustic), and stone built cottages that are full of clutter. The rooms in the hospital scenes are also full of clutter.

The plot is straightforward. A teenager has a mum with a terminal illness. At night he experiences a recurrent nightmare about his mum, and is also visited by a giant "tree monster". The "tree monster" is full of tales with a point to them, and also prone to philosophical aphorisms.

The movie is adapted from a book of the same title, aimed at teenagers, but the movie itself seems to be geared towards an older audience and contains many adult themes. As an afterword, the mum is played by Felicity Jones (of Rogue One fame), and I'm sure she gives a more endearing performance here than she does in the Star Wars movie.

There is no doubt that Frank Zappa was a genius, a cultural icon and an inspiration to many. Unfortunately this documentary is fairly forgettable.

The documentary relies almost completely on archive footage, from 1967 to just before Zappa's death in 1993. This comprises largely of concerts and interviews. This footage is informative and revealing. There is also lots of humour, either coming from Zappa himself or from his music.

The interviews however tended to reveal more about the media culture that Zappa lived in through the 60s, 70s and 80s than they revealed about the man himself. And although no doubt a very radical figure at the time, Zappa doesn't seem quite so radical when viewed from the year 2016.

The major flaw with the movie is that it lacks an emotional core; it lacks bite. We are simply shown a succession of footage with no great attempt to draw us in, or to tell a story. Zappa was a creative and outrageous figure, and yet this documentary of his life is fairly quiet and ultimately disappointing.