Whitney Houston (1985)

After reviewing Whitney: Can I Be Me last month, I was curious to check out the late singer's music, especially her debut. Growing up in the nineties, you could not help hearing her big hits, but even if half the track list were familiar songs, taken as a whole Houston's debut feels fresh and exciting.

The most interesting thing about this record is how unlike it sounds like her later records. By that I mean, apart from 'The Greatest Love of All', there are no hurricane-sized ballads.

'You Give Good Love' is a sweet ballad that remains one of Houston's best. While there are moments where she goes for the rafters, they feel like natural peaks, rather than an artist trademark. While it is incredibly polished, on this album Houston's sound is still embryonic. On this song, and the rest of the album, Houston uses her talents to serve the songs.

Somewhat unheralded nowadays, 'Thinking About You' is a terrific dance number and the funkiest thing on the album. Considering how hard Houston tacked toward pop, I was shocked to see 'You Give Good Love' and this track were produced by Kashif (who performs double duties as Houston's duet partner here). One of the great RnB producers of the eighties, he worked on most of Evelyn Champagne King's early stuff. In fact, if the production was harder, I could see 'Thinking About You' as a King song. I had never heard this song before, and it's become one of my favourites.

Opening like a new wave track from the early eighties, 'Someone For Me' is another terrific song. It skates close to sounding the most of its time, but with a strong vocal and some good guitar and percussion (I guess they were created by an 808, but there might be some real drums in there), it ends up as a real barn burner. It's just as good as 'Thinking About You'.

After the double whammy of two dance tracks, the tempo and tone changes with 'Saving All My Love For You'. One of Houston's most well-known ballads, it is a bummer of a song if you really listen to the lyrics. Once again, Houston sells the hell out of the vocal, which (somehow) blunts the sadness of the song's underlying message.

'Nobody Loves Me Like You Do' is a duet with Jermaine Jackson. There is a weird echo to the production and the rather twangy guitar  gives the song the feel of a country song. Once Houston and Jackson start singing the chorus, it feels like something Kenny Rogers would sing. Based on Clive Davis' edict that the album appeal to the broadest (white) audience, this song's inclusion is probably just savvy calculation. Still, it's  good song, and provides a nice lead-in to...

'How Will I Know' is one of those songs that makes me think of an aerobic class. It's one of Houston's songs that's always been in heavy rotation, but remains one of her best. The thing that always stood out for me about this song is the interplay with the backing singers. While it is obviously not gospel, the way they augment and play off Houston really gives the song that added bit of 'oomph'.

With its tinkling synth keyboards and soaring strings, 'All At Once' boasts a great vocal from Houston (and some great backing singers), but the lyrics are sentimental claptrap. Houston is a fine interpreter of material,  but here obvious, mawkish lines like 'she took your smile away' just come off silly when delivered so sincerely. Points for the delivery, but this might be the least interesting song on the album.

'Take Good Care Of My Heart' is another duet with Jermain Jackson. Previously released on his album Dynamite, it is a good love song with a very strong, heavy beat that gives it a real sense of momentum. The chorus brings it squarely into 'middle of the road' territory, but the duet partners work well together. Maybe not as memorable as some of the other deep cuts, but that's no slight on the song.

Whatever impact 'Greatest Love Of All' previously had is completely lost on me. It's no fault of the song - it's just been played so many times, and parodied to death, that it's hard to sit through without wanting to drift off.

One of Houston's earliest releases were her appearances on a couple of tracks by the great Teddy Pendergrass. One of these songs, 'Hold Me', serves as the finale here. A meeting between two eras, sonically it sounds like nothing else on the album. As well as a chance to hear two great voices together, it offers a glimpse at what Houston's voice sounded like in a more overtly 'soul' song.

One of the biggest hits of all time, and routinely hailed as Houston's best album, her debut is a really great record. Sure, some of the production shows its age, but Houston is in great voice, the material is all up to servicing her pipes and there is less evidence of the formula that would come to dictate her later releases.

Related reviews

Whitney: Can I Be Me

IN THEATRES: The Mummy

Man I've been really, really excited about this one - probably too excited, considering the trailers - but ever since the first casting announcements, this project has become the first of my 'must-sees' for 2017.

I can sadly admit that I have seen every single Universal Mummy movie. Most of them are very bad, or just plain boring. So, unlike the other Universal Monsters, I don't have a problem with having another go at the Mummy -- it's the kind of interesting concept that deserves a re-do (look, the 1999 Mummy is a lot of fun, but I don't think anyone is going to claim it as an all-time classic). I'm still not sold on the whole shared universe thing (remember the days when people used to focus on making one good movie?), but it seemed if Tom Cruise was into it, the material must be at least decent -- and Sofia Boutella is a badass, so I knew this at least had a shot at being fun.

A few things gave me pause going in: One, as already stated, this shared Universal Monsters franchise sounds like a mess waiting to happen. And Two, the helmer behind this Mummy is Alex Kurtzman, who has only one previous directorial credit (the okay drama People Like Us) and his work as screenwriter is pretty mixed (a few too many Transformers movies. And the last Spider-Man movie. And Star Trek 2-Wrath of Plot Holes). Still, it's not like they had Skip Woods and Brett Ratner double-teaming this one. Maybe shorn of Roberto Orci, and with different collaborators, he could rise to the challenge of making a great, fun monster movie with Tom Cruise and Gazelle from Kingsman. Because that still sounds cool.

Enough rambling. On with the review!

Cruise plays Nick Morton, a soldier/part-time black market scavenger, who has a nice sideline in swiping ancient artefacts and selling them off. Currently on tour in Iraq, he goes AWOL when he hears there might be some treasure under a town in hostile territory. Instead of treasure, Nick discovers the tomb of Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella). Buried alive after she tried to murder her way to the throne she had been denied, she is now free to enact her revenge. If this wasn't bad enough, she really needs Nick's help to get her plans underway. Zoinks!

When The Mummy aims for comedy, it is a joy. When it aims for anything else, it is Gene Wilder's character from Blazing Saddles: all over the place.

The main problem is the underlying theme of the movie, which is to give Universal a piece of the 'shared universe' pie that every other major studio is craving. The problem with this approach is that it means the this movie has no reason to exist dramatically. Every character and every scene is designed to shove this movie toward a bunch of sequels and spinoffs, rather than a narrative conclusion that will (hypothetically) make people want to see this movie on its own terms.

Call me old-fashioned, but it's a quality I miss.

What is sad is that the movie had six writers, including Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married), David Koepp (Jurassic Park) and Cruise's Mission: Impossible collaborator Christopher McQuarrie (who also wrote a little movie called The Usual Suspects). Throughout the movie you can see the struggle going on between the corporate and creative sides, as the story and the characters struggle to maintain any kind of internal coherence.

It would help if the direction was more inspired. The movie aims for scares and tension, but director Alex Kurtzman has no feel for the scenario's pulpier elements, failing to give any of the movie's signature moments a sense of real impact. As a blockbuster, this one of the most generic in recent memory, from its colour palette to its use of CG.

And despite the big budget, the movie feels weirdly small and compartmentalised. The sets are never shot with a sense of scale, and always feel like sets. Aside from the opening scenes in Iraq, the movie is basically stuck indoors. It never feels like there is a world outside of what we can see.

Speaking of tunnel vision, the 'Dark Universe' set-up which is supposed to get us to movies about Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula and the Creature from the Black Lagoon is dull and pointless - it would help if it was fun, but it just comes off as rote and poorly developed. It also takes up the majority of the movie's second act, sucking attention away from the main story.

This movie has some of the worst exposition dumps I've seen in recent years. The movie opens with a flashback to set up the Mummy, which is fine. But then thirty minutes later Annabelle Wallis repeats the same story, complete with cutaways to this scene which we've already seen. And that's not the only exposition dump - there's like ten scattered throughout the movie.

Russell Crowe has fun as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but he could be cut out and you would not miss him. When Hyde appears it looks like the movie might actually go somewhere interesting: Unlike his good half, Hyde wants to become the Mummy's partner, and help her destroy the world, just for the hell of it. It's a great idea, but Hyde is quickly subdued and you never hear anything else about it. As I said, pointless.

Speaking of pointless, the writers never figure out who Annabelle Wallis's character is supposed to be: she swings from smart career woman to damsel in distress to comic sidekick with no space in between. Needless to say, she makes no impression in any of these roles.

Cruise is something of a misfire here, and most of the problem is miscasting. Nick Morton is a idiot, an opportunist who is in for a quick buck but can't think two steps ahead. Cruise is pretty funny in the role, but Nick's weakness never feels completely real, because he's played by Tom Cruise. His innate steadfastness can't help but come through. 

This is especially true of the movie's romantic subplot, which feels like it's been half-edited out of the movie. It literally feels like there are scenes missing which showed how Cruise and Wallis sync as a couple. Cruise rarely has had believable chemistry as a romantic lead, and when the movie's third act is dependant on that chemistry to drive the final act, that is a major problem. The fact that Cruise is far too old to play young any more just compounds the problem - having these two actors together recalls   the romantic black hole of Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire in Funny Face.

As the Mummy, Boutella is fine, but underused. She is a good actress and a physical marvel, but she is never given room to move. While the production design is pretty bland overall, her makeup is terrific. When it comes to visualising the Mummy, the movie actually does something right.

It's not all bad. While the movie is pretty dull, every time it stops trying to tick every box in the 'Build your own shared universe' checklist, it is pretty fun. Jake Johnson plays Cruise's army buddy Chris, who always winds up getting the blowback when Nick's schemes go wrong. He is possessed by the Mummy and winds up destroyed, but returns throughout the movie as a ghost to tell Nick what's going on. 

Whenever Ghost Chris turns up, the movie starts to feel more like An American Werewolf in London or Big Trouble in Little China. The film's best scene is an argument between Nick and Ghost Chris in a pub bathroom. It's so weird and funny, it really draws attention to how formulaic the rest of the movie is.

I said at the top of this review that the movie is at its best when it goes for comedy, and that's the ingredient that prevents me from completely dismissing it. While the second act/shared universe trash dump is a dead zone, the beginning and ending are peppered with genuinely funny scenes. Nick's interactions with Ghost Chris are great, but his early interactions with the Mummy are also good (basically they all involve him trying to fight or flee her). 

This is where Kurtzman's talents as a filmmaker come through. He shoots and times these beats expertly, which makes his lacklustre contributions elsewhere all the more disappointing. If the movie had leaned toward something more offbeat and original, they might have ended up with something as good as Big Trouble in Little China or even Cruise's own Edge of Tomorrow. Ultimately, this movie needed to be more brave.

Wait for it to turn up on Netflix.

CAUGHT ON NETFLIX: Deidra & Laney Rob a Train

Released in March of this year, Deidra & Laney Rob a Train is part of Netflix's new plan to take on the majors by distributing their own movies.

Deidra (Ashleigh Murray) is the valedictorian of her high school and looking forward to moving away from her hometown. While her mother (Danielle Nicolet) works and her father Chet (David Sullivan) works hard to be out of the picture, Deidra looks after her sister Lane (Rachel Crow) and younger brother Jet (Lance Grey).

The kids' lives get a whole lot harder when Mom goes to jail. With bills (and Mom's bail) to pay and Child Protective Services breathing down her neck, Deidra has few options left. With Laney's help, she starts robbing the long-haul trains which crank past their house every night.

Written by Shelby Farrell and directed by Sydney Freeland, this movie is a lot of fun.

The cast are uniformly terrific: As the titular characters, Ashleigh Murray and Rachel Crow are awesome. They have great chemistry, and really feel like siblings.

Murray, who you may recognise as Josie from Riverdale, is great as Deidra - the character is a real get: super-smart and wise beyond her years, she has clearly had to grow up fast to pick up some of the slack from her hard-working mom, and Murray manages to make her transition from honours student to criminal believable. The scene where she confronts her mother in prison is heart-breaking.

As younger sister Laney, Crow is wonderfully unassuming. What makes their relationship so great is how Crow and Murray complement each other - where one sister is strong, the other is weak, and vice-versa.

Their nemesis is Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother Where Art Thou?), a disgraced railway investigator who sees his latest assignment as a chance at redemption. Though the movie is based around teens, his character feels like he stepped out of a darker movie. I give the filmmakers credit - he does not feel out of place. While he is an asshole who takes his job far too seriously, his motivations make sense.

Sasheer Zamata (Saturday Night Live) plays their school's disillusioned careers advisor. Rather than lean into the character's misery, Zamata plays off it. This woman is mentally checked out and ready to move on - she's just waiting out the clock. She ends up helping the girls when Deidra bribes her with a way out of her job.

While the conceit could have been played in a quirkier, more surreal style, Deidra & Laney Rob a Train feels very grounded. It's rooted in the characters and their relationships. It's the humanity of the ensemble that really pulls the movie together. These characters feel like normal people with strengths, flaws and insecurities.

I have been bingeing the podcast Black Men Can't Jump in Hollwood for the last few months. It reviews movies on the basis of their racial representation, and the overriding theme of the show is a desire for roles that portrayed people of colour as human beings. Without even trying, I feel like this movie manages to do that.

It's a really fine flick. It's so good, Deidra & Laney Rob a Train almost makes up for all of those Adam Sandler movies Netflix has been churning out. It's hyperbole, but I am really looking forward to what these f filmmakers do next.

IN THEATRES: Wonder Woman

It's been 75 years in the making, but feminist/psychologist/S&M enthusiast William Moulton Marston's creation has finally made the leap to the big screen in her own adventure.

Ya'll know the gist. Sexy man Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crash-lands on an island populated by Amazon warriors. The youngest of them, Diana, decides to return with him to Man's world to defeat Ares and end all wars.

Wonder Woman was the first of the new DC movies I've had any interest in seeing, and I was still worried it was going to be crap. On the one hand, the creative team are solid. Patty Jenkins is no Zack Snyder and the writers had solid pedigrees. Plus it has walking charm factory Chris Pine in it. And there's no denying the novelty of this being the character's first big screen movie. On the other hand, Gal Gadot has not yet proven her acting abilities, Jenkins hasn't made a feature since 2003 and the production woes of previous DC movies made me suspicious that we were being sold a bill of goods.

Well... the movie's good. Really good. I'll have to let it sit for awhile to see how if it sticks, but it's a heck of a lot better than the rest of the movies in this new DC stable.

Thanks to its period setting, the movie insulated from all the previous movies, and Patty Jenkins directs the movie with a completely different style and intent than Zack Snyder and David Ayer. You don't see many action movies where the emphasis is on the effects of the gunfire and explosions. While Wonder Woman is often referenced as being extremely empathetic and moral, Jenkins actually makes that empathy a part of her directorial perspective. Even when the movie is not from Diana's point of view, her sensitivity to human cruelty and weakness is filtered throughout the movie. Unlike Zack Snyder's sterile, pornographic focus on CG destruction, this is a diegesis where pain and death are acknowledged, and don't get pushed aside. Instead, they really are the focus.

First, lets talk  influences. There are two big ones: Superman: The Movie and the first Captain America. The narrative structure vaguely resembles the former - we start on Diana as a child, growing up in Themyscira and learning how to become a warrior. There is also a scene in an alley which echoes Clark Kent and Lois Lane's confrontation with the mugger. If you want to stretch, the film's focus on Diana recognising what her purpose is, is roughly equivalent to Superman's arc in the 1978 movie. 

Because of its period setting, Wonder Woman can't help but remind one of Captain America: The First Avenger. You have a world war, you have an earnest hero, you have German villains and schemes to perpetuate the war with super weapons. You even have a motley crew of soldiers who assist our heroes in foiling the bad guys' scheme; and a final sequence predicated on a major character sacrificing himself by destroying a plane carrying a super weapon.

However, as a movie, Wonder Woman is better constructed, and does not warp its story to fit into a broader narrative (the sequence which derails The First Avenger). While the top and tail narrator segments tie in to Batman versus Superman, the movie is not directly referenced, and there are no cameos from the other movies to call back (or forward) to other movies. It feels like a story with a beginning, middle and end.

One of the biggest surprises is Gadot in the title role. I found her incredibly wooden in the Fast and Furious movies, but here she is far more vibrant and well-rounded than I expected. Over-earnest but not stupid, knowledgable but with no real world experience, Gadot is really good as Diana. She is far more engaging than either of her BvS co-stars, and has the benefit of a solid script and strong direction that (I'm betting) minimised her weaknesses to make sure that her performance was up to par. Her supporting cast help share the load, but as the centre of this story, Gadot is terrific. I don't think she is as instantly winning as Chris Evan's Steve Rogers or Chris Reeve's Clark Kent, but she is really strong. More power to her.

If the movie has an MVP, it is Chris Pine - if he was not in the movie, I don't know if it would work as well. The movie is as much Steve Trevor's development as it is Diana's. Unlike her, he is a spy, someone who is willing to compromise and do what needs to be done to accomplish goals which might not even be that good. Over the course of the movie, as Diana learns about Man's world, Steve begins to view the world through her eyes, and he slowly rediscovers his own sense of right and wrong.

This kind of character arc is a strategy that DC movies should use more often. Unlike Marvel, DC's heroes are less human and more aspirational - they are mythic figures, more like gods than human beings. Outside of their origin stories, having an arc does not make sense for these characters. What Wonder Woman does is give an emotional arc to a human character who is affected by the hero/ine. Their relationship is the heart of the movie, and their shared evolution is what makes this movie as strong as it is, despite some flaws.

The most obvious is pretty cosmetic. While the action scenes work (and don't go on too long), I'm not a fan of speed-ramping. There's not too much of it, but it adds nothing to the viewing experience.

The main thing the movie is missing is an iconic musical score. I'm meh on the theme they introduced for her in BvS - it works fine as a stinger, but it's not strong enough to hang a movie on.  There is not enough of a melody to it, and it only works as a (brief) action cue. This score needed something more empathetic and, uh, heroic, ala John  Williams' Superman  theme or Alan Silvestri's underrated Captain America March. It just lacks soul.

I'm not even sure if this is a criticism (because I'm still debating it) is the villain. Taken purely as an antagonist, Ares is somewhat flawed. He is introduced extremely late, which means the conflict feels a little under-powered. The main problem is that there is no 'fall in hate' moment - you need a moment, either early or in Act Two, where the hero and villain meet. The movie is based on a concept rather than an antagonist and that is hard to pull off in a movie that requires violent resolution.

In the movie's favour, you could argue that Ares is ultimately is less important than Diana's realisation that the world is not based on an easy binary of 'good' and 'evil'. She has to recognise that ultimately he is not the source of humanity's destructive impulses, merely an agitator of them. In this respect - juxtaposing Diana's naive worldview against grim reality - her arc works far better than the stunted revisionism of the previous DC movies. Here, the movie's emphasis on collateral damage, and the movie's message, is the inverse of the previous Snyder-led movies.

While those movies seemed obsessed with destruction and the negative effects of having such powerful figures in the world, they did not have a strong central focus on their main characters: Superman remains a total blank, and we've had two movies with him already. Wonder Woman is rooted in its central character, her growth, and (most importantly) how that growth is catalysed. During the action sequences, the emphasis is not on visceral impact or making cool shots, it's on Diana's reactions to the violence and pain around her. The Western Front is the perfect setting for her arc, foregrounding human cruelty at its most mechanised and wide-scale.

While the literary Wonder Woman's first war was WW2, setting the movie during the Great War makes thematic sense, by testing her idealism and clearly drawn sense of morality against one of the most immoral repugnant periods in human history.

Those things aside, Wonder Woman is a really good movie that manages to heft some surprisingly meaty thematic content with action, humour and a welcome dollop of humanity. I couldn't give a toss about what this means for future comic book movies. This is a good movie that stands on its own, and incidentally gives one of pop culture's most iconic characters a solid cinematic showcase. 

DOUBLE WHAMMY: War On Everyone & American Honey

The Midnight Ramble takes a look back at two flicks that would and should have been reviewed last year, War On Everyone and American Honey. 

War On Everyone
Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, this was super high on my list of 'must-see' movies last year. His previous movie, The Guard, was my favourite from that year, and the trailers made this movie feel like an American cousin to that flick.

Two corrupt cops (Alexander Skarsgard and Michael Pena) spend their days blackmailing criminals. When they sniff out a bigger fish, the tables are turned...

I am sad to report that this movie was kind of disappointing. There is a hip archness to the whole flick which I could never click into. I've been struggling to get my finger on what my problem with this movie is, and this is the best I can come up with: it feels like I have seen it before. 

This movie feels like a Tarantino ripoff from the mid-nineties: too-cool characters operating outside the law, pontificating on pop culture and philosophy while they engage in drugs/robbery/hesits/porn etc. All the parts are there, but they don't end up amounting to anything. It feels like empty pastiche with no purpose. Compounding this staleness, this movie committed a serious screen-writing sin, in that every character seemed to be speaking with the same voice. Coming from a writer like McDonagh, it's really disappointing. 

For the first forty minutes I was struggling to get invested. Once the plot clicked into view, the movie started to gel. But it was clear I was not going to love these characters like I did Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle in The Guard.

Pena is good in his role, but there was nothing sympathetic or just interesting about him. Meanwhile Skarsgard's character is dealing with some kind of unspoken trauma. This would be fine, but it requires a strong actor whose mere presence can fill out these gaps. Skarsgard is fine, but he does not have that kind of charisma. The pair's dynamic never really comes into focus -- Skarsgard is a bit dumber and haunted, but that's about it. There's no real spark between them that makes you want to watch them.

Despite these criticisms the movie is not a total loss. A bad John Michael McDonagh is still better than most stuff out there. Stephanie Sigman (Miss Bella) and Tessa Thompson (Creed) are good as our antiheroes' significant others, but they are really just side characters. Theo James is also okay as the bad guy, James Mangin. The problem is that they are all hampered by the same vacuous-ness that runs through the whole movie. The one interesting character is Caleb Landry Jones as Mangin's weedy little henchman, but even then, he doesn't hold a candle to the minor characters of McDonagh's earlier films.

The one stylistic choice that really clicked with me was the use of Glen Campbell's music. Every scene with a Campbell song suddenly brings this movie into focus. Skarsgard's character is defined by his love for Campbell's music, which gives the character his one sliver of pathos. My favourite sequence involves Skarsgard and Thompson dancing to Campbell's 'Rhinestone Cowboy' through his house. It's the one scene where the movie drops trying to be clever and just has fun.

Overall, War on Everyone is not as funny or as clever as it thinks it is. 

American Honey

Written and directed by Fish Tank's Andrea Arnold, American Honey stars newcomer Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf in a free-wheeling story about a group of young'uns road-tripping across middle America.

Unlike War on Everyone, this movie was not on my radar until late last year. I was a fan of Fish Tank, and this looked to be built on similar parts: an unknown lead, and a story about young people at the fringes of society. 

Lane plays Star, a teen who is plucked off the street by a van full of kids led by Krystal (Riley Keogh) and Jake (LaBeouf). This 'crew' go from city to city selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. While learning the ropes, Star falls for Jake, whose daredevil antics and jealous rage become her introduction to adult relationships.

After the wobble of her Wuthering Heights adaptation, Andrea Arnold returns to a story about contemporary youth, in the mould of her excellent Fish Tank. There is very little plot, beyond the core premise, and like that previous effort, a lot of its effect is derived from the pairing of an established thespian with a non-actor.

As Star's lover/mentor, Shia LaBeouf is fantastic. Simultaneously balancing adult urges and powered by childlike impulses, Jake is the role LaBeouf was born to play. A few years away from his various offscreen antics, LaBeouf is back in the business of being a character actor, and American Honey hopefully inaugurates the beginning of LaBeouf being taken seriously.

The heart and soul of the movie is Sasha Lane. Like her character, Lane was literally picked off the street by Arnold, who spotted her on a beach during Spring Break. Lane is so natural and unaffected, it is hard to look away. She has a unique charisma that makes her the centre of every scene. Even when other characters (like LaBeouf) take centre-stage, I found my gaze going to Lane, to register her reactions to whatever is going on. She is really fantastic. 

This movie is over two and a half hours long, and yet you never feel it.While there is no real plot, the movie is always moving and spinning in different directions every few minutes. There is a tension and an unpredictability to the story which make sit completely riveting. Arnold's approach has been the downfall of so many indie helmers, but the difference is that Arnold keeps a tight rein on the movie's most propulsive elements: its characters. 

American Honey has not really received much hype down here, so if you haven't seen it yet, check it out. It's worth the time.

Whitney: Can I Be Me

The latest documentary from Nick Broomfield (and co-director Rudi Dolezal), Whitney: Can I Be Me is a warts-and-all retelling of megastar Whitney Houston's life and tragic death.

Whitney Huston was one of the first singers I knew by name. One of my first musical memories is hearing the soundtrack to The Bodyguard blaring from the radio. Other than that, I went into this movie knowing almost nothing about Houston beyond the key bullet points. A few people in the audience seemed to know more of the stories in the documentary, so I'm assuming a lot of this material is not new.

I found it all fascinating. Houston is one of those singers who always felt a little too big and remote for me to latch onto (kind of like Beyonce now), but the way this documentary works is like a sledgehammer, shattering Houston's porcelain image to reveal the fragile humanity behind the hit records and big voice.

The film's thesis is simple: the ingredients for Huston's rise and fall were there from the beginning, and her image as a pristine pop singer only exuberated the cracks which were already there. Pre-fame, Houston was just an ordinary kid growing up in New Jersey. While Bobby Brown is treated as her personal Satan, tempting her toward her doom, Houston was familiar with drugs from a young age. With fame and success, her dalliance became a full-blown addiction, compounded by her marriage to self-styled bad boy Bobby Brown. It then fell to her retinue of family and friends, all on the payroll, to get her out of trouble. Too intoxicated with keeping their personal gravy train running, they did nothing, and Huston's demise was inevitable.

This movie had me thinking a lot about the Kuleshov effect (Google it). Watching footage of Houston while various voices from her past attempt to illuminate her personality feels simultaneously immersive and distancing. It makes you consider just what is really going on when the exhausted singer is staring at a mirror after a show, or when Bobby Brown wraps his arm around her friend Robyn Crawford's neck and poses for the camera. The effect is as baffling as it is revelatory.

Forced to construct his subject from the outside looking in, and without the input of her family (outside of existing archive footage), the portrait Broomfield and Dolezal develops of a poor girl with low self-esteem, a driven, religious mother and a conflicted sexuality. The most fascinating conflict is the one within Huston herself -- between the girl she was, and the bland, all American persona she embraced, and then felt she had to reject. It's a conflict that bubbles throughout the film.

In the years preceding her death, Houston had gone from pop royalty to a pop culture punchline, her histrionics as a performer ridiculed and her personal life treated as another celebrity train-wreck. Combined with testimony from friends and workmates (including a stylist and a former bodyguard), Houston emerges as a flawed but extremely sympathetic figure. Rather than an arrogant buffoon, she comes off as a trapped,  immature woman who was unable to pull herself free of the influences that were bringing her down. She is a woman under siege, and every time it feels like she will break free, something will happen, self-created or otherwise, to scupper her escape.

The biggest revelation of the documentary is the figure of Robyn Crawford, Houston's best friend since childhood and -- since she did not participate in the documentary -- rumoured lover. If there is an unsung hero(ine) in this story it is Crawford. The first person to raise the alarm about Houston's spiralling addictions in the eighties, Crawford was shunned and ignored by Houston's family, who were already suspicious of their bond. When Bobby Brown enters the picture, Robyn becomes her guardian angel (at one point, the former bodyguard recalls Crawford beating Brown up). In the end, Bobby won and Crawford disappeared, leaving Houston with no real close friends.

Always portrayed as the villain who brought her down, Brown emerges as a gormless idiot, and a mutual partner in Houston's downfall. Seemingly unable to comprehend his wife's troubles, he seems more concerned with feeding his ego than helping his spouse. Brought together by similar backgrounds, they shared each others' addictions, fed and attacked each other's egos, and sent Huston on a downward spiral she could not get out of.

It's not all depressing. Broomfield and Dolezal utilise home movies and previously unseen footage from an aborted documentary of her 1999 tour to show the Houston behind the perfect veneer: joking with her friends; playing around in her hotel room; going on holidays with her daughter. In one unintentionally meta-textual scene she and Bobby re-enact one of the confrontation scenes from the Ike-Tina Turner movie What's Love Got To Do With It. Midway through, Huston takes over and begins to re-write the scene, shifting the power from Bobby/Ike to Tina/herself, so that both women can win. It's moments like this where Broomfield and Dolezal's movie is at its strongest, letting his star take the reins and run the show. While the interweaving of eyewitnesses and montage work well, it is on-the-fly vignettes like this which feel the most insightful into Huston's personality.

For a movie about someone I knew almost nothing about, this movie is a sucker punch. The finale is a combination of footage and stills, accompanied by a live recording of Houston singing. As the credits begin, the music cuts out, leaving only images of Houston in life smiling straight at the viewer. It's an unsettling effect, and at this point it felt like the full weight of Houston's life hit me all at once.

Like his subject, Broomfield and Dolezal's film is obsessed with finding the real Whitney. And it gets damn close. I would have liked more input from Crawford and Houston's mother Cissy (present via some rather chilly segments from her interview with Oprah after Huston's death); and I would have also like more information about Huston's activities post-divorce (the movie cuts from that moment to her death in 2012), such as the release of her comeback album in 2009 or her long-in-development movie project, the remake of the 1976 musical Sparkle, which was released a few months after her death.

Ultimately, Can I Be Me is an extremely empathetic look at a woman who never had a chance to be herself. Highly recommended.

After reviewing Can I Be Me, I went back and listened to Houston's first album. You can find the review here.

IN THEATRES: John Wick, Chapter 2

It has been a few months since its release everywhere else, but John Wick 2 is finally here! YAY! 

The first John Wick re-acquainted me with my love of watching bad people getting shot in the face. Cool, clean and simple, it felt like a glimpse into what a seventies action movie would look like if the eighties had never happened. There is an economy and intelligence to the way those movies (generally directed by Don Segiel  and Walter Hill) were made that we don't see enough of any more (it's the same reason I loved Mad Max: Fury Road and Dredd).

After the events of the first film, John Wick is trying to rebuild his life when he is paid a visit by Italian crime boss Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio). Wick owes him a favour after D'Antonio helped him get out of the game the first time around. With the 'boogeyman' back in the game, D'Antonio is here to collect. Soon, Wick is back on the run with a massive bounty on his head...

Keanu Reeves has made a few great action movies which got sequels. This is far and away the best one. 

Like Raid 2, this is bigger in scope, and like that movie, it loses a bit of the intensity. But this is no Matrix Reloaded. The movie is boatloads of fun, filled with inventive set pieces, eye popping art direction and plenty of pitch black humour.

With his sunken eyes and hangdog face, Reeves is starting to look his age, and that world-weariness works for the role: John Wick is the modern successor to the taciturn gunmen Lee Marvin, Chuck Bronson and Steve McQueen used to play in the sixties and seventies. Like those actors, Reeves is more of a presence than an actor. His range is extremely limited, and his off-kilter delivery has sunk him more times than not. But in a role like Wick, or Neo or Ted, his stiffness gives him an otherworldly quality that works for those roles.

The same goes for Common, playing Wick's rival Cassian. Like Reeves, he is not the best actor in the world, but the minimalist aesthetic of the Wick-verse fits him perfectly. Though it is hard to tell, it looks like he does most of his own action. He moves well, and with no wasted motion.

Playing another killer on Wick's tail, Ruby Rose's scenes feel like clips from Young Rosa Klebb Chronicles. Good female characters are hard to come by in action movies -- they are either victims or sexpots (or both). Apart from one weird butt shot, her character is constructed in the same economical fashion as the other assassins. Her character is mute, which actually adds to the role. I cannot see her Australian accent passing muster in this world.

The supporting cast from the original return. As the Continental staff, Ian McShane and Lance Reddick continue to be terrifically deadpan. The rest of the supporting players are a bunch of familiar genre faces: David Patrick Kelly - of The Warriors and Commando - pops up briefly; Laurence Fishburne chews every piece of scenery as a homeless gang boss; and, in the biggest surprise of all, Italian cinematic icon Franco Nero appears as the manager of the Continental's Italian subsidiary.

Now to the action: it's great. With the bigger budget, the action has expanded, but it is built on the same fundamentals: actors doing the action; shoot in wides; and only cut when absolutely necessary.

We start with a great car chase (complete with a wonderfully deadpan appearance from Peter Stormare) through the streets of the Big Apple, before moving to an outdoor rave, a train, an art museum and, as the finale, a bravura sequence in a hall of mirrors.

The colour palette is vivid and splashy like a comic book, and the set design is wonderfully lush. There is a bathroom in this movie that is one of the most beautifully shot rooms I've seen in a long time. It's a gorgeous-looking movie.

It is also extremely funny. Unlike so many action movies of recent times, this one bothers to have a sense of humour. It knows that it is ridiculous, but has the sense to play everything straight. The high-point in this respect are the two extended running fights between Wick and Cassian that take up the movie's second act. They are filled with wonderful beats: the endless fall down a flight of stairs; the silent gun battle through a busy train station; their final showdown inside the train, which climaxes with the frozen passengers fleeing as soon as the train stops. The movie's sense of timing and tone is perfect.

As I mentioned at the outset, the movie is not flawless.

One quibble that grew on me was that is that there is no real physical threat to our anti-hero. While he sustains some damage, Wick is so superhuman that the fights begin to feel repetitive. While they are initially presented as such, neither Common nor Ruby Rose are compatible as physical antagonists. Common initially appears to be Wick's equal, but he is dispatched fairly quickly. That leaves Ruby Rose, whose final showdown is extremely brief. At first I thought her size and looks were a misdirect. I was expecting her to be a real threat, like Mad Dog from The Raid or that little guy from The Simpsons.

Frankly, it would have made more sense to just amalgamate Common and Ruby Rose's roles into one character. You could cut Common from the movie and the movie's narrative trajectory would not be greatly affected. The movie's main villain is totally functional (and rather reprehensible), but he's not that memorable, so the movie ends up feeling a little toothless in the villains department.

These are pretty small nitpicks, but I hope we get some memorable baddies in John Wick 3 who can really put Reeves through his paces.

Overall, John Wick Chapter 2 is exactly what you want it to be. It has got great action, it is beautifully shot and covers everything in a thick (but unobtrusive) layer of irony. The dog is also adorable. It's hard to beat a beagle, but I really liked Dog Mark II - he's basically the dog version of his owner. He doesn't make noise, he doesn't wander off or get up to 'cute' hi-jinx. 

If it wasn't already obvious, go see this movie.