La Bamba (1987): Can a Rock God be Sweet?

Can a rock god be a sweet angelic boy — someone wants nothing more than to buy his mother a house and do right by his high school sweetheart and extended family?

My experience with rock and roll biopics (Ray, Walk the Line, Dreamgirls, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Doors, Almost Famous) has taught me otherwise. If the movies (and the occasional Rolling Stone article) has taught me anything, it’s that rock is a corrupting influence. It’s only a matter of time before your head gets big, you abandon your friends and business partners, you succumb to groupies (or in the case of Bohemian Rhapsody, a strangely evil form of gaydom) and drugs get the better of you.

In Bohemian Rhapsody, for instance, Freddie Mercury was far more a uniting force than a dividing force and there’s little evidence of him taking his band mates for granted. Contrary to what the movie states, they all started solo careers around the same time.

I’m not enough of an expert to comment on whether reality serves the story in these cases or the other way around, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some exaggeration was necessary.

Then again, a well-behaved rock and roller is not only a boring story, it seems antithetical to the spirit of rock and roll or any of its variants. Whether the country stylings of Johnny Cash or the sounds of Motown, it seems like music in the last 70 years wouldn’t be what it is if its creators weren’t driven by a rebellious streak.

This isn’t so in the case of Richie Valens. Or at least the version played by Lou Diamond Phillips in the 1987 film La Bamba was pure and angelic. Born Ricky Venezuela to a single Chicano mother, Venezuela was true to his high school sweetheart, forgiving of his abusive brother, and he never had a desire to do anything but earn enough money to buy his mother a house. Valens’ life came to an end in a plane crash along with Buddy Holly and J.P. Richardson in an event that served as a humongous blow to the burgeoning rock and roll movement. It was most famously catalogued in Don McLean’s hit “American Pie” where the term “The Day the Music Died” was coined.

You might say that Richie Valens was a paragon of virtue is giving him an awful lot of the benefit of the doubt considering he died at the age of 17. It’s possible that in an alternative reality, Valens would have knocked up seven girls and killed a cat had he survived to 18. In fact, one of the smarter things the film does is hint at that rock-and-roll-infused destruction and what might have been with Valens’ doppelganger in the form of his wreckless brother Bob who occupies a large role in the film. But 17-year-old Ritchie is rock solid. The film is pretty convincing that this is a man who would have stayed true to himself no matter what happened.

But just like my knowledge of what Johnny Cash or Ray Charles is limited, I don’t really know what the future of Ritchie Vallens held, and in a way it doesn’t matter. Rock stars have always been and always will be legends. In any given point in American history, there have been thousands of people who play the guitar and write songs but through some combination of marketing, luck, and talent, a few become symbols that are part of something larger than themselves.

Valens was immortalized by Don McLean who wanted to use his passing as a metaphor for lost innocence. American culture tended to get pretty metaphorical in that way as it came out the other end of Vietnam. The film chooses to symbolize Valens that way. I’ll take it.

The Eleven Films I've Seen This Year So Far Ranked from 1 to 11

Well, it's no secret that this has been a challenging year for a film viewer. I've previously complained about Marvel, Avengers, and sequel coming close to the point of ruining Summer. Last year, extremely unnecessary remakes of The Lion King and Aladdin; a bloated Avengers finale, a third Toy Story sequel, and a Men in Black reboot with diminishing returns was a tipping point for me. 

But with this temporary apocalypse having canceled Summer, I'm kind of missing the frivolous blockbusters. Nearly everything I've seen from the 2020 slate has been quirky indie fare. This kind of stuff would normally get drowned out in the Summer calendar and, at least, it has a chance to shine?


1. Palm Springs-As I wrote at TV Fanatic, I think this might have the makings of a classic on some future day. It operates on multiple levels: Charming, fun, sweet, and riotously funny on one level. On another level, it's poignant, thought-provoking, full of memorable moments, and laden with Easter eggs. Like Groundhog Day, it's endlessly rewatchable. Expect this to be a cult classic down the road.
2. 7500-Whatever happened to the days of Air Force One and Executive Decision? It's a shame tense airline thrillers have gone out of style (was it 9/11 sensitivity?). Joseph Gordon-Levitt takes every part he's given with great care and in his hands, this isn't just a psychological thriller but an existential tale of loss.
3. Blow the Man Down-I'd hesitate to use the word noir for something that doesn't have noir's stylistic elements but this tale of murder in a Maine brothel and two sisters who get caught up in the vice is a bit Fargo-esque in that it highlights the underbelly of the seemingly quaint. Few films have casts that are almost entirely old women and aren't romantic comedies (i.e. First Wives Club, Book Club) so let's celebrate June Squibb, Margo Martindale, and Annette O'Toole.
4. Radioactive-Standard fare biopic but the irony that these two (Marie and Pierre Curie) are discovering something that will kill them makes for pretty good drama and there is a courtship between the two that is kind of gripping. Too bad it on lt takes up the first half-hour of the film.
5. Buffaloed-A film of two low-lifes who try to one-up each other (Barry Levinson's Tin Men is an apt comparison) in the debt collection trade. Except that one of them is the spritely and cute Zoey Deutch so we know who to root for, don't we? The tough-as-nails chick isn't particularly new but it feels fresh coming from Deutch (just as she made the go-getter female lead in a rom-com fresh with Set It Up in 2018). The film's romance is somewhat sloppy but as a con film, it has lots of twists and turns. As an indie film, this is something with a lot of flavor as well.

6. Troop Zero-McKenna Grace (I, Tonya) stars as a Girl Scout in 1977 Georgia with ambitions to win some scouting award so she can send a message to space. But the man (in the form of a stern Allison Janney) won't let her do her thing for bureaucratic reasons that don't really matter if you think too hard. Also, this is Georgia in 1977 and maybe they don't like that Viola Davis is their scoutmaster. Like Blow the Man Down, the film has a strong sense of place as indies are known to do. Although there are some awkward moments, I can appreciate how it doesn't take the Disneyesque route.
7. Eurovision-Based on a true competition, the Netflix film takes place in Iceland and is a decent odd couple pairing between Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as idiosyncratic Icelandic yokels. Remember the days when Will Ferrell had two or three starring vehicles every year? Our appetites haven't abated for his aloof brand of manchild comedy just yet, but he doesn't always have the right scripts to work with. This comedy is a bit broad.
8. Wrong Missy-David Spade is an underrated comic presence for his generation of Saturday Night Live and he's done some amazing supporting work over the years. Still, it's definitely hard to find the right niche for him. Even though the real-life David Spade is a decent human being, his comic persona is that of a snark-master who probably wouldn't fit into a mature relationship unless they were matched romantically with an equally immature person. It's not hard to conceive of a storyline where David Spade realizes that he's not cut out for the corporate ladder and decides to become a stand-up comedian with a goofy woman who helped her alongside that life realization. Unfortunately, the film went the other way with the goofy love interest (Lauren Lapkus) being meaningless.
9. Sonic the Hedgehog-The only blockbuster I saw this year. As someone who grew up playing Sonic the Hedgehog and actually read the manual, I had the advantage of having some source material to work with. And to the degree that you can be faithful to a video game, yes, this is true to the source. But, come on, that's not really saying much. The film wasn't awful but it was uninspiring at best and forgettable at worst when dealing with certain plot lines. 
10. Horse Girl-Allison Brie (Community, Glow) stars as a sensitive girl with possibly some disorder. She wants companionship and love but seems to repel people and is averse to a deeper relationship. It's not particularly clear and neither is anything else about this film. The third act goes all Ingmar Bergman and at that point, it's no thank you!
11. Late Time Adolescence-Pretty much the same plot as King of Staten Island but, silly me, I watched this first and I don't have the patience for two Pete Davidson movies in one year. Sorry, Judd Apatow. Davidson was a decent addition to Saturday Night Live when he joined the cast in 2014 after resident stand-up Brooks Whelan got short-changed but in the last couple of years he's either coasted, complained about not getting enough screen time or simply been absent. I'm wondering if new hires like Chloe Finneman have even met the guy.

A quick-take Bohemian Rhapsody Film Review

Films that draw on historical subjects can produce an interesting divide in the viewer based on how familiar you are with the subject. A great deal of the "Bohemian Rhapsody" reviews to date have expressed disappointment because it's a paint-by-numbers of all the major points of Mercury's life. 

As someone who grew up in a household where my father listened primarily to classical music and my mom listened to a radio station called "The Sounds of Sinatra", I'm embarrassingly unfamiliar with most music before 1998. My knowledge on Queen boils down to A) songs I recognize by Queen like "Bohemian Rhapdsody", "Killer Queen", "Somebody to Love", and "We Will Rock You" and B) songs that play on commercials or in summer festivals or movie soundtracks that I knew of but didn't know they were specifically Queen like "Under Pressure", "Another one Beats the Dust", and "We are the Champions" (thanks "The Mighty Ducks" for the assist on that one) and little information on the band members. I honestly have no idea how people can keep track of the names of so many band members of groups that came before their time. The point, however, is that your knowledge of Queen is going to affect how you see this film. 

If follow school of film criticism that the film's intent matters, I'd suggest that this film was made for people like me. Reading the interviews with Queen's surviving band members, director Bryan Singer and producer Graham King, this was a passion project because they wanted to educate. Look at Graham King's quote:


But I was also fascinated with the idea that there is so much about Freddie Mercury and Queen—arguably one of the greatest bands in history—that the general public does not know....This is such an important story to tell, and, for me, it was crucial that we not only celebrate their music and achievements, but also give people a better understanding of the band’s history.

At the same time, if you're not going to see the film specifically to rediscover Freddy Mercury from a backstage perspective, this will read kind of like every other rock biography in existence. The protagonist is a man driven by pure id and does whatever he pleases and, for the most part, doesn't care who's in his way. It's the result of having all the right creative instincts and being isolated from reality by handlers who want to feed off of him. The protagonist's ego becomes oversized and he sews his wild oats. He either gains self-control or doesn't (they often dies young) but the audience is encouraged to see his beautiful soul and his contributions over his sins because that audience is biased before the movie stars by an appreciation for the music.
It's not really the fault of the film if it all follows a predictable script: The screenwriter is beholden to the details of the subject's life and Freddy Mercury is what they had to go with.

Some of these entries (Love and Mercy is a good example) manage to transcend the genre even with figures who fall into the same narrative but Bohemian Rhapsody is largely beholden to the genre. As interesting as Mercury was of a person, the story flattens some of the more interesting chapters of his life by not involving his origin as a Parsi immigrant (his family is largely absent beside the opening chapter) or a promising student. His conflict with his surname and legacy and status as an immigrant is never explored.

Similarly, there was a harmony among the members of the group that is overlooked in the film because conflict is juicier. To what degree were they ok with his gay lifestyle? There are erroneous complaints that the film straight-washes Mercury (not true), but it would be interesting if his band mate's reaction was covered. Similarly, the band was held together because "they were a family" but I was told that more than I was showed it.

Part of the problem is screen time: With his marriage to a woman that fell apart because she was upset with him for being bisexual (it seems that there is a misunderstanding over whether bisexual means faithful), his bandmates, his family, his lecherous manager, his exploration of himself some of these chapters get short shrift.

On the whole, it's certainly watchable but my immediate reaction is it had more unanswered questions than room to fill.

The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) Review

If you make a list of the most memorable biopics in history, very few of them come from before 1970 (The year of "Patton"). Films like "Life of Emile Zola" "Sergeant York" "Day for Night" and even Elia Kazan's "Viva Zapata" feel rather dry despite the efforts of their actors. Perhaps it's the Hollywood code that prevents the juicy dark parts of these characters' lives from coming to the forefront in these narratives. Or perhaps Hollywood felt more comfortable with fictional characters whose lifespans they can depict like the title characters of "Johnny Belinda" or "Goodbye Mr. Chips".


"Birdman of Alcatraz" is a rare exception. It follows the entire adult lifespan of a man and remains faithful to much of his life story so that the emotional effect really feels authentic and packs punch.


The film's subject, Robert Stroud (played by the never disappointing Burt Lancaster), is a lifer at Leavenworth Penitentiary (and later Alcatraz) who transforms from an anti-social rebel to an elder statesman (within the confines of his prison walls) when three birds enter to his cell and his senses of empathy and curiosity are awakened. In caring for his birds, he begins to care and form friendships with those around him and finds a purpose to devote his time. When his birds get sick and the local veterinarian tells him it's a routine epidemic and doesn't offer a solution, he exhaustively researches and finds his own and in publishing his results, he becomes one of the leading ornithologists in the country.


The degree to which Stroud was a spiteful man or simply misunderstood (many inmates described him as psychopathic even in his "reformed" stage) is debatable, but both Burt Lancaster and the author of the film's source material, Tom Gaddis (played by Edmond O'Brien in a somewhat odd fourth-wall-breaking narration), have an affection and admiration for the man and that shines through.


Because the character of Stroud is in every frame of the film and in many of these moments, it's just him and the birds. Similar to films like "Cast Away", "All is Lost", or "Wild" the challenges on the part of Lancaster and director John Frankenheimer to make these quiet passages work are met extraordinarily.


Similarly, Telly Savalas, Karl Malden, Neville Brand, Thelma Ritter, and Betty Field do great work in supporting parts. In particular, Karl Malden makes the case for being one of the most consistently great actors of his generation with this understated role as a straight-laced prison warden is what Robert Stroud's anti-hero persona is defined against. The two share a begrudging respect for each other after spending over half their lives on opposite sides and it's a relationship with a lot of depth.


This is a film that one should see not just because Robert Stroud was a fascinating character but because Frankenheimer and Lancaster bring his story to life so well.

2006: The Year of the African Picture

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This might just be me but I usually see a sort of pattern in each year’s slate of movies. The patterns aren’t entirely exclusive by the year but a case can be made that they are brought on by trends that ebb and flow:

2001 was the year of the dark storyline. Disjointed storylines were abound in Momento, Mullholland Drive, and Vanilla Sky. And In the Bedroom and Man Who Wasn’t There were both films with dark sides. In the Bedroom was nominated for best picture and Mullholland Drive received a best director nomination and Momento received attention for best screenplay. Dark films usually come in low-grossing thrillers but these five films were higher end products that at least all started out with potential for an oscar nomination.

2002 I really couldn’t find a pattern, other than the best picture win for Chicago solidified the Return of the Musical. There are no other films in that year that reflect that trend, however.

2003 was the year of the epic with Pirates of the Carribean, Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, Last Samurai, Cold Mountain and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Seabiscuit also had characteristics of an epic, in that it was a big budget period piece, but it didn’t involve any kind of fighting or battles. The number of big-budget blockbusters and tent poles per year has significantly increased in the ‘00s, but usually they’re constricted to the summer. Last Samurai, Master and Commander, Cold Mountain, and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King were all released in the Oscar Season and either received Oscar nominations or significant
Oscar buzz. One could argue that Lord of the Rings had been going on for three years but a) 2003 was the year in which Lord of the Rings won and b) Return of the King was the most action-packed. The epics that followed in the next year, Alexander and Troy, were far more poorly received.

2004 was the year of the biopic with Ray, The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Kinsey, Hotel Rwanda, Beyond the Sea and Vera Drake. Three of these were nominated for best picture, Hotel Rwanda was the perennial sixth candidate, and nine of the twenty acting nominations, with Kinsey’s Liam Niesson nearly making the lead actor category 5 for 5 in biographically-based roles for the first time in Oscar history. The trend continued to some extent the following with Walk the Line and Capote but Walk the Line was considered more of a love story than its 2004 counterpart, and Capote was more of a crime story than a biopic.

2005 was the year of the social statement film with four of the five best picture nominees in Good Night and Good Luck (the suppression of the press), Crash (interracial relations), Munich (the Palestinian-Israeli conflict), and Brokeback Mountain (homosexuality). In addition, among the other Oscar contenders, there was North Country (sexual harassment), Constant Gardener (corruption in the pharmaceutical industry) and Syrianna (the energy crisis/CIA corruption). Things were getting so ridiculous that political pundits were taking summer popcorn fare like Batman Begins and Star Wars III (whose storyline was conceived before either Bush got into office) and interpreting them as left-wing or right-wing statements about the Iraq war.

This brings us to 2006 which I might call the year of the Third World or more specifically the Year of the African picture with Last King of Scotland, Catch a Fire, Babel, and Blood Diamond. This might make sense considering the success of 2004’s Hotel Rwanda and 2005’s Constant Gardener and the fact that over the last couple years Africa has become a hot-button issue. One thing that comes to mind was the Worldwide 10-City Concert that preceded the G8 Summit Conference in the summer of 2005. Bono, the chief spokesman behind the movement, was named Man of the Year by Time Magazine. Increasingly, globalization and Internet 2.0 are taking storm and have surfaced on the National consciousness as of late.
Lastly, the popular thing for celebrities to do, as demonstrated by George Clooney and his dad, Brangelina, and Madonna, is to go visit Africa firsthand.

The four above-mentioned pictures all harbored serious Oscar ambitions and were shot on location, taking us first hand to the heart of the “Dark Continent.” Pictures have been set in Africa since the days of Beat the Devil, Out of Africa, Snows of Kiliminjaro and the African Queen but the African jungles served as nothing more than a background for stories about the Western colonizers. The latest wave of pictures that has surfaced since Hotel Rwanda has focused on problems facing the indigenous people of the continent which is a massive improvement.

What this means for the Oscars is that in such a close race Babel might have added weight for being part of the year’s movie trend. Voting for Babel would be a way of acknowledging this trend of shedding light on what has been commonly referred to as “The Dark Continent.”

one perk of being famous: being analyzed

I think the best part of being famous as an artist is to have your work analyzed to death: reviewed, critiqued, cross-analyzed, dissected, and everything else. There's a whole industry of people who analyzed and critiques prominent musicians, filmmakers, actors and artists. I'm one of them, or aspire to be one of them as a film critic. And those film critics or music critics, or whatever they are, don't just review something some average Joe did with his camcorder when he went on his trip to do relief work on his camcorder. They will, however, review the footage Spike Lee took of New Orleans post-Katrina when he went down there. They might bash it or they might praise it, but either way, it must be exciting to have such prominent critics looking at your work and deciding whether it's a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

In essence, what i'm saying is that it's a natural instinct for anyone who makes a work of art to want to have it judged and evaluated, and as a perk of being famous you get to have it evaluated by the best. Another perk is that even if it's bad and the critics bash it you can look on the bright side which is that you're famous enough to have those critics look at your work in the first place. I saw this terrible movie, Vanilla Sky, by Cameron Crowe, the other day and it was one of the most dissapointing movies I'd ever seen. If I were to write a bad review of it and give it a thumbs down, or whatever (or let's say a respectable critic were to do so), I wouldn't really be saying "this is a terrible work of art" because it's all relative. What I would be saying is "for something to be put into a theater on national distribution, this is unacceptable." Because, Vanilla Sky is perfectly acceptable for the standards of an 8th grader shooting a student film. If you took all the "films" ever made, Vanilla Sky is still close to the top. I have been to a couple student film festivals and some of the stuff there will just make you cringe and all of it shows an understanding of the craft that isn't fully developed. In other words "Vanilla Sky" isn't neccessarily bad, it's just bad by "famous person" standards which should give comfort to those people like Ben Affleck pre-Hollywoodland who was just running into a lot of critical trouble, although oddly enough it doesn't. That just might be one way of looking at it.

Of course, when you become a historical figure like Picasso or Monet in art or Duke Ellington or Alfred Hitchkock or Barizhnokov, then you become the subject of academic literature and books and everything, and that must be funner, still, although I hear that many of them do so with detached amusement. I heard once that Alfred Hitchkock helped his granddaughter out in film class with an essay she had to write in a class where she had to analyze one of his movies. He told her what he was thinking when he made the movie and she still got a C.

What's great about achieving that level of fame is being psychoanalyzed by authors. I'd love that. It'd be like free therapy with the best writers in the world as your therapists. I'd also love to have an E! True Hollywood Story. I would love to have everyone I've ever known rounded up and asked to say a few words about me: I would learn a lot about myself.