Posted: April 26, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Academy Awards, Birth of a Nation, Don Cheadle, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Ewan McGregor, Michael Stuhlbarg, Miles Davis, Oscars, Steven Baigelman | 6 Comments »
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Warning: SPOILERS
Miles Ahead is the new biopic of Miles Davis, one of the great, if not the greatest, jazz trumpeter and composer of all times. It’s written by Steven Baigelman and the director and star Don Cheadle. The filmmakers do everything they can, from non-linear storytelling to all sorts of directorial flourishes, to keep the audience enthralled.
And they succeed, at least for a while. Flashbacks, jump cuts and various stylistic juxtapositions that feel inspired by jazz music, give the film a certain electric immediacy.
But it’s not long before it feels that all this tinsel and sawdust is, well, not a lot more than tinsel and sawdust, there to hide the fact that in the end, the movie, though often entertaining, is really just another, as I and a friend like to call it, typical Warner Brothers biopic, the reference being the prestige pictures of the studios made in their heydays, like The Story of Louis Pasteur, The Life of Emil Zola and even more recently, Gandhi. All worthy, but all still somewhat bland. Read the rest of this entry »
