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Reviews
Music from the Big House (2010)
Raw emotion and music.
I knew what Music From the Big House was going to be about, in a very general sense, and being a blues fan I was looking forward to it. I'd never heard of Rita Chiarelli but I became a fan very quickly; her passion for the blues and her own craft is genuine and contagious. As you learn the history of Angola Prison and the individual stories of the inmates you kind of lapse into feeling sorry for these men. The whole time I was trying to remind myself that these inmates were serving life terms for a reason, and without being told what crime they had each committed almost made it worse as I imagined every heinous crime in the book.
But as the movie went on, I became so engaged with these men's stories that the fact that they were imprisoned almost fell to the wayside. They were funny and gentle and seemed like normal people and the dynamic there between the people I was witnessing and the fact that they were convicted felons created a very real tension that kept me invested in the story. For any fan of the blues, watching the inmates perform with Chiarelli was incredibly raw and emotionally visceral. When these guys are belting out lyrics about death and loneliness and redemption, specifically on the Chiarelli-penned "Lay My Bones To Rest," you believe every word they sing. It feels real, feels so absolutely honest and heartfelt that you can't help but be enraptured by their performances and feel like a part of the experience. They croon like the condemned men they are, the shadows of their sentences hanging over their heads like vulture.
That kind of emotion can't be faked, can't be bought, but can only come from experience. They're doomed and they know it, and that raw, emotional,cathartic release is refreshing in a world of bubble-gum pop stars and flavor-of-the-month radio hits. It offers a constant gut check on the nature of forgiveness and who should be forgiven, and there's no way to leave the movie without conflicting emotions. These men have nowhere to go but up, and witnessing these seemingly changed men, men who seem absolutely peaceful and at peace with themselves, bear their souls and stories is beautifully haunting.
American Animal (2011)
Raw, bizarre, and awesome.
Words like "wild" and "madness" are cliché, but there's really no other way to describe American Animal. Just like Jimmy's (Matt D'Elia) more straight-laced roommate James struggles to voice his own concerns, ambitions, and feelings in the face of Jimmy's relentless energy; it's hard to describe the film as anything other than completely mad. Ultimately this is what made it so challenging at times, but also so engaging. This is no holds-barred madness that refuses to be channeled in a single vein, and the film jumps from one bizarre scene to the next; each a different manifestation of Jimmy's deranged psyche brought to life. Jimmy is Fight Club's Tyler Durden reinvented; half as violent and twice as zany, obsessed with Hollywood actors and costumes instead of Project Mayhem and underground boxing.
But like Tyler Durden, Jimmy fights what he perceives to be the conformist indoctrination of the masses with his own extreme doctrine and is mercilessly intolerant of his friends' more "normal" views. He leaps before he looks. He acts, then asks for forgiveness, or doesn't. The film drags and is at times overly dramatic, but the whole thing builds and builds until it spirals out of control. It offers some severe gut-checks amidst the chaos, offering clarity in the confusion, and it gives the film the uncompromising point it searches for.