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Reviews
Muscle Shoals (2013)
Racist drop of oil spoiling a big barrel of honey
Early in Muscle Shoals the point is made by all concerned that Rick Hall's studio was color blind, just top quality musicians producing top quality music. A true haven in the 1960s South. But then the Swampers go off to form their own studio in town and along the way pick up and then lose Lynyrd Skynyrd (until after the plane crash). Yet, nothing is even mentioned in passing about the racist substance of the band's music or their presentation as defenders of segregation and, in effect, the Slave South. Director Greg "Freddy" Camalier might have gotten away with that as a simple presentation of musical history were it not for his choice to end the movie, to celebrate Muscle Shoals and all it had accomplished, by using Lynryd Skynyrd's openly racist "Sweet Home Alabama," along with another showing of the Confederate flag behind them, which was their standard practice. Talk about taking a dump on your own movie.
Q (2011)
A movie about connection and disconnection and love
Wow, other reviewers see this as pornography. Take another look. It's about connection and disconnection in French society, in which sex and discussions about sex are used as a central vehicle for showing relations between men and women in French society (or at least younger ones). Note that the director never shows anything above the waist of the nude women in the shower chattering away about sex and men. Note that all the characters are missing each other needs and hence at odds and frustrated. Note the scene in the plaza where everyone is self-absorbed. Note that the author starts the movie with a message that he still believes love is possible.
Where the movie fails most is not in its failure to do more than vaguely allude to the background situation - unemployment and a shipyard strike. Why those are even there is never clarified. Rather, it was the director's inability to bring the story to completion without implanting an implausibly happy ending that left me wondering what was the point of it all. If French social relations are pretty much the same as they were 25 years ago, then the director's gotten quite a bit right. Unfortunately, he didn't know where to go with it. That's why, in spite of the good acting (for the most part), I gave it only six stars.