Saisir l'instant

just finished up watching this growing up in the sixties, and rock and roll movie. for the earliest of the Baby Boomers, this is the movie for you, and the music will rock your soul. A teenage band, with inspirations maybe a little too optimistic. With a top notch cast, and great story telling, this was indeed entertaining and very realistic, since I was in a little band back then too. James Gandolfini is great as a pretty typical sixties Father, coping with everyday problems and a pretty wacky Wife. The teenagers are very realistic, and you could tell it was written pretty much biographical. It works for me. Highly recommended especially to us Boomers.

Not Fade Away takes me back to the Sixties when I would have been of the age that the young people of the film are in. Certainly the music was nostalgic enough and that will satisfy any number of fans.

James Gandolfini who starred as that other New Jersey legend of more recent vintage, Tony Soprano stars here as the father of aspiring musician John Magaro who wants more than anything else to succeed in Rock and Roll as those new groups from Great Britain are doing, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He and friends from his suburban New Jersey want to become rock stars only there's a lot more work involved than originally thought.

As for dad, Gandolfini doesn't like the kid's views or the new mod style of dress that his son is now taking up. He's a typical blue collar guy who has some real concerns about the family business and some even bigger concerns for his health. The two clash and their clash is what drives Not Fade Away.

I remember some kids on my block who were growing up including my next door neighbor in Brooklyn were doing exactly what Magaro and his friends were doing. None of them as I know stuck with music, but all apparently led successful lives, at least I've heard nothing different.

The music is wonderful if Sixties rock is your taste this is your film. The plot however is nothing that we haven't seen before. And Not Fade Away is hampered by a lack of character development other than Gandolfini and Magaro. But these two may be worth a look and a listen.

David Chase's "Not Fade Away" looks at what it was like to come of age in the '60s. The main focus is a New Jersey teenager who decides to join a band, but there are clear signs of everything that was going on: the Vietnam War, the generation gap, racial tensions, and Dean Martin's mean-spirited comment about the Beatles. Contrary to the previous reviewer, I would say that this movie is better than "Almost Famous". The latter was too fluffy and came across as a sanitized look at its era. This one is very upfront about what sorts of things happened (including some very tense scenes). And the final line poses a good question about how we as Americans want to be known to the world. Can we eventually look to our best qualities to do what's right?

Anyway, this is a good movie. It's got great music and brings up some important points. I recommend it.

As with most filmmakers who work in themes, you should watch this to see Chase's perspective on the material, not for the story itself. Its seemingly formless structure will throw off some viewers, but it's very much in line with his body of work, being less about the music and the era and more about the effects of the passage of time, specifically the tug of the past on the present and the evolution of character (or not) as the years go by. It's an autobiographical elaboration on the themes in the dark and sad final seasons of the Sopranos, though it does have plenty of the usual witty Chase touches as well, like the kids dancing away the JFK retrospective. There's a pervasive sense of nostalgia because the setting feels realistic, neither idealistic like a Spielberg/Lucas movie nor revisionist like the progressive Pleasantville-type movies whose intention is to show us all how the past wasn't as enlightened as today. The downside is that it's such a well-covered period and milieu (for my generation The Wonder Years is the reference point) that it's hard to find something original to say. But go in with the understanding that it's more complex than it appears and it'll give you plenty to chew on afterward. At one point the lead and his girlfriend are watching Blow-Up and he comments on how strange it is there's no music to tell you when someone's going to get killed, and she replies that the sound of the wind in the trees is the music, which sums up this movie pretty well.

David Chase's anticipated Not Fade Away not only jumbles itself into an indulgent story, constantly keeping the audience at an arm's length but it's overly stretched and uneven not utilizing the strong talents in the film like James Gandolfini, Jack Huston, and John Magaro. A natural comparison to Almost Famous (2000), the film doesn't hold a candle to Cameron Crowe's homage to music. Showcasing outstanding music of the 1960′s and 1970′s, Chase manages to capture moments of the young adolescent mind longing to be more. Lead Magaro delivers a character transformation of mind and body, a turn that elevates the film considerably. The great Jack Huston, an actor that will likely be one of the biggest things in Hollywood any minute now, delivers an aggressive supporting turn reminiscent of Channing Tatum's work in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006). Bella Heathcote shows tenderness and promise but undervalued and virtually unused. James Gandolfini, stands out with charisma and garners much of the big laughs. A great character actor like Gandolfini should be given room to move. The film ultimately fails because it never feels like Chase knows his film or where he wants it to go. The last twenty minutes feel unneeded, unearned, and thrown together for an "artistic" catalyst with no emotional or technical effect whatsoever. A large disappointment.