Rebel in the Rye

After role by role, performance by performance, he demonstrate his lovely artistic force in the skin of J. D. Salinger. Not only a great performance but, in same measure, the right story. Simple, dramatic, convincing. Inspired portrait of a great writer and the art of Nicholas Hoult to propose the precise nuances of his character. A film about deep loneliness. And about the basic choice defining it.

Do you remember reading the Novel "The Catcher in the Rye" by J D Salinger in High School days ?? Sure enough I dug out a Paperback copy from my little library today after seeing this Movie. A very well put together production called "Rebel in the Rye" that gives you a behind the scenes look at Mr Salinger's Life. I enjoyed the Film enough to re read the Book and my guess is that is what the Director was hoping people would do ?. The Hollywood Bells and Whistles Fancy Costumes and Music from the 30's and 40's are what you see and hear along with nice looking cast and Great As Usual Kevin Spacey who portrays Whit Burnett Salinger's mentor.

Some of Nicholas Hoult 's best work. He really gets into character, becoming someone I've never seen him be before. I've seen him take the lead in Warm Bodies, and Kill Your Friends both excellent movies (Also Jack the Giant Slayer which is OK) but this felt slightly more unique. Helping in this transformation, is Kevin Spacey who does a great job of electrifying the screen playing a man truly passionate about what he does, and a mentor to J.D. Salinger. Also like Hope Davis as Salinger's mom and wanted to point that out (and the fact that it feels like the same role she did in Captain America: Civil War)

What I love most about this movie is how it made me interested in Catcher in the Rye. I am familiar with the book and how notorious it is among literature, but I never read it myself. Not much of a book worm. The movies portrait of the man is truly rebellious. Rebel in the Rye gives the impression that his fame comes from the idea that he was bold enough to do it first like the Ramones or Prince (More of a music geek) and in his boldness touched a generation that had not really been spoken to before. A generation that would put him on a pedestal that made the war vet uncomfortable. His choice not to publish any more I was slightly aware of, but the movie does make me very intrigued about what else may be accurate (or inaccurate) .

Nicholas Hoult has done a great job driving this spectacular vehicle.

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I haven't read "Catcher in the rye" and I'm grateful for this. I'm not saying this because it is a bad book but because it would create unrealistic expectations for this movie. Fortunately, I simply enjoyed the movie for what it was - a biopic. I've found it inspiring and even charming to some degree. It also persuaded me to buy the eBook (Catcher in the rye) which I'll start reading soon.

If you are quite educated about Salinger, chances are that you're going to be disappointed because what's on the screen can never be as good as what's in your mind. Even if this is a movie about the author and not the book, chances are that you see Salinger in your own unique way. This is true about all authors.

If you are not, then you can enjoy the movie. You can relax and not compare every single detail with actual facts. After I've saw the movie, I've discovered that there are many differences compared to actual recorded history and if I knew these things beforehand, I would have been frustrated. I didn't and I've enjoyed two hours of a good movie. The end.

I'm not a Salinger fan by any means, so if I loved this movie it must have something going for it. Danny Strong is one of the best writers in Hollywood, and he creates a fast-moving and compulsively watchable story about a young man burning with ambition. Only young J. D. Salinger's ambition is not for wealth and fame. He wants to write a great book, and he wants to do it his way.

Nothing is more boring than watching writers write in a movie. But Danny Strong manages to make it exciting because we actually see Salinger learning from his mistakes and even more tellingly, learning to accept criticism from his mentor, his agent, and his publisher. By the time he's come back from the war, badly shell-shocked, and has to literally learn how to write all over again, you're completely in his corner. And the movie feels more like ROCKY than SYLVIA.

So why didn't I give this movie ten stars? Well, for one thing, too many of the party scenes looked like advertisements for alcohol and tobacco products. Late in the film, Salinger finds a guru who tells him to give up all "distractions," but it's telling that they never discuss cigarettes and alcohol as problems in their own right. Because of course nobody ever heard of a great writer succumbing to alcoholism.

The other problem is the supporting cast. They're not bad, they're sensational. Kevin Spacey plays the Columbia writing professor like he's lovable old Mr. Chips. But it's a palpable schoolboy fantasy. I went to Columbia, and let me tell you, most English professors were closer to the Drill Instructor in Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET. No matter what kind of work you turned in, they always made you feel like Private Pyle. Nobody was looking to uncover any geniuses when I was there, and nobody ever did!

Then there's Sarah Paulson as Dorothy, the world's most sultry and stunning literary agent. She's got the goods, all right. And she plays every scene like she's Lauren Bacall putting the moves on Bogart in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. The problem is, young J. D. Salinger is not Bogart. He's closer to Wilmer in THE MALTESE FALCON. So when Dorothy caresses him with casual endearments like "my darling," and "my love," you feel like it's either crude manipulation or writer Danny Strong giving in to his own teenage fantasies. It would have been nice to see Dorothy buttering up other writers, or maybe just making with the golf sticks, like the agent in SUNSET BOULEVARD.

So overall, a fun movie with a lot of excitement, but not really as hard hitting as it pretends to be. Holden saw phonies everywhere, but this movie pretends they don't exist. It's really pretty goddamn shallow, if you want to know the truth.