Movie Nation

“Made in America” is a concert film where you never get to hear an entire song by any of the many groups performing.
It’s cluttered with backstage interviews with everyone from the artists who appear on stage, to the road crew, to a single mom/entrepreneur trying to launch her food truck business based on feeding the crowds, to a crabby little old lady whose apartment overlooks the Philadelphia park where this annual concert is held. She’s irked by all the “thump thump thump,” she gripes.
Then soul crooner Jill Scott pipes up, in the distance.
“See?” the apartment lady marvels to director Ron Howard. “That’s not bad.”
The Oscar-winning director hurled several camera crews at the first “Made in America” show, in 2012, trying to capture the diffuse musical political positivity that inspired rapper/producer/impresario Jay-Z to launch this concert series in a presidential election year.
He gives Jay-Z many opportunities to express how music brings people together, how this show is meant to let America see “how far we’ve come, accepting all cultures.”
Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, one of the featured acts, talks about how the ugly state of politics today “is like bad weather,” and “people deserve clear skies.”
But Darryl McDaniel, the “DMC” of Run-DMC, gets the definitive word on the why and how of this show, which is now an annual event in Philly and Los Angeles.
“Music succeeds where religion and politics fail.”
The concert is a sampler that captures both music’s recent past, its present and possible future — snippets of Jay-Z and Pearl Jam, a warm Run-DMC reunion, rockers The Hives playing in tuxedos, spirited performances by blues-rocker Gary Clark, Jr., Rita Ora, Santigold, Mike Snow and DJ Skrillex. Ron Howard even gets a DJ lesson (not really) from Skrillex.
The wide range of genres and styles probably condemned the film to its sketchy brevity. But Kansas City throwback Janelle Morae, who fronts a big band and seems to channel the late James Brown in her performances, stands out.
Backstage, Morae explains her black and white wardrobe as her “uniform,” coming from a family of custodians, maids and garbage men. Some of the other “rise above my circumstances” stories ring hollow — Santigold’s parents were the ones who rose up from poverty, giving her a nice life and the option of music as a career. And Mike Snow’s “Eureka” moment, working at a summer job at a country club, deciding NOT to go to law school? Laughable.
But one of the security guys sums up the “gig” economy facing today’s young people better than any economist.
“You’ve got to have more than one hustle, today.”
As ephemeral as music styles and tastes are, a two year-old concert film has more historical value than it does currency, so hearing Run-DMC talk about their big break, or hearing elder statesman Jay-Z pronounce the DJ-driven “EDM” (electronic dance music) as “the music of the next generation, they’re claiming it as theirs,” is interesting. Some of the profane hip hop acts seem dated in the sea of upbeat soul, pop and alt-rock acts presented here. But Pearl Jam and Run-DMC, inspiring joyous sing-alongs to their hits, just seem timeless.
MPAA Rating: unrated, with lots of profanity
Cast: Jay-Z, Pearl Jam, The Hives, Jill Scott, Santigold, Janelle Morae, Rita Ora, Run-DMC
Credits: Directed by Ron Howard. A Phase Four Films release.
Running time: 1:33

Twelve years in the making, filming a few scenes each year to capture kids as they progress through life, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” is an amazing achievement in telling an unremarkably remarkable life story.
It’s a film of cultural touchstones and life’s mileposts, striking in their familiarity, narrow in execution. “Boyhood” is like a fictional feature film version of the dazzling “56 Up” documentaries about British schoolkids, with the singular focus on a boy that could well be Richard Linklater: The Next Generation.
The director of “Dazed and Confused” cast young Ellar Coltane at six, making him his “Mason Evans.” Then he took Mason through a shy and curious childhood, his rebellious tweens, his quiet and considered teens and into a gregarious, smart and deep thinking — Linklaterish — college freshman. We watch a daydreaming, sullen but creative kid, never good at sports, never comfortable with the various men in his mother’s life, bickering with his older sister (Lorelei Linklater), but somehow avoiding many of the pitfalls that a more melodramatic movie would have interjected.
So we see his first creative moments — graffiti on a rural Texas underpass — his first job, his first beer. We don’t see that first kiss, but we glance that first girlfriend, then meet the first serious girlfriend. There’s the camera that becomes his artistic outlet, the way siblings of a broken marriage become closer, for security, as years go by, a sullen kid learning to come out of his shell.
“Boyhood” is a limiting title, because this movie is life itself, with every character following a lifelong story arc. And as that story progresses, they age — naturally.
So Mason’s haggard single mom (Patricia Arquette) makes mistakes with men and strains to get her family into the middle class, going back to college as we first meet her. She gains wrinkles, gains weight, pulls herself together (poor people have poor diets) and grows into herself as she does.
Their oft-absent dad (Ethan Hawke) was the same age when they married, but is a musician, day laborer and chatterbox dreamer who takes years to grow up even as his vintage GTO starts to show its post-restoration wear.
Samantha morphs from a sneaky, brother-baiting big sister into a Mean Girl who towers over her brother in his most awkward years, to a less annoying, more world wise college girl who understands him. She’s fascinating enough to warrant her own film.
And Mason grows from angel-faced boy through the Bieber-haircut years, into a gangly version of “Twilight’s” Taylor Lautner, then a taller, thinner Peter Dinklage look-alike on the cusp of college.
He absorbs life lessons — musical tastes and liberal politics from his dad, compassion and seriousness from his mom. A martinet of a drunken stepdad, a well-intentioned photography teacher and a dorky first-boss all ride him. Will the lectures pay off?
The “Dazed and Confused” casual drug use mixes with the “Slacker” questioning — “Is this all there is?” Working poor east Texas gives way to suburban San Marcos, and hip and happening Austin.
The casting pays great rewards in the third act, as a 12-year-long screen acting lesson, sharing scenes with Arquette and Hawke, turns Coltrane from an unpolished child actor into a subtle, brooding hearthrob.
“Boyhood” is too bloody long, but it’s hard to think of good places to cut. Every campout scene/teens-riding-in-cars moment is at least interesting, and they all create the texture of the times and that stage in someone’s life.
And then it stops, just as Mason is getting interesting and we’re the most interested. Just like “Boyhood” itself.
MPAA Rating:R for language including sexual references, and for teen drug and alcohol use
Cast: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei Linklater, Ethan Hawke
Credits: Written and directed by Richard Linklater. An IFC release.
running time: 2:42

“Transformers: Fourth Time’s No Charm,” didn’t quite make it to $100 million on its opening weekend, earlier projections and Paramount announcements notwithstanding. And its second weekend took a steep dive. But $37 million this holiday — $55 since July 4 “weekend” started Wednesday, is nothing to sneeze at. “Tammy” led the new releases with a low-end-of-expectations $22 million for the weekend, $34 since Wed. “Earth to Echo” and “Deliver us from Evil” failed to set anything on fire, doing about $9 million (“Echo”) and $10 million (“Evil”) over the weekend, $14-15 since Wed. “Chef” fell out of the top ten. The aged angry white folks who patronize conservative documentaries didn’t turn Dinesh D’Souza’s martyrdom movie, “America: It Let Me Come to School Here, Allowed me to Immigrate, Now it’s throwing me intp 0ail for trying to buy an Election,” into a top ten hit (low per-screen averages hamstrung this 1100 screen release). $4 million since Wed.

A weak holiday weekend, by recent standards, which is why box office watchers see no chance for July’s movies to lift the summer out of the doldrums that June created. Too many sequels that have too little staying power. On a more positive note, I dropped in on “Belle” on Friday night, two months into its run, and it is still reaching its audience. “Belle” and “Chef” have been the two lingering low-cost hits which have shown staying power over the entire summer. “Chef” just cleared $20, “Belle” just this weekend  cleared $10.