Begin Again
Dir: John Carney
2014
***
Begin Again starts off pretty poorly in my opinion, the editing is messy, the non-linear narrative doesn't really work and the continuity guy should have been sacked after ten minutes. The beginning sequence whereby Mark Ruffalo's record label boss character throws demo tapes out of his car as he drives to work is so badly acted that it was hard to continue watching. It also had an familiarity about it that I couldn't put quite put my finger on until I realised it was directed by John Carney. It's basically a reworking of his 2007 hit Once. Nothing wrong with that though, for all the gripes I have with it it did start to grow on me somewhat, mainly because Carney knows people and he knows music, so a film about both was always going to work. I'm still not convinced by the casting but the story won me over, cliches were avoided too which was nice and it's nice to see a film about music that really understands music.