Promised Land; Not Fade Away

I caught up with two movies that had escaped me when I flew to and from New York after Thanksgiving. Both were fine airplane movies, largely because they had subjects of inherent interest to me: fracking and rock’n’roll. The former featured star turns by Matt Damon and Frances McDormand, excellent as always, and nice support from John Krasinski and Rosemarie Dewitt. The story, however, played like a first script by actor-writers, with a neat twist at the end that unfortunately didn’t jibe with everything that came before. That Damon and Krasinski were the writers and producers as well as stars of the film led me to think this little flaw had been glossed over. Unlike fracking, the film was cute but not very deep. Not Fade Away mined the New Jersey milieu of the Sopranos, with James Gandolfini in his familiar paterfamilias role. The story was well-worn, but no less enjoyable for that, of high school friends forming a rock band in the basement, then falling apart over girls, creative differences and, well, just growing up. In the end, this is just another high school story, but there’s something in every high school story that resonates, plus this had music selected and composed by Steven Van Zandt, so it all rang pretty true.

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