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One More Time

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One More Time (2016)

April. 08,2016
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5
| Drama Comedy Music
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Beautiful aspiring rock star Jude is stuck in a rut - relegated to recording commercial jingles and lost in a series of one night stands. When she is evicted from her Brooklyn apartment, she is forced to move into the Hamptons home of her wealthy - and selfish - father Paul Lombard, an over-the-hill, Sinatra-esque crooner angling for a musical comeback.

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TinsHeadline
2016/04/08

Touches You

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Micitype
2016/04/09

Pretty Good

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FeistyUpper
2016/04/10

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

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Geraldine
2016/04/11

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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Fritz Langlois
2016/04/12

Too much driving around in cars, like it was the normal thing to do, just like in "The Family Fang", another recent Walken misfire. Why should we care for childish, rich and idle characters with a gigantic ego problem? Their only concerns are for themselves, and they are aimlessly fighting with each other, completely oblivious to the hard realities most of us have to face, in good capitalistic fashion. It also tries too hard to be smart for its own good, instead of any real depth of feeling or thinking. The cinematography has nothing to recommend it, and again the characters have no endearing trait whatsoever. Everybody looks empty, aimless and depressed. We're mostly left with a Walken one-man show, which is half-watchable but even this gets old. I bet he relished his line "I'm not a villain" though.

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pyrocitor
2016/04/13

In an interview promoting One More Time, Christopher Walken was asked, "What motivates you to act?" His response: a long, bizarre story, full of unfinished thoughts, about getting a root canal from a dentist in a suit. Its moral? In Walken's own words, "It's what I do." It's this same kind of belligerent resolution which drives One More Time into existence. It's a story about a deadbeat dad reevaluating his relationship with his broken daughter in his silver years. It's a parable of the ripple effects the opulence of the entertainment industry has on those even tangentially surrounding it. It's one of those movies that employs adjectives like 'flawed,' 'real,' and 'complex' to defend its characters, when they're all really just synonyms for 'dislikable.' In short: it's a film we've seen countless times before already. But, as the film entertains, there can still be vague comfort and pleasantness in revisiting a familiar, stale routine, if only for the kitsch appeal. Appropriately, writer/director Robert Edwards has his mind firmly mired in the past. He consistently employs overlapping dialogue and jump cuts in conversation scenes between his film's jaded, disenfranchised characters, as if a carryover from the 90s 'Mumblecore' movement holding on for dear life. He's also certainly not subtle in orchestrating how broken his protagonists are, as they take turns chewing each other out for their sordid existences. Walken's former crooner is a slumping, defeated old man who nonchalantly traipses from affair to affair, so transfixed with glory days and his hopeful comeback that he spends his evenings editing the entry of his own Wikipedia page, when not sneaking porn to his grandson. His daughter (Amber Heard) is a snarling, cynical refugee from a collapsed post-punk band called 'Pussy Fart' (one of the film's few good laughs); she's also a recovering alcoholic having an affair with her therapist who kills time by writing ballads about how her heart "weighs 100 pounds", or making passes at her brother-in-law. Are we having fun yet? You know your film is flagging when a viewer excitedly perks up after a transition, exclaiming "Hey! A Roomba!" True story. Yes, the walls of tired cliché loom high, but the film, like Thomas Aquinas, squeaks by through leaning on the best. For such a stale story, Edwards sprinkles in some genuinely sparkling lines, and his cast spit them out with glee ("Starshadow's a wonderful name! What if you'd been born during my jazz period? You would've ended up named 'Mingus'"). The film's tunes, originals and covers, are thoroughly cute enough to lull the viewer into enough of a pleasant daze to ride out the predictable rodeo of conflicts and rock bottom revelations amicably. Similarly, there's a good ongoing gag in showcasing the catalogue of Walken's records through the ages, and their corresponding schizophrenic genre shifting, which helps keeps things chipper.But, unsurprisingly, it's the cast that breathe enough life into the film to keep it passably engaging. Granted, pink-haired Amber Heard isn't the most fun lead. She's supposed to play as Kristen Stewart and sing like Lana Del Rey, but mostly just reminds of how either would be preferable to her. We easily buy her as a well- intentioned train wreck whose parentally derived self-absorption and self-pity have left her life in shambles, but it still doesn't make her likable or sympathetic. Thankfully, Walken is here to breeze in and make things worth the while. At his worst, he's still always a pleasure to watch, and any excuse to lure him back into song and dance is still a sensational treat, context be damned. It's also kind of fresh to see him playing a genuinely d*ckish character rather than his usual lovable/evil oddballs, and Walken is careful not to downplay his character's foul, selfish life decisions and despicable parenthood. But, in counterbalancing them with his indomitable charisma and hard-etched pathos, he here offers a deceptively mature and insightful character study into why we continue to tolerate such sleaze-bags, let alone elevating them to the status of matinée idols. Edwards also mines solid dramatic support from Kelli Garner, Hamish Linklater, and Ann Magnuson as Walken's fractured but supportive family, as well as the always welcome Oliver Platt as their kindly lawyer (and no, that's not an oxymoron in this context). Walken croons "If I'd been born in Hindustan, I'd reincarnate like the Hindus can", but there's no question that Edwards' film could have used a hefty reincarnation of its own. That said, over-familiar and uninspired as its plot may be, Walken and company are up to the challenge of keeping viewers entertained (even when competing with the mighty Roomba). So for those entranced by the prospect of hearing Walken sing and giggle at the name 'Kim Jong-Il' anew, it's, overall, worth breaking out the L-P and revising those familiar story grooves… one more time. -6/10

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twotrybe
2016/04/14

Oh, woe is me, should be the appropriate title for this film. Here you have people who are well off enough but apparently aren't happy with their seemingly non-challenging lives. Christopher Walken is a singer who has seen his famous days in the rear view mirror get further and further away from him. He relives every moment he can through the retelling of those past lives as if to recapture the moment is like him trying to catch a cloud. Amber Heard's character is an alcoholic singer/writer who has a huge chip on her shoulders for whatever reason. She shouldn't but she does. The sister, played by Kelli Garner, is a tight bun and Hamish Linklater is her husband. Photogenic is a better way to describe this cast who lives in the Hamptons. So why the drama? Well, because Amber seems to think she is owed something as she messes up her life. And Chris's character falls into some traps of his own choosing but it doesn't make any sense where a man who presumably is in his 70's is trotting off having an affair at the same motel for months. I was expecting something else out of the motel scene but it was just a typical infidelity story. And I was expecting something something else out of the father/daughter relationship between Heard and Walken. In fact, this turned out to be nothing more of well to do people who really don't have any problems other than they were bored with each other. They sit around singing songs like it was a concert but they despise one another secretly for no other reason than just because.And it ended weird. No feel good, no resolution , no nothing. The soundtrack was good, though.

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jdesando
2016/04/15

"Just because you can't be someone new doesn't mean you can't do something new" Jude (Amber Heard) To see Christopher Walken sing as a has-been crooner is to remember he started as an entertainer who could dance pretty meanly on the stage. Here he features an original song written by his character, Paul Lombard, in his sunset years hoping for a new musical start.One More Time is indeed about one more chance, not just for Paul but also his 31-year old daughter, Jude, who has some singing/writing gifts she is weakly promoting. Typically, she has to deal with her father's fame and her own inability to stay anchored in a place that's both physical and figurative.Like dad, Jude doesn't always do what's best for her (both of them sexually vulnerable), and like him she needs another chance as the title suggests. The most satisfactory moments are when the two go after each other's weaknesses, a form of tough love that allows both actors to sharpen their craft. When he comments that they live in "the poor part of the Hamptons," you are aware that they both live in an alternate universe where "poor" is a relative term. Like their lives, not everything is as it really is.The most normal conflict of the film comes when Paul's wife, Lucille (Ann Magnuson), starts divorce proceedings because of Paul's infidelities. Out of this discomforting circumstance comes a chance for conservative daughter, Corinne (Kelli Garner), to show her more aggressive side, another case of a character getting a chance.One more time is a small film that will leave Christopher Walken fans wanting more of his sneer and world weary irony, yet as a washed up but returning pop entertainer, his character seems to fit the actor one more time.

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