Music of the Heart: SING ME THE SONGS THAT SAY I LOVE YOU: A CONCERT FOR KATE MCGARRIGLE

Folk singer Kate McGarrigle died in 2010 at the age of 63, leaving behind a terrific body of work and a talented family of musicians. In 2011, in a New York City concert hall, a concert was performed in her honor. Singing her songs were her son and daughter, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, as well as her sister, Anna McGarrigle. Other guests included Emmylous Harris, Norah Jones, and, among many more, Jimmy Fallon, singing their hearts out in memory of the one who wrote the songs. The event was captured on film and put together by director Lian Lunson. The resulting concert documentary, Sing Me the Songs That Say I Love You: A Concert for Kate McGarrigle, isn't much of a movie, but it sure is a great concert. It's not often that I find myself wanting to turn off a movie's picture and just listen to the soundtrack instead.

The music, so tenderly written, so expressively performed, is transporting and enjoyable. It's all of a rather similar tone and cadence, a folksy wit and carefully strummed instrumentation calling out with clarity that the songs are from the same career, sprung from the same mind. I suppose the disclaimer here is that if it's not the kind of music you go for, it'll get repetitive fast. I happen to love this style of music, so I was willing to go with it. Several old favorites are trotted out. Her kids sing "First Born," with its charming lyrics about a first-born son: "That first born son is always the one / The first to be called and the last to come." Jimmy Fallon sings "Swimming Song" - "This summer I went swimming / This summer I nearly drowned" - which fits his persona well. Rufus, one of many singing "Prosperina," one of the last songs she ever wrote, has tears rolling down his face as they circle the haunting refrain "Come home to mama."

The songs are lovely and the mood is appropriately mournful. It seems like a good concert and a moving tribute to a mother, musician, and friend taken away by cancer. But as cinema it's uneven and clumsily packaged. The stage is shot simply for coverage in footage that switches between color and black and white arbitrarily. Context is largely absent, with sparsely commented upon home movies of Kate's younger years spliced into the concert footage. Lunson is in the same instance doing too much and not enough to material that's inherently powerful and entertaining. Either give us the events plain and simple unadorned or give us the full biographical context. Stuck hesitantly between, the movie feels overlong and unsure of its purpose.

That said, the star of the show is Kate McGarrigle's music, strong and powerful, and the friends and family breathing new life into her words and melodies. There's not much need to see the movie, but it's sure worth hearing. Available now on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, XBox, Playstation, Google Play, Youtube, and SundanceNow, it'd be worth renting a stream just to listen. I'd recommend the soundtrack album over that, but on the chance you want to see the concert, the movie's your only option. Besides, with just the sound you'd miss the emotion on the faces of the singers, smiling through tears, keeping their mother's, sister's, friend's music alive. There's a devastating anecdote snuck in at the last minute in which Rufus and Martha tell of their mother's final moments alive, surrounded by family, playing an old recording of her children as children singing a Christmas carol she had taught them. She died as she lived, with love and song.

When a Problem Comes Along: WHIP IT

It’s always risky for an established actor to take on directorial duties. They could become the next Clint Eastwood or the next C. Thomas Howell, and it’s nearly impossible to tell which kind they’ll be until the finished product is available for scrutiny. Luckily for Drew Barrymore, her directorial debut is Whip It, a fast-paced, crowd-pleaser that announces her as a director to watch. She generously allows the actors in the film room to breathe, room to explore their characters in deeper and more unexpected ways than you would think would be allowed film that, prior to viewing, sounds so schematic and predictable.

Ellen Page stars as a sassy small-town teen who feels stuck in her world of beauty pageants and standardized tests until she discovers an outlet she never knew she needed at a roller derby. It sounds like a typical coming-of-age, parents-don’t-get-it, teen sports movie, and indeed it has all the beats that such a film would require like the moment where the adolescent lead finds a secret thrill in a new passion, the moment where the mismatched group of outsiders take the teen into their group, the moment where the parents find out about what their kid has really been doing all this time. (See: Saturday Night Fever, Breaking Away, etcetera). And yet, the movie isn’t a typical example of that type, hitting those beats in unexpectedly refreshing and satisfying ways. If it’s not quite Breaking Away, and it isn’t, it’s not for lack of trying.

Page gives her best performance yet (yes, including her Oscar-nominated turn in Juno), giving her character a depth and a yearning that ring true. It also helps that she’s surrounded by wonderful acting. Alia Shawkat (Maebe in Arrested Development) plays her best friend, their rapport also ringing true. Every time they share the screen, it feels like watching two old friends in the way they subtly read each other’s moods, keep long-running jokes moving even farther, warbling along with the radio, and breaking down into fits of giggling. It’s a relationship that feels so truthful, that when a cute guy (Landon Pigg) comes along, making eyes at Page, I genuinely cared about how he would change the girls’ friendship.

Like the friendship, Page’s interactions with her parents hit a particularly truthful nerve in the mixture of awkward candor and unfathomable love that often develops between a teenager and parents. There’s a core of mutual respect in their relationship that feels right. Daniel Stern, as her father, has a loveably awkward sense of a father struggling with connecting to his teenage daughter, careful to say the right thing, desperately wanting to not seem desperate in his attempts to stay an important figure in her life. Marcia Gay Harden, as her mother, is not some stage-mother stereotype, despite early scenes that threaten to push her in that direction. Instead, she’s a woman who very much wants her daughter to succeed. She’s not closed-minded; she merely stubbornly wants her daughter to be great. There’s a feeling of genuine love in the parent-child relationship on display here, not just snarky dysfunction that’s so often a teen-movie cop out. A quiet dialogue scene that finds Harden and Page sitting on the floor of their kitchen, engaging in an intense heart-to-heart, is one of the most memorable scenes I saw in any movie of 2009.

It’s memorable because Barrymore knows the strengths of her actors and the strengths of the script by Shauna Cross. She hasn’t drained her movie of stylistic flourish, but she isn’t suffering from first-time director look-what-I-can-do waywardness either. She knows when she can set up a fairly simple dialogue scene and trust that her actors will more than carry the moment. This is an enormously entertaining film as a result, with a smart, fast-paced script and great actors to perform it. The great indie-rock soundtrack and the vibrant colors are only an added bonus.

Speaking of added bonus, there’s the roller derby girls themselves. Played by the likes of Kristen Wiig, Eve, Zoe Bell, Juliette Lewis, Ari Graynor and Drew Barrymore (humbly giving herself a bit part), the athletes have great sense of comedic timing and are an energetic source of frenzied fun on and off the track, even if they are forced into a food fight in the one wrong note the movie manages to hit. Characters on the periphery of the derby are entertaining as well, especially a goofy announcer (Jimmy Fallon) and a sarcastic but supportive coach (Andrew Wilson). But, even with such minor male influences, this movie is a blast of girl-power gusto. Whip It is a hugely entertaining experience, a kind of feel-good movie that doesn’t go out of its way to make you feel good. I just had no other option when confronted with a movie so endearing, energetic, and sweet. This is the kind of movie that could have felt common, but is instead told uncommonly well.