Monday, August 16, 2021

The Sparks Brothers (2021)

IMDb plot summary: A musical odyssey through five weird and wonderful decades with Ron and Russell Mael celebrating the inspiring legacy of Sparks.
Directed by Edgar Wright.

I knew absolutely nothing about this band going into this film, but came out of it thoroughly intrigued. The group has had widely varying degrees of commercial success throughout their career, but continued to push out music and experiment with new styles and sounds, sometimes resulting in wild shifts in tone from record to record. The film follows them chronologically, so even as the music changes, we get to see how one led to the next, led to the next, which made for a beautifully cohesive way of understanding their work. Wright is, of course, a fantastically energetic director and turns out to be a great fit for this genre-pushing, norm-defying group, as he shapes their saga with such enthusiasm for the work they did. They seem to be an interesting band to begin with, and I definitely intend to listen to some more of them, but watching Wright nerd out for them for two hours was a great way to catch the spirit of what they were doing.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Sparks Brothers > Dark and Stormy Night
The Sparks Brothers < Anna Karenina
The Sparks Brothers < Being John Malkovich
The Sparks Brothers < Natural Born Killers
The Sparks Brothers < The Chalk Garden
The Sparks Brothers > Julie & Julia
The Sparks Brothers > It Had to Be You
The Sparks Brothers < Hamlet (2000)
The Sparks Brothers > Cypher
The Sparks Brothers < Connie and Carla
The Sparks Brothers > Raising Arizona
Final spot: #1620 out of 3419, or 53%.

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