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HOW TO SEE THE YEAR’S BEST MOVIE

It’s easy: buy, rent, or stream it. As of this week, it’s available on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD. How could a film this fresh and original elude so many moviegoers? First, it has no recognizable stars. Its distributor didn’t promote it well or nurture it during its theatrical run. And its title is both confusing and off-putting; whenever I recommended it I was asked, “Are you saying Sin Street?” No, it’s Sing Street.

Everyone I know who has seen this movie loves it. It has a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So stop complaining that there are no good movies to see this summer and watch Sing Street. (That is, after you’ve gone out to a theater to see my other favorite, Don’t Think Twice.) Here is my original review from this site:

Sing Street is a real charmer from John Carney, the writer-director of Once and Begin Again. Like those films, this isn’t a musical in the conventional sense of the word but it uses original songs (cowritten by the filmmaker) to move the story forward and reflect the feelings of its main character. It’s a perfect integration of music and storytelling, set in Dublin in 1985.

Sing street-Lucy Boynton-Ferdia Walsh-Peelo

Courtesy of Weinstein Company

Newcomer Ferdia Walsh-Peelo plays Conor, at 15-year-old lad whose bickering parents’ money woes result in him having to transfer to a public school filled with tough, unfriendly kids and run by a mean-spirited priest. His refuge is music. In this he is encouraged by his older brother, a college dropout who advises his sibling on the best bands, past and present…and celebrates the emergence of music videos on the telly featuring Duran Duran and The Cure.

Then Conor lays eyes on Raphina (Lucy Boynton), a striking teenage beauty with a plan to move to London and become a model. In the meantime, she serves as Conor’s muse and agrees to appear in a home-made video he shoots with a handful of schoolmates.

Carney draws on his vivid memories of growing up in the 1980s, when Ireland seemed to offer nothing but a dead end to kids of his generation… but the period also allows him to tell his story without the distraction of cell phones and texting. What a blessing. Conor’s diminutive manager doesn’t even have a family telephone and tells interested parties who read his flyers to come by his address in person!

(Courtesy of The Weinstein Company)

(Courtesy of The Weinstein Company)

The beauty of Sing Street, which Carney crafted from a story he wrote with Simon Carmody, is that it feels authentic while embracing classic movie-style wish fulfillment. There is even a fantasy sequence that only a Scrooge could reject. If this isn’t exactly the way it was, it’s the way it should have been.

Both Conor and Raphina are finding their way. He says that when he looks in the mirror he’s still trying to figure out who he is. She is poised and beautiful enough to be a model and knows it, but doesn’t have anyone to back up her dreams, which require getting away from Dublin and moving to London.

Sing Street is a feel-good movie that offers more than empty-headed escapism. I found it irresistible.

Leonard Maltin is one of the world’s most respected film critics and historians. He is best known for his widely-used reference work Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and its companion volume Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide, now in its third edition, as well as his thirty-year run on television’s Entertainment Tonight. He teaches at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and appears regularly on Reelz Channel and Turner Classic Movies. His books include The 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, The Great Movie Comedians, The Disney Films, The Art of the Cinematographer, Movie Comedy Teams, The Great American Broadcast, and Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia. He served two terms as President of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, is a voting member of the National Film Registry, and was appointed by the Librarian of Congress to sit on the Board of Directors of the National Film Preservation Foundation. He hosted and co-produced the popular Walt Disney Treasures DVD series and has appeared on innumerable television programs and documentaries. He has been the recipient of awards from the American Society of Cinematographers, the Telluride Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, and San Diego’s Comic-Con International. Perhaps the pinnacle of his career was his appearance in a now-classic episode of South Park. (Or was it Carmela consulting his Movie Guide on an episode of The Sopranos?) He holds court at leonardmaltin.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook; you can also listen to him on his weekly podcast: Maltin on Movies. — [Artwork by Drew Friedman]

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