The Soloist

Drama, 2008 (PG13)
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Morton Downey Jr

• A reporter out looking for a story and happens to run into a mentally ill homeless man who just so happens to be a former Julliard student.
• The main story is between the reporter and the homeless man but there is a pretty good underlying story as well between he and his ex wife/boss.
• Great acting of course-you don't expect anything less from Foxx and Downey.
• Made me feel just a little bit hopeless about the plight and problems of mentally ill homeless people. Seems to be yet another impossible issue to really fix.

Just Me

Last updated: 2010-03-14 00:11:32 by user05

Ah, the fifty.

The ol' fifty.

If you stopped me on the street and asked me how "The Soloist" was, I'd say, "It was fine. I dunno." I'll try to provide a little more detail here, but don't expect much. It's hard to muster a lot of energy for something this close to fifty.

"The Soloist" is about the friendship that develops between LA Times columnist Robert Downey Jr. and homeless, schizophrenic Jamie Foxx, who happens to be a highly-skilled classical musician.

This friendship has ups and downs. There are some funny moments. There are some sad moments. Mostly it's just a bunch of scenes we've seen a million times before in a story we've seen just as often.

If you're spending ten dollars to see "The Soloist," you really have too much time on your hands. But I guess "Wolverine: Origins" hasn't come out yet.

Speaking of "Wolverine: Origins," it's great to see that the ragin' cajun Gambit is going to make an appearance. He's the guy who supercharges playing cards with kinetic energy and fires them like bullets. He's a terrific character and it'll be nice to see him join the stable of movie mutants.

At first I didn't like Liev Schreiber in the role of Sabretooth, but the more I see of the trailer, the more I'm warming to him.

The same goes for the "Terminator: Salvation" trailer. At first it looked cheap and flavorless, like Terminator 3, but the longer trailers show more and more promise. The idea of a terminator that doesn't know it's a terminator is fascinating. McG is directing so it will probably be terrible. But at least there's a little hope in the air.

Helping matters is the billboard that's all over L.A. right now. It shows a toppled T800, stripped of its flesh, staring down at commuters with its glowing red eyes in a completely hypnotic fashion. Yes I want to see the movie.

Also around the bend is the new Star Trek flick. I've done a good job of not getting too excited about this, but the early reviews have been positive and the black and white billboard showing the original Constitution-Class Enterprise looks very cool. Going back to the original characters was a great idea. They were always the appeal of the show, not the universe and not the technology. What we really want to see is that old Kirk-Spock-McCoy chemistry.

Anyway, here's the score for "The Soloist."


SCORE:

How Accomplished: 51/100

How Much I Liked: 50/100

Contrary to what Terry Gilliam movies teach us, going mad is no fun. The only thing real madness makes you aware of is how you should prize sanity. There are no life lessons to be learned, sadly, from slipping out of your head. Real madness is a hell with no dimensions: ungraspable and unkind. There’s something especially pitiless about a disease that corrupts thought. The new movie, The Soloist, tells the true story of a schizophrenic Julliard-trained musician named Nathaniel Ayers. He is, by turns: loquacious, gentle, intriguing and capable of snapping your neck. He is not changed by the movie’s end, and the movie is better for it.

Seeking human-interest stories for his “Points West” column in the L.A. Times, Steve Lopez meets Nathaniel Ayers by a statue of Beethoven. Having overheard Ayers mention Julliard in-between talk of space aliens, Lopez calls the school and discovers his next story. It turns out Ayers – a man who sleeps rough and dresses like he’s headed for Mardi Gras – is a former music prodigy. Lopez writes a column about Ayers’ plight, and one of his readers sends in a cello. For the journalist, minor celebrity and bigger pay-days beckon; Ayers seems like manna from Bedlam. But slowly, Lopez’s conscience stirs; his meal-ticket doesn’t like the spotlight.

The difficulty in playing “mad” is that it’s easy to overdo it. Madness, like alcohol, offers actors an awful temptation to grandstand. Think of Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys, Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, or Nicolas Cage in anything (including his “sane” roles). Playing an actual living mad person doesn’t tend to sway actors one way or the other (they’re mostly focused on the Oscars), but thankfully, Jamie Foxx is reasonably restrained. Give the man credit, he’s playing a homeless (read: Oscar-worthy), schizophrenic (read: Oscar-worthy) music prodigy (read: And the winner is…), so the urge to break-dance through his scenes must have been crippling. But Foxx is admirably free of extraneous ticks and finger twirls, and even when he gets aShine-esque, enraptured-by-the-music scene, he refrains from weeping (and other, shameless, hand-me-the-Oscar-isms).

In the more sedate role of “disillusioned reporter”, Robert Downey Jr. opts to watch Foxx in most scenes. He knows he can’t compete with a madman’s wardrobe and a musical instrument, so he listens and waits for his scenes with Catherine Keener. Since she’s gorgeous as August and sexy as ripe cherries, Downey knows we’ll spend far more time puzzling how his character got divorced from her than we will pondering Jamie Foxx’s madness. We’ll suspect Downey of being an ass, but since he can play “smart” with his shoes on the wrong feet, it’s this fallible quality that keeps him interesting. He’s believable as an ex-husband without coming off like a douchebag, which is no mean feat when his ex-wife such a knockout.

Catherine Keener isn’t on-screen for more than ten minutes, and most of her screen-time is about building Downey’s character, and I really shouldn’t devote any lines to her at all… but can I dub her the new Susan Sarandon? She’s the right age for those Sarandon roles (i.e. the “mom” role, plus sex), she’s the best thing in most things she’s in, and her voice is tailor-made for giving life-wisdom. As I say, she has next-to-nothing to do in The Soloist, but… oh, you know.

Nothing much happens in this movie, except that one man helps another man. It doesn’t end with Nathaniel Ayers winning American Idol, or Steve Lopez winning a Pulitzer Prize. The homeless people of Los Angeles do not bond together and put on a show. Instead, you get the reality of Ayers’ condition: he can be helped, but he will never be a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. There are some schizophrenics who do manage to hold down jobs, marry and have children, and there are a lot who don’t, and Nathaniel Ayers is the latter. The lesson here isn’t nihilism; it’s realism. That, and the fact a good deed should be its own reward.

Last updated: 2010-01-17 21:30:40 by malikaziz

When I first heard about this film, I thought it was going to be about a gifted musician who some random guy finds on the street and helps get back on his feet and maybe even into Carnegie Hall, or something along those lines. I was so wrong.
The film is a true story about Nathaniel Ayers’ schizophrenia and the tragic tale that is his life. We also get a bit of Steve Lopez who somehow turned a weekly column in the Los Angeles Times to a book and then into a movie. Can we say cashing in?
Both Foxx and Downey give superb performances and remind audiences that they can indeed act. There are times that I was in awe as to how involved with these characters the men were, especially Downey, but that may be because he just seems to be the type to use proper words.
I don’t know about you, but if I see the title The Soloist and know that it is about some sort of musician, I expect to see some music. I was highly disappointed to barely hear any in the picture. Sure there was Beethoven all through the film’s score and a couple of orchestral scenes and whatnot, but it just wasn’t enough for me.
My expectations were riding high for this one. The past few movies with musical plots that I’ve seen have been nothing short of spectacular. The Soloist turns out an unprepared, unpracticed nerve ridden solo, that even the stellar casting of its lead actors can’t save it. Still, there are some touching moments, and the Foxx’s character is relatable to the audience. While I wouldn’t suggest watching this more than once, it is worth a viewing.

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