MOVIE REVIEW: “Begin Again” stars Mark Ruffalo (Now You See Me, The Avengers), Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), James Corden (Into the Woods, The History Boys), Hailee Steinfeld (Ender’s Game, 3 Days to Kill), Yasiin Bey (Be Kind Rewind, The Italian Job), Adam Levine (Love Actually, He’s Just Not That Into You), Catherine Keener (Captain Phillips, The Croods), and CeeLo Green (Kung Fu Panda, X-Men: First Class). The movie is directed by John Carney (Once, On the Edge). This movie centers around two different people, but have a connection: music and broken relationships. One person is a man named Dan (Ruffalo), who is a crazy, emotional failing record label executive who is trying to find a singer that displays the emotion and writing that many young pop singers that are wanted nowadays don’t have. The other person is a much younger woman named Gretta (Knightley) who is a singer-songwriter and is often in the shadow of her boyfriend, Dave’s (Levine), stardom. One day, Dan is fired from his job because of how he can’t find a singer and Gretta breaks up with Dave because he cheated on her. They cross paths when Gretta attends an open-mic night at a bar and Dan listens to one of her songs and is blown away. He then gets her to join him to make an album to get his job back and the stardom that she deserves.

This movie did a very good job. It’s definitely different from what I usually review, especially a movie centering around music. The story is done well, with the beginning setting up both of the main characters’ lives a couple of days before they meet at the bar and then the rest of the movie focusing on their relationships and music, giving you a fun journey. It was also funny in some places. The cinematography is a single-camera style where is looks a little wobbly at times, but makes it more realistic. Occasionally though, this can be a problem because in few scenes, they have cuts that don’t change the camera angle. It looks like someone messed up and they took it out instead of redoing the scene (for example, when Steve [Corden] and Gretta are drinking and talking in his apartment). The music they made for the film was terrific, especially the song “Lost Stars” that had three different renditions to it. I thought that the characters were well-thought out, making you feel for them and understand them. Along with the characters were great performances. I didn’t know Adam Levine acted and he didn’t do that bad of a job. Mark Ruffalo did the best job in my opinion, displaying a bit of a crazy man quite nicely. Keira Knightley also did a great job, and is a pretty good singer, having never heard her sing before. The first con for this movie would have to be the cussing. It is the only reason why  this movie rated R, and I feel that it really isn’t needed having an f-bomb thrown in almost every two minutes in the beginning towards the middle. The last con would be how some things didn’t make sense. One being Adam Levine’s beard and mustache. I don’t know why that was put in there. It was really random (I guess it’s some sort of inside joke?). Another would be how they put a part that seemed important to the storyline in the credits rather than the film itself. I won’t say what the scene is, but it should’ve been put in the whole film itself rather than the credits. Overall, this movie gives an entertaining experience and it is definitely worth a watch! FINAL SCORE: 88%= Juicy Popcorn

Here is the trailer: