Waste of time

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Sadie is desperately looking up to her older sister Georgia who is a famous C&W artist. Sadie wants to be a famous artist like her sister, but is always doing everything wrong. Her desperate need to be accepted by her sister is constantly complicated by her drug and alcohol problems.Beyond anything else you can say about this film, it is a showcase for Jennifer Jason Leigh. She not only stars -- and sings -- but produced the film, and along with her mother (Barbara Turner) wrote the script, based on a real-life experience.The casting of Ted Levine is interesting. Apparently he was cast to help distance him from the "Buffalo Bill" image he had acquired. But they made little attempt to modify his look. He still looks very much like Buffao Bill, though he is quite capable of altering his appearance by merely growing a mustache (see "Monk").

Jennifer Jason Leigh here pulls off another of her 'impossible' performances. Is there any film actress as versatile as she is? Is there anything she can't do or any role she cannot play? When she acts, she throws herself into the role with the force of an express train. Here she transforms into a hopeless, cheery, ever-smiling flop of a girl, who has failed at everything but just goes on in good humour, taking it on the chin from Life time after time. Her pathetic, sprawling, inept character is endlessly endearing, like a delightful child, even though she drives everyone she knows crazy because she is so hopeless. She can't stay off the drugs, or the booze, or out of bed with anyone for a quickie. She doesn't know when to start, she doesn't know when to stop. She is behaviour-dyslexic. Her thoroughly controlled and successful older sister gets her revenge on little sister by extending icy and permanent tolerance, disguising condescension as devotion. The two sisters are both singers, and the older one, Georgia of the title (though the star is really Sadie, the Leigh character), is a magnificent folk singer with a marvellously controlled and captivating voice (must get Winningham's CDs!). She is played brilliantly by Mare Willingham, who was justly nominated for an Oscar for it. As for Leigh, she won best actress awards from the New York Film Critics Circle Awards (highly prestigious in the USA), and the Montreal Film Festival. Leigh can sing better than she does in the film because it is part of the role that she must not be very good. However, she throws herself totally into every song she sings, and unbearably heart-rending emotion is her specialty. What a contrast to the cold control shown by her sister, who stands erect and formal, while Leigh throws herself all over the stage and repeatedly swallows and vomits up the microphone, and everything hangs out like long johns on the washing line which the neighbours don't want to see. The film is incredibly sensitive and profound, a triumph by Ulu Grosbard, who made too few films in his career, and is now well into his 80s. This is REAL film-making, and one of the endless parade of spectacular achievements by the incomparably brilliant Jennifer Jason Leigh, and surely one of her best.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham are a good match portraying vastly different siblings, but only Winningham is able to bring something convincing or substantial to her role. Leigh, playing bar-band singer and alcoholic Sadie Flood, constantly leans on older sis Georgia, an acclaimed folk singer in the Joni Mitchell mold. Perhaps due to her double duties as co-producer on the film, Leigh seems to have boxed herself into a corner: she isn't credible as a singer and, even if this is intentional, gives herself far too much screen-time at the microphone. Probably hoping for a tour-de-force, Leigh is wire-drawn and nervous and jagged; however, we simply do not see any talent within this character (Leigh is obviously a solid actress, but she makes decisions here that wall us off from her). If Sadie had even the slightest bit of charisma or appeal, we might be able to buy into the concept that she gets the (small) breaks that she does. As it is, the likelihood of her ever getting up on stage is slim. Director Ulu Grosbard crafts a few intense dramatic sequences, and the editing at the finale juxtaposes Sadie's bar performance with Georgia's sold-out arena show--both singing the same song--and it's a sadly nuanced moment...but really, what's the point? *1/2 from ****

This film presents a fairly accurate portrayal of the chaotic, symbiotic environment of the bar band music scene. If you are looking for a coherent, one-two-three plot and are expecting realism at the same time, forget it. You would be missing the point. Having "been there" and "done that", I can affirm that this movie does a pretty good job at portraying interesting and realistic snapshot views of people in this particular music genre. In addition, this film even goes so far as to attempt realistic discriminations between different types of musicians (e.g., between ones who want to just succeed, ones who just want to play, ones who can't get their lives together enough to make it, starving artists, etc.).This film initially may seem innocuous and even simplistic to some casual viewers. I must admit that I didn't get much the first time I casually viewed it. "Georgia" is very layered and textural -- the more you stand back and look, the more you can almost reach out and touch it -- but, as with most true art -- one must stand back and really take a look at it to appreciate the many layers. The layers of this particular artwork is done via multiple, sometimes concurrent, relationships, which intermittently share the foreground and the background with some really great music and various elements of the music scene. There is the relationship between Georgia and Sadie -- of course, the most obvious relationship that maintains precedence, but if you spend too much time on this one, you will miss so much. There is the Sadie-Axel layer; the Sadie-Georgia's husband layer; the Sadie-Herman layer; the Sadie-and the music layer; the Sadie-Sadie layer; the Sadie-drugs layer; the Sadie-father layer; on and on. All these relationships involving Jennifer J.L's character puts a lot of pressure on J.J.L, and I think she brings it about beautifully. I don't find her "overacting" in any scene -- the only "overacting" that is done is done by Sadie, not by J.J.L.J.J.L. has rarely disappointed me in her character portrayals. I have always found her an interesting sort of actress: she does not have that obvious physical "stand out" star quality about her, but more of a quiet, well-played character actress, genuine star quality about her. I think she, along with the other actors in this movie, did a terrific job with very difficult material (about a very unusual and difficult, but interesting, lifestyle), and this movie calls out to me to watch it every time it plays on my satellite service.This movie should not be judged along with "standards". It is a rare piece of filmwork, and should be judged entirely on its own standalone merits.