Once (2007)
Directed by John Carney
A vacuum repairman moonlights as a street musician and hopes for his big break. One day a Czech immigrant, who earns a living selling flowers, approaches him with the news that she is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. The pair decide to collaborate, and the songs that they compose reflect the story of their blossoming love.
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5 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Once to
John Carney, the writer-director of Once, returns with a valentine to '80s pop and the Irish kids who embraced it.
John Carney (who also made Once) has a lighter touch and also a greater sense of depth and poignancy.
His debut film, the raw and aching Once, features Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová as two lonely people making music together to express the emotions they can’t voice to each other.
John Carney’s Sundance-originating and technically (very) low-key Once became an independent sensation then, and has been enjoying an extended shelf life ever since (thanks to its transition to the Broadway stage), as well as a secure legacy in the catalog of musical cinema.
Switching to movies, Carney won acclaim in 2006 with “Once.”
John Carney's latest tale of random hearts brought together by song may not have the rough-and-ready brilliance of Once (or a tune to match Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová's Oscar winning Falling Slowly ) but it does a surprisingly good job of making us believe in the slightly preposterous idea of KK recording an album on the streets of New York.
And yet, frustratingly, Begin Again—a spiritual successor to writer-director John Carney’s 2006 surprise hit, Once —occasionally works, and even merits its loop-back structure.
Yes, I realize it’s not the most original concept and that, on paper, John Carney’s latest film looks an awful lot like “Once,” the miraculous 2006 musical that put the Irish writer-director on the map.
There’s a parallel to be found with Carney’s repurposing of the “lovelorn city-dwellers bond while recording an album” premise from his weightlessly beguiling 2006 debut Once into a star-powered redemption yarn that lives for its next montage.
“Don’t compare it to Once, don’t compare it to Once, don’t compare it to Once, don’t compare it to-”…
An improvised song-and-dance routine is the film’s most charming, reminiscent of John Carney’s great 2006 Dublin-set romance “Once” and a nice break from “Blue Valentine’s” indie score by Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear.
It never reaches the level of something like 2007’s Oscar-winning Irish drama Once, but Cooper and Gaga sell their relationship as a genuine love connection, despite its seemingly quick development.
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Written and directed by Siân Heder, “CODA” is the antithesis of what you’d expect, filled with so much music and singing that one might wonder if Heder is an alias for filmmaker John Carney who brought us the music-themed films “Once,” “Begin Again,” and “Sing Street.”
In that sense, it has some of the same resonance of such other movies about musicians such as “Sing Street” and “Once.”