Miles Ahead (2015)

"Miles Ahead" is chaotically put together, difficult to follow, and difficult to care about. Miles Davis (Don Cheadle), the main character, is depicted as a repugnant human being. The film plays shopworn musician biopic tricks in nasty ways to manipulate the audience. In interviews, Don Cheadle has said that he needed to get a big white star to appear in the film, and thus he built the film around the MacGuffin of Davis being interviewed by Ewan McGregor, allegedly the big white star. My guess is that Cheadle's funding didn't come through not because he is a black actor playing a black musician. My guess is that the funding was hard to find because the script was not a commercial script, no matter the color of the main character.

The film opens with a confusing mishmash of images. Miles Davis is being interviewed. We don't see the interviewer. There is film in the background of the Jack Johnson fight. This confused me. I know the fight took place over a hundred years ago and I did not know that anyone filmed it – meaning I was losing focus on the movie I was watching, and drawn into thinking about the movie in the movie. Not a good thing.

The scene is shot in extreme close-up. We see Don Cheadle's mouth and fingers as he smokes a cigarette; we also see an ashtray. This extreme close-up gives the film a claustrophobic feeling. As the film went on I began to wonder if the tight close-ups were used because there wasn't enough of a budget to create a set that reflected the time periods of the film: the 1970s and the 1950s.

The unseen interviewer asks Davis about jazz. Davis interrupts the interviewer and commands, "Don't call my music jazz." He insists that calling his music "jazz" stereotypes it. That's one of the dumbest and most petulant things I've ever heard a character say. Of course Miles Davis was a jazz musician. Ordering someone not to call jazz jazz is the demand of a petty dictator who wants control of language. The film was just beginning and I already hated the main character. And I was really sick of all that focus on his cigarette and his ashtray.

Ewan McGregor, the big white star meant to offer his magical powers to get purportedly rich whites to underwrite the movie and buy tickets to see it, shows up as Dave, a Rolling Stone reporter. He knocks on Miles Davis' door. Davis opens the door and immediately sucker punches Dave, a visitor he has never met. At this point, the film has offered me no reason to like Miles Davis, and lots of reasons to dislike him. There's more. He has a receding hairline and he wears his hair long – an older man's unsuccessful attempt to look young. And he dresses like a blind pimp. He's wearing a hip-length, turquoise and black jacket made of fabric best reserved for upholstery in houses of ill repute.

Davis has already proved he's cool by sucker punching a white man. He also proves he's cool in other cheap, manipulative ways. The film consists of a jumble of scenes shot in the 1970s and flashbacks to the 1950s. In the 1950s scene, Davis is in a car with a young white woman. The young white woman behaves foolishly. The young black woman in the front scene rolls her eyes at this white girl's buffoonery. So, Davis is cool because he can get a white girl.

The car pulls up to a house. A very beautiful young black woman is on the street. This is Frances Taylor, whom Davis will marry. He asks his white date for a twenty dollar bill. She gives him one

Fmovies: MILES AHEAD --. World Premiere at Berlin 2016. Non competition special reviewed By Alex Deleon

An Incandescent reincarnation of legendary American Jazz Musician Miles Davis by Don Cheadle, directing, producing, playing trumpet, and playing Miles himself in bushy Afro hairdo in a multi-faceted one man tour de force. This very special biopic took the Paying non-professional German audience in the cavernous Friedrichstadt Palast by storm, arousing enthusiastic ten minute ovations (two of them! -- once at end of the film itself and again after the end credits finish rolling).

On stage after the screening Mr. Cheadle, a little guy (but a giant on screen, like Japanese samurai star Toshiro Mifune) was evidently taken aback by such an unexpectedly thunderous reception from a foreign audience which he acknowledged with extreme modesty. This is not exactly a full biopic in the ordinary sense of the word as it concentrates on a mere couple of days in the life of the black American jazz legend, but these are explosive enough to convey a full picture of the angry arrogant wound-up artist who lived behind the trumpet. Don Cheadle has come a light year in the movie business since his screen debut as a G.I. in the Viet Nam war film, Hamburger Hill, 1987, or Boogie Nights as a porn star opposite Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore in 1997.

In the press conference which preceded the screening Cheadle said that this film which he worked on for six years, learning to play the trumpet in the process, is practically a lifelong dream come true. He grew up on the music of Davis and ever since entering the business has had such a project in mind. However, in the event, he states that he did not want to make a film "about Miles Davis" but rather a film in the skin of Miles Davis, as if the gangsterlike trumpet virtuoso had come back to life to present himself in his own words. Speaking in the role with a typical negro mushy mouthed style identical to the way Miles actually spoke, not cleaned up for a middle class audience and foreign to the perfect "white" elocution that is natural to the black actor in every day life, this is a film that pulls no punches and is loaded to the gills with the F-word and the MF-word, translated into German in the subtitles as the much weaker "Wikser" (habitual masturbator) -- clearly German has no real equivalent for the standard American ebonic Mutha-f****r. No matter. Powerful unexpurgated trashy dialogue all the way and a fiery angry arrogant gun toting performance by Cheadle which accomplishes the artistic task he has set out for himself in this Magnum Opus of his Hollywood career.

The story Cheadle chooses to tell focuses on the period in Miles's life when, already a living legend but having been out of action for five years addicted to cocaine as well as booze, he is about to stage a comeback to perform once again live on stage. An extreme sleaseball of a Rolling Stone reporter (Ewan McGregor) comes knocking at his door demanding an interview, and will not take No for an answer even if this puts his own life at stake. Obviously at this point in his fame and notoriety any live interview with Miles Davis would make the career of any obtrusive little known jerk of a journalist. The Rolling Stoner works his way into Miles' marginally "good graces" by supplying him with oodles of Coke and becomes his companion in a wild run around town to recover a private tape of Davis's latest music from a bunch of sleazy music producers who have commandeere

As the reviews of Miles Ahead amass on the Internet I'll be interested to read all the different ways people will have to describe Don Cheadle's electrifying performance as jazz great Miles Davis. Or should I say "social music" great, a term Mr. Davis preferred to jazz, according to this biopic. I'd never heard this term before, looked it up online after the movie ended, but couldn't find any definition that fit what I thought Mr. Davis might have meant. What it meant to me though, after being treated to a sumptuous sampling of Miles Davis music in the film, is that there's no better musical expression of the human soul than jazz if done right. In Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle seems to be able to relate to that. As for his portrayal of Miles Davis in general, he plays a man who lays everything on the line in everything he does. Total honesty. Total this feels right so I'm going to do it. No-bs, no-putting-up-with-bs attitude. From violence and crudeness to stunning beauty - this is humanity unadulterated. The movie's high points, to me, are the stunning beauty scenes - when Mr. Davis plays the horn. That is the culmination of everything.

Still, it's ironic that while Don Cheadle seems to get not only jazz, but the concept of creativity - starting off the movie with the Miles Davis quote "When you're creating your own sh**, man, even the sky ain't the limit" - Miles Ahead is limited by being formulaic. In other words, the movie itself is not jazz, though at times it tries to be and wants you to think it is. For example, there is too much clichéd man/woman relationship drama in the film, and while I get that Miles' love of women is necessary to portray for the all-important character development, Miles Ahead gets a little schmaltzy at times, if only because I'd seen the same kind of drama scenes more or less so many times before in so many Hollywood movies.

Overall, Miles Ahead is a passionate tribute, beautifully done, and the love that Don Cheadle had for the project and for Miles Davis really shines through.

Miles Ahead fmovies. Miles Ahead (2016) 1hr. 40 min.

Miles Davis is one of the best jazz musicians of all time. Davis was one of those musicians that really conveyed great talented passion and emotion in his trumpet playing. Miles made a great album in particular his 1959 masterpiece" Kind of Blue". Which Rolling Stone magazine voted it as one of the best albums of all time, regardless of genre of music. His life should've been made ages ago, unfortunately it took 2016 for a Davis film to be made, with Don Cheadle playing the great musician and also making his directorial debut.

The film takes place in 1980, where Davis hasn't made an album in five years and has recorded on but does not want the album released without his permission. He would prefer to snort his new drug of choice, cocaine than work on any releasable music. He is also hates to do interviews but a persistent one from Rolling Stone writer Dave (Ewan McGregor) who wants desperately to interview the legend and follows him to his record company at Columbia records and talks to a the President of Columbia, Harper (Michael Stahlberg) whose ethics are not honorable and demands Dave to coax Davis to send his most recent work to work with a talented musician (Keith Stansfield), who is also a junkie heroin addict. The one drug that Davis was once addicted to. Miles has no desire to give his boss anything and threatens his boss with a gun to leave him the hell alone.

Dave decides to take matters into his own hands with questionable ethics, to get his dream of an interview with a legend and says he know someone who can give him good coke. On the basis of drug use they become good friends. The first part of the movie is about a cat and mouse game of Davis music recording becomes of tug of war of who has the upper hand in who will eventually get Davis most recent recording. Another main subplot is more interesting is the relationship between Davis and his greatest love and muse Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corlneaidi) which takes place in the 1950's. The film deals with their courtship, marriage and Davis wanting Frances to give up her career as a dancer when they marry. To all of the predictable, nonetheless interesting because it is well acted are the relationships of Davis girlfriends and his infidelity and his addiction to a drug that makes him paranoid. The film contends that the relationship with Frances gave him the greatest creative musical prowess and his music was at its great peak when Davis dated and married Frances.

The film other subplot is also not very original but the car chase sequences back and forth between Davis and Dave vs. Harper and is crooked associate's is not very interesting and lacking in energy. Miles Davis deserved a better treatment in a subplot that is right out of the many car chases we have seen in the movies since the standard of car chases in the great 1971 action cop movie The French Connection. A car chase still can be entertaining if those scenes can offer something thrilling, this film action scenes are rather dull and pointless. The other love story is predictable but well-acted with Corlnealdi a standout as Davis's greatest love. Don Cheadle is very good as the great trumpeter, I just wish it was in a movie that dealt with a more interesting story of Davis life, maybe coming to terms with his coke addiction and his marriage to the great actress Cicely Tyson. Cheadle does a very good job of directing his first feature, but as it stands, more should have been made of his personal struggles with addict

This film had wonderful music, but I thought it incoherent and self-indulgent. If someone who doesn't know a lot about jazz, and thinks this film would be a good place to start, they will probably be put off, and worse, will deduce that many jazz musicians are druggies and nasty people.

It isn't a biopic. It is a sketch of a very small part of Miles' life. Even though I know he was a difficult person, this film emphasized the negatives in his personality rather than the positives.

It is a wasted opportunity to make a memorable film about this great musician.

"Miles Ahead" (2015 release; 100 min.) is a movie about the jazz legend Miles Davis. As the movie opens, we are in 1980, and Miles is being interviewed, and comments to the reporter: "Don't call my music jazz, it's social music!". It's not long before another reporter, Rolling Stone's Dave Braden, chases down Miles, to write a "come-back story in Miles' own words". We then go back to the 1950s, as Miles is breaking big. One day he meets Francis, and he is immediately smitten with her. To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: first and foremost, this movie is a labor of love AND a tour-de-force by Don Cheadle, who stars in the title role and directs, and he also co-wrote the script and co-produced. His performance as Miles Davis is spot-on, and towers above everyone else. Sorry Ewan McGregor (as the Rolling Stone reporter), and sorry also Emayatzy Corinealdi (as Frances). Cheadle's brilliant performance covers up the somewhat confusing back-and-forth between the "present" (i.e. late 70s) and the flashbacks in the 50s. Please note that "Miles Ahead" is not a bio-pic, nor is it intended as one. Cheadle (whose vision for the film was fully supported by the Miles family) simply picked two periods of Miles' life and attempts to give us a flavor of what Miles Davis the man was like. At that, I think Cheadle succeeds. If you don't care for the music of Miles Davis (?), by all means avoid this film, as it is chock-full of outstanding music (check out the excellent soundtrack, available here on Amazon). The very last scene of the movie is a live performance with participating in the band none other that Herbie Hancock, Gary Clark Jr. and Esperanza Spalding, just to name those. Just fantastic. Last but not least, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that 95% of the movie was shot on location here in Cincinnati. Yes indeed, just like Todd Haynes' film "Carol" a few months ago, there are certain sections of Cincinnati that apparently easily stand in for New York back in the day.

"Miles Ahead" finally opened this weekend on two screens at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, and the Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at was attended quite nicely. I doubt that this movie is going score huge at the box office, but hopefully it'll find some legs at the art-house theater circuit. If you are curious to find out more about Miles Davis, or simply want to admire the stellar performance of Don Cheadle, you cannot go wrong with "Miles Ahead", be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED