Still running

Rating: 10/10 (14 March 2010)

I've read sentences longer than the scenes in this movie. It starts off at a sprint and keeps going and going and going. It's all about hair, shoes, uppers and downers, teenage angst, loneliness and heartache, and it all feels true. Rather than father hatred there's father longing, the sex is raw but not exploitative, and the performances are sensational. Riley Keough (Cherie's sister) and Michael Shannon are terrific, and Tatum O'Neal nails the very small role of Cherie's mother. "It seems that two qualities are necessary if a great artist is to remain creative to the end of a long life; he must on the one hand retain an abnormally keen awareness of life, must always demand the impossible and when he cannot have it, must despair. The burden of the mystery must be with him day and night. He must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy." That was written about Goethe a long time ago, and could be written about Joan Jett today. Cool movie.