''Blaze'' is a 2018 American biographical

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

film directed by Ethan Hawke based on the life of country musician

Blaze Foley Michael David Fuller (December 18, 1949 – February 1, 1989), better known by his stage name Blaze Foley, was an American country music singer-songwriter, poet, and artist active in Austin, Texas. Background Foley was born Michael David Fuller ...

. The screenplay by Hawke and Sybil Rosen was adapted from the memoir ''Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze'' by Rosen. It stars musician Ben Dickey as Foley. The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and was released in the United States on August 17, 2018, by

IFC Films IFC Films is an American film production and distribution company based in New York. It is an offshoot of IFC owned by AMC Networks. It distributes mainly independent films under its own name, select foreign films and documentaries under its ...

. This was

Kris Kristofferson Kristoffer Kristofferson (born June 22, 1936) is a retired American singer, songwriter and actor. Among his songwriting credits are " Me and Bobby McGee", " For the Good Times", " Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and " Help Me Make It Through the ...

’s final film appearance before his retirement.

Plot

The movie shows scenes of Foley's life and career, interspersed between two of Foley's friends being interviewed on the radio and his final performance and recording.

Cast

Production

Principal photography took place in and around Village Studios in East Feliciana,

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bord ...

and a small amount of photography in

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

in early 2017.

Reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads: "As lyrical and bittersweet as the music its subject left behind, ''Blaze'' takes a decidedly unconventional -- yet richly rewarding -- approach to the musical biopic." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score of 75 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". On ''

RogerEbert.com ''RogerEbert.com'' is an American film review website that archives reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and also shares other critics' reviews and essays. The website, underwritten by the ''Chicago Sun-Times ...

'', Nick Allen raved that the film is "hands down the best movie of its kind since ''

Inside Llewyn Davis ''Inside Llewyn Davis'' () is a 2013 period black comedy musical drama film written, directed, produced, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1961, the film follows one week in the life of Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac in his breakt ...

''" and added "This movie is all Foley, and the confidence in his words proves incredibly rewarding for Hawke as a cinematic storyteller himself."

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 6443294, Blaze 2018 films 2010s English-language films Films directed by Ethan Hawke American biographical films Films about music and musicians IFC Films films Biographical films about musicians 2010s biographical films 2010s American films 2018 independent films