Tomb Raider

Last night I saw a Thursday preview of Tomb Raider and, honestly, it was so much better than I expected it to be; in fact, I had a lot of fun watching it!  Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West) has been missing for seven years until his daughter Lara (Alicia Vikander) finds a message left by him about a cursed queen called Himiko buried on an uninhabited island off the coast of Japan.  A mysterious group known as Trinity wants to locate Himiko's tomb (the reasons why are a bit murky).  Croft begs his daughter to destroy all of his research because opening the tomb will unleash a curse on the world but she uses it to try and locate him.  Despite the fact that this is most definitely an action movie, and a pretty good one at that, it has an emotional core that really resonated with me.  Lara's entire young adulthood has been influenced by her father's absence and she alternates between mourning him and being angry at him for abandoning her.  Some of the dialogue is a bit cheesy but I enjoyed the interactions between Lara and her father as she ultimately forgives him and assumes his role (which sets up a sequel nicely).  I really like Alicia Vikander as an actress and she does a nice job with this role.  Not only does she give an incredibly physical performance in some great action sequences (we see her signature move of dangling by one arm several times) but she also gives the role a lot of pathos.  She shows the fact that she is hurt and exhausted and there is one particular scene where she is devastated after killing someone who is attacking her that is really powerful.  Of course, as I previously mentioned, the action sequences are fantastic.  I especially liked a chase through the houseboats in the harbor in Hong Kong and the tomb scenes reminded me a lot of the Indiana Jones movies.  This movie is very entertaining and I recommend it for a fun night out.

Note:  This is not the first time that Dominic West has played Alicia Vikander's father (go here).

Thoroughbreds

I love a good psychological thriller and Thoroughbreds, which I had the chance to see last night at my favorite art house theater, is a darkly comedic one that I quite enjoyed.  The narrative revolves around two wealthy and privileged girls living in a Connecticut suburb.  Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) is seemingly perfect and impeccably put together while Amanda (Olivia Cooke) is a disheveled sociopath who has been forced to leave school over an incident with a horse (thankfully only hinted at rather than shown).  They were once childhood friends but had grown apart until Amanda's mother hires Lily ostensibly to tutor Amanda but, more importantly, to once again befriend the isolated girl.  Neither girl is who she first appears to be and their early interactions are characterized by rapid-fire dialogue as the girls passively aggressively manipulate each other.  They soon bond over a plan to murder Lily's cruel stepfather, which involves coercing a down-and-out drug dealer (Anton Yelchin).  There is a twist at the end of the film which makes you reevaluate everything you think you know about each girl and I found it to be unbelievably unsettling (in the very best way).  I was fascinated by these two amoral characters and how privilege can completely skew a person's sense of right and wrong.  The script is absolutely brilliant and, while the premise may seem familiar, there are enough completely unexpected moments to make it highly original.  The camera work is masterful making this film both suspenseful and menacing, more for what you don't see rather than what you do, and the sound design does much to enhance the sense of unease (I will never hear a rowing machine in quite the same way again). Both Taylor-Joy and Cooke give fantastic performances and have tremendous chemistry but Yelchin, in my opinion, steals every scene he is in.  This may be my favorite movie of 2018 (so far) and I highly recommend it!

A Wrinkle in Time

Last night I saw a Thursday preview of A Wrinkle in Time and, despite the fact that it is visually gorgeous with an important message about simply being yourself, I have to admit that I really did not like it.  Dr. Alex Murry (Chris Pine) has discovered a way to travel great distances through the universe using a tesseract, or a wrinkle in the fabric of time and space, and then he disappears for four years.  His daughter Meg (Storm Reid) is not handling his absence well but her younger brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) introduces her to three strange beings named Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey) who take the two of them along with Calvin (Levi Miller), a school friend, on a journey through the universe to find him.  Meg ultimately must battle the evil in the universe with love to free both her father and her brother.  I first read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle when I was eleven years old and I absolutely loved it.  The problem with bringing a beloved work of fantasy to the screen is that it represents the filmmaker's vision and that may differ significantly from a reader's vision.  This is not necessarily the fault of the filmmakers but the images on the screen, while absolutely beautiful, did not in any way resemble what I saw in my mind when I read this book all of those years ago and I really couldn't get past that.  I always pictured the Mrs. Ws as being eccentric old ladies who were more like grandmotherly figures to Meg rather than outlandish beings with garish hair and makeup and gaudy costumes.  Sadly, that is not the only problem I had with this adaptation.  I thought all of the acting was terrible.  Witherspoon and Kaling ham it up at every turn with knowing looks at the camera and Winfrey gives one speech after another about self-empowerment and it gets rather tedious.  I didn't especially like what Zach Galifianakis, as the Happy Medium, and Michael Pena, as the Red Eyed Man, did with their roles and don't even get me started on the overly precocious McCabe.  Although she and Pine have an affecting moment together near the end of the movie, Reid didn't make me care about Meg as a character because she is so passive and just reacts to what other people do.  By the end of the movie I had lost whatever interest I had in the characters (I almost left the theater before the movie was over).  There are so many plot holes that it becomes a confusing mess and the audience is told, rather than shown, what is happening.  The CGI is laughably horrible and it is very obvious that the young actors are reacting to green screens.  It seems as if the only direction they were given was to flail their arms wildly as they run!  It really does pain me to say that I didn't like this movie because representation is so important but sometimes a movie with the best of intentions is still a bad movie.

Every Day

As a high school English teacher I read a lot of YA fiction because I am always on the lookout for good books to recommend to my students who are very reluctant readers.  To be honest, most of it is rubbish but I actually really loved Every Day by David Levithan because I thought it was incredibly clever and thought-provoking.  When I learned that a movie adaptation was in the works, I really hoped that it would be good.  I had the chance to see it yesterday and I liked it. A is a mysterious spirit who wakes up in a different body every day.  It is always someone the same age, although it can be someone of a different gender, race, and sexual orientation, who lives in the same geographical location.  A tries to integrate into the person's life and do as little damage as possible but everything changes when A inhabits Justin (Justice Smith).  While in Justin's body, A meets Justin's girlfriend Rhiannon (Angourie Rice) and feels an immediate connection to her.  Rhiannon also feels a connection to Justin that had never been there before as they spend a magical day at the beach together.  When A wakes up in another body (a girl named Amy) the next day, she seeks Rhiannon out and eventually tries to explain.  A continues seeking Rhiannon out even though there are consequences for those he inhabits (the story of Nathan believing he is possessed by the devil is less developed in the movie than the book).  As Rhiannon falls in love with A, she eventually realizes the difficulties with such a relationship.  In order to appreciate this movie you have to be willing to accept the concept (and ignore a few inconsistencies, such as how they are able to communicate using cell phones that belong to other people).  The reason why A inhabits different bodies every day is never explained but, in my opinion, that it not what this movie is all about.  Rather, it is about loving someone for who they are rather than their appearance and loving someone enough to let them go.  Rice gives an endearing performance and it is really easy to root for her.  I also liked how each of the different actors playing A give the character similar mannerisms.  This is definitely a movie that will appeal to the demographic for which it was meant (my screening was full of teenage girls) but I enjoyed it and recommend it for its sweet romance and powerful message.

Red Sparrow

I am a huge fan of espionage so I was really intrigued by Red Sparrow and went to see it yesterday.  Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is a ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow when she suffers a career ending injury at the hands of a fellow dancer.  Worried that she will no longer be able to support her ailing mother (Joely Richardson) she is coerced by her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts), an agent in Russian intelligence, to become a Sparrow, an agent trained to seduce her target to gain information.  After grueling training under the tutelage of the Matron (Charlotte Rampling) at State School 4, or “Sparrow School,” she is sent to Budapest to meet up with Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), a CIA agent, to learn the identity of the double agent he is running in Moscow.  I judge all spy movies on whether or not they can keep me guessing and this is an intense and suspenseful thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat trying to unravel who was double-crossing whom.  There is not a lot of action, like you would normally see in a typical spy thriller, but the character-driven intrigue is what creates the tension.  I think Jennifer Lawrence gives a good performance and I wasn't at all bothered by her much-maligned accent.  There are some pretty graphic sex and torture scenes but, in my opinion, they are appropriate within the context of the story and not at all gratuitous.  One particularly disturbing scene where an attempted rape is recreated at the Sparrow school is used to help Dominika learn to detach herself from her body.  It is exploitative but that is the entire point of the movie.  She has been forced into this situation by men with power over her and that is what makes the final resolution so incredibly satisfying!  These scenes might bother some some sensitive viewers but I actually thought they were a lot tamer than what I was led led to believe.  I liked this movie quite a bit and I would recommend it to fans of the genre.

Note: I thought the nudity and sex in Atomic Blonde was much more gratuitous.

Annihilation

I battled the flu last week so I had to wait a few days before I could see Annihilation, a film I have been anticipating for months.  I finally had a chance to see it last night and, while it is definitely not for everyone, I thought it was absolutely brilliant.  The film begins with the interrogation of Lena (Natalie Portman), a biologist, who is seemingly the only member of a top secret expedition to have survived.  Then there is a flashback to a meteor falling to the Earth and hitting a lighthouse.  Next we see Lena's husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) return after having been missing for over a year.  He is seemingly the only member of a top secret military expedition to have survived but he soon falls ill.  Both he and Lena are taken to a military base near the lighthouse which is now surrounded by a strange and ever expanding shimmer.  Every expedition into the shimmer has been unsuccessful and Kane is the only person to have survived.  Lena volunteers for the next expedition, made up of scientists rather than military personnel (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Tuva Novotny), because she wants to know what made her husband volunteer for what amounts to a suicide mission.  The narrative alternates between Lena's interrogation and the mission into the shimmer where the scientists discover that plants and animals have mutated and that their own DNA might possibly be mutating as well.  Unable to trust their own bodies and minds the team disintegrates until Lena confronts what is in the lighthouse.  In my opinion this film is a metaphor for man's self-destructive nature but I feel that everyone who sees it will have a different, yet completely valid, interpretation.  The nonlinear storytelling reveals just enough information to keep the audience on edge and constantly guessing and I have to admit that I was thoroughly frightened at times.  The visuals alternate between vivid and swirling colors with amazing plants and animals and dark shadows filled with monsters so you never know what to expect.  There are scenes of terror that will make you jump as they battle some mutated animals but I found the quiet scenes where the scientists begin to distrust one another to be even more menacing.  The score is brilliant with strange and unrecognizable sounds emanating from the shimmer which are incredibly unsettling and the music during the final climax contributes to such a feeling of dread that I count that scene as one of the scariest I've ever seen.  Again, this movie may not be for everyone.  There is certainly enough ambiguity to drive a person mad but that is what allowed me to have some epic conversations with complete strangers after my screening and that, in my opinion, is what makes a good science fiction thriller.  Go see it!

The Philadelphia Story

While I have seen a production of the play upon which the film is based, I had never seen The Philadelphia Story until it was screened yesterday as part of the TCM Big Screen Classics series.  I'm not sure why I had never seen it before because Cary Grant is one of my very favorite actors and who doesn't love Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn?  I absolutely loved this lively drawing room comedy!  Socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn) is about to marry George Kitterage (John Howard), a respectable if boring self-made man.  On the eve of her wedding her ne'er-do-well ex-husband Dexter Haven (Grant) shows up with a reporter, Macauley "Mike" Connor (Stewart), and photographer, Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey), to disrupt the proceedings.  Tracy eventually finds herself torn between Dexter, Mike, and George but first she must figure out who she is before she can figure out who she should marry!  Grant, Hepburn, and Stewart are so well-suited for their roles and give wonderful and engaging performances but, in my opinion, Virginia Weidler steals the show as Tracy's teenage sister Dinah, especially during the scene when she is showing off for Mike and Liz.  The beautiful interiors and elegant costumes are perfect for a fun bit of escapism.  The script is incredibly intelligent, sophisticated, and witty, filled with one-liners delivered at lightening speed.  I'm not a huge fan of romantic comedies but there were many times when I laughed out loud, as did many people in my screening.  In my opinion this film is just about perfect and I am so glad that I was able to see it on the big screen!

Black Panther

Last night, after a very challenging week, I had the chance to see a Thursday preview of the latest entry in the MCU franchise, Black Panther, and it was so much fun!  There was not an empty seat in the giant IMAX theater and the crowd was boisterous, to say the least!  More importantly, this movie is absolutely awesome!  After the death of his father, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns to Wakanda, an advanced African nation due to plentiful supplies of an alien metal called vibranium, to become king.  He also gains superhuman abilities by ingesting an herb filled with the vibranium.  Soon after, there is a challenger to the throne who wants to use vibranium-enhanced weapons to fight oppression around the world.  In my opinion, Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) is the best Marvel villain to date because, while he is absolutely ruthless, he is not entirely unsympathetic.  After an epic battle with Black Panther there is a moment of incredible pathos between the two characters that is so refreshing to see in a superhero movie.  While it is most definitely an origin story, I found it to be very compelling with complex character development not just for T'Challa but for all of the characters.  I especially liked Shuri (Letitia Wright), T'Challa's younger sister who is almost like Q in the James Bond movies because she creates all of the amazing gadgets for him to use.  The world building in this movie is spectacular!  Wakanda is a futuristic country and the visual effects are absolutely dazzling!  The action sequences are a lot of fun and I particularly loved the car chase through the streets of Busan because one of the cars is driven by remote control and a battle involving armored rhinos!  Boseman is so charismatic in the lead role but everyone in the all-star cast (Lupita Nyong'o, Daniel Kaluuya, Angela Bassett, and Forest Whitaker) is outstanding. Andy Serkis gives an over the top performance as a South African arms dealer trying to sell weapons enhanced with vibranium and Martin Freeman has a fun role as a CIA agent.  I loved this movie and I highly recommend it!  In fact, it might just be my favorite superhero movie yet because it is as thought-provoking as it is fun to watch!  Marvel has certainly set the bar very high for the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War!

The Death Cure

Yesterday I went to see Maze Runner: The Death Cure, the final installment of movies based on the popular YA novels by James Dashner.  Thomas (Dylan O'Brien), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), Frypan (Dexter Darden), and Brenda (Rosa Salazar) must infiltrate W.C.K.D.'s headquarters in the heavily fortified "Last City" to save Minho (Ki Hong Lee) and the rest of the immune subjects from the torture they are undergoing to develop a cure for the Flare.  Thomas must reconcile his feelings for Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) and her betrayal as he faces Janson (Aidan Gillen) one final time.  Honestly, I found this movie to be unbelievably repetitive because it was basically a two hour rescue mission with nothing new added to the narrative.  I think they could have added 20 minutes to The Scorch Trials and that would have been a satisfying conclusion to the story.  I didn't even find the action sequences to be all that compelling because we just see characters running through city streets and corridors with debris falling all around them and soldiers, with spectacularly bad aim, shooting at them.  There are also way too many convenient rescues with minor characters showing up from out of nowhere at just the right moment.  The two best sequences happen very early on when the Gladers hijack a train transporting immune children to W.C.K.D. headquarters and when the three main characters fight off a group of "Cranks" infected with the Flare in a tunnel and then it becomes really boring.  The bottom line is that this movie is only for those of you who, like me, are compulsive enough to want to finish out the trilogy.

Get Out

I have now seen all of the nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture (click the title for my commentaries on Phantom Thread, The Post, Darkest Hour, Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Dunkirk).  For some reason I missed seeing Get Out when it was initially released but, luckily, Megaplex Theatres are screening all of the Best Picture nominees and I had a chance to see it last night.  Get Out is one of the best psychological thrillers that I have seen in quite some time and, if you haven't had a chance to see it, don't miss it while it is in theaters now!  Rose (Allison Williams) invites her black boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) to spend the weekend at her wealthy parents' secluded estate on a lake.  Her father Dean (Bradley Whitford), mother Missy (Catherine Keener), and brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) all make awkward attempts to put him at ease.  He soon notices that the black cook and caretaker (Betty Gabriel and Marcus Henderson, respectively) are acting very strangely which puts him on guard.  Missy, a psychotherapist, offers to hypnotize him to help him stop smoking but the hypnosis is unsettling to him.  When the family holds a party, all of the guests, most of whom are elderly or impaired in some way, admire him for his physique or abilities.  Feeling a sense of dread, he asks Rose to leave but he eventually learns the real reason he has been brought to the estate.  This movie is deeply unsettling, but in the best way possible!  The tension builds and builds to a final resolution that I was not expecting (I don't know how I was able to avoid the spoilers).  The script is absolutely brilliant, very effectively combining elements of social commentary with horror which makes for an edge-of-your-seat survival thriller!  Kaluuya gives an excellent performance, especially in a scene where he remembers his mother's death.  This movie is funny, scary, and thought-provoking and I highly recommend it!

Note:  This year I really liked, and gave positive reviews to, all of the nominees.  But if the Academy were to ask for my opinion I would give the Oscar to Call Me By Your Name for its beautiful portrayal of first love!

Hostiles

I've been anticipating the movie Hostiles since I saw the first trailer but, since it opened in SLC during Sundance, I had to wait until last night to see it!  Christian Bale plays Joseph Blocker, a hardened Captain in the U.S. Cavalry stationed at Ft. Berringer in New Mexico in 1892.  He is nearing retirement so he is given a final assignment to escort a dying Cheyenne chief named Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family, who have been held prisoner at the fort, back to their tribal lands in Montana.  Blocker bitterly refuses because Yellow Hawk is responsible for the deaths of many of his fellow officers but, when threatened with court martial and the loss of his pension, he grudgingly concedes but takes every opportunity to humiliate the chief as they begin the journey.  Soon they encounter Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike), a woman living on the frontier whose entire family has been massacred by Comanche warriors (this sequence reminded me a great deal of The Searchers) and they convince her to join them.  Their journey is perilous (everything happens to them reminding me of The Revenant) and the only means of survival is through cooperation which eventually leads to acceptance and understanding.  A subplot involving a Cavalry officer (Ben Foster) being escorted to trial for murder is introduced midway through the film which serves to emphasize the atrocities committed by Blocker against Native American tribes and Bale does an outstanding job of portraying his inner torment.  The narrative is incredibly predictable but having a deeply flawed character ultimately find redemption is a theme that always works for me.  The cinematography is absolutely stunning with wide shots of beautiful scenery and, as I mentioned, Christian Bale gives an incredible performance as does Rosamund Pike.  I do have two criticisms:  the pacing is extremely slow and meditative and I would have liked to have had more character development for the Cheyenne in order to see their point of view.  However, I would definitely recommend this film.

Phantom Thread

The Academy Awards for Best Picture were announced last week and I've seen all but two of them (click on the title to read my commentaries for The Post, Darkest Hour, Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Dunkirk).  Since I always like to see all of the nominees before the big ceremony I decided to cross the remaining two off my list this week.  I started with Phantom Thread (which opened in SLC during Sundance) last night.  In the glamorous fashion world of post-war London, the House of Woodcock is run by Reynolds (Daniel Day-Lewis), a difficult, self-indulgent, meticulous, and fastidious designer, and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville).  Women come and go in the self-proclaimed confirmed bachelor's life and he has Cyril dismiss them whenever they interfere with his genius.  Then he meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a free-spirited waitress who becomes his muse and, eventually, his lover.  She immediately upsets his well-ordered world and it seems that she, too, will be dismissed but Alma gives as good as she gets in a twist that I honestly did not see coming.  It is a film that, I suspect, will not appeal to everyone because it is more character driven than plot driven but I was absolutely enthralled by the constant volleying back and forth between the three characters for dominance.  There is a scene where Reynolds takes Alma's measurements which, in my mind, is absolutely brilliant because it reveals each of the character's motivations without a word.  Reynolds is consumed by his need to reinvent Alma, Cyril is coolly assessing her rival for Reynolds' attention, and Alma is hopeful that she will become more than just a model.  I love Daniel Day-Lewis and he gives a mesmerizing performance (rumored to be his last).  In one scene he is so incredibly debonair and charming that it is easy to see how a woman could be completely undone by just a smile but in the next he is a petulant child complaining about too much noise at breakfast and his steely gaze over the top of his glasses could reduce a woman to tears.  He is simply riveting in every scene and I am sure that I will have to own a copy just to watch him work his magic over and over again.  Krieps and Manville are also excellent, particularly in a scene where the two women have a battle of wills over a doctor's visit.  The film is gorgeous to look at and I loved the swelling piano and strings of the score.  Again, this film is not for everyone but it is right up my alley and I loved it!

Sundance Film Festival 2018

Another successful Sundance Film Festival has concluded and I thoroughly enjoyed my experience this year.  I was able to see fifteen films, including everything that I really wanted to see, and I liked them all, some more than others.  My first film was You Were Never Really Here which stars Joaquin Phoenix as tormented hit man, suffering from PTSD as the result of an abusive childhood and his experiences as a soldier in Iraq, whose weapon of choice is a hammer.  He is hired to rescue a young girl but, when the rescue goes awry, he discovers that he was set up and vows vengeance on everyone involved.  It is a brutal but strangely beautiful film about a deeply flawed character finding redemption which is a favorite theme of mine.  Next I saw Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, another film starring Joaquin Phoenix.  This is the true story about cartoonist John Callahan after he becomes paralyzed in an alcohol-related car accident.  He uses his cartoons, which feature very dark humor, as a way of coping with his paralysis and as a means of achieving sobriety.  Phoenix gives a riveting performance, as does Jonah Hill as his sponsor, and I liked the inclusion of Callahan's actual cartoons.  My next film was Blindspotting which I picked because it stars Daveed Diggs (the original Lafayette/Jefferson in Hamilton).  Diggs and Rafael Casal play Collin and Miles, two childhood best friends who now have a tense relationship.  Collin has recently been released from prison and is about to complete his probation.  We eventually learn that both of them committed the crime but, because Collin is black, he was the only one held responsible.  There are a lot of themes explored in this film but I found it to be an incredibly powerful commentary about racism that resonated with me deeply.  Diggs was at the Q&A after the film which just about blew my mind!  Next up was Lizzie, one of my most anticipated films of the festival.  It is a psychological thriller exploring the reasons behind the killing of Lizzie Borden's family.  Both Chloe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart give outstanding performances and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I saw it.  Another highly anticipated film was Colette, which tells the true story of one of the most celebrated writers from the Belle Epoque.  Keira Knightley stars in this lush bio-pic about a woman whose husband takes credit for her work until she eventually asserts her independence.  I love a good period piece but this also taps into the current zeitgeist of female empowerment.  Next, I was able to attend a free midnight screening of the documentary Believer about Dan Reynolds, the Imagine Dragons frontman, and his attempts to reconcile his LDS faith with the church's policy towards its LGTBQ members.  This documentary is extremely well done and finds just the right balance between highlighting a significant problem within the church (suicide is currently the number one cause of death for young people in Utah) while still being respectful.  I love Imagine Dragons and I really respect Dan Reynolds for the position he has taken.  Last Monday my only film was Wildlife, the directorial debut of Paul Dano (who was at the Q&A after the film).  In the late 1950s, a family with a history of moving from place to place has recently settled in a rural town in Montana.  The teenage son must deal with the disintegration of his parents' marriage when his father leaves his mother on her own to fight wild fires.  It is a simple but tragic story, anchored by an incredible performance by Carey Mulligan as a woman trapped by her circumstances.  Tuesday night I saw Hereditary, a horror film about the devastating effect a mysterious woman's death has on her family.  This film has an almost unbearable feeling of tension leading up to the final resolution.  I like to be genuinely scared, rather than shocked, by horror films and this one legitimately scared me (and the rest of the audience as well because there was much nervous laughter and even screaming).  On Wednesday I was able to take my students to a screening of Ophelia.  In my opinion, Ophelia is the most thinly drawn character and her fate is the most unsatisfactory in Shakespeare's version so I found her backstory to be incredibly compelling and her final resolution to be empowering in this retelling.  The film is beautiful and Daisy Ridley is fantastic in the title role.  My only complaint is that the final duel deviated from Lisa Klein's novel (upon which the film is based), turning what could have been a powerful moment into a silly slow-motion melodrama.  On Saturday I had three films!  The first was An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn which is a comedy of the absurd.  I don't even know how to describe this farce except to say that the over-the-top performances by Aubrey Plaza, Emile Hirsch, and Jemaine Clement made me laugh out loud.  The next film was The Miseducation of Cameron Post, starring Chloe Grace Moretz in a truly affecting performance as a young woman who is sent by her Evangelical family to a gay conversion camp after she is found having sex with a girl.  It is a poignant look at a group of teens learning to accept themselves.  The last film of the day was Puzzle which, surprisingly, ended up being a favorite from the festival.  Kelly Macdonald plays a wife and mother living an uneventful life in the suburbs who discovers a passion for jigsaw puzzles which leads to her awakening.  Who knew that a character driven film about completing puzzles could be so compelling?  As director Marc Turtletaub stated in the Q&A, it is a coming-of-age story about a 40 year old woman and I really liked it.  Yesterday I also had three films, beginning with Hearts Beat Loud.  I loved this film so much!  It is a tender story about a father-daughter relationship starring Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons and it is just lovely!  During the summer before she leaves for college, a young woman begins writing songs with her father and, when one of them becomes popular on Spotify, he tries to compel her to stay in order get a record deal until he realizes that he needs to let her go.  I absolutely loved the scene where Frank hears their song being played in a coffee shop!  The next film was The Happy Prince, starring Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde during the last years of his life after being imprisoned for gross indecency.  Everett gives an amazing performance but I sometimes found the timeline to be a bit muddled as it is framed by Wilde's recollections on his deathbed interspersed with nonlinear flashbacks.  As a teacher of British literature, I really loved the use of Wilde's writings as voice-over narration throughout the film.  My final film of the festival was The Catcher Was a Spy which was a highly coveted ticket.  Paul Rudd plays Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who joins the OSS during World War II and is tasked with determining whether Germany is building an atomic bomb.  I thought the ending was a bit anticlimactic but I enjoyed it as a fan of espionage films.  It was a wonderful ten days and, as always, my favorite part was talking to the people I met in line.  My favorite conversation was with two really cool guys about the brilliance of A Ghost Story which screened at Sundance last year!  I can hardly wait for next year!

The Post

Since yesterday was a day off from school I decided to see The Post and it is simply marvelous.  Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) is the only female publisher of a newspaper after taking over the Washington Post from her deceased husband.  She feels inadequate and often defers to the powerful men around her, including her editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks).  A source gives the New York Times documents chronicling the clandestine policies of four administrations in Vietnam.  When the New York Times receives an injunction against publishing any more stories, a reporter from the Washington Post goes after the source and also receives the documents.  Katharine Graham must balance her friendship with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood) along with her fears about the reaction of investors after taking the newspaper public not to mention the possibility of committing a felony against the freedom of the press.  In one of the most powerful scenes in the movie, she overrules all of the powerful men around her and decides to publish.  This movie is slow and the Supreme Court case upholding the freedom of the press is almost an afterthought but there are a few things that make this film absolutely brilliant.  First, it taps into the zeitgeist of our current times.  Although set in 1971 this movie may as well be about the attempts of the press to hold our current administration accountable.  Second, I love that the film emphasizes the difficulties faced by a woman in a position of power.  Time and time again we see Graham enter a room filled entirely of men and there is a particular scene where Graham is relegated to the living room with all of the wives of powerful men while they stay in the dining room to discuss business that really angered me.  However, the powerful scene where Graham tells her Chairman of the Board that the paper belongs to her and a scene where she walks down the steps of the Supreme Court with women looking to her as a role model made me want to cheer out loud!  Finally, the performances of both Streep and Hanks are just superb as are those in the all-star ensemble cast including Bruce Greenwood, Sarah Paulson, Tracy Letts, and Bradley Whitford among others.  Steven Spielberg has done it again and I highly recommend this movie!

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Yesterday I had the opportunity to see The Treasure of the Sierra Madre for the first time on the big screen in honor of its 70th Anniversary.  I love being able to see these classic movies as they were meant to be seen and this one about greed and betrayal is spectacular.  Frank Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Bob Curtain (Tim Holt) are down and out in Tampico, Mexico in the 1920s when they meet an old prospector (Walter Huston) full of wild stories about the fortune to be made in the mountains.  Dobbs and Curtain decide to put in with him and they endure many hardships before finding the mother lode.  Even after acquiring enough gold for all three of them to live comfortably for the rest of their lives they still want more and soon begin to distrust each other.  When a stranger happens upon their mine they contemplate killing him to avoid taking him on as a partner.  After fighting off a group of bandits they decide to close down the mine but Dobbs turns against them in one of the most ironic endings I've ever seen.  This movie does move at a very slow pace but the point is not really the adventure but what the adventure does to the men and this theme is very compelling.  Bogart gives an incredible performance as a man slowly driven mad by his own greed and I also really enjoyed Huston as the grizzled old prospector, especially when he does his famous jig when they discover gold.  This movie also includes one of the most famous lines when a bandit says, "We don't need no badges.  I don't have to show you any stinking badges."  My Dad quotes this line to me all of the time but I never knew what it meant.  Now I do!  This is a fantastic movie and I recommend seeing it on the big screen.  You have another opportunity on Jan. 17 (go here for tickets).

Call Me By Your Name

Several of my friends saw Call Me By Your Name at Sundance last year and were blown away by it so I have been eagerly anticipating its wide release for what seems like such a long time!  I finally got to see it last night because Salt Lake Film Society brought it to SLC a week earlier than planned.  This film left me an emotional mess and I'm pretty sure that I will be seeing it several more times.  Elio Perlman (Timothee Chalamet) is spending the summer in Northern Italy with his family when Oliver (Armie Hammer), a doctoral student, comes to stay to assist his father (Michael Stuhlbarg), who is a professor of archaeology.  Elio has an instant attraction to Oliver and awkwardly tries to gauge his feelings, even beginning a relationship with a local girl (Esther Garrel) to make him jealous.  The scenes between Elio and Oliver are long and drawn out but they are fraught with so much tension (Chalamet and Hammer have unbelievable chemistry) until they finally begin a physical relationship.  Eventually, Oliver must go home which leaves Elio brokenhearted but, in what is arguably the best scene in the film, his father tells him that it is better to feel sad than to feel nothing at all and that he should be grateful to have had such a special relationship because they are rare.  In my opinion this is one of the best coming of age films about first love ever made and, if you have ever loved someone that you can't be with, you definitely need to see it.  I started crying when Elio says goodbye to Oliver at the train station and I was a complete mess by the end credits. Timothee Chalamet is absolutely brilliant in this role and, as much as Gary Oldman impressed me as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, I think Chalamet is deserving of the Oscar for the final shot alone.  His quiet restraint as he cries after hearing some devastating news simply shattered me.  The cinematography is beautiful, almost making the lush countryside a character itself, and, while I loved the songs by Sufjan Stevens which are so evocative, the use of "Love My Way" by The Psychedelic Furs pretty much did me in (it is a favorite from my youth and many memories came rushing back to me of high school).  It is an amazing film and I highly recommend it!

Note:  If I had seen this before the end of the year, my Top Ten list would be different.  This film is definitely up there with A Ghost Story and Personal Shopper.

The Room

After watching The Disaster Artist a few weeks ago, The Room became a must see!  Luckily I had the opportunity to see Tommy Wiseau's epic masterpiece on the big screen last night.  This movie is an absolute riot and I saw it with a loud and rowdy crowd which made watching it so much fun!  The story is essentially a love triangle between Johnny (Wiseau), his best friend Mark (Greg Sestero), and his fiancee Lisa (Juliette Danielle) with a revolving door of characters who live in their same building.  The  plot is meandering, the dialogue is completely over the top (it was supposedly inspired by Rebel Without a Cause and the plays of Tennessee Williams), and the acting is stilted and tone deaf.  There are innumerable scenes of characters having awkward sex with strange moaning sounds and there are wide shots of San Francisco with melodramatic music in between every scene.  The lines "I don't want to talk about it" and "Don't worry about it" are repeated endlessly and the audience in my screening began yelling them out with the actors!  In fact, the audience laughed uproariously at just about everything that happened and applauded when Johnny spoke the immortal line, "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"   I don't know when I have had more fun watching a movie so, in a strange way, Tommy Wiseau really did create something epic.  I can honestly say that it is the best bad movie I have ever seen and I recommend it highly (for laughs).

I, Tonya

My first movie of 2018 was I, Tonya and, boy, did I pick a good one to start the year!  It is a dark comedy about the real life Olympic figure skater who rose to notoriety through the actions of the idiots surrounding her.  The narrative is told though present day interviews of Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie), her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), and her estranged mother LaVona (a brilliant Allison Janney) interspersed with flashbacks to events in Tonya's life, including the "incident."  The fact that all three of them are unreliable narrators makes this one wild ride and I loved it when the characters broke the fourth wall to make snarky comments to the audience about the goings-on.  This movie is very funny and over the top but I also found Harding to be an incredibly sympathetic character (which, remembering this incident vividly, I was not expecting).  Tonya went from one horribly abusive relationship with her mother to another one with her husband.  She was an incredibly gifted skater but, because she couldn't afford to maintain the image the U.S. Figure Skating Association wanted to project (she sewed her own costumes), she was often judged unfairly.  Her environment was so unstable that it really is a wonder that she was able to rise above it all to compete at the highest levels of her sport.  I was really struck by the scene of a young Tonya begging her father to take her with him when he leaves her mother and the scene where Tonya begs the judge to let her do jail time rather than ban her from competitive skating for life is very poignant.  However, the scene that resonated with me the most was just before her long program at the Lillehammer Olympics when the lace on her skate breaks and she is forced to begin or be disqualified.  Her panic and despair was difficult for me to watch because I remember thinking that she was such a prima donna when I watched this event live.  It is so easy to judge someone without knowing all of the circumstances.  Robbie gives an amazing performance (she even learned how to skate!) but Janney bats it out of the park by giving a monstrous character just a bit of humanity (the scene where she watches Tonya skate at the U.S. Championships on TV is brilliant).  I highly recommend this movie!

The Disaster Artist

There are good movies and bad movies and then there are movies that are so bad they become good and gain a cult following.  For me that movie is Flash Gordon but for many people it is The Room, which still has midnight screenings around the country and audience participation that rivals The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  On New Year's Eve I saw The Disaster Artist which is about the making of The Room and it is absolutely hilarious.  Not only is it an homage to the relentless pursuit of your dream against all odds and despite what everyone tells you, but it is also an affecting story of a friendship.  Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) meets Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) in an acting class and they soon become friends after bonding over the movie Rebel Without a Cause.  Tommy is eccentric (to say the least) and of an indeterminate age with mysterious origins (he says he is from Louisiana) and a seemingly limitless source of income but he somehow convinces Greg to move to Los Angeles to pursue their dreams of acting.  After much rejection Tommy decides to make is own movie as a vehicle for Greg.   He writes the script, buys his own equipment rather than renting it, hires a production team, auditions actors, and begins filming in some highly amusing scenes.  The shoot is fraught with difficulties, not the least of which is Tommy's inability to remember his lines (which he wrote), but somehow the movie is completed and given a premiere (paid for by Tommy).  The two friends are estranged at this point but Greg comes to the premiere.  When the movie isn't received as Tommy intended, there is a touching moment when Greg tells him that not many people get to live out a dream and to be proud of what he has created.  I laughed and laughed at this movie (as did everyone in my packed screening) but I also really enjoyed the message of pursuing your dreams.  I loved Josh Hutcherson and Zac Efron as characters in The Room and Seth Rogen (hit or miss with me) as the exasperated script supervisor but James Franco does a brilliant job portraying such a bizarre character without turning him into a caricature.  It was a lot of fun to see side by side shots of scenes from The Room with the same scenes filmed for this movie during the credits.  Last New Year's Eve I saw the film Fences and I can definitely say that seeing The Disaster Artist was an infinitely more enjoyable experience!  I highly recommend it!

Note:  I haven't seen The Room but now that I've seen The Disaster Artist, I really want to.  Fathom Events is sponsoring a special screening tomorrow (go here for info) and I can't wait!

Molly's Game

The next film on my winter break movie list was Molly's Game, which tells the true story of the rise and fall of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain).  Most of my friends really liked this movie (and it's getting quite a bit of Oscar buzz) but, to be honest, I wasn't very keen on it.  After a devastating accident ends her amateur skiing career, Molly is at loose ends and decides to move to Los Angeles where she becomes the personal assistant of a wannabe Hollywood player.  Among her other duties, she is tasked with setting up and running his weekly poker game with a well-known actor and other notables who tip her extravagantly.  She decides to learn everything there is to know about poker and, when her boss treats her unfairly, she woos the actor (reportedly based on Tobey Maguire) to a game that she runs.  She makes a fortune until a few incidents lose her the game.  She decides to take what she has learned and start a new game in New York which eventually includes members from the Russian mob.  Her involvement with mob leads to an arrest by the FBI so she hires Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba) to represent her.  He becomes exasperated with her because she won't disclose information about the participants in order to clear herself.  This film reminded me a lot of The Big Short because there are some amusing montages and onscreen descriptions of poker but, for me, the stakes (pun intended) weren't high enough to make the story as compelling.  Jessica Chastain is receiving a lot of attention for this role but I found her performance (and endless voice-over narration) to be very monotone and devoid of emotion as she spits out the words as fast as she can (a criticism I also have with Jesse Eisenberg's performance in The Social Network).   I also have a problem with Sorkin's ultimate portrayal of Molly as a victim of the men in her life.  After the first two acts show Molly as an intelligent and resourceful entrepreneur, there is a scene with her estranged father (Kevin Costner) near the end of the film where he tells her that all of her behavior has been a reaction to him.  Ugh!  This scene invalidates the theme of the entire movie!  I didn't really like Molly's Game but I suspect that many people will.