The Good Dinosaur

It has become a tradition to see a movie the day before Thanksgiving and I continued that tradition Wednesday by taking Sean to see The Good Dinosaur.  It is a wonderful movie and both Sean and I loved it.  In fact, Sean was absolutely riveted to the screen the whole time.  The movie presupposes that the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs missed Earth and now they are farmers and ranchers while humans are wild cave dwellers.  The story centers on a young Apatosaurus named Arlo who is the runt of the litter and afraid of everything.  After Arlo gets trapped in a violent storm (more on this later), he is washed down the river away from his home and family.  He befriends a wild human, whom he names Spot, and together they encounter other dinosaurs (a trio of Pterodactyls, T-Rexes and their herd of buffalo, and rustling Velociraptors) and must overcome more natural disasters on their journey back to Arlo's family.  Arlo learns the meaning of friendship (in some really tender scenes) and how to overcome his fear (in some really violent and scary scenes).  There are also some really funny moments such as when Arlo and Spot find some fermented fruit and begin hallucinating (Sean turned to me and said, "I think the fruit is poisonous and that is why they are going crazy." Ha ha!) and when the T-Rexes are sitting around the campfire comparing scars (one of the T-rexes is voiced by Sam Elliott).   The story is very formulaic and derivative but I still found it to be compelling.  The animation is absolutely incredible!  It has the most realistic CGI landscapes I have ever seen, particularly the scenes with running water, featuring the beautiful American West.  One of the most stunning moments is when raindrops drip off some tree branches.  My only problem with this movie is that, for a film heavily marketed to young children, it is quite violent and scary (I literally jumped in a scene involving a snake) with the death Arlo's father in a storm, several near drownings, attacks by Pterodactyls and Velociraptors, and a violent landslide.  Sean, who is ten, was quite upset during the storms and mentioned them several times after the movie.  Sean ultimetely loved the movie and so did I!  I would recommend it as a fun family activity over the holidays with the proviso that younger children might be a bit scared.

Room

Last night I went to see the film adaptation of Emma Donoghue's best-selling novel, Room (which my book club read several years ago).  It is extraordinary!  Joy (Brie Larson), a young woman who was abducted at age 17, has been held captive in a tiny garden shed for seven years with her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay), who was fathered by her captor.  Despite the horror of her situation, she teaches Jack that the shed, which she calls Room, is the entire world and that everything in it is a friend.  When her captor reveals that he has lost his job and that he might lose his house, Joy realizes that she must take action to save Jack and tries to teach him about the outside world.  When they are rescued, Jack is completely overwhelmed by the world and everyone and everything in it and struggles with things as simple as climbing stairs.  However, as Jack becomes more and more confident in the world, Joy finds it difficult to reconcile the past seven years with her new life.   This movie is sometimes very unsettling to watch but it is also a beautiful story about a mother's love for her child (It reminded me a lot of the film Life is Beautiful where a father turns life in a concentration camp into an adventure for his son).  Both Larson and Tremblay give unbelievable performances, which are certain to be remembered during awards season, and I also really enjoyed Joan Allen's performance as Joy's mother, especially in her scenes with Jack.   The cinematography is very striking, particularly the dingy close-up shots which emphasize the claustrophobia of the shed juxtaposed with the wide and empty shots of the outside world.  While the novel is completely from the perspective of five-year-old Jack, this adaptation does a good job capturing his shifts in understanding (Donoghue also wrote the screenplay).  I would highly recommend this tense and psychological drama.

Note:  At this screening I saw the first preview for The Danish Girl.  I think I'm more excited to see it than the new Star Wars movie!

Mahler's "Tragic" Symphony

Last night the Utah Symphony performed an epic concert at Abravanel Hall (stop reading right now and go here for tickets to tonight's performance).  The evening began with Symphony No. 6 "Morning" by Joseph Haydn and it was absolutely beautiful.  I always like pieces which feature the woodwind section (I played the clarinet in school) and I loved the themes played by the solo flute and oboe in the first movement and repeated in the fourth.  The theme played by a solo bassoon and a solo double bass in the third movement was also quite lovely as was a theme played by a solo horn accompanied by the harp.  I really enjoyed hearing so many different instruments featured.  All of the musicians of the Utah Symphony are so talented!  After the intermission, the orchestra played the spectacular Symphony No. 6 "Tragic" by Gustav Mahler (The Utah Symphony is performing the entire Mahler symphony cycle to commemorate its 75th Anniversary this year).  With the nickname "Tragic," I thought this piece would be moody, atmospheric, and mournful.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  It is bold, lively, and energetic with rousing themes played by the brass and timpani, almost as if Mahler is raging against the fickle hand of fate.  The first movement conjured up images of battle while the second movement denoted a beautiful and romantic interlude until the hammer of fate (literally) falls on the protagonist in the finale.  The percussion section featured a giant wooden box which was struck twice by an equally giant mallet (I read that each strike represents a tragedy in Mahler's life and that a third strike is sometimes included which represents his struggle with certain music institutions).  It was incredibly dramatic, to say the least!  I loved it but I was exhausted after listening to such an emotional piece and I can't imagine how the musicians felt at the end!  Again, it was an epic evening of music and you certainly don't want to miss it!

Mockingjay Double Feature

Last night's screenings of Mockingjay Part 1 and Part 2 brought to an end what amounts to an enormous commitment to a franchise; Hunger Games premiered in 2012 so I have been waiting four long years to see the conclusion (also, spending five hours to watch both films seemed like an enormous commitment as well.)  In the final analysis, it seemed pretty anticlimactic.  When I saw Part 1 last year, I was really surprised by how much I liked it considering that the book upon which it is based is my least favorite in the trilogy.  Apparently, what I disliked about the book was reserved for Part 2.  The second movie begins almost exactly where the first one ended (It was almost as if there was a short intermission in one long movie!) with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) reeling from Peeta's (Josh Hutcherson) attack.  She finally decides that she, alone, must stop Snow (Donald Sutherland) once and for all by assassinating him.  She joins the rebels, including Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and Finnick (Sam Claflin) for a final assault on the Capitol with some fantastic action scenes, such as outrunning a tidal wave of oil and battling a series of mutants in the sewers, and a showdown with President Snow.  As exciting and intense as the battle scenes are, they are also somewhat underwhelming because the Capitol is already in ruins.  We don't get the satisfaction of watching the rebels destroy the city.  We also don't get the satisfaction of seeing the final battle because Katniss is knocked out by the explosion and, when she wakes up, it is all over.  Furthermore, without giving anything away, the final confrontation between Katniss and Snow is hardly satisfying, considering what she has been through.  Finally, the happy ending in a bucolic setting bathed in sunshine feels contrived to me.  These were all of my criticisms of the book so I'm not sure what I was expecting from a movie adaptation...Again, as I mentioned, I did enjoy all of the action scenes and I think the principal actors (most of the supporting actors have been reduced to cameos) give great performances as they grapple with themes of power and the abuse therof, but I am not sure that is enough after this much investment of time.  It was an awesome spectacle but I was a bit disappointed.

Note:  This was an advance screening with an energetic crowd yet there was no applause at the end.

Suffragette

Every year I teach the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel to my sophomores.  I am always amazed at their intense reaction to this book.  I sometimes think that my students know, intellectually, that the Holocaust happened but they don't really have an understanding of how it actually affected real people until they read about Elie's first-hand experiences in a concentration camp.  Last night I went to see the movie Suffragette and, like my students, I feel like I had an intellectual understanding of the fight for women's suffrage but I didn't really know the horror of what these women went through until I saw events depicted on the big screen.  This movie was a visceral experience for me.  The story revolves around Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), a young woman who works in deplorable conditions at a laundry earning much less than her male counterparts.  She learns of the women's suffrage movement from her co-workers and eventually becomes caught up in the cause.  As she becomes more involved, she endures social ostracism, the loss of her job, and the loss of her family.  It is heartbreaking to see, especially when her husband takes away her son, and I was horrified at the treatment many women received in prison, particularly when they are force-fed during a hunger strike.  These events were so upsetting to me that I actually had tears in my eyes for much of the movie.  Mulligan gives an incredible performance as Maud and Helena Bonham Carter is perfect as a fellow suffragette.  Bonham Carter plays so many eccentric characters that it is easy to forget that she is an exceptionally talented actress.  Ben Whishaw was very effective as Sonny, Maud's husband, because I hated him by the end of the movie (I like him better as Q).  I found it a bit odd that Meryl Streep had less than five minutes of screen time as Emmeline Pankhurst, a noted real-life leader of the movement, because she was featured so heavily in the marketing of the movie.  Many critics feel that the narrative is, at times, very heavy-handed.   However, I feel that the honest depiction of the struggle was necessary to show someone like me that I shouldn't take my very privileged life for granted.  I highly recommend this movie, especially to young women.

Note:  I have never enjoyed being told what to do so I feel sure that, had I lived during this time period, I would have been a suffragette!