The Smashing Pumpkins at the Vivint Arena

The last time I saw The Smashing Pumpkins, I was in the pit at the Great Saltair and it was absolutely epic!  I was considerably younger then.  Last night when The Smashing Pumpkins made a stop at the Vivint Arena, I may have been sitting in a comfortable chair but the concert was no less epic!  Not only did they play for over three hours but they dug deep into their vast catalog and played every one of my favorite songs and then some!  To begin with Billy Corgan took the stage alone for a haunting rendition of "Disarm" and then, when the rest of the band joined him, they played every song I wanted to hear (which is very rare):  "Rhinoceros," my favorite Pumpkins song, "Siva," "Drown," "Zero," "Eye," "The Everlasting Gaze," "Stand Inside Your Love," "Landslide," "Tonight, Tonight," "Cherub Rock," "1979," "Ava Adore," "Today," and "Bullet With Butterfly Wings."  They played covers of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," both of which were fantastic.  They also threw in "Rocket," "Thirty-Three," a psychedelic version of "Soma," "Blew Away," "For Martha," "To Sheila," "Mayonaise," "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans," "Try, Try, Try," "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning," "Hummer," and "Muzzle" for good measure.  I loved it!  Every song featured a dazzling light show and visuals ranging from religious iconography to showgirls in Busby Berkeley type productions.  Corgan was in rare form with multiple costumes that were shiny and oh so bright!  This concert is definitely in my top ten of all time even though I did leave before the encore (it was almost midnight!).  I'm clearly not the same girl who danced in the pit over 20 years ago!

The Little Stranger

Yesterday I went to see The Little Stranger, another movie that is slow and contemplative but one that I thoroughly enjoyed.  In the summer of 1919, a young village boy (Oliver Zetterstrom) attends a garden party at the estate that once employed his mother as a maid.  Hundreds Hall, a venerable old estate held by the Ayres family for generations, makes quite an impression on the young boy as does Susan Ayres, the privileged daughter of the house who doesn't have long to live.  In the summer of 1947, that young boy, now the esteemed Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson), is called to Hundreds Hall, now in decline, to tend to a maid.  He meets Mrs. Ayres (Charlotte Rampling), who still holds sway over the village from her crumbling mansion, Roderick Ayres (Will Poulter), who is horribly disfigured and suffering from PTSD from the war, and Caroline Ayres (Ruth Wilson), a former nurse called home to tend to her brother who is chafing at her lost prospects.  Faraday begins treating Roddy's injuries and eventually insinuates himself into the uneasy household.  Is the ghost of Susan haunting the Hall or is there something more sinister at play?  In the tradition of the best Gothic horror stories, Hundreds Hall is suitably creepy and atmospheric as it slowly drives its inhabitants mad.  However, I found this movie to be more of a character study with some interesting social commentary on class divisions than a traditional horror movie.  The tone is more menacing than scary and those expecting a thrilling narrative might be disappointed.  Rather, the action is incredibly understated but I was captivated by Gleeson's steely performance of a man haunted more by the past than by the strange goings-on in the present.  This film is not for everyone but I recommend this spellbinding tale to fans of psychological thrillers.

The Bookshop

Last night I went to see the film The Bookshop with my friend who teaches with me in the English department.  I mention that because there were times when the two of us were the only ones laughing at a literary reference.  I think you might need to be an English teacher to really appreciate this film!  A widow named Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) comes to a small village in England during the 1950s to open a bookshop.  She purchases an old abandoned house to use as her shop and immediately runs afoul of Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), an important and influential personage in the village, who wants to use the old house for an art center.  She also finds an ally in the village hermit, Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy), and they begin a lovely relationship based on books.  One of the first books the two of them bond over is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and there are a lot of references to this book within the narrative, including a fear of new ideas represented by the books Florence sells as well as the final resolution.  It is a very subtle movie that moves at a slow pace but I loved the message about finding courage to pursue your dream against opposition.  I also loved the performances:  Clark plays Violet with a savage gentility, Mortimer gives Florence a quiet dignity, and Nighy is incredibly affecting as a misanthrope who prefers books to people.  I found this film to be incredibly charming but I struggle to think of anyone who would enjoy it as much as my friend and I did.

Operation Finale

My Dad once joked that I would read any book that had a swastika on the cover!  This is because I have such a huge interest in World War II (not because I am a Nazi!).  I guess this is true about movies as well because once I saw the swastika on the movie poster for Operation Finale I wanted to see it!  Fifteen years after the end of World War II, the Mossad gets information that Adolf Eichmann (Ben Kingsley), the notorious architect of Hitler's Final Solution, has been living in Argentina under an assumed name.  The Israelis decide to send a team led by Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), an agent tormented by the death of his sister during the Holocaust, to capture him and bring him to Israel to stand trial but they are violating the sovereignty of Argentina so they must use stealth.  They go to great lengths to capture Eichmann in secret but his glasses are accidentally left behind which alerts the Argentinian government.  It then becomes a race against time to get Eichmann out of the country.  The story gets really bogged down in the first act and I found it difficult to keep the characters straight and follow what was going on.  However, the final act is filled with tension and is incredibly compelling.  Both Kingsley and Isaac give outstanding performances, especially when the two interact with each other in an intense psychological show-down.  I also really enjoyed the dramatic score.  Alexandre Desplat is becoming my favorite film composer.  In short, this movie is a fairly standard biopic but I would recommend it for the two central performances.

Searching

I was very intrigued by the premise of the movie Searching (the entire narrative is told on computer screens and smartphones) so I decided to see a Thursday preview last night.  I was pretty much on the edge of my seat the whole time and I have to admit that the resolution took me completely by surprise.  David Kim (John Cho) has what he considers to be a close relationship with his daughter Margot (Michelle La) but she has been struggling since the death of her mother (Sara Sohn) two years earlier.  When Margot doesn't come home one night he files a missing persons report and Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) is assigned to the case.  After a series of dead ends, David starts searching through Margot's social media accounts and finds some unsettling information about his daughter.  He begins to realize that he didn't really know her at all.  I found the story to be compelling and Cho gives an incredible performance as David becomes more and more frantic.  I was deeply invested in the outcome and there were a few plot twists that had me on an emotional roller coaster.  The use of technology throughout the movie is extremely clever and, although it felt forced a couple of times, it gives the story an immediacy and a tension that a traditional narrative might have lost.  It was fascinating, yet again, to see how different an online persona can be from the person we really are!  I highly recommend this thriller!