Godzilla: King of the Monsters

I'll be honest and admit that I don't really know much about the Godzilla mythology and I didn't see the 2014 movie Godzilla but Godzilla: King of the Monsters looked like a fun summer blockbuster so I went to see it last night.  Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), a paleobiologist with an organization called Monarch which studies creatures like Godzilla who once dominated the Earth, has created a device, nicknamed Orca, which will communicate with these Titans.  She joins forces with Alan Jonah (Charles Dance), an eco-terrorist, because she believes that these Titans can reverse the effects of overpopulation, pollution, and destructive mining to bring balance back to nature.  She brings her unsuspecting daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) with her as she and Jonah use the Orca to awaken a Titan which becomes known as Ghidorah.  Scientists from Monarch, believing that Emma and Madison have been kidnapped by Jonah, contact Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) to help rescue his ex-wife and daughter.  When Monarch realizes what Emma has done, they begin tracking Ghidorah and discover that it is an ancient alien and that it is activating all of the other Titans to attack the Earth.  The only Titan impervious to Ghidorah's control is Godzilla.   This leads to an epic battle where the scientists of Monarch attempt to help Godzilla defeat Ghidorah as well as rescue Madison, who ran away with the Orca when she realized what her mother had done.  Again, I don't know much about Godzilla and his origins but I found this story to be incredibly convoluted and I thought the triangle between Madison and her parents to be completely unnecessary.  There are so many characters, including Monarch scientists (Bradley Whitford, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Thomas Middleditch, and Zhang Ziyi) and military personnel (Aisha Hinds, O'Shea Jackson, Jr., David Strathairn, Anthony Ramos, and Elizabeth Ludlow), many of whom seem to be there only to provide exposition, that it was sometimes hard to keep track of who was who.  However, the creature design is incredible, especially Godzilla's dorsal plates which light up when he feels threatened and Mothra's wings which are beautiful, and the visuals on the screen are amazing, particularly in the action sequences when the monsters fight each other!  I was actually more interested in the monsters than the humans in the story!  The sound design and the bombastic score are also outstanding and really add to the sense of dread when the monsters fight each other.  It is an exciting and entertaining summer blockbuster and I recommend it to fans who are expecting that and nothing more.

Note:  There is an end credits scene setting up the next installment in the MonsterVerse, which reportedly pits Godzilla against King Kong.

Bountiful High School Class of 2019

Yesterday Tashena graduated from Bountiful High School.  We are all so incredibly proud of this girl (but we don't know how this happened because she was a five year old starting kindergarten yesterday!).

Congratulations Tashena!  I can't wait to see what you do next!

Ma

Tashena really wanted to see the movie Ma so I took her and her brother (who was visiting from California for her graduation) to see it yesterday.  I don't know that I would have picked this movie on my own but it was better than I thought it would be.  Ironically, Tashena's brother and I liked it more than she did!  Sue Ann (Octavia Spencer) is a lonely, middle-aged veterinary assistant who agrees to buy alcohol for some bored teenagers, including Maggie (Diana Silvers) and Andy (Corey Fogelmanis).  She worries that the kids will get into an accident if they go off drinking so she invites them to her basement which soon becomes the popular hangout for all of the kids in the town.  Sue Ann follows the kids on social media and begins harassing them, wanting them to come over more and more.  Maggie is unsettled by this and soon realizes that Sue Ann went to high school with her mother (Juliette Lewis) and Andy's father (Luke Evans) and that the two of them pulled a public and humiliating prank on her.  Maggie warns her friends to stay away but Sue Ann lures them back and terrorizes them, using tranquilizers from the vet's office, in retribution for what their parents did to her.  In my opinion, this is more of a psychological thriller than a horror movie (which disappointed Tashena) and it is more gruesome than scary with some truly disturbing scenes.  What elevates this above a campy teen movie is Spencer's performance as an unexpectedly sympathetic character (before she goes completely off the rails).  There is the requisite plot twist which didn't really work for me because it didn't add anything to the story and there were some interesting racial dynamics which definitely should have been explored more thoroughly but I didn't hate this movie.  I think it is destined to become a cult classic.

School of Rock at the Eccles

I have a long list of musicals that I really want to see and last night I got to cross one that was pretty near the top off (number one on that list is coming to Broadway at the Eccles next season and I will be seeing number two in San Francisco in the fall).  School of Rock the musical is very similar to the movie of the same name starring Jack Black and I really enjoyed it.  Not only is it a feel good show but the kids in the cast, who play their own instruments, are all insanely talented!  Dewey (Merritt David Janes) has been kicked out of No Vacancy, the band he formed, right before the Battle of the Bands.  Ned (Layne Roate), Dewey's best friend with whom he has been living for several years, is under pressure from his girlfriend Patty (Madison Micucci) to get him to pay rent.  In desperation, he takes a substitute teaching job at Horace Green Prep School meant for Ned.  The students in his class are being crushed under the pressure put on them by their parents who don't understand them.  After hearing them during their music class, Dewey decides to form a band with Zack (Mystic Inscho) on lead guitar, Katie (Leanne Parks) on bass, Lawrence (Julian Brescia) on keyboard, Freddy (Cameron Trueblood) on drums, and Shonelle (Arianna Pereira) and Marcy (Alyssa Emily Marvin) on backing vocals.  He recruits Billy (Sammy Dell) to be the band's stylist, James (Jacob Moran) as security, Mason (Dylan Trueblood) on tech, and Summer (Sami Bray) the class know-it-all (I probably laughed harder than I should have when Dewey calls her Hermione Granger) as the band's manager.  Tomika (Camille De La Cruz), a shy and insecure transfer student, eventually becomes the band's secondary lead singer.  As the students play they become more confident and Dewey decides to enter them in Battle of the Bands.  He just needs to convince the uptight principal Ms. Mullins (Lexie Dorsett Sharp) to let him take the students on a field trip (in a hilarious scene involving the music of Stevie Nicks).  Eventually, the parents catch on to Dewey's deception but the kids convince him that they need to perform at the Battle of the Bands and this performance wins over the parents.  Janes has a great rock and roll voice and a fun rapport with all of the kids but I couldn't help comparing him to Jack Black.  The true stars of the show are the kids and every time they performed (my favorite songs were "Stick It to the Man," "Time to Play," and "School of Rock") they brought the roof down on the Eccles Theatre.  This show is so much fun and it runs through June 2 (tickets may be purchased here) at the Eccles.

Summer Reading: The Outsider

I actually started reading The Outsider by Stephen King, the first selection on my summer reading list, last week. I was supposed to be completing the checkout process for the end of the school year but I simply could not put this book down! One of my colleagues started reading it, too, and every time we saw each other we would immediately start discussing it (this even happened at graduation!). I finished it in only a few days because I had to know what happened! A grisly murder of a young boy has sent the small town of Flint City, Oklahoma reeling. Understandably, the police want to solve this murder as quickly as possible. When Detective Ralph Anderson finds multiple witnesses and incontrovertible forensic evidence that points to Terry Maitland, he and District Attorney Bill Samuels decide to arrest the popular teacher and Little League coach very publicly. Despite the fact that Maitland has an iron-clad alibi, the town goes into a frenzy due to the nature of the murder and several tragedies occur. Distraught over the notion that Maitland might have been innocent, Anderson enlists the help of another police detective, Maitland's defense attorney, and a private investigator to determine how one man could be in two places at one time. What they discover is far more sinister than they could have imagined. As you know, I have a love/hate relationship with Stephen King so I tend to judge him more harshly than the rabid fans who gave this book such glowing reviews but, having said that, I really enjoyed this. I found it to be incredibly suspenseful, particularly the police investigation in the first part of the novel. The chapters are short and move from narrator to narrator and this serves to keep you guessing. The action does slow down a bit when they begin hunting the Outsider in earnest (there is a lot of dialogue where characters voice their doubt about what is really happening and it gets a bit tedious) but that didn't stop me from reading into the early morning hours to get to the resolution! I really liked the use of folklore to ground the supernatural aspects of the story and I found the specific legends to be incredibly unsettling. King is the master of writing about ordinary characters caught up in extraordinary situations and this novel is no exception. I particularly enjoyed Holly Gibney.  However, she is a character in the Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch) which I have not read. Referencing his other works is one of King's hallmarks but in this instance I found it to be frustrating because it happens frequently and I didn't understand the references. This is nowhere near as good as the classic King novels but it is good enough and I definitely recommend it.

Note:  Have you read The Outsider?  What did you think?