Rocketman

Last night I went to see Rocketman, the biopic about the flamboyant singer Elton John, and I loved it, especially the music and Taron Egerton's performance as the iconic star.  The movie tells the story of John's life as if it were a stage musical with big production numbers of songs that reflect the events in his life.  The movie uses the framing device of having John (Egerton) enter rehab for his addictions to alcohol, cocaine, sex, and, rather amusingly, shopping.  He recounts his childhood with a self-absorbed mother ("The Bitch Is Back") and distant father ("I Want Love"), performing in local pubs as a teenager ("Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting"), forming his legendary songwriting partnership with Bernie Taupin ("Your Song"), his triumphant performance at the Troubadour ("Crocodile Rock"), his loneliness ("Tiny Dancer"), beginning a personal ("Don't Go Breaking My Heart") and business ("Honky Cat") relationship with John Reid, his suicide attempt ("Rocket Man"), his descent into drug, alcohol, and sex addiction ("Bennie and the Jets"), his disastrous marriage to Renate Blauel ("Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me"), the deterioration of his relationships with Reid, his mother, and Taupin ("Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word"), and his decision to go to rehab ("Goodbye Yellow Brick Road").  While in rehab John is able to confront all of the people in his life and learn to love himself for who he is ("I'm Still Standing").  This movie portrays John as a consummate performer even when his life is falling apart and that makes it very compelling.  Egerton is absolutely fantastic in the role and I was very impressed by the fact that he did all of the singing himself (and that he actually hit a baseball during the concert in Dodger Stadium). I was also impressed by Jamie Bell as Taupin and Richard Madden as Reid (who is a very nasty character).  I loved the staging of the musical numbers because they are very energetic, fun, and filled with fabulous choreography and gorgeous costumes.  This movie earns its R rating because of some sex scenes between John and Reid and some scenes of debauchery at a club but I don’t think they are overly salacious.  There will be the inevitable comparisons to Bohemian Rhapsody (which I think are unfortunate because the two movies, while they have similar subjects, are very different) but I have to say that Rocketman didn't quite have the pathos for me that Bohemian Rhapsody did but I loved it, nonetheless, and I certainly recommend it.

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.