The Peanut Butter Falcon

Yesterday I crossed another new release off my long list by seeing The Peanut Butter Falcon.  This contemporary retelling of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a heartwarming movie that put a huge smile on my face!  Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Down syndrome, has spent most of his life in a nursing home because his family is unable to supervise him and there is nowhere else for him to go.  As a huge fan of a wrestler named Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church), Zak escapes hoping to make it to his wrestling school in rural North Carolina.  He meets up with Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), a down-on-his-luck fisherman in the Outer Banks, who is on the run from a rival fisherman with an ax to grind (and his own demons).  Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), who works at the nursing home, is sent to retrieve Zak but she is eventually persuaded to join them on their way to the wrestling school.  The three of them form a bond as they go on a journey of discovery (literally and figuratively) where Zak is reborn as a wrestler named Peanut Butter Falcon.  I loved this movie because the story about an unlikely friendship and living life to the fullest on your own terms really touched my heart.  It also made me laugh out loud, particularly a scene where Tyler tells Zak the rules for traveling with him and the scenes where Salt Water teaches Zak to wrestle.  The performances are wonderful! Gottsagen, who actually has Down syndrome, is incredibly endearing and LaBeouf gives an emotional performance that is one of his best.  The two of them have great chemistry and I really enjoyed watching them play off each other.  The soundtrack, which features bluegrass and folk music, and the beautiful cinematography are also outstanding!  I cannot recommend this movie enough!

Brian Banks

The movie Brian Banks is another recent release on my list and I was able to see this inspirational true story last night.  In 2002 Brian Banks (Aldis Hodge) is a sixteen year old high school student and an All-American football player committed to play at USC after he graduates.  He meets a fellow student named Kennisha Rice (Xosha Roquemore) in secret in a hallway and, when he rejects her, she falsely accuses him of raping her.  He is tried as an adult and pressured into taking a plea bargain to avoid going to jail.  However, he is sentenced to six years, which he serves, and then three years of parole.  His parole officer won't let him play football as a walk-on at a community college and he has difficulty finding a job as a convicted felon so, in desperation, he turns to Justin Brooks (Greg Kinnear) of the California Innocence Project.  Thinking that there are too many obstacles to getting his conviction overturned, Brooks is initially hesitant to take the case but is eventually won over by the sheer force of Banks' character.  Overcoming unbelievable odds, Banks is finally able to achieve his goal of playing in the NFL.  Before I discuss the movie I need to confess that the exoneration of people who have been wrongly convicted has always been a topic that I am incredibly passionate about and it always pushes my buttons (it was a frequent subject for me as a debater in high school) so it is inevitable that I would find this movie powerful and moving.  Some may find the story to be emotionally manipulative but I found it to be very compelling with affecting performances by both Hodge (I really liked him in the movie Clemency, which has a similar theme, at the Sundance Film Festival this year) and Sherri Shepherd who plays Banks' mother.  I was moved to tears several times and I really appreciated seeing a movie with such a positive message about perseverance.  I would highly recommend this feel-good movie!

Hello, Dolly!

I had never seen the movie Hello, Dolly! before (I saw the stage musical at HCT years ago) so I was really excited to see it yesterday as part of the TCM Big Screen Classics series.  It is simply delightful and I absolutely loved it!  At the turn of the century, the irascible Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthau) wants to get married so that he will have someone to do all of the chores at his Hay & Feed store in Yonkers, New York.  His niece Ermengarde (Joyce Ames) wants to marry the artist Ambrose Kemper (Tommy Tune) but her uncle objects because he doesn't have a steady income.  His clerk Cornelius Hackl (Michael Crawford) is longing for an adventure in New York City and doesn't want to come back to Yonkers until he has kissed a girl.  He convinces his fellow clerk Barnaby Tucker (Danny Lockin) to come along with him.  Irene Molloy (Marianne McAndrew) owns a millinery shop in NYC but tells her assistant Minnie Fay (E.J. Peaker) that she wants a rich husband to take her away because she hates hats!  An enchanting and recently widowed matchmaker named Dolly Levi (Barbra Streisand) is hired to find a wife for Vandergelder but she decides that she wants to marry him herself.  She just needs to convince him!  She arranges for all of the couples to meet for a memorable evening at the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant in New York City and merriment ensues.  This is like one of those old fashioned classic movie musicals that I remember watching at my Grandma Anderson's house so I am not entirely sure why I had never seen it before.  The story is a little weak but I loved the big song and dance numbers.  My favorites are "Put on Your Sunday Clothes," "Dancing," and "Hello, Dolly!" because they are incredibly elaborate and involve a large ensemble!  I also really love the songs "Before the Parade Passes By" and "It Only Takes a Moment" because they both have poignant messages about life and love.  The sets are spectacular, especially the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant, and each costume worn by Streisand is more lavish than the one before!  Streisand is very charismatic in the role and sings every song brilliantly but my only complaint is that she doesn't lip-sync very well.  This is a fun and lighthearted musical that absolutely delighted me and I recommend seeing it on the big screen (go here for tickets).

The Kitchen

There are quite a few movies hitting theaters this weekend that I really want to see and I decided to start with The Kitchen last night.  The Irish mob rules an area of New York known as Hell's Kitchen in the 1970s.  When three of the mobsters (Brian d'Arcy James, James Badge Dale, and Jeremy Bobb) are arrested in an FBI sting operation and sent to prison, their wives Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), and Claire (Elisabeth Moss) decide to take over their criminal enterprise by negotiating new contracts with the business owners with the help of a psychopathic assassin (Domhnall Gleeson).  They soon run afoul of the rest of the Irish mob who don’t like being upstaged, some intransigent Hasidic businessmen who don't like dealing with women, a rival crime family in Brooklyn, and the FBI.  However, they ruthlessly deal with their enemies to eventually become incredibly successful...until their husbands are released from prison.  Each of the women has a different motivation for taking action:  Kathy is rebelling against the stereotypical role of wife and mother, Ruby is lashing out against the racism within the community (especially by her Irish mother-in-law), and Claire is exacting revenge for the abuse she has suffered at the hands of her husband for years.  Of course there are some wild twists and turns, some of which I was able to predict and some I wasn't.  All three actresses do a really good job with the material that they are given but I did find the tone to be all over the place.  It is extremely violent but there are also lots of comedic moments that seem really incongruous.  I liked the 1970s aesthetic with the costumes and the soundtrack featuring Heart, Fleetwood Mac, and Kansas.  Honestly, I think Widows does a better job of telling the same story but I found The Kitchen to be entertaining enough.

Note:  I found it odd that the members of the Irish mob didn't seem very Irish...

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at CPT

Last night I had so much fun at CPT's production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I really love this show because, not only is it absolutely hilarious, it is unexpectedly poignant (I have seen the Broadway touring company and a fabulous production at PTC several years ago) and CPT did a great job with it. The spelling bee is moderated by Rona Lisa Peretti (Alexandra Rae Kalaher), the best realtor in Putnam County and a past spelling champion who frequently reflects on her experience ("My Favorite Moment of the Bee"). She is aided by Vice Principal Douglas Panch (Brandon Green) who is returning after a five year absence due to an unspecified incident. His main function is to give the definitions of the words and use them in highly amusing sentences ("The Spelling Rules"). Mindy Mahoney (Katelyn Johnson), an ex-con doing her required community service, hands out juice boxes to the losing contestants ("The Prayer of the Comfort Counselor"). The first contestant is Chip Tolentino (Jake Heywood), a baseball player defending his title as champion of the bee last year who spends most of his time flirting with a girl in the audience ("My Unfortunate Distraction"). The second contestant is Logainne SchwartzandGrubenniere (Savanna Hansen), the president of the gay/straight alliance in her elementary school who wants desperately to please her two fathers who have been coaching her for this moment for years ("Woe is Me"). The third contestant is Leaf Coneybear (Trevor Hansen), a home-schooled free spirit who makes his own clothes and is at the bee because the winner and first runner-up had to attend a bat mizvah ("I'm Not That Smart"). The fourth contestant is William Barfee (Aaron Linford), an uptight asthmatic who had to pull out of last year's bee because of an allergic reaction. He frequently has to remind the moderators how to pronounce his name (it's Bar-FAY) and uses an innovative method to help him spell ("Magic Foot"). The fifth contestant is Marcy Park (Emily Woods), a transfer student at Our Lady of Intermittent Sorrows Parochial School who placed ninth at last year's national spelling bee.  She is an overachiever who skipped two grades ("I Speak Six Languages") but now just wants to have a little fun. The sixth contestant is Olive Ostrovsky (Taneesa Wright), who hasn't yet paid the entrance fee because her mother is at an ashram in India and her father has not claimed the seat that she has been saving for him ("The I Love You Song").  Which of these six painfully awkward misfits will be crowned the winner? I really loved everything about this show: the cast, the set, the costumes, the choreography, and the random audience members who participated in the bee (they were responsible for many of the funniest moments). Several of the people around me said that they didn't know anything about this show before they came but they ended up loving it! I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here) to this delightful show.