The Virtuoso

Last night I went to see the action thriller The Virtuoso but, ultimately, I didn't find it to be very thrilling.  The Virtuoso (Anson Mount) is a highly paid assassin known for his meticulous planning and attention to detail (he tells us so in an elaborate second-person narration as he carries out a hit on a mobster).  He is given a job by The Mentor (Anthony Hopkins) without the requisite time that he needs for planning and, due to circumstances beyond his control, it goes horribly wrong resulting in collateral damage.  He is haunted by this and ignores a number of jobs until The Mentor gives him one he cannot refuse.  He only has a time, a location, and a mysterious clue to use to identify his target, a fellow assassin.  He arrives at the appointed place at the appointed time and sees several possibilities: a Loner (Eddie Marsan), a Waitress (Abbie Cornish), a Stranger (Richard Brake), a Local Girl (Diora Baird), and a Deputy (David Morse).  After observing them without discovering his target, he decides to eliminate them all one by one.  However, this assignment is not what it appears to be.  The premise of this movie is actually quite intriguing but the execution (pun intended) is incredibly bland.  Because the pacing is so slow, I was anticipating a build-up to something dramatic but I guessed the plot twist early on so it was a bit anticlimactic.  Mount’s performance is not engaging enough for his character or his actions to be compelling and the excessive voice-over gets very tedious very quickly because it is so monotone.  I wasn't invested in any of the other characters either because they have almost no development which wastes the considerable talents of the actors in these roles.  The only highlight is Hopkins who has one impressive monologue (but phones in the rest of his performance).  All of this could be forgiven if the action sequences were exciting but, alas, even they are few and far between and the lighting is so dark that you can't really see what is happening.  Despite an interesting story and a talented cast, this is a dull and boring movie and I recommend giving it a miss.

Limbo

I am a huge fan of dark comedies and comedies of the absurd so I absolutely loved Limbo, which I saw last night.  Omar (Amir El-Masry) has recently fled war-torn Syria and is seeking asylum in England.  While he waits for his status to be resolved, he is detained on a desolate island in the outer Hebrides in Scotland with a group of refugees, including Farhad (Vikash Bhai), Wasef (Ola Orebiyi), and Abedi (Kwabena Ansah).  Omar spends his days trekking to a pay phone (the only cell phone service on the island is located at the top of a mountain) to talk to his parents who have relocated to Turkey and to inquire after his brother Nabil who remained in Syria as a freedom fighter, Farhad "adopts" a chicken and names him after his idol Freddie Mercury, while the brothers argue about whether Wasef will be able to play for Chelsea F.C. and about whether Rachel and Ross were on a break (they find a DVD box set of Friends at the donation centre).  The refugees also spend time in cultural awareness classes, run by Helga (Sidse Babette Knudsen) and Boris (Kenneth Collard), to help them fit in but the locals still think they are terrorists.  These episodes and others provide much comic relief (I laughed out loud multiple times) but the main narrative is incredibly poignant.  Omar carries his grandfather's oud, a traditional stringed instrument, with him everywhere he goes but he never plays it because it represents his identity, which has become blurred.  He must make peace with his decision to leave Syria and with his brother (Kais Nashef), who he thinks disapproves of his decision, before he can play and move on with his life.  I was incredibly invested in the character of Omar and his fate because El-Masry gives a performance that is both sensitive and powerful.  His expressionless, yet somehow mournful, gaze communicates everything he is feeling so effectively, even more than the dialogue.  The juxtaposition of this with a video on his phone, which he watches multiple times, of him playing the oud at a concert and joyfully acknowledging his family (one of the best uses of an aspect ratio change I've ever seen) is absolutely brilliant.  The highly composed wide shots of the barren landscape serve to emphasize the isolation the refugees feel as does the production design which features an almost empty apartment where the refugees live and a barely stocked grocery store where Omar tries, unsuccessfully, to find the ingredients for a recipe his mother gives him.  I honestly loved everything about this movie because it is both humorous and affecting while quietly portraying the harsh realities that refugees face.  I couldn't recommend this more!

Note:  I read a review comparing this to a Yorgos Lanthimos movie in tone and a Wes Anderson movie in execution.  Since I am a fan of both of these directors, it is no surprise that I loved it!

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

I have lots of memories of watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood when I was a little kid.  After finishing each episode I would immediately watch it again dubbed in French on the French channel (I grew up in Canada) because I loved both shows so much.  Since I enjoyed Won't You Be My Neighbor?, I was really excited to see Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street yesterday.  Like the former, this documentary about the making of the iconic children's show brought back so many childhood memories and I absolutely loved it!  In the late 1960s most of the programming for children was made to sell products to the white middle class parents of the children who watched it and it was also an era when many children were spending most of the day in front of the television while their parents worked (one study showed that even very young children could recite all of the words to a jingle for a beer commercial).  Because many low-income minority children were educationally behind when they started school, a television executive named Joan Cooney had the idea that a television show could use the same principles of advertising to teach letters and numbers to these children to compensate for the deficit.  Writer and director Jon Stone was recruited to develop a show and he had the idea to use an authentic neighborhood street to appeal to the target audience of inner-city children.  Puppeteer Jim Henson was recruited to help the show capture and retain the attention of the children with his puppets.  Composer Joe Raposo was recruited to write catchy songs to reinforce educational concepts (I remembered every word to every song featured in this documentary even though it has been almost forty years since I heard them).  This extraordinary collaboration resulted in one of the most groundbreaking shows in television history which has had a profound impact on generations of children.  Archival footage and contemporary interviews with many involved with the show, including the actors who played the beloved characters Gordon, Susan, Bob, Luis, and Maria, provide a fascinating look behind the scenes and I was especially interested to learn about how intentional each episode was with very specific cognitive and affective goals.  Big Bird is one of my favorite puppets (I was deeply offended as a child when no one would believe Big Bird about the existence of Mr. Snuffleupagus) and I love that his character was developed in order to learn along with the children.  The most poignant learning opportunity was when the characters tell Big Bird that Mr. Hooper has died in order to teach the audience about death.  I had a few tears in my eyes but I also laughed and laughed at the puppet blooper reel.  This was a delightful journey back to the street where I spent much of my childhood and I highly recommend it!

Four Good Days

It seems like a lot of the movies that screened at the Sundance Film Festival last year are finally getting a wide release after being postponed due to Covid.  I remember being really intrigued by Four Good Days at the time (even though I ultimately picked other films) so I decided to see it last night.  Molly (Mila Kunis), a heroin addict for the past ten years, randomly shows up on the doorstep of her mother, Deb (Glenn Close), who refuses to let her in.  Deb has spent years trying to help her get clean, including fourteen stints in rehab, but Molly has always relapsed and this has wreaked havoc on her entire family, including her step-father Chris (Stepehen Root), her father Dale (Sam Hennings), her sister Ashley (Carla Gallo), her ex-husband Sean (Joshua Leonard), and her children Colton (Nicholas Oteri) and Chloe (Audrey Lynn).  Deb ultimately relents and drives her to a clinic where she detoxes for three days.  A doctor at the clinic offers Molly the chance for a monthly shot of Naltrexone, which eliminates the craving for opioids, but she needs to be drug free for one week in order to be eligible for it.  Since she needs to stay clean for four more days, Deb allows her to move back home.  These four days are fraught with tension as the two of them give vent to the simmering recriminations in their relationship.  This is a fairly typical addiction movie such as we have seen many times before (Ben is Back and Beautiful Boy are much better explorations of how parents cope with children who are addicts) and it has the usual story arc but the material is elevated by the performances of both Close and Kunis.  Close is incredibly poignant as a mother who loves her daughter but is torn between desperately wanting to help and knowing that her help won't make a difference in her daughter's recovery.  Kunis is almost unrecognizable in a gritty and authentic performance that is one of her best, especially in a scene where Molly speaks to a high school health class about the realities of addiction.  This was not quite as good as I was expecting it to be but it is still worth checking it out when it becomes available as a VOD on May 21.

Thierry Fischer Conducts Bach, Wynton Marsalis, Carter & Wagner

Everyone in attendance at Abravanel Hall last night was treated to a very eclectic Utah Symphony concert and I, being one of the lucky few in the audience, absolutely loved it!  The orchestra began with a really fun piece by Johann Sebastian Bach called Concerto for Two Violins with Madeline Adkins and Claude Halter as soloists.  I especially loved the first and third movements because of the lively themes played by the soloists who seemed to respond to each other, almost as if they were dueling!  Abravanel Hall was then turned into an intimate jazz club for the next two numbers by Elliott Carter and Wynton Marsalis, respectively.  Two small ensemble groups were formed on either side of the stage with dramatic lighting as each performed.  One group played Double Trio by Carter, which was incredibly dynamic with lots of different percussion instruments and themes played by trumpet and trombone, and the other played selections from A Fiddler's Tale by Marsalis, which featured several different styles of jazz.  I am not a huge fan of jazz but I really enjoyed these pieces and I must admit that I was tapping my toes during the final selection, The Blues on Top, from A Fiddler's Tale because the musicians were definitely playing the blues and it seemed like they were having so much fun improvising (Thierry Fischer even left the podium for the last few moments to let them jam).  The concert concluded with the beautiful Siegfried Idyll by Richard Wagner.  This was written as a birthday present for Wagner's second wife Cosima, with whom he had a passionate affair before marrying her, after the birth of their son Siegfried.  I thought it was incredibly romantic and I particularly loved all of the themes played by the woodwinds.  Each of the these pieces were so different but I loved them all and I highly recommend getting a ticket to this program which will be repeated tonight and tomorrow night (go here for tickets).