Profile

I was absolutely fascinated by the movie Searching because the entire narrative takes place on computer and smartphone screens.  When I saw the trailer for Profile, which employs the same format, I immediately wanted to see it and I had the chance to do so last night.  Amy Whittaker (Valene Kane) is a British investigative journalist who works freelance but is desperate for a permanent position.  She pitches a story about the recruitment of young European women into the terrorist organization ISIS but she needs something compelling to impress her editor (Christine Adams).  She decides to create a new Facebook profile using the persona of a young girl who has recently converted to Islam so she can experience the recruitment process firsthand.  She begins liking and sharing videos with jihadist content and is soon contacted by Abu Bilel (Shazad Latif), a member of ISIS living in Syria.  They begin conversing over Skype every day and, while Amy initially tries to find out damaging information from Bilel, she eventually becomes sympathetic to his cause.  Is she falling in love with the charismatic terrorist or is she doing whatever it takes to get a good story?  The images on Amy's computer screen flash very quickly between her conversations with Bilel, her conversations with her increasingly concerned editor and friends (Morgan Watkins and Emma Carter), footage of ISIS activities from other Facebook profiles, and Google searches for information.  This particular format is even more compelling in this movie than in Searching because it is based on a true story about a relationship conducted entirely on social media.  It is also a cautionary tale about revealing too much about yourself to strangers online. The narrative is incredibly suspenseful and I was on the edge of my seat for most of the final act as Amy's situation becomes more and more dangerous.  Both Kane and Latif give convincing performances as two people playing a cat-and-mouse game with deadly consequences and the tension is palpable.  I really enjoyed this and I recommend it to fans of these so-called Screenlife movies.

Those Who Wish Me Dead

I have been looking forward to Those Who Wish Me Dead for months because it looked like an intense action thriller.  I saw it last night and, while I did enjoy it, I was expecting more from director Taylor Sheridan.  Hannah Faber (Angelina Jolie) is a smoke jumper for the National Forest Service stationed in the wilderness of Montana.  She is suffering from PTSD after a recent fire because she misjudged the direction of the wind which resulted in the deaths of three young boys and she feels responsible.  After failing a psychological evaluation, she is demoted to keeping watch at an isolated fire tower along the Continental Divide.  Owen Casserly (Jake Weber) is a forensic accountant who has discovered a vast government conspiracy.  When he learns that the D.A. working on the case has been assassinated, he correctly assumes that the assassins (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) are coming for him next and flees with his son Connor (Finn Little).  The assassins predict that Owen will be trying to reach his brother-in-law Ethan Sawyer (Jon Bernthal), a sheriff in Montana, and ambush him on the road.  Owen is killed but not before he gives Connor the information to implicate many people in power.  Connor is stranded in the wilderness but Hannah finds him and vows to help him as a way to atone for the deaths of the other boys.  However, she must contend with the ruthless assassins who want Connor dead in one direction and a deadly forest fire in the other.  I always enjoy flawed characters seeking redemption but Hannah is very thinly developed (as are most of the other characters in this movie) and the narrative relies more on things implied rather than things explained which becomes frustrating because there are so many unanswered questions.  Jolie gives a kick-ass performance but I was absolutely riveted by Little (I loved him in Storm Boy) and Medina Senghore, who plays Ethan's pregnant wife, has several stand up and cheer moments with the assassins.  The action sequences are an absolute adrenaline rush and the images of the fire destroying everything in its path are strangely compelling.  I liked this movie but it definitely feels like a throw-back to the disaster movies of the past in which the action supersedes plot and character development.  See it for the spectacle but don't expect much more.

Army of the Dead

Last night I took my nephew Sean to see Army of the Dead (Sean is a huge fan of Zack Snyder) and we both had so much fun watching this epic mash up of the zombie and heist genres.  The movie begins with a heavily armed military convoy transporting an unknown, but dangerous, payload.  When the convoy is involved in a head-on collision on a Nevada highway, the container opens to reveal a zombie who infects all of the soldiers before wreaking havoc on the city of Las Vegas in an awesome opening credits sequence (that rivals the one in Deadpool) with a cover of "Viva Las Vegas" underneath it.  A group of heroic soldiers, Ward (Dave Bautista), Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), and Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick), are responsible for saving many lives and helping to contain the city behind a wall of shipping containers.  However, they are now back to their low paying dead-end jobs until a wealthy casino owner (Hiroyuki Sanada) approaches Ward with a proposition.  The government has decided to detonate a nuclear bomb over Las Vegas to wipe out all remaining zombies and Tanaka wants the $200 million located in an almost impenetrable safe in his casino.  He asks Ward to assemble a team and offers $50 million as a reward to infiltrate the city and get the money.  He recruits Cruz and Vanderohe along with a helicopter pilot (Tig Notaro), a safecracker (Matthias Schweighofer, who steals every scene he is in), a coyote who knows the best route into the city (Nora Arnezeder), and a viral personality famous for killing zombies (Raul Castillo).  Tanaka insists that his head of security (Garret Dillahunt) accompany them and Ward's estranged daughter (Ella Purnell) infiltrates the group to locate a friend who has gone missing in the city.  They must contend with the undead (who are pretty terrifying) as well as a traitor in their midst while racing against the clock.  Will any of them survive?  The action sequences are so much fun (but are extremely gruesome) and I especially loved the scenes where they trick the undead into springing all of the booby traps to get to the safe and when one of Siegfried & Roy's undead tigers gets revenge on a bad guy!  Along with all of the action, there is also quite a bit of humor and pathos (I laughed at just about everything Schweighofer says and does until he made me cry).  Bautista gives a surprisingly affecting performance in between all of the battles, especially in a touching scene with his daughter.  Sean and I both really enjoyed this movie and I recommend seeing it on the biggest possible screen with the biggest possible crowd and the biggest possible tub of popcorn.  It is the perfect summer blockbuster!

Note:  It is incredibly violent.  At one point I covered Sean's eyes and said that his parents would be horrified that I took him to this movie (I had permission).  He giggled and replied, "My Dad will love this movie!"

Utah Opera's La Tragedie de Carmen

The very first opera that I saw performed live was Georges Bizet's masterpiece Carmen so it will always be one of my very favorites.  I was, therefore, understandably intrigued when I heard the announcement that Utah Opera would be performing La tragedie de Carmen by Peter Brooks to close out the 2020-2021 season.  This is a pared down version of the classic (there are only four singing roles and no chorus) that is much more intimate with a particular emphasis on fate.  I procured a highly coveted ticket  (seating is limited to 30 percent capacity to accommodate social distancing) to last night's performance and I was thrilled to be back at Capitol Theatre.  Unfortunately, the director, Omer Ben Seadia, chose to change the setting from Spain in 1820 to Spanish Harlem in the present day and Don Jose is a police officer instead of a soldier, Carmen appears to be a cross between a prostitute and an exotic dancer rather than a factory worker, and Escamillo is a famous singer instead of a bullfighter.  Micaela (Julia Gershkoff) travels from a small town to the city in search of her betrothed Don Jose (Isaac Hurtado) and, while he has fond memories of his hometown, he seems to reject her.  He and his commanding officer Zuniga (Brandon Bell) are called to a commotion on the street and find Carmen (Kristin Chavez) singing about the fickle nature of love.  Zuniga insists that Jose arrest her but she tries to convince him to let her go by promising to dance for him.  Jose is beguiled by her and lets her go, which gets him demoted, then meets her at a club owned by Lillas Pastia (Daniel O'Hearn), who may or may not be Carmen's pimp (he is a sleazeball wearing a red track suit and gold chains).  Carmen dances seductively for Jose but becomes enraged when he says he must go back to work.  When Zuniga comes looking for him, Jose kills him in a fight while Carmen becomes enamored with Escamillo (Efrain Solis) when she hears him singing at the club about a bull fight.  Jose is jealous when Escamillo invites her to his next performance and challenges him but Carmen intervenes and Jose declares his love for her.  They begin a relationship but when Carmen's husband Garcia (Brnadon Bell) appears, Jose kills him.  After a tarot card reading that predicts her death, Carmen leaves him to meet Escamillo at the stage door of his performance at Madison Square Garden.  When Jose finds her there, she knows that he is desperate and has nothing to lose but she refuses to submit to him.  Jose embraces her in a long goodbye, with Fate (Edith Grossman) looking on, before stabbing her to death.  I am not a fan of altering the source material for artistic purposes so I didn't really care for the changes made to the story or to the characters.  I was also really confused by the staging.  While I did like the projections on a scrim at the back of the stage (a chamber orchestra performed on stage behind this scrim), I had a hard time figuring out what was happening with two large panels, especially when the characters would write on them.  However, the beautiful music more than made up for these complaints and the four leads sang their roles brilliantly.  I especially loved Gershkoff's aria "Parle-moi de ma mere," Chavez's rendition of the habanera, and Solis' performance of the famous "Toreador Song."  Even though this production was a bit of a miss for me, I was still so happy to be in an audience listening to beautiful music performed live by a talented cast. There are a very limited number of tickets available to the two remaining performances (go here).

Here Today

I am a huge fan of Billy Crystal and the trailer for Here Today made me laugh so I went to see it last night.  Charlie Burnz (Crystal) is a well respected comedy writer responsible for successful Broadway plays, movies, television shows, and books.  He is currently the head writer for the popular sketch comedy show This Just In and is working on a memoir.  Emma Payge (Tiffany Haddish) is a free-spirited singer who has lunch with Charlie because of a winning bid at a charity auction.  She eventually confesses that she has no idea who he is and just bid on him as a way to get back at her ex-boyfriend who is a big fan.  She has a severe allergic reaction to shellfish during lunch and, because she has no insurance, Charlie pays the substantial emergency room bill.  She attempts to pay him back little by little and they form an unlikely friendship.  She is the first to notice that he is suffering from dementia, which he has been keeping secret from everyone in his life, and helps him reconcile with his son Rex (Penn Badgley) and daughter Francine (Laura Benanti) who blame him for their mother's death.  I actually laughed out loud multiple times and I enjoyed the chemistry between Crystal and Haddish who both give incredibly charming performances.  The message about making peace with the past and living in the present is also very heartwarming but it does become quite mawkish in the final act.  The pacing gets a bit bogged down when the focus shifts from Charlie's relationship with Emma to his role as a mentor to an up-and-coming writer (Andrew Durrand) on the comedy show and to the flashbacks with his wife (Louisa Krause) which feel forced.  Despite the flaws, I liked this movie and so did the large and vocal crowd in my screening.