Don't Look Up

The Academy Award nominations were announced on Tuesday and I have seen all of the nominees for Best Picture (click on the titles for my commentaries on Belfast, CODA, Drive My Car, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, and West Side Story) except for one.  I am not really a fan of Adam McKay (I liked The Big Short well enough but I despised Vice) so I didn't watch Don't Look Up when it was first released but, since I have a tradition of watching all the nominees, I decided to watch it on Netflix last night.  Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University, discovers a new comet but her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), determines that it is on a collision course with Earth and will cause mass extinction.  They contact Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), the head of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA, who confirms their results and arranges for them to meet with President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep).  She and her son Jason (Jonah Hill), the Chief of Staff, don't want to release the information to the public because it will make her look bad right before the mid-term elections.  Dibiasky and Mindy then decide to publicize the news themselves on a popular morning show hosted by Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry) and Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) but Dibiasky's volatile outburst becomes a meme and the news about the imminent destruction of the Earth is overshadowed by the engagement of pop stars Riley Bina (Ariana Grande) and DJ Chello (Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi).  When President Orlean becomes embroiled in a sex scandal with her Supreme Court nominee, she decides to deflect attention by sending nuclear weapons into space to destroy the comet.  However, the CEO of the tech company BASH, Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), believes that the comet contains trillions of dollars worth of resources so President Orlean decides to use untested BASH technology to break apart the comet and recover the pieces for the lucrative mining opportunities.  Will humanity survive?  This is a dark comedy that satirizes global warming along with political nepotism, celebrity culture, social media, abuse of power, and corporate greed but I found the message to be very heavy-handed (even though I agree with most of what McKay is saying) and the scope too large to be effective.  While there are some really funny elements (I especially loved the star-studded concert to save Earth and I laughed out loud at the mid-credits scene involving dinosaur-like creatures) and a few great performances (Hill and DiCaprio are my favorites), the uneven tone really bothered me.  The end of the world just isn't that funny, in my opinion, because the stakes are so high.  I found the juxtaposition between the touching dinner scene with Mindy, his wife (Melanie Lynskey), Oglethorpe, Dibiasky, and her boyfriend (Timothee Chalamet) and the amusing attempts by politicians and military personnel to flee the Earth in spaceships to be especially jarring.  I also found the stock images of nature interspersed with the comedy to be off-putting.  I didn't hate it as much as Vice but it is definitely my least favorite Best Picture nominee.

Sundown

Last night I saw the movie Sundown and I am still thinking about this intriguing character study.  An obviously wealthy British family, consisting of Neil (Tim Roth), Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and teens Colin (Samuel Bottomley) and Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan), is vacationing at a luxurious resort in Acapulco.  Their holiday is cut short when Alice receives a distressing phone call informing her that her mother has been rushed to the hospital and she insists that they return home immediately.  However, when the family is at the airport ready to check-in (with full concierge service), Neil realizes that he has left his passport back at the hotel and must stay behind.  Instead of returning to the resort, he takes a taxi to a seedy hotel and proceeds to spend the next few days drinking and sitting on the beach while ignoring the frantic phone calls from Alice.  He meets a local woman (Iazua Larios) and begins an affair with her as the days turn into weeks.  Finally, Alice returns to Mexico to confront him is a scene filled with restrained fury.  This is a slow burn with lots of up-close shots of Neil's inscrutable face staring into the ocean but it is somehow incredibly compelling because you never know how you are supposed to feel about him.  Who is he?  Why has he seemingly abandoned his family in their time of need?  What is he doing in Mexico?  Why does he seem so ambivalent about his situation (including a violent murder that happens literally at his feet)?  The answers, which are revealed very slowly, may surprise audiences.  I was also really intrigued by the subtle commentary on class structure.  Many of the locals are portrayed as incredibly subservient to the wealthy tourists, bringing unsolicited drinks and waiting around for hours in taxis, but then their attention becomes more sinister in the third act.  Roth gives a highly nuanced performance because, even though he is incredibly still most of the time, there is so much going on behind his eyes.  Ultimately, I think this movie is not quite as profound as it thinks it is (the ambiguous ending made several people in the audience groan out loud) but I found it very interesting.

The Golden Couple

My February Book of the Month selection was The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (the other options were Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black, A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross, Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, and Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu). I discovered these authors during the lockdown and eagerly devoured all of their books (often in one sitting) so I was very excited to read their latest! Avery Chambers is an unorthodox therapist who guarantees that she can treat people in only ten sessions. She requires absolute honesty and investigates every aspect of her clients' lives in order to uncover the root of their problems. Matthew and Marissa Bishop seem like the perfect couple but Marissa turns to Avery because she has a secret that could threaten the happiness of her marriage. However, as Avery investigates the Bishops, she discovers that they are both hiding much more than they are willing to disclose during their sessions and it soon becomes clear that Avery herself is keeping secrets. The narrative alternates between the POVs of Marissa and Avery and I found both characters to be incredibly compelling even if they are flawed. I particularly enjoyed the idea of a therapist who has gone rogue because so much of what Avery does can be construed as unethical and it makes for a provocative narrative. All of the secondary characters are also very intriguing and I never knew from one minute to the next who to believe or trust as more and more information is slowly revealed. This kept me reading well into the night in order to unravel all of the mysteries (and there are so many of them along with quite a few red herrings). Hendricks and Pekkanen are known for their dramatic plot twists but I found the big reveal in this story to be somewhat underwhelming because I predicted it early on (I thought it was fairly unoriginal and obvious). The resolution is rushed and, in my opinion, it is all a bit too neat considering the high stakes involved. I liked this novel well enough but I definitely think that The Anonymous Girl, The Wife Between Us, and You Are Not Alone by these authors are better and would recommend them over this.

Moonfall

To be honest, after all of the heavy content that I watched all alone in my living room during the Sundance Film Festival this year I was really looking forward to a ridiculous disaster movie on an IMAX screen in a crowded theater with a big tub of popcorn.  I certainly got all of that with Moonfall last night!  The moon has been knocked out of its orbit for reasons and is now on a collision course with Earth.  Also for reasons, the only way to save the Earth from certain doom is to send NASA Deputy Director Jocinda "Jo" Fowler (Halle Berry), disgraced astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), and conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) into space on a decommissioned space shuttle retrieved from a museum in order to detonate an EMP device in the center of the moon.  Finally, for reasons, Harper's estranged son Sonny (Charlie Plummer) must race against time to get Jo's son Jimmy and his caregiver Michelle (Kelly Yu) to safety while Jo's ex-husband General Doug Davidson (Eme Ikwuakor) must take drastic measures to stop the military from launching nuclear weapons at the moon.  Let's just say that none of the reasons involve actual science, logic, or common sense!  The entire premise is completely preposterous, with an absolutely bonkers third act, and most of the dialogue is cringe worthy but there are some great visual effects and I would be lying if I said I didn't have a lot of fun watching this.  If you are a fan of Roland Emmerich's other disaster movies you will probably enjoy it, too.  I recommend seeing it on the biggest screen possible with as many people as possible with the biggest tub of popcorn possible.

Thierry Fischer Conducts Ravel, Liszt & John Adams

Last night, like most Friday nights, I was at Abravanel Hall for a Utah Symphony concert and I loved every minute of it!  The orchestra, once again under the baton of Music Director Thierry Fischer, began with Slonimsky's Earbox by John Adams.  I was unfamiliar with this piece but I enjoyed it immensely because it is incredibly dynamic with non-stop energy coming from every section.  I especially loved all of the percussion and the almost strident blasts from the brass.  Next, the orchestra was joined by Joyce Yang for Piano Concerto No. 1 by Franz Liszt and this was pretty spectacular!  The first movement is incredibly dramatic and I loved watching Yang's fingers fly up and down the keyboard.  The second movement is very romantic with beautiful passages by the solo piano while the third movement is playful with a theme played by the triangle and duets between the piano and several woodwind instruments.  The final movement returns to the dramatic themes introduced at the beginning with a powerful march played by the brass.  I have seen Yang perform at Abravanel Hall before and she was simply brilliant last night.  She received a thunderous standing ovation and performed a beautiful rendition of Prelude in G Minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff as an encore.  After the intermission, the orchestra played several pieces by Maurice Ravel.  The first was Une barque sur l'ocean and, as I listened, I could see a violent storm, suggested by a theme played by the timpani, at sea with a boat being tossed about on turbulent waves.  Next came Valses nobles et sentimentales which are a series of light and airy waltzes.  The concert concluded with La Valse and during this piece I imagined a large group of waltzing couples dancing in a ballroom in Vienna and I especially loved the theme played by the harps.  It was a lovely evening of music and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  The same program will be performed again tonight and, since all the cool kids spend their weekends at Abravanel Hall, I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here).