Air

I love a good sports movie but I have to admit that I had my doubts about Air when I first heard about it.  How could a movie about the making of a basketball shoe be entertaining?  I had the chance to see a sneak peek last night and, not only was I completely riveted, I wanted to stand up and cheer by the end of it!  In 1984 Nike's fledgling basketball division is in third place behind Converse and Adidas.  A Nike executive named Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) wants to change that by betting the entire budget on only one player, Michael Jordan, who has yet to play a game in the NBA because he sees greatness in him.  First he must convince the Nike Director of Marketing Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), Nike CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), sports agent David Falk (Chris Messina), and then a reluctant Michael Jordan who wants to sign with Adidas.  But, more importantly, he must convince Jordan's mother Deloris (Viola Davis) because she also understands her son's worth.  This movie is about how a game-changing partnership between an athlete and a sponsor came about but, rather ironically given my reservations, my favorite scenes involved the designing of the shoe!  I laughed out loud when the Creative Director Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) unveiled the prototype to Vaccaro and Strasser for the first time because it is bathed in light but the audience doesn't actually see the shoe just the reaction to it!  Damon and Davis are outstanding with several goosebump inducing moments but, really, the entire ensemble cast is great!  Bateman delivers a poignant monologue about the high stakes of this deal, Messina is completely unhinged in a scene on the phone, and Affleck is hilarious as an aphorism-spouting CEO beholden to his board.  As a child of the 80s, I really loved the nostalgia of the production design as well as the needle drops, especially the opening montage of pop cultural references with "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits underneath it.  I also enjoyed the references to John Stockton (Utah Jazz fan here).  Affleck's direction should also be praised because, even though much of the action consists of conversations, many occurring over the phone, and almost everyone, even those who do not follow basketball, knows the outcome of the negotiations, he somehow infuses the narrative with heart and humor.  This is a crowd-pleasing slam dunk and I highly recommend it!  

Enys Men

The second movie in my double feature at the Broadway last night was Enys Men (which is Cornish for "Stone Island").  I am a big fan of experimental horror and I found this to be incredibly unsettling.  A Volunteer (Mary Woodvine) conducts daily observations of and logs the data for a group of white flowers on the cliff of an isolated and inhospitable island off the coast of Cornwall in 1973.  She follows the exact same monotonous routine every day and the results of her observations do not change.  She has very little contact with the outside world except for a short-wave radio and a Boatman (Edward Rowe) who periodically brings her supplies.  After the Boatman and his smashed up boat wash up on shore, however, the Volunteer begins to be haunted by the spirits of people who once inhabited the island and a strange lichen appears on both the flowers and on the Volunteer's body.  It seems as if the Volunteer is being subsumed by both memory and nature but this is my interpretation (everything is open to interpretation because what this movie does so well is put you inside the head of the main character so that, like her, you begin to question everything that you see on the screen).  The action happens in a very non-linear structure (the Volunteer is shown with a yellow rain slicker well before we see the floating body of the Boatman wearing it and she places a piece of his boat on the mantel before we see the wreck in the water) and the images are steeped in mythology and allegory, particularly the oft-repeated wide shots of circling birds, crashing waves, and a mysterious stone monolith.  The sound design, which features wind, waves, and static from the radio, emphasizes the disorientation and the use of grainy 16-millimeter film is incredibly evocative (it is almost as if the movie itself is a relic unearthed from the past).  Woodvine is absolutely riveting as a woman slowly going mad.  The narrative can be frustrating because it focuses more on atmosphere than plot and it is more unnerving than scary but I was fascinated by this movie and highly recommend seeking it out (it is playing in a very limited engagement at the Broadway).

A Thousand and One

I was so excited for another double feature at the Broadway last night!  I started with A Thousand and One because, after hearing all of the buzz, I really regretted missing it at Sundance this year.  Now that I've seen it, I definitely understand why it won the Grand Jury Prize at the festival because I loved this powerful exploration of what makes a home and family.  Inez de la Paz (Teyana Taylor), who is herself a product of the foster system, impulsively decides to kidnap her six-year-old son Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola) from his foster placement after being released from Rikers Island.  She loves her son fiercely and, even though what she has done is illegal, she is determined that he will have a better life than her.  Through sheer force of will and despite many obstacles she creates a home for Terry and enters a tumultuous relationship with a former boyfriend (Will Catlett) so that he will have a male role model.  As Terry grows older (Aven Courtney at age 13 and Josiah Cross at age 17) Inez is hard on him and pushes him to succeed in school but this gives him many more opportunities than she had.  However, their hard-won sense of security is threatened by the gentrification overtaking New York and by a secret that eventually comes to light.  This story about a young woman trying to build a stable home for her son is made even more poignant by the fact that she never had one herself and I had tears in my eyes several times!  Taylor gives an absolutely brilliant performance because it is so lived in.  It almost seems as if events are happening to her in real time because all of the many emotions she portrays are incredibly authentic.  I was also really impressed with the three actors who play Terry because they all have a stillness that belies what is going on behind their eyes.  I was especially moved by a scene in which Adetola asks why no one is looking for him and another one in which Cross tells his mother he will always remember his home.  This is now one of my favorite movies of 2023 and I highly recommend it!

Harvey at the Grand Theatre

Last night I had the opportunity to see a delightful production of Harvey at the Grand Theatre.  I was especially excited for this play because I had never seen it, or the movie adaptation starring Jimmy Stewart, before and I was very pleasantly surprised by how moving I found it!  A social climber named Veta Louise Simmons (Kristin Housley) is exasperated when her brother, Elwood P. Dowd (Roger Dunbar), interrupts one of her gatherings by introducing his imaginary friend Harvey, a six foot one-and-a-half inch tall white rabbit, to her high society guests.  Veta is humiliated by his behavior, and what it might mean for her daughter Myrtle Mae (Niki Rahimi) and her chances for an advantageous marriage, so she makes the drastic decision to have him committed to a sanitariam called Chumley's Rest.  However, when Veta attempts to explain the existence of Harvey to Dr. Sanderson (Aron Cain), he mistakenly assumes that she is the one who needs to be committed.  Hijinks ensue when everyone, including Dr. Harold Chumley (Mickey Goldstein), the orderly Duane Wilson (Robert A. Easton), Nurse Ruth Kelly (Angie Nicole), and Veta's lawyer Judge Omar Gaffney (Jeffrey Owen), tries to determine who is really crazy!  In the end, Veta realizes that Elwood is a kind man and that she doesn't want to change him even if it means living with Harvey!  I really loved the message about the importance of kindness, which seems particularly salient in these times, and Dunbar is fantastic as Elwood because he exudes warmth and charm in every scene even when all of the other characters are caught up in the chaos.  Housley is also a lot of fun to watch, especially when Veta becomes hilariously overwrought on Dr. Sanderson's fainting couch!  Speaking of which, the elaborate sets consisting of the wood paneled library in the old Dowd family mansion and the reception room of Chumley's Rest are quite impressive.  There is a fun bit of business involving a maid (Teresa McLeod) as the sets are changed from one to the other that is very effective as well as some great special effects that make the invisible Harvey an actual presence on stage (I especially liked his inclusion during the bows).  This heart-warming show put a huge smile on my face and I highly recommend it (go here for tickets).

Return to Seoul

When I saw the trailer for Return to Seoul, I thought it sounded like something my nephew would enjoy so I took him to see it last night.  We both found this complex exploration of one young woman's search for self to be incredibly thought-provoking.  Frederique "Freddie" Benoit (Ji-Min Park), a 25-year-old Korean woman who was adopted by a French couple as a baby, spontaneously decides to travel to Seoul when her flight to Tokyo is canceled.  She tells two new acquaintances that she is not there specifically to find her biological parents but she eventually ends up at the Hammond Adoption Agency and has them contact her mother and father to see if they will respond to her request to meet.  Her father (Oh Kwang-rok) responds immediately but, when she visits him and his family, she is repulsed by his emotional professions of guilt over abandoning her and she viciously rejects his pleas for her to move to Korea and live with him.  She returns several more times to Korea but doesn't attempt to learn the language or understand the culture, pushes everyone who tries to form a relationship with her away, and engages in reckless and self-destructive behavior.  It takes seven more years for her mother (Cho-woo Choi) to agree to a meeting when she is back in Korea on a business trip and, while they have an emotional reunion, Freddie refuses to communicate with her further.  She is clearly looking for an identity but she doesn't feel at home in either France or Korea, doesn't belong with her adoptive or biological families, and doesn't stay with any of the men or women she hooks up with.  It is only when we see her alone in an unknown location that she seems to be at peace.  Ji-Min Park, in her debut, gives an absolutely phenomenal performance because, even though her character is very unlikable, you simply cannot look away from her because of her chaotic energy, especially in a five minute scene where she dances with abandon to avoid her feelings.  I really loved the use of music in this movie because, in different scenes, Freddie uses music to bond with people, to escape from stressful situations, and, ultimately, to find herself (it features a fantastic soundtrack).  When she has no other label for herself, she becomes a musician.  I also really enjoyed the ambiguity in the narrative, particularly when things get lost in translation from French to Korean, and it is so interesting to speculate about what happens to Freddie next (my nephew and I had a very spirited discussion about this afterwards) because there are no easy answers about this kind of trauma.  The themes of identity really resonated with me (and my nephew) for lots of reasons and I highly recommend seeking this out!