The Eight Mountains

I was really intrigued by The Eight Mountains because it won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year (tying with EO) so I decided to see it last night as the first in a double feature at the Broadway.  I absolutely loved this moving portrait of a 40-year friendship.  An 11-year-old boy from Turin named Pietro (Lupo Barbiero) spends the summer with his parents in a mountain village in the Italian Alps.  He soon meets Bruno (Cristiano Sassella), an 11-year-old living in the village, and they become inseparable as they hike around the mountains with Pietro's father Giovanni (Filippo Timi).  They reunite every summer until they eventually grow apart as the teenage Pietro (Andrea Palma) becomes estranged from his father and stops coming to the village while Bruno (Francesco Palombelli) continues hiking with Giovanni on his visits.  Fifteen years later, Pietro (Luca Marinelli) returns to the village after his father's death and learns from Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) that Giovanni purchased a plot of land with the intention of building a cabin on it.  The two of them spend the summer building the cabin together and, even though adventure takes Pietro around the world and domestic responsibilities keep Bruno busy in the mountains, they vow to spend their summers there.  Pietro relates a story he heard in Nepal about the world being made up of eight mountains separated by eight seas surrounding the tallest mountain.  They have a philosophical discussion about whether it is better to visit the eight mountains or to climb to the top of the tallest one which is an allegory for their lives (this reminded me of the theme in Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse).  What I loved most about this movie is that, even though Pietro and Bruno are very different people, the friendship that is forged between them as children is genuine and they support each other through the vicissitudes of life.  Marinelli and Borghi have tremendous chemistry together (as do Berbiero and Sassella) and the friendship feels very lived in and believable.  The cinematography is simply breathtaking with vast mountain landscapes and lakes and I especially enjoyed the Steadicam shots as Pietro and Bruno hike at different times during the year.  The action is very slow (the runtime is 147 minutes) but I was never bored because I was so emotionally invested.  I highly recommend seeking this one out!

42nd Street at CPT

Last night my sisters and I went to see a fun and energetic version of 42nd Street at Centerpoint Theatre. I saw the Broadway touring production several years ago and that was a showy song and dance extravaganza where every number was completely over the top with dazzling choreography and sparkly costumes. I didn't think that a community theatre production could compare to that spectacle but I was really impressed with what CPT did with it! A young dancer named Peggy Sawyer (Kaylee Wheeler) arrives in New York City straight from Allentown, Pennsylvania in order to make her Broadway dreams come true during the Great Depression. She joins the chorus line of a brand new musical produced by Maggie Jones (Amanda Rogers) and Bert Barry (Matt Ford) and directed by Julian Marsh (Brock Harris) called Pretty Lady but when Dorothy Brock (Cynthia Klumpp), the star of the show, has a mishap on stage, she gets the chance of a lifetime! This features lots of well-known Broadway standards, including "You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me," "I Only Have Eyes For You," "We're In the Money," "Sunny Side to Every Situation," "Lullaby of Broadway," "About a Quarter to Nine," "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," and "42nd Street." My sisters were really excited because, even though they weren't familiar with this show, they recognized all of the songs and I suspect fans of Broadway will enjoy hearing them, too! The choreography is a lot of fun and the insanely talented members of the ensemble execute it very well! It is so much fun to watch and I especially enjoyed it when the curtain slowly opened to reveal row upon row of tap-dancing feel at the beginning of the show! Wheeler is absolutely delightful as the ingenue Peggy Sawyer because she has a wide-eyed enthusiasm that really works for the character. She is a great dancer and has a beautiful voice (my sister wished that she had been featured more). Harris is bombastic as the impresario Julian Marsh but he has a few really tender moments with Wheeler and I loved his rendition of "Lullaby of Broadway." Klumpp commands the stage as the quintessential Broadway diva Dorothy Brock but she also shows a lot of vulnerability when a younger and more talented dancer threatens to take her place. The set, featuring the stage, back stage area, and dressing room of an Art Deco theatre, is very impressive and I especially liked the various backdrops for the big production numbers in Pretty Lady.  Finally, costume designer Brianna Taylor is to be commended for the sheer number of elaborate period costumes built for this show (and the cast is to be commended for all of the incredibly quick costume changes, too!). This is a toe-tapping old school musical that will definitely put a smile on your face. It runs on the Barlow Main Stage through July 11 (go here for tickets).

The Boogeyman

Movie adaptations of Stephen King's works are really hit or miss with me.  In my opinion, The Shining is the best and The Dark Tower is one of the worst.  Last night I went to see The Boogeyman, the latest adaptation based one of King's short stories, and I think it falls somewhere in the middle of these two extremes because I certainly didn't hate it but I don't think it will have a lasting impression.  Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and her younger sister Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) are almost debilitated by the recent death of their mother and they are not getting much support from their father Will (Chris Messina) because he is burying his own pain in his work as a therapist.  Will is approached by an unstable man named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) who claims that his children were killed by a monster that is now stalking him.  When Lester hangs himself in a closet in their home, this mysterious monster begins terrorizing the family.  Sadie eventually reaches out to Lester's wife Rita (Marin Ireland) and learns that this creature lives in the dark and feeds off feelings of grief and sadness.  This movie is incredibly atmospheric with a menacing sound and light design that makes the buildup to the terror extremely effective even if it does strain credulity (why don't they just turn on the lights?).  One scene in particular, when Sawyer rolls a glowing orb down a dark hall to see if the monster is lurking at the end of it, is so scary that I almost had to cover my eyes.  However, the final confrontation with the monster is very anticlimactic after all of the terrifying shots of dark closets and the message about getting over the trauma of losing a loved one is a bit heavy handed.  All of the performances are outstanding, although the characters are not developed fully, and I was especially impressed by Blair, who is very convincing as a child suffering from night terrors, and Dastmalchian, who is equally affecting and creepy in a brief role.  This is a serviceable horror movie that I enjoyed but it is not very memorable and I recommend waiting until it is streaming.

Puffs at West Valley Arts

I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter franchise (I have read all of the books and seen all of the movies countless times and I even flew to San Francisco just to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) so I was absolutely thrilled to be able to see Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic at West Valley Arts last night! It is a really fun and clever parody of the popular series and I loved it! A Narrator (Brandwynn Michelle) introduces the audience to a brave orphan wizard with a lightning bolt scar named Harry Potter (Sofia Parades-Kenrick) but then tells us that this story is about another orphan named Wayne Hopkins (Grayson Kamel) who is also sent to the school of female magic and male magic after learning that he is a wizard. The story begins with a ceremony that sorts everyone into one of the four houses: Braves, Smarts, Snakes, and Puffs. The sorting hat places Wayne in Puffs and he is soon introduced to the prefect, Cedric Diggory (Adam Packard), and the other outcasts and misfits in this house, including Oliver Rivers (Tanner Larson), Megan Jones (Bryn Campbell), Susie Bones (Natalie Ruthven), J. Finch Fletchley (Oran Marc Di Baritault), Sally Perks (Ally Choe), Ernie Mac (Lucas Stewart), and others. Over the next seven years, Wayne struggles to learn magic and tries to protect everyone from the Dark Lord, Mr. Voldy (Adam Packard). However, he is constantly overshadowed by Harry who steals all of the attention, including the moment when the Puffs are finally allowed to shine during the three wizard tournament. Eventually he starts to feel useless but the Headmaster tells him that everyone is a hero to someone and that friendship is the most important magic! What makes this show so much fun (and so clever) is that all of the well-known characters from the books are alluded to with enough recognizable traits to know exactly who they are without naming them (my favorite is a certain potions teacher) and all of the memorable events still happen but they are shown from the perspective of secondary characters who are not involved in the action. Fans will have a blast spotting all of the references! The action is non-stop (it is almost frenetic), with most of the actors playing multiple roles (I laughed out loud when a different actor played the Headmaster in the second act), and the "magic" happens using ingenious costumes, props, and choreography rather than special effects. The ensemble cast does a great job executing all of the physical comedy with Packard as the standout for me, especially as the bumbling Mr. Voldy. The set, which consists of the great hall and the Puffs' common room on the main stage and a variety of classrooms and corridors in the castle located in areas above the wings, is incredibly simple but effective and I especially loved all of the candles floating in the rafters. I enjoyed this so much and I highly recommend it (go here for tickets), especially for fans of the series!

She Started It

My June Book of the Month selection was She Started It by Sian Gilbert (the other options were The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer, Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs, Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See, and Banyan Moon by Thao Thai). I defaulted to the thriller yet again and this twisty page-turner kept me up all night! Former school friends Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe are surprised when they receive invitations to an all-expenses-paid bachelorette weekend from Poppy Greer. The four of them often bullied Poppy at school but it was so long ago and she must have forgiven them for their little pranks by now. Besides, who could resist the opportunity to stay at a luxury resort on a private island in the Bahamas? They are discomfited to discover that they are Poppy's only guests but soon settle in for three days of sun, sand, and cocktails. However, it soon becomes clear that Poppy has arranged this weekend to exact revenge but, when one of the four is murdered, Poppy is not the only one with a motive. The narrative alternates between the POVs of Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe in the present and Poppy's diary entries about past events when they were at school. The four main characters are unlikable and unreliable narrators with lots of secrets that are revealed little by little and the diary entries cleverly inform what is happening on the island and why (although the diary entries read as if they are a creative writing project rather than the words of a young girl). The suspense builds and builds as the island is transformed from a tropical paradise into a literal prison with no way to communicate with the outside world and no way to leave. The plot is quite ingenious (I especially enjoyed how Poppy uses technology to get even with her tormentors) and there are so many twists and turns (it is really fun when the women begin turning on one another) that I actually suspected everyone at one point! I did figure out one of the biggest twists before the big reveal but it didn't detract from my enjoyment because the story is so engaging that I raced through to find out if I was right and I giggled out loud when something happened to confirm my suspicions. This is a quick and easy read that combines Mean Girls with The Lord of the Flies and I recommend it for fans of thrillers.