Nickel Boys

I was very moved by Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys so I was eager to see the movie adaptation Nickel Boys by director RaMell Ross.  I was hoping that it would get a wider release after the fall film festivals and, luckily, it is now playing at the Broadway.  I had the chance to see it last night and the more I think about it the more I love it.  Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) is an idealistic Black teenager living in Tallahassee, Florida with his grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) during the era of segregation.  He is inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. to participate in the Civil Rights Movement and by his history teacher Mr. Hill (Jimmie Fails) to enroll in college courses.  He is picked up by a man driving a stolen car while hitchhiking to campus and, when the man is pulled over by police, he is unjustly arrested as his accomplice.  Because he is a minor, he is sent to the reform school Nickel Academy where he befriends a cynical student named Turner (Brandon Wilson).  Elwood soon discovers that the academy is both cruel and corrupt after he is brutally whipped for defending a student who is being bullied and when he and other students are hired out as slave labor.  They come to suspect that a student has been executed and buried on the property but, when  Elwood wants to expose the academy to a visiting government inspector so that conditions will improve, Turner advises him to keep his head down.  He does not listen and is severely punished.  Many years later, Turner is inspired by Elwood to come forward after mass graves are discovered at the academy.  This features a non-linear structure and the narrative is told through the first person POVs of Elwood and Turner (the audience only sees what they see) with lots of archival footage of the Black experience during this time period interspersed in between.  It took me a little while to adjust to this but eventually something clicked and I realized that I was actually experiencing everything that the two characters do.  It was both visceral and powerful.  The images on the screen are hauntingly beautiful and the performances by Herisse and Wilson are incredibly compelling even if some of the scenes are difficult to watch.  I don't think I have ever seen anything like this before and I highly recommend it but I will say that those who have not read the book might not understand everything that is happening.

The Brutalist

Last night I went to an early screening of The Brutalist at the Broadway with my nephew (I sure do love going to movies with him) and I think it is an epic masterpiece.  Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) is a Hungarian Jew who emigrates to the United States after surviving the Holocaust while separated from his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy).  He lands in New York Harbor but soon travels to Philadelphia where he is taken in by his cousin Atilla (Alessandro Nivola), who has become very assimilated and has an American (and Catholic) wife named Audrey (Emma Laird) who does not want him staying with them.  Atilla eventually gives in to Audrey's wishes (and a false claim that Lazslo made advances to her) and asks him to leave.  He becomes a heroin addict while working a construction job and living in a shelter run by the Catholic church but soon meets a wealthy, but mercurial, industrialist named Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) who knows of his reputation as an innovative architect before the war.  He proposes that Laszlo design a large project as a memorial to his mother and offers to help facilitate the immigration of his wife and niece as an incentive.  Laszlo is reunited with his family and moves to Van Buren's vast estate as work on the elaborate community center begins.  The project is fraught with complications including the last minute addition of a chapel, Van Buren's insistence on having another architect supervise the work, the derision of Van Buren's arrogant son Harry (Joe Alwyn), and the derailment of a train carrying materials which is blamed on Laszlo.  However, it is a violent encounter with Van Buren that ultimately dooms the project.  Many years later, at a retrospective of Laszlo's work in Venice, it is revealed that the community center was eventually completed and now stands as a monument to him rather than Van Buren.  I was absolutely riveted (despite a runtime of over three hours) by this bold exploration of the immigrant experience and I loved how Laszlo's first distorted view of the Statue of Liberty, which is often called a symbol of the American dream, foreshadows what is to come.  Brody is utterly captivating with an emotional performance that, in my opinion, is the best of 2024, especially in an incredibly intense scene where Lazslo tells Van Buren that his buildings will be his legacy, but I was also impressed with Pearce because he is the perfect embodiment of Van Buren's privilege juxtaposed with Laszlo's suffering.  I could not look away whenever the two of them appear on screen together.  The production design is immersive, particularly Laszlo's innovative buildings, and the cinematography is dazzling (it was filmed in VistaVision).  I even loved the titles because they mimic Brutalist architecture.  Finally, I was blown away by the score by Daniel Blumberg, especially the continuous music in the ten minute opening sequence, because the repetition of a four note motif (by the brass and the piano among other instruments) is so evocative.  I cannot recommend this enough!

Note:  Watching this felt like an event because the theater was packed and the structure of the movie (which includes an overture and an intermission) is a throwback to the way movies used to be presented.

Dial M for Murder at PTC

I love the movie Dial M for Murder (I'm a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock) so I was really excited to see a new adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher at PTC last night. This version is still set in the 1950s but there is an update that intensifies the motivations of the characters and I found the whole production to be incredibly compelling. Tony Wendice (Dan Domingues) blackmails his old college friend Lesgate (Aaron Cammack) into killing his wife Margot (Awesta Zarif) for her money after he discovers that she is having an affair with a crime writer named Maxine Hadley (Lucy Lavely). However, all of his elaborate plans go awry when Margot kills Lesgate instead and he must improvise to make Margot culpable for the murder. Will Margot, Maxine, and Inspector Hubbard (Peter Howard) be able to expose Tony as the mastermind before it is too late? This is an incredibly intense psychological thriller because it is not so much about "whodunnit" but about how the plot will be unraveled. Every aspect of the production adds to the tension and I especially loved the set, which features a well appointed living room surrounded by discolored mirrors that distort the contents within and a murky scrim through which you can see the all-important staircase on the other side of the door, and the dramatic lighting, which uses light and shadow to great effect (especially in the scene where Tony is compelling Lesgate to do his bidding because Tony's shadow looms over Lesgate and it is so ominous). I was also impressed with the sound design because hearing Maxine's interview on the radio during the attack sequence creates a sense of unease that is palpable. The pacing is absolutely brilliant because, despite the heavy reliance on dialogue, my attention never wavered as more and more secrets are slowly revealed (the audience gasped out loud during a particularly heated scene). The cast is uniformly exceptional and it is difficult to single anyone out but I had a lot of fun watching Dominigues subtly manipulate everyone around him with a smirk on his face (he is such a cad) and Howard bumble around with an overwrought delivery (he is the source of much comic relief) until he reveals himself to be Tony's equal in manipulation. Finally, I think having Margot's lover be a woman (the biggest change from the original play by Frederick Knott) really ups the stakes for her and provides a more persuasive motive for the lengths she goes to hide the affair. I thoroughly enjoyed this and, if you are a fan of suspense, I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here). It runs at PTC through January 25.

The Last Showgirl

Last night my nephew and I went to see The Last Showgirl at the Broadway.  I was really eager to see this because of everything I had heard about Pamela Anderson's performance and it is definitely the highlight of the movie.  Shelly Gardner (Anderson) has been a dancer in a Las Vegas revue called Le Razzle Dazzle for over thirty years.  Her much younger castmates Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) see the show as just a way to earn money but she thinks of it as a glamorous career in an iconic show where she feels beautiful and seen.  However, when she learns that show will be closing permanently very soon, she must come to terms with the effect her career has had on the relationship with her estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) and with the fact that she has only been deluding herself that she is a star after a disappointing audition for another director (Jason Schwartzman).  I really loved the exploration of what it means to follow a dream even when that dream requires sacrifices or is derided by others and I found the ending to be almost triumphant even though Shelly's future remains uncertain.  I also liked the examination of how society treats women when they age (this would be a great double feature with The Substance), especially in the scenes involving Shelly's friend and former castmate Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis).  Anderson gives the performance of her career and, as a woman who was herself sexualized in most of her acting roles and then discarded, she brings an authenticity to the role that is incredibly poignant.  I particularly loved her vulnerability in the audition scene.  I was also really impressed by Dave Bautista as Eddie, the producer of the revue, but I found Curtis to be too over the top.  Unfortunately, the script is quite weak with ambiguous relationships that I wish had been explored more fully and much of the already short runtime is taken up with artistic shots of Shelly standing in front of various locations (I get that this is supposed to represent the real Las Vegas that tourists don't see but the repetition becomes tedious).  Much like with Maria, I really loved the central performance but didn't necessarily love the movie.

Ragtime at The Ruth

I really love the musical Ragtime so I was thrilled to be able to see it last night in the Scott & Karen Smith Grand Theater at The Ruth.  It is an amazing production (and the theater isn't too shabby, either).  This show tells the story of America at the turn of the 20th Century from the perspectives of three different groups of people.  Mother (Amy Shreeve Keeler) is the matriarch of an upper-class family living in the suburb of New Rochelle when Father (Christopher Higbee) leaves on a voyage to the North Pole and she is forced to make decisions for the first time in her life.  Tateh (Taylor Morris) is an Eastern European Jew who brings his daughter to America hoping for a better life.  Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (Yahosh Bonner) is a Harlem piano player looking for justice after the death of his fiance Sarah (Brittany Andam).  Their stories converge along with those of the most notable figures of the day, including the illusionist Harry Houdini (Clayton Barney), a showgirl named Evelyn Nesbit (Morgan Fenner) who gets caught up in the Crime of the Century, the Black leader Booker T. Washington (Chad Brown), the financier J.P. Morgan (Bradley Moss), the inventor of the Model-T Henry Ford (Trevor B. Dean), and the anarchist Emma Goldman (Marcie Jacobsen), with ragtime music as a metaphor for the dramatic changes taking place in American life before World War I.  The entire cast is outstanding but I especially enjoyed Bonner and Andam because they sing "Sarah Brown Eyes," my favorite song in the show, so beautifully (the two of them also just about blow the roof off the brand new theater with their powerful rendition of "Wheels of a Dream") and I found Bonner's performance of "Make Them Hear You" and Andam's performance of "Your Daddy's Son" to be incredibly stirring.  I was also really impressed with Keeler because she sings "Back to Before," another one of my favorites from the show, with so much emotion.  Speaking of emotion, the ensemble brought tears to my eyes during "Till We Reach That Day" because it is so affecting.  The dynamic staging and choreography really add to the storytelling, especially in "Ragtime" as the various groups circle around each other, in "Journey On" as Father and Tateh arrive and depart from New York Harbor as Mother waves to both of them, in "A Shtetl Iz America" as the immigrants arrive at Ellis Island with metal fences that are moved and configured as barriers and then as a gate, and the synchronized movements that mimic an assembly line by the factory workers in "Henry Ford."  I also really loved the energy in "Gettin' Ready Rag" and "Atlantic City."  This new theater features a thrust stage which retains the intimacy of the old theater but allows for more elaborate sets and I liked the use of bricks, glass, and iron girders to represent the industrialization of the age.  Finally, I have always loved HCTO's costumes and this show is no exception.  I especially loved the white Edwardian dresses worn by the women of New Rochelle and Evelyn Nesbit's showgirl costume.  Every aspect of this production is extremely well done and I highly recommend it (you definitely do not want to miss out on being a part of The Ruth's inaugural show).  It runs through February 22 and tickets may be purchased here.

Note:  I thoroughly enjoyed seeing shows at the quirky HCTO theater but I have to admit the the new theater is much more comfortable (lots of leg room).