She Loves Me at OPPA

Last night I went to see She Loves Me at On Pitch Performing Arts and it was a delightful production of one of my favorite shows! The action takes place at Maraczek's Perfumery in Budapest during the 1930s and follows a group of eccentric clerks, including Georg Nowack (Cormac Romine), Ilona Ritter (Amanda Murray), Steven Kodaly (Dylan Marriott), Ladislav Sipos (Gavin Turner), and Arpad Laszlo (Emily Butcher). When Mr. Maraczek (Jeff Duncan) hires Amalia Balash (Caitlin Olsen) as a new clerk, Georg takes an immediate dislike to her and soon they are both bickering constantly. However, both Georg and Amalia have unknown correspondents and it turns out that they are actually writing to each other! Chaos ensues until they eventually realize they love each other. Most of the songs in this show consist of simple every day conversations between co-workers (the clerks even break out into song whenever a customer leaves the shop) and they are all really charming. My favorites are "Tonight at Eight" and "Will He Like Me?" because they give the male and female perspectives on going out on a first date. I also enjoy the big production numbers, including "Good Morning, Good Day," "Days Gone By," "Ilona," "A Romantic Atmosphere," and "Twelve Days to Christmas," and the choreography in this production is simple but a lot of fun. The performances are all wonderful. Olsen has a beautiful voice and her rendition of "Dear Friend" is incredibly poignant. Romine is very appealing (he reminded me a lot of Zachary Levi in the Broadway revival production) and I loved his playful performance of "She Loves Me." Murray steals the show because she is so much fun to watch. Her facial expressions are completely over the top and her version of "A Trip to the Library" made me laugh out loud! The simple period costumes and wigs are very effective in conveying the time and place and, as always, I was very impressed with how well the small space is used. There is a pastel colored set piece which shows the outside of the perfume shop and then opens up to reveal the interior with a large window showing a view of a street in Budapest on a screen behind. Glass display cases filled with lots of bottles and baubles are moved on and off stage and are cleverly configured to become various areas in the store (I loved how they are used in "Twelve Days to Christmas"). I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this show and I highly recommend it as the perfect night out with your valentine this month.  It runs Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, through March 1 (go here for tickets).

Note:  Last night was opening night so there were a lot of different activities going on before the show and during intermission. I tried to slink into the theatre without attracting too much attention but I may or may not have won the romance trivia contest...

Love Me

I really enjoyed Love Me at last year's Sundance Film Festival so I decided to see it again as part of my double feature last night.  I think it is really clever with an important message about living authentically.  After all life has become extinct on Earth, a smart buoy makes contact with a passing satellite that was launched during the last days of civilization to greet any lifeforms that might come to Earth in the future.  Worried that the satellite's programming will only allow it to communicate with a lifeform, the buoy accesses the internet to learn about life on Earth so it can imitate one.  The buoy creates the profile Me for itself and the profile I Am for the satellite and they begin interacting with each other (and begging each other for likes).  They eventually create avatars and a digital environment based on a social media influencer named Deja (Kristen Stewart) and her husband Liam (Steven Yeun) and they obsessively reenact one of their most popular videos in order to get the emotions just right.  However, I Am starts to feel like their relationship is fake.  Ultimately, Me and I Am must break away from these personas and see each other as their original selves in order to connect.  This features live action, motion capture performances, and animation and I think it is incredibly imaginative (I especially love the design of the buoy and the satellite because they are so expressive) even if it does lose steam before reaching an inevitable conclusion.  What makes this so compelling is the message that what is portrayed on social media is not real and that it is always better to be yourself rather than an imitation of someone online.  It is also fascinating (or horrifying) to think that humanity might be judged in the future by what is posted on YouTube.  Finally, Stewart and Yuen give really appealing performances (I especially loved Yuen's motion capture performance and Stewart's live action one) that ground some of the more existential themes.  This was one of my favorites at Sundance last year and I recommend it but it might be too quirky for some.

Companion

Last night I saw Companion as part of a double feature and I had so much fun with it!  Iris (Sophie Thatcher), a highly sophisticated companion robot programmed to provide unquestioning love and devotion, travels with her boyfriend/owner Josh (Jack Quaid) to an isolated lake house owned by Sergey (Rupert Friend) to spend the weekend with Jack's friends Kat (Megan Suri), Eli (Harvey Guillen), and Patrick (Likas Gage).  However, the weekend takes a turn for the worse when Iris's programming malfunctions and she kills Sergey in an act of self-defense after he tries to rape her.  That is really all you should know before going to see this because half the fun is trying to figure out where the plot is going and there are some wild twists (even if some of them are a bit convenient).  I will say that this is a pretty powerful indictment of whiny male entitlement but Quaid, who is somehow always able to play pathetic losers so effectively, and Thatcher, who is pitch-perfect in her portrayal of many different emotions as Iris slowly gains autonomy (pay close attention to her eyes), make this dynamic very compelling.  I loved the dark humor, the great needle drops, and the cool retro vibe (especially with Iris's costumes).  I heard a lot of hype for this before I went to see it (I had to wait until after Sundance) and I was definitely not disappointed!  Go see it if you are a fan of horror!

September 5

My nephew and I finally had the opportunity to see September 5 last night and we both found it to be very compelling.  ABC Sports is covering the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich when members of the crew, including Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), the president of ABC Sports, Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), the head of operations, Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), a producer, and Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), a local translator, hear gunshots.  They soon learn that it is a terrorist attack by Black September in which Israeli athletes are taken hostage in order to extort the release of Palestinian prisoners.  Mason quickly decides to switch from coverage of volleyball and boxing to live coverage of the hostage situation as it unfolds in real time.  They face logistical problems with getting cameras and Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker), then a reporter, on the scene but, because nothing like this had ever been done before, they also grapple with the morality of what they are doing because they may be impacting the fate of real people whose lives are in jeopardy in order to get a story.  Even though the outcome of this attack is widely known, it is still incredibly tense and suspenseful because of the frenetic pace created by hand-held camerawork and chaotic sound design that puts the audience right in the middle of the action.  The performances are also riveting and I was particularly impressed with Magaro because you feel the gravity of his decisions from just his facial expressions.  The production design is outstanding and the archival footage featuring Jim McKay's actual coverage blends seamlessly with scenes using the replicas of the studio and the control room.  I was really fascinated by the lack of modern technology as they create the broadcasts, especially when they take pictures of pictures in order to enlarge them and take pictures of letters on a board to create captions.  The focus is definitely on the implications for the media rather than the political and historical context of the attack itself and this might bother people but I found it very interesting and would recommend it.

Presence

Since Sundance is now over, I decided to see Presence, a film I enjoyed at last year's festival, now that it is in wide release.  I liked it more upon a second viewing because I was able to notice a lot more details.  A dysfunctional family, including a cold and uptight executive named Rebecca (Lucy Liu), her docile husband Chris (Chris Sullivan), her cocky son Tyler (Eddy Maday), and her depressed and neglected daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), moves into a large suburban home hoping to have a fresh start after the recent death of Chloe's best friend Nadia from a overdose.  As tensions between the family members intensify, Chloe begins to feel a presence within the house.  Other family members reject the idea of a ghost but it soon begins to make contact in a way that is protective of Chloe, especially when Tyler and his new friend Ryan (West Mulholland) act aggressively towards her.  The entire movie is from the POV of the ghost, achieved by having director Steven Soderbergh operate a handheld camera to follow and eavesdrop on the characters in long unbroken takes.  I was particularly struck by how the subtle movements of the camera seem to convey how the ghost is feeling about what it is seeing (I noticed that some of the early shots, especially those before the family inhabits the house, foreshadow what eventually happens as well as the identity of the ghost).  This is more of an atmospheric psychological thriller about a family in turmoil than a horror movie (the trailer is a little bit misleading) but it is extremely compelling with a thought-provoking twist at the end (which definitely made more sense to me after watching it a second time).  This is a clever spin on the traditional ghost story and I would definitely recommend it.