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 (Lukas 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.

Noises Off at CPT

I had so much fun at CPT's hilarious production of Noises Off last night. I don't think I stopped laughing during the whole show! Lloyd Dallas (Brandon Garside), a temperamental and sarcastic director, is staging a play called Nothing's On starring Dotty Otley (Carol Madsen), an aging television star, as Mrs. Clackett, Gary Lejeune (Michael Reis), a scatterbrained actor who can't finish a sentence, as Roger Tramplemain, Brooke Ashton (Amelia Joan Bowles), a young and inexperienced actress having an affair with Lloyd, as Vicki, Frederick Fellows (Josh Curtis), an insecure and accident prone actor, as Philip Brent and the Sheikh, Belinda Blair (Samantha Wursten), a reliable actress who knows all of the gossip about the cast, as Flavia Brent, and Selsdon Mowbray (Doug Caldwell), an accomplished actor who has a drinking problem and a tendency to miss his cues, as the Burglar. Poppy Norton-Taylor (Jenni Cooper) is the put-upon assistant stage manager who is also involved with Lloyd and Tim Algood (Radley Haws) is the overworked and sleep deprived stage manager tasked with fixing every problem. Act I of this play-within-a-play involves a disastrous dress rehearsal before opening night with missing props, a malfunctioning set, an actor questioning his character's motivation, a spontaneous nosebleed, and a lost contact lens.  Act II takes place backstage while the show is on tour. The relationship between Dotty and Gary has deteriorated and the two of them do everything they can to sabotage each other's performance while Lloyd is trying, unsuccessfully, to keep both Brooke and Poppy happy by having Tim make several ill-fated attempts to buy them flowers. Act III takes place at the end of the run and features a complete breakdown with the actors ad-libbing the entire scene while Brooke performs her lines and blocking as normal. The entire cast has brilliant comedic timing because the pace is incredibly frenetic (if you blink at all you will miss something funny). The physical performances are outstanding and I don't know which is funnier: when Frederick hops up the stairs because his trousers are down around his ankles or when Gary trips down them so spectacularly! I love that the bows incorporate all of the hijinks from the show, especially when Bowles looks for a contact lens on the floor, when Reis gingerly walks down the stairs, and when Caldwell misses his cue to come through the window. The elaborate two-story set is almost a character itself, particularly when it fails so dramatically, and the sheer number of doors (which are slammed continually) is impressive. I enjoyed everything about this show and I highly recommend it for a fun night out. It runs on the Barlow Main Stage through February 25 (go here for tickets).