Snow White

I was really interested in the new live-action remake of Snow White because I wanted to determine for myself if the online furor about it was warranted.  Now that I have seen it I can say that some, but definitely not all, of the criticism is unfair and I actually liked it.  A young Snow White (Emilia Faucher) is taught by her parents, the King (Hadley Fraser) and Queen (Lorena Andrea), to be kind and fair to the people of the kingdom but darkness comes when her mother dies and the King marries a temptress (Gal Gadot).  She becomes an Evil Queen after the King is lost in a faraway war and keeps Snow White (Rachel Zegler) locked in the castle as a servant.  The Evil Queen becomes jealous when her Mirror (voiced by Patrick Page) tells her that Snow White is now the fairest one of all so she commands her Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) to kill her and bring back her heart.  He releases her in the forest, instead, where she meets seven dwarfs and a bandit named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap).  When the Evil Queen learns of this deception, she attempts to kill Snow White herself with a poisoned apple but the spell is broken by Jonathan and love's first kiss.  The seven dwarfs as well as Jonathan and his bandits help Snow White become the leader the King knew she could be and she defeats the Evil Queen.  In my opinion, the story is quite faithful to the original (more so than I was led to believe) but I did really like the updates, including the development of the romance between Snow White and Jonathan before the kiss happens and the defeat of the Evil Queen by Snow White's kindness to the people.  I loved Rachel Zegler's charismatic performance and I really enjoyed the new songs, especially "Waiting on a Wish," "Princess Problems," and the romantic "A Hand Meets a Hand" (fun versions of "Heigh-Ho" and "Whistle While You Work" are also included).  The CGI animals are absolutely adorable and the scene where Snow White meets them in the forest is enchanting.  However, the GGI for the seven dwarfs is really creepy!  Their eyes are realistic but their faces are cartoonish and I couldn't get past how weird that combination looked whenever they were on screen.  Gal Gadot is terrible because some of her line readings made me want to laugh (not in a good way) and her singing is even worse (although I did like special effects in her transformation into a hag).  This is not the best live-action remake I've seen (Cinderella holds that title) but it is not as bad as people are saying and I recommend giving it a chance.

Last Breath

My sister recommended the movie Last Breath very highly to me so I braved a snowstorm to see it last night.  I really enjoyed this riveting true story about a group of saturation divers who repair underwater pipelines in the North Sea.  Veteran Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson), taciturn and unemotional David Yuasa (Simu Liu), and rookie Chris Lemon (Finn Cole) are deployed 100 meters beneath the surface for routine repairs when their support vessel loses power, and the dynamic positioning system fails, during a storm.  This causes the vessel to drift away from the dive site while David and Chris are underwater.  David is able to make it to safety on the diving platform, known as the "bell," but Chris's umbilical cord is snapped leaving him untethered without a communications link to the surface, power for his light, and, more importantly, air to breathe.  He is left with only ten minutes of air from his auxiliary tank while David, Duncan, and the crew on the ship mount a desperate attempt to rescue him.  This is very straightforward without a lot of embellishment but it is still incredibly tense, almost unbearably so, and there were several times when I was on the edge of my seat and holding my breath.  The hand-held underwater cinematography, atmospheric lighting, and dramatic sound design add to the sense of claustrophobia and terror.  The performances are solid and I really enjoyed seeing all of the technical aspects involved in this highly dangerous job, particularly the pressurized pods the divers must live in for the entire duration of their rotation.  I definitely recommend this taut thriller, especially now that it is available to stream.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Los Angeles

Over the weekend my sister Kristine and I went on a quick road trip to Los Angeles to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Pantages Theatre and we had so much fun!  I saw this show several years ago in San Francisco when it was performed in two parts so I was really intrigued to see the new production and my sister, who is a huge Harry Potter fan, was even more excited to see it for the first time.  We both loved it because it is absolutely magical!  It is nineteen years after the Battle of Hogwarts and Harry Potter (John Skelley) now works for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, his wife Ginny Potter (Trish Lindstrom) writes for The Daily Prophet, Hermione Granger (Ebony Blake) is the Minister of Magic, and her husband Ron Weasley (Matt Mueller) manages Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.  Their children Albus Potter (Emmet Smith) and Rose Granger-Weasley (Naiya Vanessa McCalla) are on their way to Hogwarts when the story begins.  Albus soon forms an unlikely friendship with Scorpius Malfoy (Aidan Close), the son of Harry's nemesis Draco (Benjamin Thys).  They are drawn together because they are both unpopular and bullied.  Albus is bothered by his father's notoriety and feels that he is a disappointment while Scorpius is plagued by unfounded rumors that he is really the son of Lord Voldemort.  They feel that they have something to prove so, with the help of Delphi Diggory (Julia Nightingale), they steal a time-turner from the Ministry of Magic in order to go back in time to save Cedric Diggory (Caleb Hafen) from his fate.  This has unintended consequences and now Scorpius must enlist Hermione, Ron, and Severus Snape (Larry Yando) to help him go back in time to change the future back.  However, Delphi has her own reasons for wanting Cedric to return and compels Scorpius and Albus to use the time-turner once again to restore the alternate timeline which leads to an epic confrontation in Godric's Hollow.  Even though this new version is close to three hours long, there are obviously some elements that have been removed from the earlier one but I honestly didn't miss anything.  The biggest changes I noticed were that the Dementors appear on stage rather than fly through the audience (I was a bit disappointed but my sister still thought they were really cool) and the relationship between Albus and Scorpius is more romantic than I remember.  I really loved the touching story about father-son relationships, the fun performances (my favorite was Close and my sister's was Mackenzie Lesser-Roy as Moaning Myrtle), and the iconic costumes and sets (fans of Harry Potter will immediately recognize the Gothic architecture, the House Banners, and the moving staircases at Hogwarts) but the way the magic is staged is what makes this show so amazing!  Seeing the students run through Platform 9 3/4, use their wands, travel by flue powder, and drink polyjuice potion caused the audience to gasp out loud but the duel between Harry and Draco and the transfiguration scene received spontaneous applause!  The staging of other scenes is also very clever, particularly when Albus and Scorpius jump off the Hogwarts Express, when they emerge from the lake, and when they are separated by the moving staircases.  Even the choreography used by the ensemble to move set pieces on and off stage is incredibly dynamic!  The show is absolutely spellbinding (pun intended) and I am so glad that I had the chance to see it again, especially with my sister!  It will be on tour in various cities through 2026 (I hope it eventually comes to SLC) and I highly recommend getting a ticket if you have the opportunity.

Note:  I had to drive through a severe snow storm and my sister had to drive in Los Angeles traffic.  I'm not sure which was worse (although we still had the best time on this trip).

Black Bag

My nephew and I went to a Thursday preview of Black Bag last night.  We were both really looking forward to it and we were not disappointed.  When George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), an intelligence agent who specializes in administering polygraphs, is given a list of five agents who might be responsible for allowing a cyber worm capable of destabilizing a nuclear facility, code name Severus, to fall into the wrong hands, he is dismayed to see that his wife, fellow agent Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), is one of them.  He has a week to find the traitor so he invites the other agents, Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) and Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), who are a couple, and James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page) and Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), who are also a couple, to an elaborate dinner at his home with Kathryn whereupon he provokes them into revealing intimate details about themselves (in a fabulous tension-filled scene).  He eventually zeroes in on Kathryn and initiates surveillance on her black bag activities (anything too sensitive to be revealed even to a spouse) but is his motivation to expose her or to protect her?  This is a slick and stylish spy thriller but it focuses more on the loyalties and betrayals that happen within three relationships more than those that happen between countries and, in my opinion, that makes it even more compelling.  It also focuses more on dialogue than on action (although there is a great sequence involving a drone), especially in a brilliantly edited scene involving polygraph tests because the answers to the questions posed reveal everything (if you are paying attention).  It is so much fun watching Fassbender and Blanchett spar with each other while delivering the witty dialogue and the rest of the cast is also excellent (Burke is so good at playing a cad).  I love intelligent thrillers and this is a good one.  Go see it!

Rule Breakers

I am a sucker for inspirational movies so I went to see Rule Breakers last night and I really enjoyed this true story about one woman's quest to empower young girls in Afghanistan through science and technology education.  After she was denied the opportunity to use the computers at her school because of her gender, Roya Mahboob (Nikohl Boosheri) eventually teaches herself how to code using a computer in a local cafe, campaigns for computer classes for women at her university, becomes an entrepreneur in the tech field, and establishes computer classes at high schools for girls.  However, she wants to do more and, with the support of her brother Ali (Noorin Gulamgaus) and an Indian tech entrepreneur (Ali Fazal), she decides to sponsor a girls robotics team with the hope of taking them to international competitions and recruits four highly qualified girls, including Taara (Nina Hosseinzadeh), Esin (Amber Afzali), Haadiya (Sara Malal Rowe), and Arezo (Mariam Saraj).  They face many obstacles (so many obstacles!), experience personal tragedy, and receive backlash from the Taliban before they eventually triumph through dedication and determination.  This is incredibly moving and there were moments when I had tears in my eyes over what these girls had to go through in order to achieve their dreams.  I also think this is an important story to tell about the power of knowledge to change the world, particularly now that girls in Afghanistan no longer have access to education beyond the sixth grade.  The performances are all outstanding but I do wish that the movie had developed the characters, especially the girls on the team, more fully because I wanted to know more about them.  My only other complaint is that the scenes at the robotics competitions focus more on the party atmosphere (are robotics competitions really like this?) rather than on what the teams are actually doing and how they are being judged.  The heartwarming story definitely overcomes these minor issues and I highly recommend it!