Rugby!

This summer, instead of playing baseball, Sean has decided to play rugby!  He has been going to practices for the past few weeks and the season officially starts next Saturday.  I can hardly wait to watch him play because I've heard a rumor that he is fast!

I guess I better learn a little bit about rugby!

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

Guy Ritchie is a very idiosyncratic director.  All of his movies feature frenetic action sequences with pulse-pounding music underneath them and his protagonists are street-smart wise-cracking hoodlums with a crew of sidekicks.  This worked for me in both of his Sherlock Holmes movies and these elements are what worked for me in his new movie, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.  However, instead of his usual formula which would have made the story of Arthur into an entertaining movie, Ritchie added some strange elements of fantasy which made it into a convoluted and bloated mess.  The movie opens with a bewildering CGI battle sequence featuring giant elephants, under the control of the wizard Mordred, attacking King Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana).  We learn that the King's brother Vortigen (Jude Law) is in league with Mordred and when the wizard is ultimately killed, Vortigen takes matters into his own hands and kills Uther himself to seize the throne (gaining power by a blood sacrifice to a strange octopus-like creature).  Uther's young son escapes to Londinium where he is raised in a brothel, becoming the aforementioned wise-cracking thug with his crew of misfits.  Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) is eventually reunited with Uther's sword Excalibur, captured by Vortigen, and rescued by a witch who can control animals (Astrid Berges-Frisbey).  Arthur must learn to control Excalibur, in a strange sequence featuring rodent-like creatures, and then face Vortigen (who has made another blood sacrifice to the strange octopus) in an ultimate show-down involving a giant snake.  I really liked the music, the fun interactions between Arthur and his crew (who eventually become the Knights of the Round Table at the end of the movie), the stylized fight sequences between the crew and Vortigen's soldiers (known as blacklegs), and Jude Law's portrayal of Vortigen.  But it seems like Ritchie didn't know what kind of movie he was making with the inclusion of these ridiculous CGI fantasy sequences filled with monsters.  This movie is incredibly disjointed and confusing and I definitely recommend giving it a miss.

Note:  I am 0-2 in my movie selections this weekend.  I find it interesting that aside from Logan and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, I have been very underwhelmed by Hollywood blockbusters this year.  My favorites so far have all been independent films.

The Circle

I am so glad it is the weekend!  It has been a rough couple of weeks because I've been trying to tie up some loose ends with student government before I turn everything over to the new advisor and I've been trying to motivate seniors who have completely shut down.  I need a weekend to recharge my batteries!  What I love most about the weekend is sleeping in late, reading until the wee hours of the morning, and seeing as many movies as I can.  This weekend started off with a late night screening of The Circle with my sister.  We both really wanted to see this movie because the premise seemed really intriguing.  Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is hired by an internet company called The Circle through a recommendation by a college friend (Karen Gillan) and soon catches the eye of founder Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) who recruits her for a new project called SeeChange.  Basically, Mae must wear a camera at all times and be transparent to the world about everything she sees and does.  She is warned by Ty Lafitte (John Boyega), the creator of SeeChange who now has reservations about how the data gleaned from the constant monitoring will be used.  At first I was completely engrossed in this movie and I enjoyed watching Mae get sucked in by the charismatic leader.  But then the message about privacy and limiting freedom got completely muddled by some giant plot holes and a bewildering ending.  What was Bailey's motivation for what he was doing in the Circle?  What was he hiding while forcing everyone around him to be transparent?  What was it that Mae exposed when she forced him to become transparent?  What happened to Bailey and the company after Mae exposed him?  What were her true feelings about transparency?  Why did her friend suddenly become disillusioned with the company?  Why did Ty lurk about in the shadows of the campus waiting for someone else to blow the whistle when he had all of the evidence needed to expose Bailey?  There is almost no character development in this movie and neither my sister nor I even understood what happened at the end.  Watson is fine in the role and Hanks gives a great performance as the cult-like leader but most of the other actors are terrible, especially Glenne Headly as Mae's mother.  This is not a very good movie and we were both pretty disappointed because it had so much potential but it was just what I needed to decompress after a long week.

The Dinner

Another film on my never-ending list is The Dinner and I was able to cross it off last night.  Paul (Steve Coogan), a former history teacher with a history of mental illness, his long-suffering wife Claire (Laura Linney), his brother Stan (Richard Gere), a successful congressman currently running for governor, and Stan's second wife Katelyn (Rebecca Hall) meet each other at an exclusive and unbelievably pretentious restaurant to talk about a family crisis involving their teenage sons.  The dinner is fraught with tension and as each course is elaborately served (and labeled with on-screen titles), a layer is removed revealing their incredibly dysfunctional family dynamic and we learn that their boys have committed a horrific crime and that each of them have differing opinions about how to deal with the situation.  Much of the film involves the characters hashing it out at the dinner table and in various locations within the restaurant but there are also quite a few flashbacks which, for the most part, effectively illustrate how the relationships have become so combative (Chloe Sevigny appears in flashbacks at Stan's first wife).  One of them, however, involving a visit by the two brothers to Gettysburg seemed to go on and on, belaboring the point that a house divided against itself cannot stand.  All of these characters are pretty unlikable, even the one character who advocates that they do the right thing ultimately wavers, but all four actors give incredibly nuanced performances (I was especially impressed by Hall).  The Dinner is not an easy film to watch (at one point I had to turn away while one person in my screening left at that same moment) and the ambiguous ending left me a bit unsettled but, since I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, I highly recommend it as a thought-provoking morality play.

Look at Those Guns!

Last weekend Tashena competed at the BYU Invitational track meet.  As the name implies, only the best of the best are invited to compete at this two-day meet.  Tashena was ranked fifth in the state of Utah, quite a feat for a sophomore.  She had a really rough two days because she failed to advance to the finals in any of her events (discus, shot put, javelin, and long jump).  In discus, her best event, she scratched on her first two throws and had a mediocre distance for her final throw.  I think she was nervous because she puts so much pressure on herself and this was a big meet.  It doesn't matter the outcome, I am still so incredibly proud of this girl!  Her next big competition in the state championship (which she qualified for at her first meet of the season) and I'm sure she will be even more determined than ever to do well!

Note:  Look at those guns!