The Grinch

Sean and I have a long-standing tradition of seeing a movie the day before Thanksgiving.  I tried to convince him to see Bohemian Rhapsody but he chose The Grinch instead.  It tells the well-known story by Dr. Seuss of how the Grinch (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) tries to steal Christmas from Whoville by impersonating Santa Claus but with a few new updates.  Seeing everyone in Whoville so happy at Christmastime reminds him of when he was sad and lonely growing up in an orphanage and that makes him hate the day.  Meanwhile, Cindy Lou Who (voiced by Cameron Seely) contrives an elaborate plan to catch Santa Claus because she wants him to help her frazzled single mother (voiced by Rashida Jones).  The two of them inevitably meet on Christmas Eve and Cindy Lou's request helps the Grinch learn the true meaning of Christmas.  I thought it was so sweet (Sean didn't think the Grinch was mean enough).  There are quite a few really fun sequences to add to the original story such as an elaborate routine of getting ready for the day which involves a latte with a frowning face, searching for a reindeer to pull his sleigh, and a run-through of Cindy Lou's plan to trap Santa with all of her friends.  I especially liked all of the gadgets used by the Grinch to move from house to house and steal all of the Christmas presents.  The animation is very colorful and vibrant, the score by Danny Elfman is a lot of fun, and the version of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" performed by a very persistent group of carolers (Pentatonix) is fabulous!  It was a really nice movie to start the holiday season!

Widows

Yesterday was kind of a dark and dreary day so I decided to spend it in a movie theater by seeing Widows.  Viola Davis, in an incredible performance, plays Veronica Rawlins.  Her world suddenly falls apart when her husband Harry (Liam Neeson) is killed, along with his associates, in a robbery gone wrong.  Harry stole $2 million from Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), who is running for alderman of his ward, but the money was burned in the explosion that killed him and now Manning wants Veronica to repay him.  She finds Harry's plans for his next job and recruits the widows of his former associates, Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) and Linda (Michelle Rodriguez), to help her carry out the heist in order to repay Manning.  They are in over their heads but they are desperate and that is what makes their story so compelling (it is so much better than Ocean's 8, to which it will inevitably be compared, because the stakes are higher).  The supporting cast is outstanding, including Colin Farrell as the politician trying to hold on the alderman seat that has been in his family for years, Robert Duvall as his corrupt father, Daniel Kaluuya as Manning's brother and henchman, and Cynthia Erivo, as a single mother recruited to be the getaway driver.  The action is intense and suspenseful with a wild plot twist that made me gasp out loud and a resolution that made me cheer.  It is a heist movie that is so much more than a heist movie and I found it to be highly entertaining.

Note:  I literally did spend the whole day in the theater because I saw Bohemian Rhapsody again, not once but twice.  Clearly I have lost my mind.

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos 1 & 2

It has been a really long week and my favorite way to decompress when I am feeling stressed is by attending a Utah Symphony concert.  The program last night was simultaneously soothing and stirring!  The orchestra began with Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concertos No. 1 & 2 which are masterpieces of the Baroque era.  Concerto No. 2 featured soloists Mercedes Smith, Flute, James Hall, Oboe, Claude Halter, Violin, and Travis Peterson, Trumpet, who were all amazing but I was especially impressed with Peterson's performance.  I really enjoyed these pieces and I found myself imagining a stately ball scene in a Jane Austen novel and it was just lovely.  In between the two concertos, the orchestra played a contemporary piece called Derive 1 by Pierre Boulez which has an incredibly modern sound created with traditional instruments.  The juxtaposition between this piece and the concertos was really interesting and Maestro Thierry Fischer requested that the audience hold their applause until the end of the final piece to maintain the mood.  After the intermission the orchestra played Symphony No. 3 by Aaron Copland.  I have heard this piece performed live several times and I find it to be very evocative of the American west.  I love the themes played by the woodwinds and, of course, the instantly recognizable fanfare played by the brass, punctuated dramatically by the timpani, is brilliant.  I loved everything about this concert and I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here) to tonight's performance.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  I didn't hate it but I definitely didn't love it as much as my friends did.  I thought it was one big set up for all of the future movies to come and I hoped that the subsequent movies in the Wizarding World would be better.  My hopes were in vain.  I had a chance to see a Thursday preview of the latest installment, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, last night and I thought it was a convoluted mess.  Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) escapes while being transported from the U.S. to England and wants all the pureblooded wizards from around the world to rise up and take over all of the non-magical people.  He is particularly interested in Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), who, with the help of a shape shifter named Nagini (Claudia Kim), is trying to find out his true identity (which, presumably, Grindewald knows).  A young Dumbledore (Jude Law) enlists the help of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to track Grindelwald down because he is prevented from fighting him himself.  Newt's brother Theseus (Callum Turner), who is an official with the Ministry of Magic, his former childhood girlfriend Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz), and his current girlfriend Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) are also looking for Grindelwald.  Then Tina's sister Queenie (Alison Sudal) comes looking for her and she brings Jacob (Dan Fogler) along because she's enchanted him into marrying her.  After a bizarre plot twist involving Leta's brother Yusef Kama (William Nadylam), which is all a bit of tedious misdirection, there is an epic confrontation with Grindelwald.  The story is incredibly confusing with a bewildering number of characters who bounce incomprehensibly between New York, London, and Paris and yet nothing of substance actually happens.  There were many times when I couldn't figure out what was going on.  I kept thinking that it would all come together in the end but it doesn’t because this movie, once again, involves a lot of exposition setting up the next movie, particularly a major revelation at the end which comes out of nowhere (people in my screening actually booed at this).  I didn’t especially like Depp’s portrayal of Grindelwald because he is so bland and I found Newt to be more annoying than endearing this time around.  The best part of this movie is Newt's interactions with his fantastic beasts, particularly a sea horse made of kelp, but other than that I found it to be incredibly disappointing.  I think I might be done with the Wizarding World.

Overlord

I was very intrigued by the idea of a movie involving World War II intrigue and elements of horror so I decided to see Overlord last night.  I liked it so much more than I thought I would!  On the eve of the D-Day invasion in France a squadron of paratroopers is sent to destroy a German radio tower attached to a church in a tiny village.  When their plane is shot down, only five members of the squadron survive:  Ford (Wyatt Russell), Boyce (Jovan Adepo), Tibbet (John Magaro), Chase (Iain De Caestecker), and Dawson (Jacob Anderson).  Ford insists that they carry on with the mission to destroy the radio tower despite the odds and they encounter a villager named Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier) who hides them.  While scouting the area around the church, Boyce discovers that the Nazis have been using a serum to experiment on the villagers in the hope that they can create a super soldier to win the war.  He eventually rescues a paratrooper who was captured (Dominic Applewhite).  They decide that not only do they need to blow up the radio tower but they also need to destroy the Nazi's lab which leads to an epic showdown.  There are some elements of the story that do become rather silly, especially involving a German officer who injects himself with the serum, but I found it to be incredibly suspenseful and entertaining.  The action sequences are intense, particularly the opening scene in which the plane is shot down, and the scenes where Boyce explores the lab in the church are really creepy and atmospheric (thanks to great sound design) even if they do contain many horror tropes.  My favorite scene involves Chloe taking out a particularly persistent monster (I may or may not have cheered out loud).  Most of the characters are very thinly drawn and stereotypical (the war-weary veteran, the innocent newcomer, the wise-cracking prankster, the self-sufficient survivor) but I did find them to be sympathetic and I was rooting for them to succeed.  This movie is pretty gory and violent (lots of war and zombie imagery) but it is a lot of fun.  I am actually very surprised by how much I enjoyed Overlord and I would recommend it to fans of action/horror movies.