Sundance Student Screening 2019

Yesterday I had my annual Sundance Film Festival field trip which is always a hit with the students.  I actually had several students ask me about it at the beginning of the school year and I had a group of students who have gone with me all three years (they asked if they could come next year even though they are graduating).  Being able to take my students to see a film is always a highlight of the festival for me and I am so grateful that the Sundance Institute, with support from the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation, provides these free screenings for students every year!  I derive so much enjoyment from the arts and it means so much to me to be able to share that with my students.  The film that we got to see this year was The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind which tells the true story of how a boy was able to save his entire village in Malawi during a severe drought by building a windmill to create electricity to power a water pump to irrigate the crops.  I really loved this film because, not only is it incredibly life-affirming, it also has a powerful message about the importance of education.  William (Maxwell Simba) is not allowed to attend school because his parents can no longer pay the fees but he sneaks into the school library every day to learn how to create electricity.  Simba is incredibly endearing and sympathetic in the role and there were times when I had tears in my eyes (so did my students), especially when he tries to convince his Dad (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to give up his bicycle to use for parts.  This film is Ejiofor's directorial debut and he was there for a Q & A afterwards.  My students were very taken with him and asked some great questions.  They loved the film as much as I did and talked about it the whole way back to school on the bus.  It was a really great experience for both me and my students.

2018

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2016

Serenity

The second movie in my Thursday night double feature was Serenity which looked like another intriguing psychological thriller.  It wasn't.  Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) is a down on his luck Iraq War veteran who makes his living taking tourists out on his fishing boat on an island off the coast of Florida.  He is obsessed with catching an elusive fish which sometimes causes problems with his paying customers.  He is often reduced to taking money from Constance (Diane Lane), his sometime lover, to pay for the gas to run his boat and must fire his first mate Duke (Djimon Hounsou) because he can't pay him.  Things change when Baker's ex-wife Karen (Anne Hathaway) approaches him to murder her abusive husband Frank (Jason Clarke) at sea for $10 million.  He initially refuses but begins to consider the offer for the sake of his son Patrick (Rafael Sayegh) who lives with Karen and Frank.  A mysterious businessman in a suit (Jeremy Strong), who has been stalking Baker, causes him to question his reality when he finally does make contact.  I have heard some critics refer to this movie as the worst of 2019 but they have clearly not seen Replicas which gets my vote for that dubious honor.  Like Replicas, this movie has an interesting concept, which could have been a really atmospheric noir thriller, but it is derailed by its execution and a completely implausible plot twist that I saw coming well before it was revealed.  Even though it is ridiculous and full of holes, this plot twist could have provided an interesting exploration of free will but, instead, we get McConaughey emoting in a sugarcane field.  Speaking of which, there is a lot of cringe-worthy dialogue (Hathaway refers to Clarke as "Daddy" more times than I could count) and most of the characters come across as wooden caricatures rather than actual people.  The only reason that it ranks slightly above Replicas is because of the cinematography.  Beautiful shots of ocean waves and sunsets are nicer to look at than sub-par CGI shots of robots any day!  Avoid both of these movies!

Glass

Last night I finally had a chance to see Glass, M. Night Shyamalan's sequel to Unbreakable and Split.  As one of the few people who actually liked Unbreakable, I was very eager to see it and, while there are problems, I really enjoyed this psychological thriller.  The movie begins with David Dunn (Bruce Willis) who, with technical support from his son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), acts as The Overseer, a vigilante taking down criminals using his extrasensory perception.  He encounters Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) and learns the location of four girls whom Crumb has abducted.  The Overseer confronts him in the persona of The Beast which culminates in their arrest and imprisonment in the mental institution where Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), known as Mr. Glass, is being held.  Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulsen), a psychiatrist specializing in treating people with delusions of grandeur, tries to convince David, Kevin, and Elijah that they are normal and that their superpowers have logical explanations.  She enlists Joseph, Mrs. Price (Charlayne Woodard), and Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), who survived an attack by The Beast, to help convince the three that they are mentally ill rather than extraordinary.  Glass, acting in the role of a superhero mastermind, plans the escape of all three hoping for an epic showdown between The Overseer and The Beast to show the world that superheroes really do exist but they are ultimately stopped by Staple.  Of course, in true Shyamalan form, there are several plot twists which lead to some redemption.  While there are some rather sketchy plot holes in the narrative, I enjoyed Shyamalan's supposition that comic books are the mythology of real world superheroes.  I also really liked the theme that it is important to see people as they really are.  All three leads give fantastic performances.  McAvoy believably moves from character to character in an instant, Willis gives one of his best performances in recent memory, and Jackson is completely over the top.  The production design is really interesting with each character inhabiting a specific color (carried over from the previous movies) juxtaposed with an otherwise drab institutional color palette and the hand-held camera work reinforces the claustrophobia.  The biggest issue I have with this movie is that it sometimes has way too much exposition, as if Shyamalan doesn't think the audience has seen the prequels.  However, I think this is an interesting and entertaining end to the saga and would recommend it.

Roma

The nominees for the Best Picture Academy Award were announced yesterday and there was only one film that I hadn't seen yet (you can read my commentaries for Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Vice, and A Star Is Born by clicking on the titles).  Since I always like to see the nominated films before the big ceremony, I decided to see Roma while it was still playing at one of my favorite art house theatres last night.  This movie is a masterpiece.  It chronicles a year in the life of a domestic servant named Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) and the affluent family she works for in Mexico City during the early 1970s.  Much of the narrative involves the mundane chores of Cleo's every day life: cleaning the house and courtyard, cooking and serving meals to the family, waking the four children, taking them to school, and putting them to bed.  Soon, however, both Cleo and Sofia (Marina de Tevira), the matriarch of the family, face a similar situation.  Cleo begins a relationship with Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) and, when she discovers that she is pregnant, he leaves her (in one of the most heartbreaking scenes I've ever seen).  Sofia's husband Antonio (Fernando Grediaga) leaves to attend a medical conference in Quebec and when it is over he does not return to the family's home.  The tumult in their personal lives is mirrored by the unrest in Mexico culminating in the massacre of student demonstrators.  Through it all the two women support each other and it is a beautiful story of redemption (Director Alfonso Cuaron has stated that this film is a tribute to the women who raised him).  There are two incredibly emotional scenes near the end of the film that absolutely shattered me but serve to highlight the resilience of these women and I don't think I will stop thinking about them any time soon.  The film is in black and white without a score and this really allowed me to see the careful composition of each shot.  There are many recurring images, such as a car being parked in a narrow alley, planes flying in the background, and water being splashed on the cobblestones of the courtyard, which are so full of meaning.  Aparicio gives an incredible performance as a quiet and self-contained woman who becomes more and more concerned about her own and Sofia's situation.  I loved that this film is a deeply personal story set against the backdrop of the larger political context within Mexico.  I highly recommend it!

Note:  I definitely want Bohemian Rhapsody to win Best Picture but, in all honesty, perhaps Roma should win.

Utah Opera's The Little Prince

Last night I went to see Utah Opera's production of The Little Prince.  I almost didn't get a ticket because I don't usually like modern operas with librettos in English and my only experience with the novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, upon which the opera is based, is when I was forced to read it in French when I was a senior in high school (I didn't understand it at all).  I am so glad that I decided to get a ticket any way because I loved it!  The story begins with a Pilot (Jared Bybee) telling a group of school children (Choristers of the Madeleine Choir School) about a drawing of a snake eating an elephant.  Every adult thought it was a hat which proves that adults can't see anything!  Then he tells them of crash landing his plane in the desert and meeting the Little Prince (Nitai Fluchel) who wants a drawing of a sheep to eat all of the bushes, especially the baobab trees, threatening to overtake his planet.  The Prince then recounts his life story on his planet which contains three volcanoes, one active and two dormant, and his beautiful, but vain, Rose (Grace Kahl).  When the Rose treats him badly, the Prince decides to visit other planets.  On the first planet, he meets The King (Tyrell Wilde) who has no subjects and only issues orders that can be followed such as commanding the sun to set.  On the second planet, he meets the Vain Man (Joshua Lindsay) who wants to be the most admired man on an otherwise uninhabited planet.  On the third planet, he meets The Drunkard (Addison Marlor) who drinks to forget his shame over drinking too much.  On the fourth planet, he meets The Businessman (Jesus Vicente Murillo) who fails to see the beauty of the stars by his need to count and catalogue them to prove ownership.  On the fifth planet, he meets The Lamplighter (Addison Marlor) who blindly follows orders to light and extinguish a lamppost every 30 minutes to correspond to day and night on his planet.  The Prince finds all of these adults to be ridiculous (the allegory was lost on me when I read it in French) so he decides to visit Earth and lands in the desert.  He meets a Snake (Joshua Lindsay) who tells him he can send him home any time he wishes.  He sees a rosebush which makes him think his Rose is just ordinary.  Finally, he sees a Fox (Melanie Ashkar) who tells him that you can only see with your heart not your eyes and that spending time with his Rose has made it special.  He decides that he misses his Rose and wants to go back home.  He takes the Pilot to a well to find Water (Melissa Heath) which saves him and makes arrangements with the Snake to return home.  The Pilot is upset but the Prince tells him not to worry that he has died because his body is just a shell that is too heavy to return to his planet.  The Snake strikes, the Prince disappears, and the Pilot repairs his plane.  The story ends with the Pilot telling the children that he can always see the Prince by looking at the stars.  This story of friendship, loneliness, love, and loss is so touching (I definitely need to read it again in English!) and Academy Award-winning composer Rachel Portman's music is incredibly beautiful.  I loved the costumes, especially the king's long train, and the set, which consists of a book-lined study and transforms into hundreds of pages from books to represent the desert.  The Choristers of the Madeleine School Choir, especially Fluchel who is amazing, are so talented and their voices add so much to the story.  It is a magical production and I highly recommend it (go here for tickets).