Birthday Dinner at The Garden Restaurant

My sister and I have birthdays one week apart and we have a tradition of celebrating at The Garden Restaurant at the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial building downtown.

The Garden Restaurant has a casual atmosphere, with stunning views of downtown, and and upscale bistro menu.

Spinach & Artichoke Dip ($11)

Classic Burger ($13)

Berry Cobbler & Ice Cream ($8)

The Garden Restaurant is a great place to celebrate an occasion (there is a special menu for Father's Day).  The food is really good and reasonably priced (entrees range from $13-$20) and the wait staff is very efficient and friendly.  It is open Monday - Thursday 11:00 am to 9:00 pm and Friday - Saturday 11:00 am to 10:00 pm.  Reservations are accepted (go here).

Rocketman

Last night I went to see Rocketman, the biopic about the flamboyant singer Elton John, and I loved it, especially the music and Taron Egerton's performance as the iconic star.  The movie tells the story of John's life as if it were a stage musical with big production numbers of songs that reflect the events in his life.  The movie uses the framing device of having John (Egerton) enter rehab for his addictions to alcohol, cocaine, sex, and, rather amusingly, shopping.  He recounts his childhood with a self-absorbed mother ("The Bitch Is Back") and distant father ("I Want Love"), performing in local pubs as a teenager ("Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting"), forming his legendary songwriting partnership with Bernie Taupin ("Your Song"), his triumphant performance at the Troubadour ("Crocodile Rock"), his loneliness ("Tiny Dancer"), beginning a personal ("Don't Go Breaking My Heart") and business ("Honky Cat") relationship with John Reid, his suicide attempt ("Rocket Man"), his descent into drug, alcohol, and sex addiction ("Bennie and the Jets"), his disastrous marriage to Renate Blauel ("Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me"), the deterioration of his relationships with Reid, his mother, and Taupin ("Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word"), and his decision to go to rehab ("Goodbye Yellow Brick Road").  While in rehab John is able to confront all of the people in his life and learn to love himself for who he is ("I'm Still Standing").  This movie portrays John as a consummate performer even when his life is falling apart and that makes it very compelling.  Egerton is absolutely fantastic in the role and I was very impressed by the fact that he did all of the singing himself (and that he actually hit a baseball during the concert in Dodger Stadium). I was also impressed by Jamie Bell as Taupin and Richard Madden as Reid (who is a very nasty character).  I loved the staging of the musical numbers because they are very energetic, fun, and filled with fabulous choreography and gorgeous costumes.  This movie earns its R rating because of some sex scenes between John and Reid and some scenes of debauchery at a club but I don’t think they are overly salacious.  There will be the inevitable comparisons to Bohemian Rhapsody (which I think are unfortunate because the two movies, while they have similar subjects, are very different) but I have to say that Rocketman didn't quite have the pathos for me that Bohemian Rhapsody did but I loved it, nonetheless, and I certainly recommend it.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

I'll be honest and admit that I don't really know much about the Godzilla mythology and I didn't see the 2014 movie Godzilla but Godzilla: King of the Monsters looked like a fun summer blockbuster so I went to see it last night.  Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), a paleobiologist with an organization called Monarch which studies creatures like Godzilla who once dominated the Earth, has created a device, nicknamed Orca, which will communicate with these Titans.  She joins forces with Alan Jonah (Charles Dance), an eco-terrorist, because she believes that these Titans can reverse the effects of overpopulation, pollution, and destructive mining to bring balance back to nature.  She brings her unsuspecting daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) with her as she and Jonah use the Orca to awaken a Titan which becomes known as Ghidorah.  Scientists from Monarch, believing that Emma and Madison have been kidnapped by Jonah, contact Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) to help rescue his ex-wife and daughter.  When Monarch realizes what Emma has done, they begin tracking Ghidorah and discover that it is an ancient alien and that it is activating all of the other Titans to attack the Earth.  The only Titan impervious to Ghidorah's control is Godzilla.   This leads to an epic battle where the scientists of Monarch attempt to help Godzilla defeat Ghidorah as well as rescue Madison, who ran away with the Orca when she realized what her mother had done.  Again, I don't know much about Godzilla and his origins but I found this story to be incredibly convoluted and I thought the triangle between Madison and her parents to be completely unnecessary.  There are so many characters, including Monarch scientists (Bradley Whitford, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Thomas Middleditch, and Zhang Ziyi) and military personnel (Aisha Hinds, O'Shea Jackson, Jr., David Strathairn, Anthony Ramos, and Elizabeth Ludlow), many of whom seem to be there only to provide exposition, that it was sometimes hard to keep track of who was who.  However, the creature design is incredible, especially Godzilla's dorsal plates which light up when he feels threatened and Mothra's wings which are beautiful, and the visuals on the screen are amazing, particularly in the action sequences when the monsters fight each other!  I was actually more interested in the monsters than the humans in the story!  The sound design and the bombastic score are also outstanding and really add to the sense of dread when the monsters fight each other.  It is an exciting and entertaining summer blockbuster and I recommend it to fans who are expecting that and nothing more.

Note:  There is an end credits scene setting up the next installment in the MonsterVerse, which reportedly pits Godzilla against King Kong.

Bountiful High School Class of 2019

Yesterday Tashena graduated from Bountiful High School.  We are all so incredibly proud of this girl (but we don't know how this happened because she was a five year old starting kindergarten yesterday!).

Congratulations Tashena!  I can't wait to see what you do next!

Ma

Tashena really wanted to see the movie Ma so I took her and her brother (who was visiting from California for her graduation) to see it yesterday.  I don't know that I would have picked this movie on my own but it was better than I thought it would be.  Ironically, Tashena's brother and I liked it more than she did!  Sue Ann (Octavia Spencer) is a lonely, middle-aged veterinary assistant who agrees to buy alcohol for some bored teenagers, including Maggie (Diana Silvers) and Andy (Corey Fogelmanis).  She worries that the kids will get into an accident if they go off drinking so she invites them to her basement which soon becomes the popular hangout for all of the kids in the town.  Sue Ann follows the kids on social media and begins harassing them, wanting them to come over more and more.  Maggie is unsettled by this and soon realizes that Sue Ann went to high school with her mother (Juliette Lewis) and Andy's father (Luke Evans) and that the two of them pulled a public and humiliating prank on her.  Maggie warns her friends to stay away but Sue Ann lures them back and terrorizes them, using tranquilizers from the vet's office, in retribution for what their parents did to her.  In my opinion, this is more of a psychological thriller than a horror movie (which disappointed Tashena) and it is more gruesome than scary with some truly disturbing scenes.  What elevates this above a campy teen movie is Spencer's performance as an unexpectedly sympathetic character (before she goes completely off the rails).  There is the requisite plot twist which didn't really work for me because it didn't add anything to the story and there were some interesting racial dynamics which definitely should have been explored more thoroughly but I didn't hate this movie.  I think it is destined to become a cult classic.