Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
In the new Zellner brothers film Damsel, misguided characters stumble through lush settings, and try to sell us on the idea that there is something worthwhile in dressing a western with modern ideas about obsession, feminism, and family. The brothers deserve credit for the attempt, but they fail to find a focus on a clear message or point of view.
Continue reading “Film Review: Damsel“
The makers of Sicario: Day of the Soldado probably couldn’t have predicted just how relevant their film would be today back when it was greenlit to follow its 2015 precursor Sicario. But those hoping for a searing dramatization of the inner workings of the U.S./Mexico border patrol and its operators will be sorely disappointed with this sequel, which offers plenty of gore and violence, but little in the way of prescient or urgent social commentary.
Families gather at a funeral home to say goodbye. Warm, soft waves of organ music bathe the viewing of an open casket that rests near a portrait of a smiling elderly woman. The reviewing line snakes away from the casket. Reverence, sorrow, and the beginnings of grief swirl around the gathered. A granddaughter named Charlie (Milly Shapiro) approaches the casket. Doubt and curiosity play on her face. She touches her grandmother’s body ever so slightly. No jumping, twitching, or ghostly images… nothing. As she begins to move away, however, she notices someone’s fingertips lightly spreading something on the lips of the deceased. She wonders if this is normal. She looks up, and catches the face of a man sitting behind the casket. A man with a strangely out of place smile on his lips. Her gaze lingers a beat too long on the man, then she moves off toward the rest of the ceremony. Continue reading “Film Review: Hereditary“
You don’t need to have seen the previous three Ocean’s movies (that would be 11, 12, and 13 for the uninitiated) to enjoy Ocean’s 8, the female-helmed companion film that opens today; it stands alone as a highly enjoyable, old-fashioned heist movie. But those who are loyal fans of the original series will be rewarded with a few nods to the previous films, as well as a couple of cameos that I won’t reveal here, but which will no doubt please the films’ devotees. Breezy and fun, writer/director Gary Ross’s entry into the Ocean’s universe retains the brisk confidence of the original pictures, while providing a welcome freshness by changing the stories’ traditional casting.
Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur is no stranger to the survival story genre; he directed 2015’s mountain-expedition-gone-bad thriller Everest, and 2012’s Icelandic-language The Deep, about a fisherman who capsizes before being rescued after six days in the water. That film probably planted the seed for Kormákur to take on Adrift, the film adaptation of Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea, Tami Oldham Ashcroft and Susea McGearhart’s 2002 book about the dire consequences of Hurricane Raymond on a sailing adventure undertaken by Tami and her fiancé Richard Sharp in 1983. Kormákur, working from a screenplay by twin brothers Aaron and Jordan Kandell (Moana) and David Branson Smith (Ingrid Goes West), has succeeded in creating a nerve-wracking, what-would-you-do, visceral sea faring adventure that rises to the top of a fairly crowded field.
Solo: A Star Wars Story, which opens today in just about every Bay Area theater, is a big-screen comic-book origin story, with an accomplished and sometimes first rate cast in front of the camera, and some seriously seasoned talent behind it. Unfortunately, in the year-and-a-half since principal shooting began, issues real and manufactured have given the internet too much time to speculate, postulate, pontificate, and generally expectorate on any number of meaningless side stories. Thankfully, at the center of this mostly worthless dead zone of internet fodder lies a straightforward, entertaining film that should service, if not delight, Star Wars fans and casual viewers. Continue reading “Film Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story“
Writer/director Bill Holderman, whose age isn’t listed on IMDB, but who looks to be in his late 40s or so, must be particularly close to his grandparents. His first screenplay, 2015’s A Walk in the Woods concerned two older men reconnecting on an ill-advised hiking trip, and now his newest screenplay — and his first directorial attempt — is about four senior citizen women on a similar journey of self-discovery. The women’s catalyst for change isn’t the Appalachian Trail, however; it’s E.L. James’s infamously titillating bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey. Co-written by actress and first time screenwriter Erin Simms, Book Club takes a fun but lightweight idea and makes it a success because of the quartet of legendary and always watchable actresses who bring the story to life.
“We have to be so very careful about what we believe,” a very reassuring and overly confident professor Philip Goodman reminds us at the outset of Ghost Stories. This premise, that we must question our beliefs and those in whom we place our trust, is the central theme that undergirds a film that is often tempted to slide into cliche, but which ultimately satisfies as a genre entertainment with a theatrical flourish
The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival ended last Tuesday, but many of its offerings will find their way to your neighborhood cinema in the near future. We conclude our coverage of this year’s Fest by taking a look at four of the Fest’s films that you may want to keep your eye out for in the coming months (our previous coverage posts can be found here, here, and here). And if you’re curious to see which Fest films took home awards this year, you can see all the winners here. In the meantime, we’ll see you next year for SFFILM #62!
1.) Sorry to Bother You (USA 2018, 107 min. Centerpiece)
Oakland rapper and artist Boots Riley got the hometown reception from the Festival this year, as his debut feature film was given a first-of-its kind, dual-venue Bay Area premiere at two of the Bay Area’s most iconic and beloved theaters: Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater and San Francisco’s Castro Theater. The movie had previously premiered at Sundance, where it garnered a Grand Jury prize nomination, but its Bay Area premiere definitely felt more special. Riley’s film centers on Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield, Get Out), a new employee at a telemarketing company in downtown Oakland (exteriors were shot around Kaiser’s Franklin Street building) whose rise up the corporate ladder doesn’t come without cost, to himself, his girlfriend (Tessa Thompson), and his friends, colleagues, and community. While inarguably entertaining, Riley’s film has a definite first attempt feel: elements of political satire, social criticism, surrealist comedy, outrageous sci-fi, and sweet romance often overlap to an extreme, coming dangerously close to burying the picture beneath its own everything-but-the kitchen-sink weight. Comedically deft performances from Stanfield and Armie Hammer, as a villainous corporate head, though, are appealing enough to make the flaws of Riley’s jam-packed screenplay forgivable.
Sorry to Bother You will open in the Bay Area on Friday, July 6th.
Continue reading “Film Feature: SFFILM 2018 Festival Spotlights #4”
If you haven’t made it out to the SF International Film Festival yet, don’t worry – you still have one more day to catch some great films. The Festival ends tomorrow, Tuesday, April 17th, and tickets to remaining screenings can be found here.
Spinning Platters continues its coverage by taking a look at four films that screened at the Fest that will be opening soon here in the Bay Area (we note each film’s opening date below), so if you had hoped to see some of these at the Fest and missed them, you’ve got a second chance. And even though the Fest ends soon, stay tuned to Spinning Platters; we’ll have some wrap up coverage after the Fest concludes.
1.) Kodachrome
(Canada/USA 2017, 105 min. Marquee Presentations)
Upon hearing the title of director Mark Raso’s new film, you would be forgiven for thinking it might have something to do with Paul Simon’s 1973 single of the same name. That song is referenced in the film, but never played, which is for the best, since the last film to take its title from a Paul Simon song was a huge flop. Raso fares better here, working from a script by the author and screenwriter Jonathan Tropper (This is Where I Leave You). Based loosely on a 2010 article in the New York Times about the closing of the last photo lab in the country to develop Kodak’s famed color film, Kodachrome is a father-son redemption story that calls to mind Sam Shepard, and not just because Shepard stalwart Ed Harris plays Ben, the estranged, terminally ill famous photographer father to Jason Sudeikis’s wounded music producer son Matt. The actors are believable as a father and son with a complicated history, which helps detract from the cliché of their road trip from New York to Kansas to drop off old Kodachrome rolls of Ben’s before the lab closes. Accompanying the duo is Zoe (Elizabeth Olsen), Ben’s nurse and assistant and, of course, love interest for Matt. Olsen’s likable presence and her chemistry with Sudeikis also help keep the story from feeling too obvious, and you find yourself wanting to spend more time with them. The film does occasionally succumb to the hackneyed, though, as when Matt and Zoe finally look at Ben’s developed slides (you’ll have long since guessed what’s on them), in a somewhat cloying scene that may remind some viewers of the famous “The Wheel” episode of Mad Men. But with its nostalgic look at how our analog world has given way to digital, Raso and Tropper manage to pull off a charming narrative that would have felt derivative with a lesser cast at the helm.
Kodachrome will open in the Bay Area this Friday, April 20th.
Continue reading “Film Feature: SFFILM 2018 Festival Spotlights #3”