Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
If you heard Adam Driver belt out “Being Alive” in Marriage Story two years ago and thought to yourself, “Wow, I sure wish I could hear Adam Driver sing more,” well then you’re in luck. The musical Annette opens today, and Driver warbles his way throughout, so if you’re into that, go check it out. But for the rest of us, be warned: this overly long, joyless rock opera is no fun, and a chore to sit through.
DC, which obviously stands for Demolition Crew due to their incessant need to destroy CGI buildings in each film they release…. Oh, wait, it stands for Detective Comics? Ah. Well, in that case, they have a lot of repairing to do, both to their brand and to their movies, which have suffered from every production snafu, PR mess, and critical upheaval possible in the last decade. With the exception of the first Wonder Woman film in 2017, and delightful detours with Shazam! and Birds of Prey, the headlining slate of Batman, Superman, and Justice League-related films have been atrocious, including 2016’s Suicide Squad. Thankfully, The Suicide Squad (emphasis on ‘The’) pulls no punches as it blows up any trace of the previous film’s legacy. It’s a fun movie that requires no homework; you can enter the theater a DC expert or fresh-faced, and Suicide Squad provides a gory good time at the movies. Sure, it’s too long. Sure, its middle third is boring, forgettable, and obnoxiously sullen. Nevertheless, Director James Gunn has infused a sense of silly violent fun that studio rivals over at Marvel have been employing for over a decade, and which DC has been incapable of featuring until now (note: Birds of Prey was actually a better, under-appreciated righting of the ship). The Suicide Squad is not perfect, but it’s a helluva good time.
Stillwater is a strange movie that somehow works in spite of itself. It tries to be many things: a murder mystery, a character study, a redemptive father/daughter drama, a romance, and a fish out of water culture clash, to name just a few. Some of these elements are strong and some are weak, but, taken together, they create a whole that is worth more than its parts, and make the picture worth a look despite its flaws.
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M. Night Shyamalan was nominated for writing and directing Oscars for the inarguably brilliant The Sixth Sense over 20 years ago, and he’s been trying to replicate that success ever since. Unfortunately, each of his offerings since then, aside from 2002’s box office victory Signs, has been met with high hopes and then dashed expectations. His newest film, Old, is a similar disappointment. “Disappointing” is actually too kind a word for this picture; unwatchable and laughable are probably more accurate descriptors.
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Director Morgan Neville, who won an Oscar for 20 Feet from Stardom and multiple awards for the Mr. Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor takes on the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain in his new film Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain. The subtitle is somewhat curious; yes, the film is about Bourdain, but while Neville briefly touches on Bourdain’s early life, anyone looking for a thorough biographical sketch of the man won’t find it here. Ultimately, the film is less of an all-encompassing biography, and more of a meditation on life and its attendant joys and sorrows and suicide, loss, and grief. On that level, it works exceptionally well.
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The scene: Thousands of music lovers packed around a stage. Guitars, drums, keys, horns, harmonicas all playing together, and together getting heads to bob and bodies to sway. It’s the summer of ‘69, and this isn’t Woodstock. Continue reading “Film Review: “The Summer of Soul””
Full disclosure: I’m someone who doesn’t typically like musicals. I’m jarred when, mid-conversation, characters break into a big song and dance number, and everyone acts like that’s a totally normal way to communicate. Then the dialogue resumes, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around that. So I was a bit apprehensive to see the film version of In the Heights, a musical I had seen live, and hadn’t found memorable. But my cynical self was blown away: not only is the movie better than I could have imagined, but it benefits tremendously from the shift to the big screen. Continue reading “Film Review: “In the Heights””
The Dreamspeakers Festival Society website states that “When the first Dene filmmaker returned home to Canada’s Northwest Territories, his people had no words for his new art. They call it ‘Dreamtalking’.” The term ‘Dene’ refers to both the native language (also called Athabascan) and also the Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Territories in Canada. Dreamspeakers was founded in 1993, and for the last 28 years has highlighted the films and media art of Indigenous artists from nations around the globe.
Continue reading “Film Feature: 2021 Dreamspeakers International Indigenous Film Festival”
Now is a great time to go to the movies (assuming you’ve had at least one, and ideally both, vaccine jabs). The long hiatus from theater-going means that even the most mediocre films will benefit greatly from being seen on a large screen, blasting through surround sound systems, and riding the energy of an exuberant audience. The third installation of The Conjuring movies, not including the Conjuring universe spin-offs Annabelle, The Nun, and La Llorona, is not mediocre by any means.
Continue reading “Film Review: “The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It””
Last March, I was all set to go to the advance reviewer screening of A Quiet Place II when the Bay Area began to shelter-in-place. The screening was cancelled and the movie’s release postponed. But this week I finally made it to that reviewer screening, marking my return to the cinema, some 14 months later. And it was worth the wait. Because not only is Part II terrific, but releasing it earlier via streaming wouldn’t have done it justice. This picture is meant for the big screen.