Film Review: Hereditary

Family as the source of dread and horror

From left: Milly Shapiro as Charlie, Toni Collette as Annie, Gabriel Byrne as Steve, and Alex Wolff as Peter in Hereditary.

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“

Film Review: Ocean’s 8

Old-fashioned fun is the real mark in latest Ocean’s film

Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock, l.)  assembles a crack team of eight (from l., Cate Blanchett, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, and Helena Bohman Carter) to plan a foolproof heist.

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.

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Theater Review: Award Winning Hit Musical Jersey Boys Returns to Broadway San Jose

(l to r) Chris Stevens (Nick Massi), Corey Greenan (Tommy DeVito), Jonny Wexler (Frankie Valli), and Tommaso Antico (Bob Gaudio). Photo by Joan Marcus, 2018.

The hit musical is on tour right now with a brief layover at the Center for the Performing Arts in San Jose. Absolutely stunning, the story follows The Four Seasons and their slow and steady rise as one of the biggest musical acts of their time. Frankie Valli (Ben Bogen on opening night), Bob Gaudio (Tommaso Antico), Tommy DeVito (Corey Greenan), and Nick Massi (Chris Stevens) are four guys from New Jersey trying to get out of their lackluster town. Though they run from trouble, trouble seems to follow them; guess you can take a guy out of New Jersey, but you can’t take New Jersey out of a guy. Continue reading “Theater Review: Award Winning Hit Musical Jersey Boys Returns to Broadway San Jose”

Show Review: Steve Ignorant and Paranoid Visions, Modern Enemy at The Fonda 5/26/18

Revolution Songs The Whole World Needs

Steve Ignorant and Paranoid Visions-6

Hardcore, Anarcho, Crust, Street, Pop: Five ways to describe various aspects of punk rock music — and that’s just five — of which I’ve happily run around in circle pits, been pressed against sweaty beer spilling individuals, and genuinely rocked my head off to in my life thus far.

For myself and a great number of friends who grew up in the ‘90s, punk provided a sense of community in a rural hippie town that was otherwise obsessed with reggae and country music — figure that out — where you could go 6 miles north where horses have the right of way or 10 miles south where meth seems to be lurking around every corner. It gave us an outlet for our anger and disillusionment in our supposedly sleepy little town in the Lost Coast. It should come as no surprise that by high school I was listening to heavy doses of Subhumans, Leftover Crack, Bad Religion, and Crass.

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Film Review: Adrift

A nice day for a sail? Not quite.

Richard (Sam Claflin) and Tami (Shailene Woodley) are adrift in the Pacific after a fierce hurricane throws them off course.

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.

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Show Review: Peter Hook and the Light, El Ten Eleven at The Wiltern 5/18/18

Take The Shock Away!Peter Hook and the Light-9

It often feels like a number of artists these days are playing up the waves of nostalgia for their music. So many bands that have been laying dormant have been coming out of the woodwork with reunion tours, new albums, and renewed activity, enough so that my lovely editor had made mention in passing to me that most of the bands at festivals were made up of 50 year olds. Personally, I don’t really care. I like music, and if a band I like gets back together or does something new, I’m all for it. So when I first heard that Peter Hook had formed his own band in 2008 and started playing Joy Division songs I was pretty much all for it. I love Joy Division. I lamented that Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu’s live Joy Division cover shows were so far out of reach and further lamented missing out on Hook’s shows, but it’s looking like 2018 is just starting to turn into MY year for concerts! Continue reading “Show Review: Peter Hook and the Light, El Ten Eleven at The Wiltern 5/18/18”

Sibling rivalry boils over: Ubuntu Theater presents Suzan Lori-Parks’ Pulitzer-winning Topdog/Underdog

Who’s the mark? Booth (Michael Curry) and Lincoln (Dorian Lockett) attempt to out hustle each other. Photos courtesy of Simone Finney, 2018.

Something bad that keeps rising… Booth’s words to Link. Do you feel it, too? But before Link can answer, Booth determines that Link does a better job keeping his demons at bay. After all, he’s chosen a clean life after years of hustling three-card Monte. He won’t even touch the cards.

In a season of site-specific shows, Ubuntu takes us to the Waterfront Playhouse in Berkeley, to a tiny black box theater. Here we are voyeurs into Booth and Link’s living quarters, of less than average amenities, they are two brothers barely surviving. Sleeping on crates, eating off crates, stuffing stolen clothes into crates, and storing their few beloved personal items in crates. Their parents abandoned them as children, first their mother, then their father. Each left the other brother a $500 dollar inheritance, leaving Booth to wonder, did they plan the escape together?

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Film Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story

Joonas Suotamo is Chewbacca, Woody Harrelson is Beckett, Emilia Clarke is Qira and Alden Ehrenreich is Han Solo in SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY.

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“

Spinning Platters Interview: Mark Stern from Punk Rock Bowling

Punk Rock Bowling is one of the most exciting and unique music festivals running. This year, which happens to be their twentieth, is also one of their biggest! In addition to headliners NOFX, Rise Against, and At the Drive-In, we’ve got some rare visits to the US from legends including Norway’s Turbonegro and Canada’s DOA, not to mention too many other bands to even begin listing here.

Spinning Platters had a chance to pull founder Mark Stern from his busy schedule to talk about what it’s like to book a festival, which combines punk rock and bowling, and plop it in the middle of the desert at the beginning of summer. Lineup and tickets can still be found here! Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Mark Stern from Punk Rock Bowling”

Film Review: Book Club

Great company, solid laughs make this Club worth joining

Longtime friends Diane (Diane Keaton, l.), Sharon (Candice Bergen), Vivian (Jane Fonda) and Carol (Mary Steenburgen) talk about books and more in their book club.

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.

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