Film Review: The Mountain Between Us

Kate, Idris, and a dog battle the elements: Who will survive!?      

Strangers Alex (Kate Winslet) and Ben (Idris Elba) must stick together to survive a plane crash in the Rocky Mountains in heart of winter.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good old fashioned, human-versus-the-elements survival story; 127 Hours is one of my all-time favorite films, and Everest, Into the Wild, and even Alive all captured my imagination and left me pondering the strength of my own survival instinct long after the credits rolled. Director Hany Abu-Assad’s new film The Mountain Between Us isn’t the best of this genre by a long shot, but it’s a decent enough addition to the canon, and, if the genre’s one you enjoy, you can easily add this picture to your viewing queue and feel okay about doing so.
Continue reading “Film Review: The Mountain Between Us“

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2017: Friday Recs and Rundown

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is here again, bringing a host of bands both new and familiar. The best music is not necessarily the most well known, and the greatest festival experiences are the surprises. Here’s the first of three posts to help guide your HSB journey, with recommendations, links, and descriptions.

On Fridays, the crowds are relatively light until the late afternoon, so you can wander more easily than on the other days. Those dastardly organizers, though — they always pit similarly great bands against each other at the same time slots, so there will be hard choices to make. Continue reading “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2017: Friday Recs and Rundown”

Show Review: Andrew W.K. at The Independent, 9.27.17

This show had all of the essentials needed for a great metal show. Andrew WK, the patron saint of partying, leading his six piece backup band of very loud and technically adept musicians. Two members of his backup band were women, which made the party even better, as did the pizza guitar he played mid-set. AWK is a live wire with big, metal voice, but at the show, he seemed a little dampened. It happens – a lot of us have had the crud, and if he did I hope he feels better. This didn’t lower show’s wattage though, or cause anyone to party any less hard. A great metal show also has a fist pumping crowd in the back,  and mosh pit up by the stage. Here, at an AWK show, all of these are accounted for. AWK writes great hooks that keep you moving and joyful, and his touring band brings them to a higher level of musicianship than the original recorded version. Continue reading “Show Review: Andrew W.K. at The Independent, 9.27.17”

Show Review: Deerhoof, Christina Schneider’s Genius Grant, Mayya and the Revolutionary Hell Yeah at Teragram Ballroom, 09/22/17

Deeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrhooooooooooofff!

Deerhoof-30

I cannot start this without immediately stating my bias. I love Deerhoof. I’ve been in love with this strange quirky band since I was 16 years old in high school, and a friend of mine played the cleanest version that exists of “Gore in Crown,” though we knew it as “Gore in Beans.” They are a band that — for whatever reason — manages to attack their inspiration ceaselessly and never get redundant in doing so. Like Fugazi‘s later career, each album is new, fresh, and exciting, better than the album before it. This says nothing of their performances — of which the following is my fifth as an audience member — which always retain some of the highest energy of any show I’ve ever been to.

Continue reading “Show Review: Deerhoof, Christina Schneider’s Genius Grant, Mayya and the Revolutionary Hell Yeah at Teragram Ballroom, 09/22/17”

Film Review: Battle of the Sexes

Stone and Carell serve up a winner in still timely ’70s tennis drama      

Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) play to the crowd at a press conference preceding the Battle of the Sexes.

Opening nearly 44 years to the day after the famous tennis match it’s named after, Battle of the Sexes chronicles the much publicized and widely watched (90 million viewers tuned in worldwide) 1973 match between then 29-year-old women’s champion Billie Jean King and former men’s champion 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. Billed as the ultimate Battle of the Sexes, the match became much more than just an exhibition game; it took on a life of its own, and, after King’s resounding defeat of Riggs, it became a touchstone for the growing women’s equality movement of the early 1970s. Husband and wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine) and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (127 Hours; Slumdog Millionaire) wonderfully capture the zeitgeist of the period down to the smallest details, and have assembled a stellar cast to bring this often infuriating but always engaging true story to life.
Continue reading “Film Review: Battle of the Sexes“

Film Review: Brad’s Status

A midlife crisis worth watching: Stiller shines in funny and poignant story  

Brad (Ben Stiller, l.) reflects on his life while touring colleges with his son Troy (Austin Abrams). 

Ben Stiller, who can play middle-age angst like no one else (see While We’re Young, for example), is in fine form in writer/director Mike White’s new film Brad’s Status. Although the film’s premise about a soon-to-be-50 straight white man facing an existential crisis as he grapples with his life choices may sound like the epitome of naval-gazing white privilege, the picture touches on some universal themes with sensitivity and wry humor, thanks in large part to Stiller’s well-tuned performance and White’s sharp screenplay (White is perhaps best known for the 2000 cult hit Chuck and Buck and this year’s social satire Beatriz at Dinner).
Continue reading “Film Review: Brad’s Status“

Film Review: mother!

If a stranger knocks at your front door…

Jennifer Lawrence’s Mother struggles with hostess duties as Javier Bardem’s poet entertains.

Standing before an unpainted bedroom wall, a young and thoroughly domesticated woman ponders which shade of eggshell will look just so. She mixes up a tester, applies a strip, and steps back to regard her work. Elsewhere an older man inhabits his writing study, conjuring magic onto the page and thence to his readers. Later the two will enjoy her hearty meal, and settle into reading by the fire.

But something isn’t right. A sound, or maybe a feeling, forces the woman to cock her ear. She moves as quietly as possible, propelled by a feeling she can’t explain, to peek in on the man. He isn’t writing. He’s just sitting, waiting, watching. Something isn’t right.

Such is the ominous atmosphere of Darren Aronofsky’s latest film mother!, which only partly succeeds, through the use of the horror genre overlaid with biblical themes, at offering a portrait of female anxiety.

Continue reading “Film Review: mother!“

Film Review: Home Again

Reese goes home again, but that doesn’t mean you have to    

Lillian (Candice Bergen, l.) and her daughter Alice (Reese Witherspoon) delightedly share breakfast with the three total strangers that Alice has let in her home (from l., Nat Wolff, Jon Rudnitsky, and Pico Alexander).

With Home Again, writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s debut feature, we see that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The daughter of filmmaker Nancy Meyers (The Intern; It’s Complicated; The Holiday; Something’s Got to Give), Meyers-Shyer here copies her mother’s patented feel-good glossy, Pottery Barn-infused style to create a romantic comedy that is blandly harmless at best and ludicrously insipid at worst. That Meyers herself produced the project is no surprise, as the entire picture feels like Mom just handed her daughter the keys to the family car and admonished her to drive it exactly as Mom would.
Continue reading “Film Review: Home Again“

Spinning Platters Interview: Corin Tucker & Peter Buck of Filthy Friends

You have 15 minutes in a room with two of your idols to ask them whatever you want. Here’s how that goes…

Photo taken at The Independent in SF on 8.29.17

R.E.M. changed my life. If it weren’t for them, I probably wouldn’t have found rock ‘n’ roll. At least they were my gateway band, the band that introduced me to punk, folk, power pop, and even hip hop. Sleater-Kinney are a band I found in high school, and they quickly became my favorite band. Little did I expect that cofounder Corin Tucker would form a band with R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck many years later. That band is Filthy Friends, and they recently released a fantastic record. We had the opportunity to chat with them just before they played the Independent. I tried not to geek out too much. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Corin Tucker & Peter Buck of Filthy Friends”

Show Review: Dead Cross, Qui, Secret Chiefs 3 at El Rey, 8.21-22.17

“Nothing stops this tour!”

Dead Cross-20

Since supergroups seem to be the big deal right now, it’s hard to recognize any band who comes together in collaboration as anything but. However, it becomes crystal clear, when the band performs live, that “supergroup” is not as appropriate of a term. When talking about Dead Cross it is completely fair to say that this is a band, not another one-off album release. The self-titled album, recently released on Ipecac Records, is a blistering hardcore punk set that injects a new vitality into the genre.

Continue reading “Show Review: Dead Cross, Qui, Secret Chiefs 3 at El Rey, 8.21-22.17”