Film Review: St. Vincent

Evidently, a movie can be both completely predictable and completely enjoyable at the same time.

Melissa McCarthy sets up Bill Murray for the best line of the entire movie.
Melissa McCarthy sets up Bill Murray for the best line of the entire movie.

Before seeing St. Vincent, the debut feature from Theodore Melfi, I knew very little about it. I knew that Bill Murray plays a cranky old man who lives next door to a single mother, and he develops a relationship with this woman’s young son. That’s it. I knew it was an indie movie, so I predicted to anyone who’d listen that the movie would definitely have a scene featuring an indie rock song punctuating an important uplifting moment. About this, I was wrong. The song by The National, “Start a War,” is used to punctuate an emotionally sad moment. How predictable was the rest of the film, you ask?

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Film Review: The Best of Me

The Best of Me offers the near-worst in its genre.

Eye candy, yes. Chemistry, no. James Marsden look-alike, absolutely not.
Eye candy, yes. Chemistry, no. James Marsden look-alike, absolutely not.

Take a close look at the picture above.  Does Mr. Shirtless look anything like a high school version of James Marsden?  If you answered ‘yes’, then this movie is absolutely the movie for you.  If you answered ‘no’, then you’re completely normal and will understand what I say when I say that the part of young Dawson was completely miscast.  This was the biggest failure of The Best of Me, but there were other failures as well, including a overly complicated third act.  Based on the book by Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, A Walk to Remember), The Best of Me is obviously catering to the same audiences that have contributed a whopping ton of money to previous Sparks adaptations.  But this movie fails as an inspiring story and fails to provide compelling characters.  I haven’t read the book so I can’t say for sure whether or not it was the source material’s fault.  But either way, its unpredictability and distractions ruin the chance for emotional connectivity.

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Show Review: Gerard Way at the Fillmore 10/12/14

GW4

To be honest, I don’t think anything has made me feel older than waiting in line to get into a Gerard Way show, all alone, on a chilly San Francisco night. So many teenage girls with their moms who are closer to my age than they are. All pumped up with teenager energy and hormones. It was overwhelming and energy sucking. I can’t even imagine how Gerard Way must feel, looking at this crowd, when he is a year older than me, married and a Dad himself. It must be weird to say the least. I will say though that at least a lot of them looked like the disaffected youth that would have been the original fans of his former band My Chemical Romance. But now that being weird is normal, who knows if they have the same insecurities and pain that the original “emo” fans of his would have had, like myself. So, what kind of night would it be? Would all that teenage energy turn into something beautiful? Something destructive? Or just throb into something else completely? Continue reading “Show Review: Gerard Way at the Fillmore 10/12/14”

Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts: 10/16/14-10/22/14

Haulin-Oats_David-Yearick

Treasure Island Music Festival is coming up this weekend. Which is the best music festival in America. Nonetheless, there are still a bunch of other great shows, too!

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MVFF Spotlights #4: Wild/St. Vincent/After the Fall

We’ve got three final spotlights from the 37th Mill Valley Film Festival, which closed Sunday night after ten days of showcasing dozens of fresh and exciting titles. Festival highlights, photos, and videos are available at: http://mvff.com. We’ll see you at the Fest next year!

Wild
(USA 2014, 120 min)

Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) at the start of her long and often arduous journey.

Director Jean-Mark Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) and writer Nick Hornby have turned Cheryl Strayed’s exceedingly popular memoir Wild into one of the best pictures of the year. Reese Witherspoon gives perhaps the fiercest performance of her career as Strayed, who, in the mid-1990s, hiked the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) solo as a way to cope with several losses in her life. A powerful meditation on grief, healing, strength, and redemption, Vallée’s picture benefits enormously from the emotionally raw performances of is two lead actresses. Laura Dern, as Strayed’s mother Bobbi, seen in flashbacks, is devastating as a young mother whose capacity for hope and love is beyond measure. Shot on location at various points along the PCT, Yves Bélanger’s cinematography is breathtaking, and fittingly accentuates the emotional complexity of Strayed’s story.

Release Date:
– Opens nationwide on December 5th

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Show Review + Photo Gallery: Aftershock Music Festival – September 13-14, 2014

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ConcertGoingPro

Across the Midwest and Southeast United States, from the last weekend of April through May 31, were seven Monster Energy Drink sponsored rock music festivals dubbed “The World’s Loudest Month”.  Rock on the Range, Carolina Rebellion, Welcome to Rockville, Fort Rock, RockFest, River City Rockfest, and Rocklahoma collectively entertained hundreds of thousands of hard rock and heavy metal fans in Columbus, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Ft. Myers, Kansas City, San Antonio, and Pryor (OK), respectively.  Music fans most certainly traveled long distances to attend these festivals, with their amazing 1-3 day lineups featuring the likes of Rob Zombie, Korn, Five Finger Death Punch, Guns N Roses, Limp Bizkit, Avenged Sevenfold, Kid Rock, Slayer, Deftones, Twisted Sister, Staind, and Godsmack, just to name a few.

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The Insiders’ Guide to the Treasure Island Music Festival (Updated for 2014)

A Treasure Island sunset, courtesy of Kelly Hoffer
A Treasure Island sunset, courtesy of Kelly Hoffer

This weekend’s Treasure Island Music Festival has quickly become my favorite musical event of the year. There are no conflicting set times, so you can see everyone on the bill. The size of the festival is fairly small, so it’s easy to get around. The setting in the middle of San Francisco Bay is absolutely stunning. And something about all of these combine to keep the people going in a relaxed, pleasant mood that makes being there all the more enjoyable.

Now, you might think going to this festival is as easy as hopping in your car and going to the festival to enjoy some music, but you’d be wrong. Read on, and I’ll teach you how to avoid rookie mistakes.

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MVFF Spotlights #3: The Imitation Game/Foxcatcher

The 37th Mill Valley Film Festival wrapped up last night.  The Festival screened some of this fall’s most hotly anticipated pictures: Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler and Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, and many more.  We gave you a look at some of the festival’s lesser known independent films, now here’s a quick look at a few of the hot titles (and Oscar bait) coming out this fall.  For full festival photos and information, visit: http://mvff.com.

The Imitation Game
(US/UK 2014, 113 min; English)

Cumberbatch cracks the code.
Cumberbatch cracks the code.

The Imitation Game is a return to the traditional period bio-dramas of yesteryear (you know, like A Beautiful Mind).  It tells the story of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who cracked the German Enigma c0de during World War II, thus introducing the world to computer science while having a large impact on helping the Allied forces win the war, and who was also subsequently arrested after the war for being a homosexual.  Everything about the film is rock solid, from the stalwart acting, led by a fantastic Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing, to the film’s music and set design.  While many movies, dramas in particular, flounder under the weight of forced contrivances, The Imitation Game embraces and utilizes them to an entertaining degree.  We’re right there cracking the code alongside Turing in this old-fashioned period drama.

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Show Review: Modest Mouse with Mimicking Birds at the Masonic, 9/26/2014

Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse
Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse

In the modern musical world, artists’ success seems to be measured in how quickly they can crank out new, catchy, pop-earworm singles that you keep singing from day to day until the next one comes along. Entire albums are far too much to swallow for the attention-deficit horde that is the concertgoing crowd, and heaven forbid you haven’t put out anything for several years’ time — you’re just a faded memory, a phrase that still pops up on cobweb-covered Internet searches. It’s therefore refreshing and wonderful to see acts like Modest Mouse, the Washington-based indie rockers who took the mid-2000s by storm, return to the Bay Area with over 7 years having passed since their last album’s release, and play to an absolutely sold-out house at their own debut at The Masonic, the recently-revamped auditorium that has been all of the buzz of San Francisco of late. It’s a testament to the staying power and wildly dedicated fanbase that they possess, and they did not disappoint the hundreds who screamed, cried, and writhed their way through the evening with them, unloading their explosive energy with a live assembly of nearly 10 players making up their ranks.

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