Tag: review

Movie review? HamilTEN

cf West Side Story

As our celebration of HamilTEN, the tenth anniversary of the musical Hamilton, my wife and I went to the Spectrum Theater in Albany in late September to see the movie. Well, more correctly, we saw the stage version of Hamilton, which was filmed in 2016, and the original cast was featured before they dispersed.

It was made available on Disney+ in 2020, but I had no streaming service. Moreover, I’m not all that fond of seeing movies on the small screen anyway. So when it came to the cinema in honor of the 10th anniversary of Hamilton (HamilTEN), it was a required visit.

As I’m sure I’ve described, we first learned about Hamilton when our daughter was really hot on this musical. We bought and played the CD in our car whenever we traveled with our daughter. There were rules, including that my wife could not turn off the vehicle until the playing song ended. So, and I’m not exaggerating, we’ve probably listened to Hamilton north of 200 times in three years. Although not 100% historically accurate, our daughter learned who ran in the elections of 1796 and 1800.

A guy named Howard Ho is a scholar of the musical who explains over several videos why the listening and relistening of Hamilton isn’t as repetitive as it might be. Part of it concerns the fact that so many words are packed into a single line. One video suggests the first measure encapsulates the entire musical motif.

In 2019, we saw both the touring company and a parody of Spamilton. We’ve watched the Weird Al Hamilton Polka.

Finally

Still, finally seeing the movie and seeing the staging was magical. Angelica (Renée Elise Goldsberry) performed Satisfied, which was electric. King George (Jonathan Goff) never blinks in his three songs, and after his final song, he remains rollicking on the stage. Thomas Jefferson’s moves (Daveed Diggs) are extraordinary. It is remarkably moving when Eliza (Phillipa Soo) sings Burn. This is fascinating, given our history with the work.

I probably know Hamilton better than any other musical, except possibly West Side Story, which I saw more than 60 years ago, plus subsequent movie and stage presentations.

I can’t review Hamilton. We got more emotional about it than we would have thought. Oh, we were the only people in the theater – it WAS the third week – but it would have been interesting to register audience reaction.

Vaguely related: Did an Enslaved Chocolatier Help Hercules Mulligan Foil a Plot to Assassinate George Washington?

Movie review: Dirty Dancing

Grossinger’s

I finally saw the movie Dirty Dancing (1987). My wife had seen it years before, but misremembered parts of it. We went to a matinee at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany in early July.

One thing that worked that should not have was the seemingly seamless mix of music from the early 1960s and mid-1980s. One critic noted: “The dance finale…, although an obvious crowd-pleaser, is performed to a contemporary song, clearly intended for the charts, which blows the period feel right off the dance floor.” I think is mitigated largely by the voice of former Righteous Brother Bill Medley, whose duet with Jennifer Warnes, Time Of My Life, seemed to fit.  

As a couple of critics noted, the film was pro-sex. The seeming differences between the haves, such as the family of Baby/Frances (Jennifer Grey), and the performers, such as Johnny (Patrick Swayze), gave it a certain Romeo and Juliet vibe, except that (SPOILER!) no one dies.

In many ways, the film’s hero was Baby’s father, Dr. Jake Houseman, played by the late, great Jerry Orbach, whose relationship with his daughter is one of the two most important in the movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes scores were 72% positive with critics and 90% with audiences. The negatives were that it was “dull and charmless,” “boring,” “blah,” and/or “objects of choreography used to push a thoughtless agenda of sound and movement.” Meh.

Bias

While I liked it far more than I thought I would, separating the movie from the vaguely familiar setting, a Borscht Belt resort, isn’t easy. I traveled past a few of these buildings in the Catskill Mountains. “The movie is based on Grossinger’s, “a major star in the upstate New York constellation of recreation.

“Alan Zweibel, one of the original writers on “Saturday Night Live,” is writing “The Mountains,” a show about Grossinger’s, Deadline reports… The Liberty, New York, mainstay known for supplying luxury and entertainment closed in 1986.”

Deep in the recesses of my memory, I know I’d been in one of the resorts, but I don’t think it was with my family. Could it have been a high school choir trip? I distinctly remember the separation of meat and milk. 

The movie also nameschecks New Paltz, where I went to college.

Movie review: The Last Class

Robert Reich

My wife suggested we see a documentary film called The Last Class. I did not know this movie, but it fit into her desire to learn more about how to fight for justice. “Robert Reich teaches his final ‘Wealth and Poverty’ class to 1,000 students at UC Berkeley, ending a 40-year career that reached 40,000 students.” (Incidentally, Reich has a Wealthy & Poverty section on his YouTube page, featuring his entertaining drawings.)

The film includes a bit in which the former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration is having a difficult time trying to get rid of the actual oversized chair from his time in the office.

Teaching is his true passion, although he’s better known in political circles. He wants to ensure that the students don’t just parrot what he’s thinking but show the ability to think for themselves. 

It’s a short film—71 minutes—that is frank and, in the end credits, hysterically funny. I think my wife, knowing less about him, got more from the film than I did.

Freedom Summer

Still, he tells a particular story about Michael Schwerner, one I had heard before, but surprisingly, it was still moving. Michael was Robert’s protector in his neighborhood growing up because Robert was, and is, short of stature and was bullied. He lost track of Michael until he heard that Michael was part of the campaign attempting to register black citizens in Mississippi to vote. Shortly thereafter, Robert learned that his old protector, whom he knew as Mickey, along with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in June 1964. This instilled in Robert a sense of the need to fight for justice.

As somebody who likes to go to the movies, I’m not sure this is a film one needs to see in the theater, but I think it’s very worthwhile. My wife and I went to a weekday matinee at the Spectrum Theatre. The only other people in the viewing were a man and his son, who had just turned 21 and wanted to know how to be a better citizen. THAT was inspiring!

Movie review – Fantastic Four: First Steps

The positive buzz to the new film Fantastic Four: First Steps assuaged my resistance to seeing yet another Marvel Movie. As any member of the MMMS (Merry Marvel Marching Society) could tell you, there have been previous FF films that ranged from disappointing to pretty terrible.

An example of the latter is the unreleased Roger Corman film (1994), which I saw on YouTube a decade or so ago. It was so bad that it was mildly entertaining. I thought the 2005 film was pretty pedestrian. The 2007 follow-up has been on my DVD, unwatched for months.

The new film is “set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world.” A reliable source tells me that MARVELS, the miniseries with Alex Ross art, appears to be the primary influence here. What I know for sure is that it worked for me. I got the Earth-828 reference; August 28 is the birthday of FF co-creator Jack Kirby. Whatever the source,  the film’s aesthetic wowed me, leaning into the comics of the 1960s without feeling stuck in the past.

The team

The team’s interaction was interesting. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) feels responsible/guilty for the team’s transformation four years earlier. Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) is the most interesting of the four. Unlike her comic book counterpart in the 1960s, this woman is fierce. She loves and is frustrated by her overthinking husband, Reed.

Sue’s brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) is impulsive but talented. The script gave Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) short shrift, with just a hint of a potential romance. Herbie the Robot was integral to the plot. 

I wondered how the group would, or could, defend Earth from Galactus, the powerful eater of worlds (Ralph Ineson), and his mysterious herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). And there’s a personal complication. It seemed like a credible solution. 

A person who is the biggest FF fan I know has seen the film twice before I’d seen it once. The Rotten Tomatoes score was 86% positive with critics, 92% with fans. I saw it on a hot Tuesday afternoon at Spectrum 8 in Albany. 

I liked the vibe, optimism, and unity of the general public in the film —well, most of the time. However, I’m not sure it was enough to make me watch the sequel. Not incidentally, at least one person in the theater left immediately when the credits started, missing the Four Years Later postlude. I liked the cartoon at the very end of the film.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps Main Theme and more, music by Michael Giacchino. And if you are obsessed – I am not – 47 minutes of BREAKDOWN – Marvel Easter Eggs You Missed!

Movie review: F1

racecars

To my mild surprise, my wife wanted to see the movie F1. I said OK, though it wasn’t high on my list of must-see films. In my time, I’ve avoided many summer blockbusters. We went to the Spectrim 8 Theatre in Albany on a Tuesday afternoon in early July.

F1 did what it set out to do: make you feel like you are riding with these drivers. Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) will drive almost anything, and his old friend Ruben (Javier Bardem) recruits him for his Formula 1 team.

You get sucked into feeling like part of the management and pit crew, trying to ensure that the two team drivers, Sonny and Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), succeed or at least don’t crash and burn. Kate (Kerry Conlon) is central to the team and wants to be taken seriously as the technical director; I liked Conlon in The Banshees of Inisherin. 

Critic Michael Cook wrote: “This is a classic ‘summer and popcorn’ movie. Some beats may feel familiar, but it’s done so well that you overlook some of its problems. It’s a movie worth seeing at the theater to get the full experience.” I agree with that, and the fact that the actors practiced actual driving for several months gave those scenes a feeling of verisimilitude. True Formula 1 fans will grimace at some inconsistencies, but most of the general public may not notice or care.

Pop

Frankly, I enjoyed it on the level that my grandfather McKinley Green and I used to watch Indy car racing on TV when I was growing up. But F1 doesn’t seem like a movie you want to see on television.

When Formula One came to Las Vegas in the story, I was fascinated because I was in that city in 2024 shortly before it was altered to create the track. Businesses near the course, such as restaurants and bars, which could benefit from more people coming in, were thrilled. Ordinary Las Vegans with no monetary benefit tended to be irritable about the inconvenience.

Rotten Tomatoes critics gave the film 83% positive reviews, but it was 97% positive with audiences.

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