Carousel (Broadway) (2018)

I love Carousel. I think the music is beautiful and the story as well. Seeing this now a second time, on a Broadway this time, it doesn't hold up as well as I remember. There is a lot less plot than I remember. Most of the songs are kind of filler. And the second act that I remembered being so imaginative was actually very ambiguous. There are a number of seeming plot holes. Billy doesn't actually do anything to earn his ticket into heaven. Did grown people in the early 1900s really ride carousels? Multiple times in a single day? Was carousel barker a real job? Do clam bakes always involve scavenger hunts? The costumes are appropriately ugly. It's so site-specific to New England, it's almost too bizarre. The accents were sort of all over the place. Jessie Mueller's accent was fine but she doesn't have all that many lines for a lead. I took most issue with Joshua Henry's accent, which didn't quite sound New England. I think perhaps as a whole cast, they should have made a decision to just drop the accents, cause it was kind of inconsistent. Billy Bigelow is perhaps one of the meatiest male roles in musical theater--his acting is excellent (of which there is a lot) but I do not prefer his singing. Henry's voice has a lot of heft, it's very deep. His head voice sounds like it's coming from a completely different person. If I Loved You was delightful, but I didn't love his rendition of Soliloquy. Maybe it's just one of those songs you're so used to hearing one way that when other people try to do something a little different, it doesn't sound quite right. The absolute best part of the show is Justin Peck's choreography. The dance sequences are mesmerizing. Blow High, Blow Low--one of those filler songs--is so much fun. They even forgo the eponymous carousel in order to leave space for the dancers to do their thing.

I think Amar Ramasar is fabulous as Jigger (what an awfully racist name). I think he should've gotten a Tony nomination for a role arguably bigger than Mr. Snow. Speaking of racism, there is certainly a different dynamic with an African-American Billy, making an interracial leading couple. I actually sympathize with Billy more as an African-American. Who are the characters of color? Billy, the policeman, the Starkeeper, and Jigger. That is the two "criminals" (and the wife beater), the man charged with fighting the criminals, and the God-figure/low-level-afterlife-magistrate. Make of that what you will.

The criticism most often levied against Carousel is that it condones domestic violence, but I don't read it quite the same way. I don't think it condones anything (because Billy's redemption is really ambiguous), but I do think they try to rationalize why victims of domestic abuse stay. "He's your fella and you love him" and that's about it.

Fire at Sea (Fuocammare) (2016)

There are some really beautiful moments in this hard hitting documentary. It's sometimes hard to watch--teh camera forces us to stare the crisis in the face when many Europeans would rather turn a blind eye. Refugee documentaries like this are really devastating. But there is so much life in these people that have gone through hell and back to reach opportunity. The movie is really slow (and music-less), intentionally so. But it is mesmerizing. It is kind of an interesting concept to mix documentary with staged scenes. But the metaphor is brilliant and unmistakable. The young Lampedusan boy is adorable. He supposedly has a lazy eye and so he wears an eyepatch to force him to train his weaker eye. The metaphor, of course, is that Europe must train itself to see with its other eye the pain that these refugees have suffered. There is a staged scene where the boy sees a doctor and discusses his anxiety, an anxiety that is common among locals dealing with the influx of refugees. The boy is supremely Italian in this scene, as he "acts"--the intonation of his voice is so Italian. But it is that scene that it really all clicks. And you see how brilliant Gianfranco Rosi's direction is.

Finding Vivian Maier (2013)

This is a fascinating movie made by a dedicated historian sleuth. It was just pure luck. He started by buying some boxes of negatives and he ended up collecting this woman's entire life. Going through the boxes (of a hoarder) and archiving all the items is a gargantuan task. Just by examining Vivian's things, he was able to learn so much about her, and yet so much of her is still shrouded in mystery to be lost forever. Her photography is stunning. She had a great eye. It's terribly sad that her work was never shared during her lifetime. It's really quite tragic. There is a bit of a sense that as a secretive woman she would never have wanted anyone to uncover these details about her; it's an intrusion on her privacy but it's so engaging and she's so eccentric that the viewer really wants to know what happened too. I'm not too bothered by it.

The Square (2017)

I don't think I fully understood the message of The Square. But the vignettes are hilarious. The monkey scene is absolutely absurd but you can't look away. I can understand some of the abstract "what is art" stuff, but what was he trying to get across in that scene? I like the scene in the Tesla where they're arguing over who will go inside the building. There are some funny situations. I'm just not sure they all come together.

Red Army (2014)

It's about hockey, but it's about more than just hockey. It's a classic Cold War documentary. The Cold War certainly reached the world of sports and the Soviets had the best hockey team in the world. The first part of the movie is about how they got so good. But then it becomes more of a fascinating look behind the scenes at the Soviet machine under which the hockey stars suffered. It's pretty short, packing in a lot of interesting interviews, even if you're not into hockey. At the highest levels, it was about ideology, but the players on the ice were only human and this movie gets to their humanity. I know they call soccer the beautiful game, but Soviet hockey was true balletic beauty.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

I like a good mystery, but the fun is in the buildup to the revelation. And everything before the revelation in this movie is kind of dull. Poirot interrogates all the passengers separately so all of the movie stars get a a little bit of screentime and a couple lines to say, but with every little reveal I'm like so-what. There are hints of Sherlock in the style, but without the likability of Sherlock. If you don't know the solution, it's kind of clever. But immediately after, I fell asleep. I admit, I don't know how the movie ends and I couldn't be bothered to go back and find out. At least it looked nice.

Game Night (2018)

Game Night is fun. It kept me awake on the plane. The premise is way out there, but the actors play along. Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams especially are quite good. It's kind of funny not in a haha way but in a situational absurdist way. It's so ridiculous, it works.