Amy Diaz – Page 41

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (PG-13)

A teenager living in Sheffield, England, and dreaming of a future of fabulousness pursues his desire to become a drag queen in the musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, a joyous movie about figuring out who you are, with original songs

Jamie New (Max Harwood) is an out, proud and happy-seeming teen, even if he does have some family difficulties — his dad (Ralph Ineson) doesn’t keep in contact — and he’s the object of some bullying from schoolmates, including popular kid Dean (Sean Bottomley). But Jamie has a supportive best friend in Pritti Pasha (Lauren Patel), whose headscarf and nerdiness have also made her a bullying target, and a supportive mom, Margaret (Sarah Lancashire).

It’s Margaret who buys Jamie the sparkly pair of red pumps he’s been saving for as a birthday present — and she gives him the card and cash that she says is from his dad. Though Jamie is clearly worried about what people — the kids at school, his dad — will think, he uses the shoes as a springboard to more fully develop a drag queen persona with the intention of debuting her at the school prom. It’s this plan that takes him to a drag queen clothing store and its owner, Hugo Battersby (Richard E. Grant), who on stage is the warrior queen Miss Loco Chanelle. Hugo helps to school Jamie in the art of being a drag queen and in also his history, particularly in late 1980s and early 1990s England.

Grant really brings it in that particular song, which captures the joy of his performance days and the struggles of that particular time in history. It’s one of many times when, even if the movie is being very on the nose, it’s nonetheless deeply moving and really captures the emotions of the characters. There are times here that reminded me of the scene in the recent movie CODA, when the teen learning to find her singing voice describes what music means to her in sign language, which is presented as her most precise way of expressing her emotions. Similarly, this movie uses song to really get to what things like performing in drag means to Jamie — and to the hurt of his relationship with his father. The movie also does a good job of making us understand what the power of a drag persona means to Jamie and how he wields it and has to learn to wield that power with care.

Strong relationships also help to sell this story, despite its fantasy elements of lunch room dance numbers and high school hallway as runway. Even though most of Margaret’s scenes are about Jamie, Lancashire is able to give us so much of her life and what she’s going through — particularly the very relatable parental heartache of putting all her energy into supporting Jamie with the knowledge that success means he’ll one day leave her behind. Likewise, we get glimpses of Pritti’s inner life and even some of the more antagonistic characters get layers. This is a sweet, good-hearted movie but it lives in the realm of reality, in terms of the way its people relate to each other, which helps all the joyful aspects of it have even more impact.

And the music and dancing — including some really spectacularly choreographed and production design-having big-cast dance numbers — are universally great too.

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a brightly colored, big-hearted, delight-filled movie. B+

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, strong language and suggestive material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Jonathan Butterell with a screenplay by Tom MacRae (and based on the stage musical of the same name), Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is an hour and 55 minutes long and is distributed by Amazon Studios via Amazon Prime Video.

Cry Macho (PG-13)

Clint Eastwood dons a very Clint-Eastwood-y cowboy hat to play a very Clint-Eastwood-y old-man cowboy in the Eastwood-directed Cry Macho.

It’s 1979 and Mike (Eastwood) is a fading horse trainer living in Texas. After a clunkily exposition-filled but wholly unnecessary opening scene where he is fired, we see that same former boss, Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakam), hire Mike a year later to go to Mexico to get Howard’s teenage son Rafael. Howard gives Mike, who has never met Rafael, who goes by Rafo (Eduardo Minett), a picture of the boy when he was like 6 (Rafo is now like 13) and some cash and mentions that Rafo’s mother, Leta (Fernando Urrejola), is nuts and that he (Howard) can’t go himself because he has vague legal troubles in Mexico.

Sure, this should all work out fine.

Mike first goes to see Leta, a cartoonishly Bad Mother, at her mansion, where a fancy party is taking place. She drunkenly tells Mike to take Rafo if he can find him — Rafo is wild and lives in the streets, taking his rooster to cockfights. And indeed Mike does find Rafo and his rooster, Macho, on the streets. After some convincing, Mike seems to get Rafo to agree to go with him to Texas, but later Leta threatens Mike that she will send the Mexican authorities after him if he tries to take Rafo. Mike seems to give up on the whole endeavor and drives away but then he finds Rafo has stowed away in his car and eventually agrees to take the kid north.

Because there is now a certain amount of peril involved in their journey — both from the police and from Leta’s henchmen — the duo takes back roads, running in to various types of difficulty. Eventually they end up in a small town where Marta (Natalia Traven), a widow raising her four granddaughters and running a restaurant, shows them kindness.

Cry Macho is not as aggressively offensive as 2018’s The Mule (which, rereading my review, I was way too nice to) but it is generally unpleasant and unfun to watch with regard to everything it does with its Mexican characters. Not that the two Texan characters come off much better, in terms of development and believability, but everything with the Mexican characters has a real hacky stereotype quality that I did not enjoy. The movie’s two female characters are painted with extravagant lack of subtlety as saint (the generous Marta, who finds Mike and Rafo when she goes to light candles in the shrine of the Virgin Mary) and devil (the boozy Leta, whose villainy is so over-the-top it doesn’t really make sense). It’s all so “ugh” that it gets in the way of whatever emotional story it’s trying to build about Mike and his mentor-y relationship with Rafo.

This movie is also clunky and inartful in its plot mechanics and its dialogue. You can see every seam of how this story was put together and the dialogue often feels like a first draft rough sketch of the ideas you’re trying to convey in a scene, not something the characters would actually say. These people never read as humans, only as characters and sometimes only as character types, which also makes it hard to judge whether the performances are any good.

This movie does look good, even if it leans on the dusty landscape to do most of the heavy lifting in that regard. Cry Macho isn’t as off-putting as The Mule — but it also isn’t the graceful The Old Man and the Gun (Robert Redford’s allegedly final acting turn), the movie Cry Macho most made me think of, with its nostalgia-filled “give it up for Your Favorite Actor, ladies and gentlemen” vibe. C

Rated PG-13 for language and thematic elements, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Clint Eastwood with a screenplay by Nick Schenk and N. Richard Nash (based on the book Macho by N. Richard Nash), Cry Macho is an hour and 44 minutes long and is distributed by Warner Bros. It is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max through Oct. 17.

FILM

Venues

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• The Eyes of Tammy Faye (PG-13, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Sept. 24, through Sunday, Sept. 26, at 12:30, 3:30 and 6:30 p.m.

• Blue Bayou (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Sept. 24, through Sunday, Sept. 26, at 1, 4 and 7 p.m.

• National Theatre Live Follies,a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Oct. 3, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets $15 ($12 for students).

• National Theatre Live Cyrano de Bergerac, a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Oct. 17, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• Frankenweenie (PG, 2012) at the Rex Theatre on Sunday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• The Nightmare Before Christmas (PG, 1993) at the Rex Monday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets $12.

• The Phantom of the Opera (1925), a silent film starring Lon Chaney, with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Thursday, Oct. 21, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. Tickets start at $10.

• Nosferatu (1922), a silent film directed by F.W. Murnau, on Thursday, Oct. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rex in Manchester, featuring live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis. Admission $10.

Featured photo: Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Courtesy photo.

Kiddie Pool 21/09/23

Family fun for the weekend

Another fair weekend

• The Granite State Fair, which kicked off last weekend, continues Thursday, Sept. 23, through Sunday, Sept. 26, at 72 Lafayette St. in Rochester. The fair and midway open at 4 p.m. on Thursday and Friday; the fair opens at 10 a.m. and the midway opens at noon on Saturday and Sunday, according to granitestatefair.com, where you can buy tickets and find directions. Admission costs $10; kids 8 and under get in free. Shows, ride passes, parking and more require separate tickets, which are also available online (where you can find height requirements for the rides, in case you’re trying to figure out which kids are tall enough for which rides). One event to consider: Circus Hollywood, with shows at 5 and 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 23, and Friday, Sept. 25; at 2, 5 and 7 p.m. on Saturday, and at 2 and 5 p.m. on Sunday. General admission is included, or get a ringside premium box for $15 (each box allows up to four guests), according to the website.

Another festival weekend

• Beaver Brook Association (117 Ridge Road in Hollis; 465-7787, beaverbrook.org) will hold its 40th annual Fall Festival and Nature Art Show this weekend — Saturday, Sept. 25, and Sunday, Sept. 26, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The celebration has events for all ages; for the kids, there’s a children’s art exhibit, a petting farm and children’s nature crafts, according to the website.

• We’re still in the thick of Old Home Day season and this weekend the Sandown Old Home Day Fall Festival will come to Sandlot Sports (56 North Road in Sandown) with events Friday, Sept. 24, through Sunday, Sept. 26. Saturday, Sept. 25, is the big day with games and a bouncy house and mini steam train rides from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; a coloring contest station from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; a bungee jump from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; face painting from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; cow plop bingo at noon and a pie eating contest at 2 p.m. There will also be a bike parade at 9 a.m. and live music from about 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., when fireworks are scheduled, according to the event’s Facebook page. On Sunday, check out fire and police station tours, the schedule said.

• DeMeritt Hill Farm (20 Orchard Way in Lee; 862-2111, demeritthillfarm.com) will hold its Harvest Weekend this Saturday, Sept. 25, and Sunday, Sept. 26, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both days. The schedule includes pumpkin painting, guessing games, food sampling and more, according to the website. The farm also offers hay rides on the weekends ($2 per person) and is in the thick of its pick your own apple season. (For more places doing pick your own apples, check out our “Farm Fun” cover story in last week’s (Sept. 16) issue of the Hippo, which features stories on upcoming agricultural fairs, apple picking and corn mazes. See hippopress.com and scroll down for the e-edition of the paper. The stories start on page 10.)

• J&F Farms (124 Chester Road in Derry; 437-0535) is offering a Fall Hayride on Saturday, Sept. 25, with ticketed times at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. The cost is $10 per person and includes a hayride to the pick your own pumpkin patch, cider doughnuts, a petting zoo and more, according to the farm’s Facebook page. Find tickets via a link to an eventbrite page on the Facebook page.

At the Sofaplex 21/09/16

He’s All That (TV-MA)

Addison Rae, Tanner Buchanan.

Also appearing here is Rachel Leigh Cook — who you may remember took her glasses off thus signifying her transition from nerd to looker in 1999’s She’s All That. Here she plays Anna, mom to lead girl Padgett (Rae). A high school senior, Padgett doesn’t just dress fancy and use eye-puffiness-reducing masks for funsies; she’s a paycheck earning, free-stuff getting social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers. She even helped her boyfriend Jordan (Peyton Meyer) gain followers and jump-start his pop star career. But then she catches Jordan cheating on her — and, horror of horrors, the moment is livestreamed. She loses her sponsorship (which she’d been counting on to fill her college fund) and finds herself meme-ed as “bubble girl” from the snot bubble in her nose during her break-up crying. To earn back her followers (and her sponsorship) she agrees to a bet with frenemy Alden (Madison Pettis): find a loser and make him a hottie. Alden picks as the loser a flannel-wearing 1990s throwback named Cameron (Buchanan, who is also on the TV show Cobra Kai and is really making a nice career out of nostalgia-based media).

Cameron is all sarcasm about high school and taking film photos with messaging about the shallowness of society, which his best friend Nisha (Annie Jacob) finds entertaining. (Nisha is probably the movie’s most interesting character overall. When Netflix turns this thing into a series or cinematic universe or whatever, it should follow Nisha.) At first he isn’t sure what to make of Padgett’s sudden interest in him, but soon, and with some nudging from his younger sister Brin (Isabella Crovetti), he finds himself genuinely starting to like her. Likewise, Padgett starts to see Cameron as more than just a project, but will the secret of what led her to start hanging out with him jeopardize their chance at a real friendship?

Ooo, will it? If, based solely on the movie’s title, you sketched out all the beats in this movie and then took a drink every time the movie hit one, you’d be drunk before the first half hour. He’s All That hits every expected plot point — but delightfully. This movie knows what it is and knows who is watching it, a group that probably includes some actual teenagers but probably also includes a fair number of me-agers who saw the 1999 original and enjoy the Snapple-and-a-Hot-Pocket treat that is this silly blend of “Ha! That guy!” and teenage rom-com storytelling. So pop some popcorn and watch this puppy, fellow Olds; come for the Rachel Leigh Cook and modern day Clueless-y look at excessively rich teenagers, stay for an entertainingly cast supporting character who shows up in the movie’s final scenes. B Available on Netflix.

Vacation Friends (R)

John Cena, Lil Rel Howery.

Marcus (Howery) and his girlfriend Emily (Yvonne Orji) are in Mexico for a relaxing getaway — or it could be relaxing if Marcus weren’t so tense about all of his plans for his big proposal. When they get to their fancy suite, which should be all rose petals and romantic music, they find a soggy mess from a burst Jacuzzi from the room above. Despondent and unable to find a room at any hotel better than a Best Western by the airport, Marcus and Emily agree to accept the offer of random fellow vacationers Ron (Cena) and Kyla (Meredith Hagner) to stay in their giant suite (which happens to be the one whose leaky Jacuzzi flooded their room). Rona and Kyla seem crazy to the tightly wound Marcus, what with their carefree jet-skiing and their cocaine-rimmed margaritas, but, in the spirit of having a romantic vacation, Emily convinces him to just go with it. Eventually, the four end up having an adventure-filled week, full of bar-dancing (Marcus) and bar fights (Kyla) and culminating with Marcus and Emily getting married (for real? Maybe?) in a cave by a shaman type and then getting so drunk Marcus can’t totally remember the rest of the evening. And maybe doesn’t want to, as the flashes he does remember seem to suggest that he and Kyla got a little friendlier than is cool for the night of one’s wedding to another person.

When they say goodbye to Ron and Kyla at the airport, Marcus and Emily are fairly confident that they will never see that couple again but then, in the midst of the festivities for their “real” wedding — with Emily’s posh, disapproving parents (Robert Wisdom, Lynn Whitfield) running the show — Ron and Kyla show up again.

Cena and Howery have very good buddy (or maybe reluctant-buddy) chemistry. This is the type of role that makes great use of Cena — one that balances his physicality with his comedy chops. And the pairing with Howery works to complement both actors, playing up Howery’s stress so that he isn’t just a straight man to Cena’s wackiness. Orji and Hagner are also key elements to the mix here, not just “girlfriend role” characters who fill out the scene. Hagner in particular has a kind of good-hearted, upbeat zaniness that feels like a blend of Kate Hudson and Isla Fisher.

Have the dumb “crazy people in extreme situations” comedies changed or have I changed, because Vacation Friends feels like the kind of movie that might have once annoyed me but that I really enjoyed. I mean not “and the Oscar for best original screenplay goes to” enjoyed but laughed a couple of big belly laughs at and basically liked spending time with. Is this another example of a movie being more suited to the relaxed atmosphere of one’s own sofa versus the “you paid money to be here and even more money for this popcorn” of the theater, where one (me) may be less forgiving? I don’t know the answer to these questions but I do know that Vacation Friends was enjoyably stupid fun. B Available on Hulu.

Kate (R)

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Woody Harrelson.

Birds of Prey underused Winstead’s awesomeness in her role as The Huntress and this movie feels like the demonstration of how much more action hero she has in her. Here, Kate (Winstead) is an assassin who is bothered by a job that had her killing a man right in front of his teenage daughter, Ani (Miku Patricia Matineau). Months later, she tries to tell her handler Varrick (Harrelson) that she wants to retire but as you know if you see even one of these movies, retirement is seldom in the cards for your fancy assassin-types. Instead, she finds herself poisoned with about a day to live and seek vengeance on everyone who had something to do with her fast-approaching death.

The movie is set in Tokyo and takes place mostly at night, giving the whole thing a kind of neon coolness. She does a fair amount of snazzy fighting — some shooting, some stabbing, one guy is felled by her getting him to trip. Winstead is entertaining enough that I regularly forgot the movie didn’t have a whole lot more going on. This is a fine if not particularly innovative pick for when you just want some low-effort action. C+ Available on Netflix.

Disney Princesses Remixed: An Ultimate Princess Celebration (G)

This special/short film is primarily a handful of performances by what the internet tells me are Disney stars (in the live-action people sense) doing pop (or in one case, punk-y rock) takes on Disney movie songs. Brandy also shows up to sing an original song. The whole thing is knit together with a framing device that has a skateboarding, Disney-loving young girl picking the songs and princess qualities to build the remix with the help of an Alexa-like personal assistant. The gist of all of this is, I think, to sell the princesses, even some of the older ones with soppier character stories, as good and non-problematic modern girl avatars. And I think this special is fairly successful at this. The songs, while a bit on the poppy side for my personal taste, were a hit with my kids, whose big complaint is that there weren’t more. B Available on Disney+.

Worth (PG-13)

Michael Keaton, Amy Ryan.

Keaton gives a solid performance, reminiscent of his work in Spotlight, as Ken Feinberg, the lawyer who was the Special Master of the federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund. Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11 he is appointed to get victims’ families to sign on to receiving money from the U.S. government in lieu of suing — the airlines, among other possible targets. His team has to deal with the raw emotions of people who recently lost loved ones, many of whom see pretty much any dollar figure as an insult. Though full of individual heartbreaking 9/11 stories (many of which are based on real people or are composites of real people, according to an article in Slate), the movie is actually largely a procedural about how Feinberg attempts to balance the staggering weight of the emotion of the situation with what both Congress and the president paint as an urgent need to get the financial aspect of the deaths settled without potentially economy-tanking lawsuits. The movie shows Feinberg mess up in his initial attempts to present the fund to the families, and slowly learn how to navigate his difficult task. This is not a particularly fun watch but it is a solid group of performances and an interesting look at the messy, personal aftermath of the attacks for those who lost someone. B+ Available on Netflix.

Come from Away (TV-14)

Jenn Colella, Sharon Wheatley.

This musical play tells the story of the passengers from all over the world who found their flights diverted to Newfoundland on Sept. 11, 2001. The Broadway cast performs a live stage production, recorded earlier this year in front of an audience of people wearing masks as we see in the movie’s opening scenes. The cast, most of whom play several characters (identifiable by a change of hat or jacket and maybe a different accent), make up the townspeople of Gander and the people from across the globe who wind up in the town after a harrowing day on a plane. Sometimes, literally more than a day, as passengers sat on their airplanes, between flights and just waiting on a tarmac, for 28 hours. We meet the mother of a New York City firefighter, a couple who find their relationship fraying, a man from London who becomes smitten with a woman from Texas, a female pilot who knew one of the pilots in the hijacked planes as well as the head of the local SPCA who is desperate to get food and water to the pets stuck in airplane cargo holds, various small-town mayors, a new TV reporter. It’s a lively show that manages to have humor and energy while still capturing some element of anxiety and the gravity of the event it’s depicting. And it does a good job of bringing us up close to the performers while still letting us see some of the staging magic. B Available on Apple TV+.

Malignant

Malignant (R)

After a brutal attack, a woman finds herself seeing through the eyes of a killer in Malignant, an unexpected bit of horror from director James Wan.

Wan’s filmography, according to IMDb, includes “story by” credits on some of the Saw movies, some of the Conjuring universe movies, Aquaman and this movie, and he directed the first Saw, some Insidious movies, two Conjuring movies, Aquaman and its upcoming sequel. This movie fits well in that mix — it’s very “1980s classic horror”-styled horror with some, I don’t know, humor, I guess. I’m not saying Malignant is funny but it does have some moments of real kookiness.

Madison (Annabelle Wallis) comes home from work suffering from some pregnancy achy-ness. She is also suffering from having a violent jerk as a husband — Derek (Jake Abel), who takes time out of his busy afternoon of lying around to first harangue Madison about working while pregnant and then slam her head against a wall. Madison uses his run to get her some ice for her bleeding head wound to lock him out of the bedroom. He eventually falls asleep on the downstairs sofa, only to wake to the sound of someone in the kitchen. When he goes to investigate, he first finds the blender on, then the refrigerator door pops open, etc., in the manner of Spooky Things Messing With You so familiar in these movies. This spooky thing, which appears to us as a kind of a shadow person, doesn’t waste time escalating the Messing With Derek and pretty quickly clobbers him (the visuals and foley work here — and in the rest of the movie — are extravagantly “ew”).

Madison wakes up, tentatively coming out of the room, sees Derek’s very lifeless body and is then attacked herself and left unconscious in the nursery. She comes to in the hospital and is devastated to learn that she has lost the baby and falls into a stupor, with younger sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson) having to do the talking for her to Detective Kekoa Shaw (George Young). Shaw isn’t sure what’s happening but his partner Detective Regina Moss (Michole Briana White) thinks that Madison probably has something to do with Derek’s death. Then other people start dying and Madison, recovered enough to go home but still quite shaken, goes to the detectives to report that she can see the murders — she’s doing her laundry in her house, for example, when she suddenly finds herself watching the crime as if she were there.

For a while I found myself wondering if this movie was just a study in spooky atmospherics. There’s a lot of “room bathed in red light” and “crime scene in the rain” and “barely lit hospital/police station” and a few stretches shot in the Seattle Underground (a real thing, according to Wikipedia, where streets and first-story storefronts from ye olden times, now below the ground level, can be visited as a tourist attraction). And all of this is scored to some pretty top-notch “you are watching a modern riff on classic horror” style music, all screaming strings and anxiety synth. It’s cool but, like, why, I thought. Why are we spending time in a bunch of very familiar “movie like this” setups with some very “sure, I believe these people as people” characters who are otherwise not terribly memorable, I thought.

Initially.

When you realize the “why” — well, the movie takes on a whole new vibe. I’m still not exactly clear on where we, as a culture, landed with the whole “what is camp” discussion. I feel like, OK, maybe Malignant isn’t camp, per se, but it’s not totally not camp. It’s a crazy little ride, this movie, one that had me checking my watch initially but ultimately left me more amused than not.

I think, if you at all like horror, if you at all enjoy a late night and a bowl of popcorn and a feeling that maybe there should be more lights on in the house, this movie is probably a fun Saturday night in. B-

Rated R for strong horror violence and gruesome images, and for language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by James Wan with a screenplay by Akela Cooper, Malignant is an hour and 51 minutes long and distributed by New Line Cinema. The movie is available on HBO Max through Oct. 10 and in theaters.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Drive, Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester
anselm.edu/dana-center-humanities

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• David Byrne’s American Utopia (NR) will screen at O’neil Cinemas in Epping on Wednesday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m.

• The Card Counter (R, 2021) will screen at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Sept. 17, through Sunday, Sept. 19, at 12:45 p.m., 3:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m.

• The Alpinist (PG-13, 2021) will screen at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Sept. 17, through Sunday, Sept. 19, at 1:15 p.m., 4:15 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.

• Drifting (1923), starring Anna May Wong, Priscilla Dean and Wallace Beery, a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, will screen Sunday, Sept. 19, at 2 p.m. at Wilton Town Hall Theatre. A $10 donation is suggested.

• Hedwig and the Angry Inch (R, 2001) at Rex Theatre on Tuesday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets $12.

• Serial Mom (R, 1994) at Rex Theatre on Wednesday, Sept. 22, at 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• Frankenweenie (PG, 2012) at the Rex Theatre on Sunday, Oct. 17, 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• The Nightmare Before Christmas (PG, 1993) at the Rex Theatre on Monday, Oct. 18, 7 p.m. with a portion of the proceeds going to Motley Mutts Rescue. Tickets cost $12.

• Nosferatu (1922), a silent film directed by F.W. Murnau, on Thursday, Oct. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rex in Manchester, featuring live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis. Admission costs $10.

• The Big Parade (1925), a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Thursday, Nov. 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. Tickets start at $10.

• National Theatre Live No Man’s Land a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Nov. 21, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• National Theatre Live The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Dec. 5, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• An evening with Chevy ChaseA screening of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989, PG-13) plus Q&A with audience on Saturday, Dec. 11, 7 p.m. at the Cap Center. Tickets start at $59.50.

• Elf screening at Christmas Break on a Budget on Saturday, Dec. 18, at noon at The Strand in Dover. The afternoon will include storytime, family activities and the movie. The cost is $20 for a family of four or $8 each.

Featured photo: Malignant. Courtesy photo.

Kiddie Pool 21/09/16

Family fun for the weekend

GraniteCon!

• As you may have read on page 24 of last week’s Hippo (find the e-edition at hippopress.com) or on page 9 of this week’s issue, this weekend is the Granite State Comicon 2021. The Con will run Saturday, Sept. 18, and Sunday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the DoubleTree by Hilton Manchester Downtown (at 700 Elm St.). Kids under 8 get in free with adult admission (which costs $25 on Saturday, $20 on Sunday and $40 for a weekend pass). Organizers for Kids Con New England (which is returning to in-person cons with a Kids Con in Portland, Maine, in November and in May 2022 in Concord) will have a setup in the Fan Zone during the convention. See the full program for GraniteCon at granitecon.com.

Meeting of the makers

• See the hobbies and inventions of the makers at the NH Maker & Food Fest at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire (6 Washington St. in Dover; childrens-museum.org, 742-2002) on Saturday, Sept. 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. People with a variety of experiments, creations and hobbies will show off their work at this event, which will also feature food trucks and food vendors. Admission is pay-what-you-can (suggested donation of $5), according to the website.

Town celebrations

• Derryfest will run Saturday, Sept. 18, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at MacGregor Park on East Broadway. The day will feature kids activities, live animals, demonstrations and performances by local groups throughout the day, food and more. See derryfest.org.

• Head to Pelham’s Old Home Day for a parade, food trucks and chicken poop bingo on Saturday, Sept. 18, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The day kicks off with a pancake breakfast from 7 to 10 a.m., craft fair vendors open at 9 a.m., a cornhole tournament starts at noon and the parade steps off at 2:30 p.m., according to pelhamoldhomeday.org, which also explains chicken poop bingo — it features a chicken pooping every hour throughout the day, and if the poo lands on the square corresponding to the number you’ve picked, you win prize money. Kid-specific amusements include face painting, touch a truck, inflatable ax throwing and more, the website said.

• The annual Fall Equinox Festival hosted by TEAM Exeter will run 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 18, at Swasey Parkway. The day will feature food vendors and live music as well as kids activities and artist vendors, according to teamexeter.com, which suggests a $10 donation per person or $20 per family.

Movie time

• See Indiana Jones in his first (and best) adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark (PG, 1981), on Friday Sept. 17, in Wasserman Park (116 Naticook Road in Merrimack) as part of the town’s summer movies in the park. The screening starts at dusk and the films are free and open to residents and nonresidents, according to the town’s Parks and Recreation website.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (PG-13)

A complicated father-son relationship, a fantastical otherworldly realm and Awkwafina come together in the lively Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, a martial arts-heavy adventure-filled entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Having people (rather than big robots or something) fighting each other brings an energy to the choreography of many of this movie’s fight scenes that makes them enjoyable to watch apart from just the “who beats who” element.

Shang-Chi, called Shaun when we first meet him (Simu Liu), lives in San Francisco, making a living valet parking cars with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) and dodging questions from friends about why they don’t buckle down and find jobs that reflect their talents. But then Shaun gets in a fight on a bus — not just any fight, but a prolonged martial arts fight against multiple skilled fighters, including a guy whose arm is a large knife and who IMDb tells me is called Razor Fist (Florian Munteanu). In the process, the men steal an amulet given to Shaun by his late mother (Fala Chen) and Katy learns that her longtime friend has some very supercharged fighting skills. Shaun tells her about his past, which includes the story of his father, Wenwu (Tony Leung), a basically immortal warrior who owes his long life and his extraordinary fighting powers to the 10 rings he wears on his arms. Shaun ran away from home (home being a sort of mountain fortress where Wenwu trains his fighting forces) and his father as a teenager and realizes that the bus fight is a sign his father is coming after him. He is also afraid that his father will send his men after his younger sister, Xialing (Meng’er Zhang). Though they haven’t spoken in years, Shaun is determined to protect Xialing and heads to Macau, where he thinks she lives, with Katy, determined to protect Shaun, in tow.

The movie eventually leads to an Asgard-like other realm — reached not by Bifrost but through a constantly moving maze in a bamboo-like forest — called Ta Lo, which is a green countryside with a bucolic-seeming village and animals like a white fox-ish creature with multiple tails and giant lions. Here, the group meets Nan (Michelle Yeoh), the siblings’ mother’s sister, who, like everybody in this movie, is also a bad-ass (but elegant) fighter.

Ta Lo is very pretty and, much like with the Thor movies and Asgard, the movie is maybe at its best when it’s set in these non-modern-day locations (I would include in that Wenwu’s compound, which has more of an out-of-time castle feel). Especially during the climactic battle (is it a spoiler to say an MCU movie has a climactic battle? I don’t feel like it is), it’s so much easier to forget about trying to make the physics of the battle make sense in our world and just sort of go with this alternate realm situation. These sections help to give the movie a more adventure-y, fantasy feel than some of the more grounded-in-our-world comic book movies.

The clunkier parts of the movie, for me at least, were when it tried to fit this movie into the wider MCU but then it’s been a while since we’ve started a new story with characters not previously teased in a familiar property before they get their own movie (like Tom Hollander’s Spider-Man or Black Panther, both appearing in Captain America: Civil War before their characters’ own movies). So, while it’s clunky, it’s not, to me, fatal or even damaging to Shang-Chi overall.

The performances here are solid. Awkwafina might have been brought in for comic relief but she also offers the viewer entry into this world and she brings a little meatiness to the parts of the story that are about Shaun (and Katy) trying to figure out what their place in the world is. Yeoh is great and brings those Anthony Hopkins-like Serious Actor chops to the movie. Simu Liu is a likeable leading man and, in the grand Marvel tradition of having antagonists who are more charismatic than the movie’s lead, Tony Leung turns in an even more compelling performance that gives Wenwu some layers and human motivation (you can go down a whole internet rabbit hole with that character, though I won’t get into it too much because here be spoilers).

Is it true that even a “yeah sure it’s fine” Marvel movie would feel like a good time at the movies given, you know, all the everything? Sure, yes, that’s fair. (It was delightful to see and hear the Marvel Studios title card in a theater.) But Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings truly is a good time at the theater, with characters that are enjoyable to be around, and, though I also enjoyed this summer’s Black Widow, Shang-Chi brings a nice burst of freshness in the MCU. B+

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton with a screenplay by Dave Callaham & Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Lanham, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is two hours and 12 minutes long (with two post-credits scenes, which, like, might as well stay) and is distributed by Walt Disney Motion Pictures. It is currently only in theaters though it is reported (Wikipedia and elsewhere) that it will go to Disney+ after the 45-day theatrical window, meaning mid-October-ish.

Cinderella (PG)

The wish Camila Cabello’s heart makes is to be a great dress designer in Cinderella, a live-action jukebox musical version of the classic fairy tale.

I stress the live-action part because in some ways this movie feels like a cartoon — a solid, above average cartoon whose central mission is being bright and fun. The movie also has those classic “TV special” vibes, with a certain family-musical stageyness and some fun stunt casting. I think the “PG” rating is also a significant aspect of this movie. It’s clearly aimed at kids, maybe in the 7 or 8 to teen age range, and that was the level on which I found myself judging the movie as I watched.

Ella (Cabello) ticks the standard Cinderella boxes: lives in the basement of her family home in a once-upon-a-time-ish land, is friends with mice (voiced by James Corden, Romesh Ranganathan and James Acaster) and is forced to serve her stepmother Vivian (Idina Menzel) and stepsisters, Malvolia (Maddie Baillio, who gives the character a fun evil-but-weird energy) and Narissa (Charlotte Spencer), whom the narrator describes as “cray.” That narrator, and in the pivotal scene the Fabulous Godmother, is Billy Porter, who is great, and beautifully costumed as a haute couture take on a monarch-y butterfly.

Instead of dreaming of True Love, Ella dreams of overcoming the prejudice against female business owners and starting her own dress line. Entertainingly, her song of longing is sung to her future self, with a storefront and a customer base.

Meanwhile, King Rowan (Pierce Brosnan) is trying to convince Prince Robert (Nicholas Galitzine) to marry, perhaps Princess Laura (Mary Higgins) from the neighboring kingdom, who will help the united royal families rule all the lands from here to the sea monster, as she points out on a map. But Robert is having none of this; he wants to be in True Love when he marries. Queen Beatrice (Minnie Driver), bored with her life of standing next to the king and waving, isn’t in any hurry to push her son into a loveless marriage and meanwhile Robert’s sister Princess Gwen (Tallulah Greive) is just trying to get someone to listen to her ideas about wind energy, anti-poverty programs and the catapult-industrial complex. When Robert sees plucky Ella at a royal ceremony — she climbs a statue of the king to get a better look at the goings on and then suggests King Rowan consider some bleachers when he yells at her for being on his statue — he is smitten and slums it to mix amongst the common folk and find the girl who won his heart with sass-talk.

When peasantly attired Robert finds her, he tries to convince Ella to go to the upcoming ball for his princely self, meant to give him a chance to meet Miss Right. Ella is uninterested until he says that he knows some fancy people and can help her find potential clients for her dressmaking enterprise. Thus does she start designing the dress, which is ruined by the disapproving stepmother and so on, hitting the standard Cinderella beats with a plucky modern twist.

Watching modern, say the last 25 years or so, filmmakers deal with Cinderella as a character is always entertaining. The 1950 Disney character is kinda drippy by modern standards (at least, as I remember her; though I liked the movie in my youth it isn’t one I’m eager to revisit with my kids), and in their more recent uses of her, such as in the live-action 2015 Cinderella, they’ve seemed to look for ways to highlight her non-waiting-for-a-prince character traits. In that movie, they made her intelligently kind. In 1998’s Ever After: A Cinderella Story (which is rated PG-13), Drew Barrymore’s take on the character is also a more can-do girl, who can wield a sword and does her best to look after her friends. (Both of those movies, along with the TV movie Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella from 1997 with Brandy as Cinderella and Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother, are on Disney+, should you want to make it a multi-feature Cinderella movie night.)

Here, Cinderella (and many of the movie’s supporting female characters) has ambitions in a world that doesn’t usually allow women to have non-marriage-related ambitions, and the movie gives its prince longings that are more emotion-driven. Which, yay! — good for letting everybody live their truth, even if it is unsubtly conveyed. I feel like if you view this as a bit of family entertainment geared to kids, it makes sense and feels appropriate for the movie’s messaging to be fairly blunt. As a parent, I’ll take blunt messaging that leans in the direction of kindness, being who you are and standing up for yourself over a more nuanced telling where a girl appears to be finding her happiness because she found her prince.

The show itself is also rather bluntly staged, with its townsfolk singing “Rhythm Nation” in the square and the stepmother explaining the facts of life with “Material Girl.” It’s loud and colorful and fun — almost cartoony but in a way that works for gather-round-the-TV family entertainment.

The movie’s performances are all somewhere on the scale of completely acceptable to “this actor is having a good time.” Galitzine is perfectly suitable and the movie has fun with Brosnan but it is, of course, the women’s show: Cabello is charming and can sell the comedy as well as the singing. Menzel is exactly what you’d expect from “Idina Menzel as the stepmother” and the movie has to work at times to make her not the star of this show. Minnie Driver also seems to be having a fun time, and throughout there are some solid supporting characters and cast who all have the right “welcome to our theatrical production; hey ma, look at me!” vibe. B

Rated PG for suggestive material and language. Written and directed by Kay Cannon, Cinderella is an hour and 53 all-singing, all-dancing minutes long and distributed by Columbia Pictures, who sold this to Amazon and thus it is on Amazon Prime.