Final Destination Bloodlines

I am a casual fan of the Final Destination franchise at best (my favorite is the third one but they all kind of blend together because they are so formulaic) but I had heard great things about the latest installment, Final Destination Bloodlines, so I decided to see a matinee yesterday.  I really liked it and I think it is the best movie in the series.  College student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is tormented by a recurring dream in which a woman named Iris (Brec Bassinger) and her fiance Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) die in an explosion during the opening of a restaurant in a high-rise tower fifty years ago.  She eventually realizes that Iris is the estranged grandmother she has never met and finds her living in an isolated and fortified cabin.  Iris (Gabrielle Rose) tells her that she had a premonition about the explosion and was able to evacuate everyone before the tragedy could happen.  However, Death refused to be thwarted and started killing the survivors in the order they died in her vision.  She and a little boy named J.B. (Jayden Oniah) were the last to die and Death is finally catching up to the two of them as well as her descendants who were never meant to be born.  After Iris is impaled by a weather vane, Stefani tries to warn her uncle Howard (Alex Zahara), her estranged mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), her cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Julia (Anna Lore), and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner), and her brother Charlie (Tio Briones) that they are next to die but they refuse to listen because Howard and Darlene believe that their mother was delusional.  After Howard dies in a freak accident with a lawn mower, Stefani searches for J.B., who turns out to be William Bludworth (Tony Todd), to get answers before it is too late for her family.  I love that there is a twist to the usual formula and that expectations are often cleverly subverted (especially with Erik).  The characters and their relationships with each other are much more developed than they are in the previous movies and the family dynamic adds an emotional core that I found very compelling.  I also found William Bludworth's arc (it is ingenious how he ties all of the movies together) to be quite moving and I loved his message that death is coming for us all one way or another and that we might as well live our lives to the fullest while we can (Todd knew he didn't have long to live and this makes his performance all the more poignant).  Another shout out goes to Harmon because he steals every scene he is in and he also gives a surprisingly touching performance.  Finally, all of the elaborate sequences leading to the deaths of each character are absolutely epic (I will never have another MRI).  I enjoyed this so much more than I expected and I highly recommend it.

Note:  There are a lot of really fun Easter eggs for fans of the franchise (pay close attention to Iris's book).

Friendship

Last night I took my nephew to see Friendship at the Broadway because the trailer made me laugh out loud.  It is absolutely hilarious but it is also a really sad exploration of the extent to which someone will go to be accepted.  Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) is an unremarkable middle-aged man living in the suburbs with a corporate job who is so socially awkward that he gets nosebleeds when he gets excited.  He meets Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a charismatic TV weatherman, when he moves into Craig's neighborhood and they soon begin spending lots of time together.  Craig becomes infatuated with Austin but, when they are hanging out with Austin's friends, he commits a social faux pas that ends the evening on a sour note.  This causes Austin to distance himself from Craig because he is also insecure and wants to keep his friend group.  Eventually, Craig goes to extreme lengths to reestablish his friendship with Austin even though his actions threaten his job and his relationships with his wife Tami (Kate Mara) and his son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer).  I was unfamiliar with Tim Robinson and his popular sketch comedy I Think You Should Leave so this was my introduction to his particular brand of cringe comedy and I laughed out loud so many times (as did everyone else in the audience) at his antics.  He has outstanding comedic timing and his facial expressions, physical movements, and line deliveries as a character who cannot read social cues but desperately wants to fit in are brilliant.  Rudd is also very funny as the straight man to all of Robinson's mania.  Having said all of that, this is sometimes very difficult to watch because both Craig and Austin are profoundly lonely characters (even though Austin is more socially adept) searching for connection and, while it is realistic, the resolution between them is unsatisfying.  This will make you laugh but it will also make you squirm and I recommend it to fans of this specific genre (it's definitely not for everyone).

Memorial Day Weekend at Lava Hot Springs

Marilyn and I decided to spend the long Memorial Day weekend in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho (a two hour drive north from where I live) at a KOA campground.  We stayed in a cabin located near the bank of the Portneuf River (a tributary of the Snake River) with trees and mountains all around us and it was beautiful.  The cabin was very comfortable with two beds, a table and chairs, a kitchen (with a mini fridge, microwave, and a sink with running water) and a full bathroom.  We spent the majority of our time outside on our patio which had a fire pit, two Adirondack chairs, a metal table and chairs, and a barbecue.  The weather was absolutely perfect so I really enjoyed reading outside during the day and sitting by the fire in the evening (my favorite part of camping).  We made tin foil dinners in the fire on Saturday night and burgers on the barbecue on Sunday night and we ate outside (everything tastes so much better outside).  Marilyn's dog Reese loved it because everyone (in the other cabins next to us and the RVs across from us) was so friendly and would talk to us and pet her.

This quick trip was so relaxing and we had a great time!  We were sad to leave yesterday but we have decided that we want to come back (we have even scoped out a cabin in another area of the campground that we want to reserve next time).  I highly recommend this KOA (go here to reserve RV hookups, cabins, and tent sites) because there are a lot of different activities available and the staff is extremely helpful and friendly.

Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique

I specifically picked last night's Utah Symphony concert for the program but I was really excited to discover that the guest conductor was the new Music Director Markus Poschner.  I've seen him conduct the orchestra before and I always enjoy watching him on the podium because he is so expressive (and frequently conducts without a score as he did last night).  The orchestra began with For A Younger Self, a violin concerto composed by Kris Bowers who is known primarily for his film scores, with Charles Yang, to whom the piece is dedicated, as soloist.  The composer likened this piece to the Hero's Journey as a musician finds confidence as a performer after years of study.  I really liked the back and forth between Yang and the orchestra in the first movement because it is so chaotic and then I loved Yang's virtuosity in the violin solos featured in the second movement.  The final movement is incredibly dynamic and I enjoyed watching Yang's fingers fly up and down his violin!  Yang is known for an encore that went viral on social media featuring "A Change Is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke which he spontaneously improvised after a performance with the Dallas Symphony and I was absolutely thrilled when he did it for us.  Not only does he play a bluesy rendition of the song but he also sings it (he has a great voice and could probably have a singing career if playing the violin doesn't work out) and the crowd went crazy!  After the intermission, the orchestra played Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz and I was so excited to hear this piece performed live in its entirety for the first time.  It begins as a daydream about a woman the protagonist loves but then turns into a nightmare where he kills her and she comes back to haunt him (it is rumored to be inspired by the composer's own unrequited infatuation with Harriet Smithson) and you can really hear a shift in the mood as the piece progresses.  There is a recurring theme, which represents his obsession with the woman he loves, introduced by the flutes and violins in the first movement and then repeated by various instruments throughout but I especially love the theme played by the brass with a tolling bell in the final movement because it is so ominous (I always see the opening credits of The Shining in my mind whenever I hear this).  It was an epic performance and I haven't felt so exhilarated by a Utah Symphony concert in a very long time!  This same program will be repeated tonight and I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here).

Note:  I was sitting next to a college student attending his first Utah Symphony concert and he asked me lots of questions about the orchestra and classical music.  I am definitely not an expert (to say the least) but I enjoyed talking to him because I attended my first Utah Symphony concert when I was in college and I would have loved to have had someone answer my questions.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

I am a huge fan of the Mission: Impossible franchise so I was beyond excited to see Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning at a Thursday preview with my sister last night.  It is unbelievably convoluted but it is an epic and heartfelt conclusion to the series (if, in fact, it is actually the conclusion) and we both loved it!  Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) now has the cruciform key needed to acquire the source code for the Entity from the wreckage of the Russian submarine Sevastopol.  However, Gabriel (Esai Morales) has stolen the malware, called the poison pill, created by Luther (Ving Rhames) which will enable him to control it.  Ethan and his team, Benji (Simon Pegg), Grace (Hayley Atwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff), and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), must get the source code from the submarine and the poison pill from Gabriel before the Entity gains access to the world's nuclear codes and before President Sloane (Angela Bassett) launches a preemptive strike to mitigate the fallout for the United States.  They must also evade CIA Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Agent Briggs (Shea Whigham), who have personal reasons for stopping Ethan.  The first hour is really exposition heavy but, once it gets going, there are some amazing action set pieces (Tom Cruise is a madman).  I especially loved the cross-cutting between a scene of hand-to-hand combat between Ethan and a sailor on a submarine and a scene where the team fights a group of Russian soldiers on an island in the Bering Sea and, of course, the much hyped aerial sequence between Ethan and Gabriel on a biplane is spectacular (it is even better than I was expecting) but my favorite scene is a breathtaking underwater sequence where Ethan dives to the wreckage of the Sevastopol and gets trapped (I was on the edge of my seat the whole time because the sound design is so foreboding).  I also enjoyed Ethan's arc because he feels the weight of all of his decisions even more in this installment and there are some really touching moments between him and several other characters (especially with one from his earliest mission) which lead to a very satisfying resolution for him.  Cruise shines in a role he has been playing for thirty years (a montage of all of his missions while he is receiving his latest one is very well done) and the rest of the large cast does a great job (the standout for me is Tramell Tillman as the captain of a submarine because one of his line readings made me laugh out loud).  It is not without faults (I had only the vaguest notion of why things needed to happen and a scene where Ethan communicates directly with the Entity is a bit silly) but it is exhilarating and it must be seen on the big screen (my sister and I are already planning to see it again in IMAX).

Note:  I rewatched all of the earlier movies in preparation for this one and I think Fallout is still my favorite.