My Neighbor Totoro

Written and directed by the acclaimed Hayao Miyazaki and first released in 1988, My Neighbor Totoro returns to the big screen courtesy of Fathom Events and GKIDS as part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2018.

My Neighbor Totoro tells the story of Satsuki and Mei, two sisters who move to the country with their father while their mother remains hospitalized. As they explore their new surroundings, they encounter a number of nature spirits, including the huge and lovable Totoro, who takes the girls on some wonderful adventures, including a ride on the magical Cat Bus. That’s a giant, multilegged, hollowed out cat with rats for lights that serves as a bus, complete with furry, 70s era shag carpeted seats.

Cat Bus, Totoro, and Satsuki. IMDb.com.

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The Metropolitan Opera’s 2018-2019 Live in HD Season Begins

On October 6, the 2018-2019 season of The Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series begins with Verdi’s Aida, with an encore performance on October 10. Anna Netrebko sings Aida for the first time at the Met with Anita Rachvelishvili as her rival Amneris.

Attending an opera at the cinema is certainly a different experience than seeing a live performance at an opera house, as I describe in some detail here. But if you’ve never tried opera and wonder whether it might be to your liking, or if you would love to see a Met performance but aren’t going to be anywhere near New York, the cinema offers an accessible and relatively low-priced venue.

You can find theaters showing the performance in your area are at Fathom Events.

The Predator: The Real Victims are Anyone Who Paid Money to See This

The Predator is probably the stupidest movie I’ve seen since spring, and that’s saying a lot (The Meg, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom). Trailers (here, here, and here) and the movie poster give away what passes for a plot. Sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) runs into a predator on one of his missions, gets locked up, and meets up with a group of random nutcases. The predator kills a bunch of people, and then a bigger predator shows up. Cue vast quantities of ineffective gunfire, multitudes of explosions, and a fair dose of assorted bladed weapons.

Boyd Holbrook and Olivia Munn in The Predator. IMDb.com.

Other characters include stock biologist/scientist Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn), stock government super-secret program guy Traeger (Sterling K. Brown), and McKenna’s stock super-intelligent son Rory (Jacob Tremblay), who manages to figure out how to use the predator’s alien technology without much difficulty. Nobody turns in a particularly good performance, but that’s not entirely the actors’ faults. They’re not given characters to work with so much as standard archetypes. Continue reading →

Twenty Years Later, Perfect Blue is Still a Masterpiece

Based on the novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, the animated psychological thriller Perfect Blue, directed by Satoshi Kon, was released in Japan in 1998 and recently brought back to theaters for its 20th anniversary by Fathom Events.

Mima, a successful singer in an idol group, chooses to make the transition from singing to acting. Her handlers are deeply divided on the advisability of this move. An obsessed and clearly disturbed fan is also not happy about the transition. Mima, herself, seems to be having second thoughts, and her self-doubt begins to manifest as a mocking and increasingly hostile reflection in her mirror. Posts on a website with disturbingly accurate knowledge of minute details of Mima’s life become progressively more shrill as people who work and interact with her are brutally murdered one by one.

Perfect Blue. IMDb.com

The screenplay by Sadayuki Murai masterfully builds the tension and ups the stakes over the 81-minute runtime. Who’s doing all the killing? Is it the deranged, creeper fan? Is it Mima, herself? Is the creeper even real, or is he just another manifestation of Mima’s deteriorating mental state? The film keeps the audience guessing right up to the climax. Continue reading →

Bad Idea Theater Presents: The Meg

The Meg is the latest in a long line of summer films dedicated to feeding on the fear and morbid fascination humans have with the idea of being eaten by a monster. This is a spoiler-free review, so I won’t tell you whether Pippin the dog or Hamster Ball Guy from the trailer survive to the final credits. Some of the supporting cast gets eaten, some doesn’t, and not even the Meg can eat the entire buffet of cliched potential victims conveniently packed into one crowded beach. Trying to guess which minor characters and extras would make it out alive was the only source of minor suspense in an otherwise by-the-numbers summer popcorn flick.

Pippin the Dog Tries to Escape from The Meg. IMDb.com