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Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story (2022)
A celebration of New Orleans
Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story is a celebration of music, life, death, multi-culturalism and diversity in New Orleans through the New Orleans Jazz festival. I personally never attended the Jazz festival but I did enjoy this fast-paced documentary about this large, annual, event. The documentary primarily focuses on the festival's 50th anniversary with added historical footage to tell the story. The music was great and the documentary did a great job at conveying the vibe at the festival. I highly recommend watching it if you like New Orleans, music or both or would like to find out more. Based on the documentary, I hope to attend the festival at some point in the future.
Bru & Boegie: The Movie (2019)
Incredibly boring
I tend to love movies and be very open to many different genres. However, I found this movie so incredibly boring that I ended up skipping through most of it after about 10 minutes. The entire movie is only someone meditating with a few minor variations. It was so boring it literally was not watchable. I do not understand why others give it a good rating - the movie did not catch my attention at all and that is extremely rare for me in a movie.
Cats (2019)
"All that I wanted was to be wanted"
I have seen the stage production "cats' twice before seeing this movie. Once about 25 years ago and once as recent as earlier this year. In both cases, I did not like the show despite normally being fond of musicals. There appears to be no plot and the show seems to be just a series of mostly nonsensical songs about cats. I was so puzzled why it is such a popular musical - the fourth longest running on Braodway, sixth longest running on West End, an international success through it's traveling production, and winning 7 Tony awards including best musical - that I felt I was missing something. My research revealed that there is indeed not much of a plot, but that spectators love the catchy music, the impressive dancing and the remarkable costumes. I also found out that the musical is based on a poetry collection, "Old Possum's book of Practical Cats", by TS Eliot and is therefore less about the storyline as it is about the individual poems brought to live in the music.
It is with that backdrop that I went to see the movie, expecting not to like it. It did not help that I have been reading horrible reviews of the movie especially criticizing the lack of a plotline, the humanoid cats and the poor CGI.
I was very pleasantly surprised by the movie. I did not expect much of a plot, but it was much better than in the show as I could better understand the singing, there was some additional dialogue and an additional subplot that added more context and more of a story line. I feel like I now finally understand the show. I actually liked the humanoid cats as I thought it brings out the best of both worlds: the dancing is really good and preserving the human body as much as possible helps to bring that out. On the other hand, adding the fur, the cat ears and the tails adds an extra dimension with a nice blend between the cats that are being portrayed and the human movements. I did also mostly like the CGI as it gave the director more creativity on how to use the environment.
Despite all the negative reviews, I actually really liked the movie and may go see it again. The music and singing is catchy, the dancing and choreography amazing, the acting excellent, especially from some of the less known actors such as Francesca Hayward and Laura Davidson, and the plotline much clearer than in the show. The movie made me appreciate the stage production more.
Some things that did bring the rating down for me include the weak plotline, which seems unavoidable considering the source material, and the sometimes poorly implemented CGI, especially if you pay closer attention to the details. There were so many problems with the CGI that the studio released a new version within the first week of the show having hit the theatre to fix a number of them, something I never heard of being done in the past.
The lyrics of one of the songs in the movie says it well: "All that I wanted, was to be wanted". This movie wants to be appealing to a broad audience, similar to the stage production, but somehow is perceived as not good for the same reason I struggled with in the stage production - a poor plot.
The Good Liar (2019)
Enjoyed this con-artist movie/drama
The story in this movie was fun, engaging and interesting with some good plot twists. On the surface, it is a typical con-artist story but there is more behind the story than first meets the eye. Performances from Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren were great and it was nice to see these experienced actors in a movie together.
Midway (2019)
Hard to follow
I found this movie hard to follow. The editing was confusing to me jumping between multiple locations without it being clear who is who and how it all fit together. It felt to me that there were critical scenes missing to make the film work. It didn't help that for me many actors looked very similar and I often struggled figuring out who is who and what their roles were. The acting also felt off to me - there were too many missed opportunities for some strong dialogue, which was replaced with dialogue that I did not find very engaging.
The Goldfinch (2019)
Beautifully crafted
I do not understand why the critics rate this movie so poorly. The story is interesting, the cinematography is beautiful and the acting is great. I never read the book, so do not have a comparison, but thought the movie did a great job at telling the story in enough detail to enable you to get into the characters' head while not becoming boring. The 2.5 hours just flew by and was an appropriate length to allow for strong character development and to appreciate the psychological forces at play for the main characters. I enjoyed how the story cut back and forth between the young Theo and the older Theo beautifully and at the appropriate times.