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Aquarium Lantern Festival, ILLUMINATE Festival, SALT Dance, Natalie D. Richards
There's always so much more to do in the local arts, culture and entertainment scene than any print issue can hold. Here are just a few more ways you can spend your weekend.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Heretic, Small Things Like These, Memoir of a Snail and more
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever ***
Barbara Robinson’s 1972 novel The Best Christmas Pageant Ever remains one of sweetest, most earnest examples of faith-based family entertainment this side of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Dallas Jenkins’ adaptation retains nearly everything that makes the source material work. Narrated in flashback by Lauren Graham, it’s set in a picturesque 1970s small town where well-meaning mom Grace (Judy Greer) agrees to take over directing the town’s beloved Nativity pageant, only to find that the Herdmans—a sextet of near-feral siblings with absentee parents—are dead set on taking it over.
Anora, Here, Music By John Williams, Emilia Pérez, Absolution and more
Absolution **
Has Liam Neeson really been riding in the same groove for so long that he’s moved from multiple “aging badass reaching a life transition” roles to multiple “aging badass reaching a life transition who also has dementia” roles? His unnamed character here is long-time muscle for a Boston-area crime boss (Ron Perlman), facing memory loss and trying to use the time he has remaining to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Frankie Shaw) and grandson (Terrence Pulliam).
Two new productions explore the psychological cost of bigotry
It ain’t easy talking about hate. It’s depressing to feel like it should have gotten easier in recent years, considering how often various groups are demonized in our world, but it’s still hard to contemplate dehumanization in a way that isn’t didactic.
The singer gets improvisational and experimental for SLC visit
André Benjamin brought his New Blue Sun world tour to the Eccles Theater on Wednesday, Oct. 16, and his intent was clear; a real artist is always on the move.
Smile 2, We Live in Time, Goodrich, Rumours, Exhibiting Forgiveness, Woman of the Hour
Exhibiting Forgiveness ***
There are some challenging things percolating beneath the surface of writer/director Titus Kaphar's movie, which might have made even more of an impact had he not been so determined to underline things that didn’t need underlining. It’s the tale of on-the-rise visual artist Tarrell Rodin (André Holland), whose burgeoning success is unexpectedly accompanied by the reappearance of his long-absent father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks), in recovery from years of drug addiction and seeking reconciliation for the damage he did as a father.
Saturday Night, Piece by Piece, The Apprentice, Lonely Planet, In the Summers and more.
The Apprentice **1/2
There’s the version of this movie that’s genuinely inquisitive about the circumstances that created Donald Trump, and the version of this movie that exists strictly as an excuse to laugh at him—and then there’s this version, which falls squarely between the other two. It opens in 1975 New York, with Trump (Sebastian Stan) trying to make his own mark outside the shadow of his slumlord dad Fred (Martin Donovan).
Darkly comic ghost story explores what happens when indifference comes back to haunt you
There’s a ghost wandering through the audience at the outset of Chisa Hutchinson’s Whitelisted—not literally, of course, and not even really within the framework of the play.
Joker: Folie à Deux, A Different Man, The Outrun, White Bird, Monster Summer, Girls Will Be Girls and more
Blink **
Documentary filmmaking is ultimately a kind of journalism, and it’s always frustrating to watch documentary filmmakers who seem to have decided ahead of time what the story is, even before all the reporting is done. The clearly-inspirational premise involves French-Canadian parents Édith Lemay and Seb Pelletier who, upon learning that three of their four children have retinitis pigmentosa—a genetic condition that will eventually result in near-total blindness—decide to take the family on a year-long adventure around the world to create memories of things they might not be able to see later.
