Christopher Schroeder

Tag: movies

  • Too Much for Tuner

    Too Much for Tuner

    Most credible critics recommend Tuner, a new movie written by Daniel Roher and Robert Ramsey, which surprises me.

    Niki (Leo Woodall), who has hyperacusis and no longer plays piano, works as a piano tuner with his father’s friend Harry (Dustin Hoffman). On a job, he meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a piano student whose dream is apprenticing for a famous maestro (Jean Reno). They meet a second time with Harry, who is soon hospitalized and then dies, leaving behind big medical bills.

    To pay these, Niki uses his hypersensitive hearing to help criminals crack safes, and later gives Ruthie a stolen watch, which is a replacement for the one from her grandmother that she left on a train. She wears this watch to her audition, and learns in conversation with the maestro that it has been stolen, which ends her relationship with Niki. Niki manages to restore her reputation with the maestro, and his own with her.

    This movie, which is directed by Roher, intriguingly mixes genre conventions and offers lavish visuals and appealing performances, especially from Woodall and Hoffman. These however cannot compensate for its specious plot, which overshadows everything else.

    This story is filled with implausible circumstances. Niki for example memorizes cryptocurrency account recovery codes despite being ordered at gunpoint to destroy and then consume the document, and later reconstructs these codes to access the account, but he neither steals this money nor offers this information even after he is kidnapped to obtain these codes, which forces him to miss Ruthie’s audition performance.

    These circumstances also appear at the center of the story. For instance, the maestro recognizes the watch he had stolen from him on Ruthie’s arm in his discussion with her about the apprenticeship, and agrees to avoid the authorities, and apparently still offer Ruthie the apprenticeship, after Niki offers to obtain the second stolen one — both had been secured by the maestro’s grandparents before they departed for a concentration camp — from his co-criminals who are apprehensive about keeping stolen goods from Holocaust victims.

    This pattern is only reinforced by the conclusion. Niki, who has lost his hearing from a beating after he was caught by his co-criminals while retrieving the second stolen watch, is nonetheless asked by the maestro to tune his piano, but Niki first plays it, and demonstrates both his proficiency and credibility, for his ex-girlfriend, who is moved by the moment.

    Such situations stretch the suspension of disbelief past the point of breaking at least for some. Those who can overlook all these coincidences will have an entertaining experience. The rest might realize that Niki, who tells Harry early in the movie he’ll never getting back the time he spent trying to understand Harry’s joke, was more right than they realized.

  • More From Moore

    More From Moore

    I can appreciate that Natalie Moore was able to watch both Prada movies with her mother but question the relevance of her most recent column.

    The sequel might have coincided as Moore suggests with a new Media Insight Project report, but it offers less about the future of media in the United States than she suggests. Rather, the movie relegates journalism, “Capital J” or not, to the setting for a continuing story that was started in the first movie.

    Corporate raiders might appear in the second to dismantle legacy publications, but the “page views” emphasis for example predates Andy’s return as the new features editor. Rather, the movie focuses primarily upon the relationship between Andy, who in her time away has become an award-winning journalist, and her former and future boss Miranda.

    This relationship, which occupies the center of this story, says more about time and aging, and the effects of these upon working relationships among women. Andy, who now trusts learned her instincts and advocates for herself, discovers that the world could be less vicious than she otherwise believed. Miranda in turn finds in Andy a former and perhaps future version of herself, someone who if they can collaborate will enhance both Miranda’s legacy and her life.

    This focus is not only established by the new working relationship between Andy and Miranda, but it is reinforced by the newfound friendship between Andy and her erstwhile rival Emily. Emily, who is working for Dior at the start of the movie, agrees to use her boyfriend Benji to buy the company and unbeknownst to Andy to install her in Miranda’s position, which Andy and Miranda subsequently prevent by finding yet another buyer, which nonetheless doesn’t prevent Andy and Emily from becoming friends.

    In this and other ways, this sequel is more about corporate relationships than the future of journalism, which makes this op-ed seem more like a vanity opportunity that allows Moore to reminisce about her mother and her career without offering much of substance to readers. This condition becomes even clearer in contrast with the only other op-ed in that Sunday newspaper.

    That reveals a larger concern, one that is actually about the future of journalism in Chicago. The Sun-Times seems to have generally reduced its op-eds, and some days offers none to its readers. Such circumstances can only increase the pressure for more from Moore, and from her editors and publisher.

  • Reality For Few

    Fantasy Life, which is a new movie written and directed by Matthew Shear, is a more substantial story than some critics seem to think.

    Sam (Shear), a law-school dropout, agrees to babysit his psychiatrist’s (Judd Hirch) granddaughters and soon thereafter finds ways to spend their mother Dianne (Amanda Peet), an unemployed actor. Dianne, who does little to discourage Sam’s attention, nonetheless ends the affair almost before it begins but uses it to needle her estranged, and increasingly inebriated, husband (Alessandro Nivola) and their parents over dinner in her parents’ summer home.

    Dianne’s husband, who drives away and then crashes his car, recovers in his parents’ home, but she eventually invites him home. Dianne later encounters Sam between sessions in another psychiatrist’s office, and asks him to meet her in a nearby coffee shop after hers, and they discuss their lives and split dessert before going their separate ways.

    Most credible critics seem satisfied with this movie, which some nonetheless consider “slight” or even unoriginal. I however found it perhaps more subtle and refreshing, which made it even more satisfying.

    The directing and acting are accomplished enough to support this unconventional plot. Dianne, who initiated their meeting and later hears the limitations of her belief after her new psychiatrist mirrors it back to her, seems incapable of expressing herself, and retreats into the less challenging topic of Sam’s missing money. Sam for his part seems relieved that Dianne doesn’t challenge his account of his life since he left after that disastrous dinner and in return accepts Dianne’s retreat.

    Both in other words recognize, and resign themselves to, unfinished realities, and neither pushes for more, which are choices only mature people, however messy, could make. Such lessons are ones many of us could learn, which is why it is a more substantial, and significant, story.