Event: Halloweentown Comes to New York City in the Enchanting and Theatrical Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas Light Trail

Light Trail (c) The Interested Bystander

For the second year in a row, the New York Botanical Garden is opening its doors to Jack Skellington and the other spooky inhabitants of Halloweentown for the Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas Light Trail. The nighttime event is a separate ticket from the garden as it starts after the garden closes. Timed entries run from 7 pm to 9:15, and the whole trail lasts 30 to 60 minutes, depending on how long you linger with each artistic installation of sculpture, light and music (the movie soundtrack by Danny Elfman plays throughout). The trail runs from Wednesday to Sunday until November 30. 

Film Reviews: “One Battle After Another” Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Best Film, While “Plainclothes” and “Where to Land” Are Two Thought-Provoking Indies

One Battle After Another (c) Warner Bros. Picture

Film: One Battle After Another 
In Cinemas 

Everything about the look and feel of One Battle After Another, the latest Paul Thomas Anderson film, would suggest the 1970s, which would be the auteur director’s second consecutive film in this era, but then the plot also hinges on a cellphone as well as starting a car with a fingerprint, so who knows. The film is very loosely based on the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, and the less you know about the plot, the more exciting and spontaneous the film will feel. Just using what was shown in the first trailer, the film focuses on Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio, at his funniest), who in his younger days was part of the French 75, a group of revolutionaries (think Weather Underground) performing what was seen as terrorist acts against the government and big businesses that had policies they felt were unjust. Now, 15 years later, he’s the single father of a teenage girl, Willa (Chase Infiniti, an impressive film debut), whose mother Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) was also part of the group, and he gets a message that their lives are in danger, being pursued (Javert-style) by the Dickensian-named Army Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn, very committed to the bit). Bob enlists the help of Willa’s karate sensei, Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro, in his best role to date) and we follow how the paths of Bob and Lockjaw intersect. The film has many more themes and characters that I will not discuss, but just know, Anderson is talking about the political environment America finds itself embroiled in today. 

Off-Broadway Reviews: Two Young Gay Men Struggle to Find Their Place in the World in the Sia musical “Saturday Church” and the Bioplay “House of McQueen”

Saturday Church (c) Marc J. Franklin

Theater: Saturday Church 
At New York Theatre Workshop 

The most ingenious element of Saturday Church, the vibrant and engaging new musical at New York Theatre Workshop, is its concept, which parallels Sunday church, the Christian-faith kind with scripture readings and gospel choirs, with Saturday Church, the makeshift, volunteer-based sanctuary in urban cities, where mostly homeless LGBTQ+ youths have a place to connect and get any help they might need. Both churches purport to be an inclusive community, but the Sunday one, mostly misreading the Bible, has rules that must be obeyed and sins that must not be tolerated, while the Saturday one seemingly follows the teachings of Jesus (but maybe not to the letter of the law) helping those in need. Speaking of Jesus, they do show up in the musical, more in the guise of Sasha Fierce than your usual white man in a robe. In fact, Ulysses (Bryson Battle), our main character, humorously calls this deity/occasional run-in/hallucinations Black Jesus. As played by Tony Award winner J. Harrison Ghee, Black Jesus gives this production a sense of humor and wider world view as the rest of the plot, at least on paper, is pretty bleak. The musical’s two main stories both deal with loss. First, there’s Ulysses, the young effeminate New Jersey churchgoer has just lost his father. It puts a strain on his mother, Amara (Kristolyn Lloyd), who takes extra shifts as a nurse, and makes his Aunt Rose (Tony winner Joaquina Kalukango) even more overprotective than she usually is. Then there’s Ebony (B Noel Thomas), a trans mama bear figure, who runs the Saturday Church near the Christopher Street Piers with their best friend Sasha, who recently died tragically. How these two stories intersect is the main focus of Saturday Church, and as Black Jesus promises at the top of the show, will show us “what collective love looks like.” 

Film: How Gays and Straights Interact in Different Time Periods Is Explored in “The History of Sound,” “Twinless” and “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” (Just One of Many, Many Plots)

The History of Sound (c) MUBI

Film: The History of Sound 
In Cinemas on Friday 

Ever since the premise and cast of The History of Sound was announced, the inevitable comparison to Brokeback Mountain was soon made. Two respected young (and as far as we know, straight) actors are are playing two men at the start of the 20th century find love as they traverse the rural and unforgiving landscape of America. The two meet as students at the New England Conservatory of Music: Lionel (Paul Mescal), a simple and reserved man raised on a farm in Kentucky (shades of Ennis del Mar), and David (Josh O’Connor), a well-off, more gregarious man from Newport, Rhode Island (the more Jack Twist of the pair). As their love starts to bloom (in secret, of course), war breaks out in Europe and David is drafted, giving us the moment Lionel, at his most demonstrative, tells David: “Write. Send chocolates. Don’t die.” When David comes back and takes a job at a small college in Maine, he convinces Lionel to join him on a project where he goes around the country recording songs and stories on wax cylinders in danger of going extinct with the current generation. They take three months backpacking and travelling the backroads of America, giving the pair, like Ennis and Jack on Brokeback Mountain, the smallest moments of happiness that real life would never afford them.