Screens: Don’t Look Up is a

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Sunday 3/13

Vincent Zorn. Enjoy brunch with live music. Free, noon. South and Central Latin Grill, Dairy Market. southandcentralgrill.com

dance

Salsa Class. Learn to salsa and strut your stuff. $6-8, 7pm. IX Art Park, 522 Second St. SE. ixartpark.org

stage

The Legend of Georgia McBride. See listing for Wednesday, March 9. $25-30, 2pm. Live Arts, 123 E. Water St. livearts.org

classes

Paint & Sip with Catelyn Kelsey Designs.

Paint a beautiful view from the mountain top. $35, 2pm. Eastwood Farm and Winery, 2531 Scottsville Rd. catelynkelseydesigns.com

etc.

Almost Famous Brunch. Take a stroll with Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe’s nostalgic rock odyssey. $10, noon. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, 5th Street Station. drafthouse.com Nosferatu scored by Bob Lanzetti. F.W. Murnau’s masterwork is back on the screen with a haunting new score. $10, 3:30pm. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, 5th Street Station. drafthouse.com

Monday 3/14

music

Baby Jo’s. Tunes from the seven-piece New Orleans-inspired boogie and blues band. Free, 6:30pm. The Whiskey Jar, 227 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. thewhiskeyjarcville.com Celtic Angels Ireland. A joyous performance of Irish music and dance. $20-30, 4 and 7:30pm. Wayne Theatre, 521 W Main St, Waynesboro. waynetheatre.org Monday Music Series. Enjoy food and drink paired with live Latin music from Vincent Zorn, Berto & Vincent, or Beleza. Free, 7pm. South and Central Latin Grill, Dairy Market. southandcentralgrill.com

etc.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Celebrate 20 years of Harry Potter on the big screen. $10, 7pm. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, 5th Street Station. drafthouse.com Jimmy Miller’s Bracket Breakfast. Panelists include Jim Ryan, John Grisham, Caroline Darney, and Macon Gunter, with emcees Steve Rappaport and John Freeman. Raising money for Piedmont CASA. $75, 7:30am. The Pavilion at Boar’s Head Resort, 200 Ednam Dr. Monday Night Trivia. Hosted by Brandon “The Trivia Guy” Hamilton. Free, 6pm. Prince Michel Vineyard & Tap 29 Brewery, 154 Winery Lane, Leon. princemichel.com

Tuesday 3/15

music

The Way Down Wanderers. Songs with guts that ask big questions. $15, 8pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 S. First St. thesoutherncville.com Tuesday Evening Concert Series. Presenting Apollo’s Fire, The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. $5-39, 7:30pm. Old Cabell Hall, UVA Grounds. tecs.org

etc.

A Promise to Grow: Book Reading and Community Art Project. Local author Marc Boston reads from his new picture book, followed by a community art project. Free, 4pm. Dairy Market. dairymarketcville.com

Direct miss

Don’t Look Up overshoots its satirical target

NETFLIX

Oscar-nominated disaster film Don’t Look Up, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, is a comedy that takes itself too seriously.

By Justin Humphreys

arts@c-ville.com

In Adam McKay’s satire Don’t Look Up, astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), discover a “planet-killing” comet that’s hurtling toward Earth. Aided by NASA official Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), our heroes bravely try to warn the world. As the news breaks, backwards mobs vehemently deny the comet’s existence, and these three Cassandras desperately struggle to prevent doomsday. What all this amounts to is a ham-handed allegory about climate change, undone by its preachy, self-congratulatory tone, which constantly reminds the audience this is a very important film. In reality, its recent Academy Award nomination in the Best Picture category hardly reflects the actual film. For an alleged comedy, Don’t Look Up takes itself way too seriously.

The issues the film confronts are important: America’s rampant greed, misguided priorities, sick obsession with celebrity, overdependence on technology, scientific illiteracy, and—metaphorically— global warming. But tackling substantial topics doesn’t inherently give a movie substance. This story about whistleblowers blasts a shrill and persistent whistle.

Moreover, Don’t Look Up really isn’t saying anything new, in terms of either cultural commentary or science fiction. Its runaway comet concept is a deathless chestnut in genre films and literature, in everything from When Worlds Collide to Greenland. Parodying that sub-genre could be very funny, but here the humor is bludgeoning. Ultimately, Don’t Look Up plays like an overlong, halfbaked episode of “Black Mirror,” with little of that series’ scathing intensity.

Don’t Look Up has been compared to Stanley Kubrick’s apocalyptic comedy Dr. Strangelove, which is stretching a point. What Kubrick accomplished tightly in just over an hour-and-a-half, this film doesn’t come close to matching in its draggy two hours and 25 minutes.

There’s a gag Kubrick belabored in Dr. Strangelove: a sign reading Peace is Our Profession at the Air Force base where World War III is triggered. Don’t Look Up has similar weak spots—the flick stridently overworks various on-the-nose satirical jabs about why our heroes can barely get anyone to listen or actually mobilize the world to overcome the grave problem at hand.

DiCaprio and Lawrence are both good. Melanie Lynskey is excellent as DiCaprio’s put-upon wife, and Tyler Perry is spot-on as a glib, glad-handing talk show host. Meryl Streep as the U.S. president and Cate Blanchett as Perry’s co-host are both arch and unfunny. Jonah Hill as the president’s son is, as his part demands, repulsive, but he doesn’t believably capture that character’s stupidity. And as a cartoonish military thug, Ron Perlman gamely does his best with a very broadly written role.

It’s Mark Rylance’s performance that steals the movie. As billionaire cell phone mogul Peter Isherwell, whose vast wealth blinds the public to his deep fallibility, Rylance skillfully hits all the right notes, from his simpering voice to his perpetual gameshow-host grin. Rylance flawlessly delivers Isherwell’s stream

Don’t Look Up

R, 145 minutes Streaming (Netflix)

of messianic double-talk, which masks the dehumanization and invasiveness lurking behind his technology. If all of Don’t Look Up paid off like Rylance’s exceptional performance, it would be a superior film.

Most of the film’s ideas holler out for more skillful treatment. The cinematography gets needlessly jerky. There are self-indulgent montages that could have been better handled. During Oscar season, as you make your list of movies to watch before the awards show, don’t bother to look at Don’t Look Up.

The issues throughout the film are important: America’s rampant greed, misguided priorities, sick obsession with celebrity, overdependence on technology, scientific illiteracy, and—metaphorically—global warming.