CHIP’S CORNER

Friends, we made it. It’s 2021, and that hellscape of a year is behind us. Things are far from back to normal yet, but let’s celebrate a new year and new hope while we can, shall we? (Needless to say, everything below is still subject to change.)

AMARILLO ARTS

CONCERTO EXTRAORDINAIRE: Chamber Music Amarillo’s annual concert promises “Shamelessly Popular Music” in this year’s edition, set for 7:30 p.m., Jan. 9, in the Mary Moody Northen Recital Hall at West Texas A&M University. Violinists Evgeny Zvonnikov and Natalia Korenchuk, flutist Helen Blackburn and the Amarillo Virtuosi chamber orchestra, under the baton of conductor Michael Palmer, will perform such favorites as Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” and Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 3.” (806-376-8782, amarillosymphony.org)

“LITTLE WOMEN”: Louisa May Alcott’s iconic classic novel gets a new spin in this production from Amarillo Little Theatre, set to be staged Jan. 14-24 on the ALT Mainstage, 2019 Civic Circle. Cast members include Marlee Wall as Meg, Kendall Carnahan as Jo, Jennifer McClellan as Beth and Zoë Parrish as Amy, with Carrie Huckabay as Marmie. (806-355-9991, amarillolittletheatre.org)

AMARILLO SYMPHONY: The orchestra plans to kick off its live concert series with the return of guest ensemble PROJECT Trio, performing a world-premiere work by Chris Rogerson, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s immortal “Symphony No. 5.” The concert, for now at least, is set for Jan. 22 and 23 in the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Buchanan St. (806-376-8782, amarillosymphony.org) MOVIES “THE MIDNIGHT SKY”: George Clooney stars in and directs this melancholy sci-fi drama (adapted from Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel “Good Morning, Midnight”) about a lonely man left behind to die on a disaster-struck Earth. gorgeous to watch. If only it weren’t so ultimately hollow. the crew of his Arctic research station, headed to friendlier climes to better try to survive an unspecified apocalyptic disaster that has apparently left most, perhaps all, of Earth an uninhabitable mess. Lofthouse stays behind because, 1, he’s dying anyway and 2, he’s trying to contact a quintet of astronauts returning to terra firma after voyaging to an inhabitable moon of Jupiter (discovered years earlier by Lofthouse, played in his younger days by Ethan Peck). her rescued and to reach the astronauts in time for them to attempt a return to the moon, Lofthouse sets off on a trek across the unforgiving Arctic wasteland.

Meanwhile, on the exploratory ship, Sully (Felicity Jones) and Tom (David Oyelowo), the commander, are celebrating a pregnancy (Jones’ real-life condition was written into the script), while Sanchez (Demián Bichir), Maya (Tiffany Boone) and Rembshire (Kyle Chandler) are missing their lives and families back home, unaware of what’s going on.

The narrative bounces back and forth between these at first separate stories, each culminating in outstanding set pieces unlike anything Clooney’s ever directed (though, it must be noted, quite similar to what Clooney the actor went through in “Gravity”). The ship encounters a meteor storm, resulting in a balletic dance of weightless blood globules. Lofthouse and Iris, for their part, wander into a cut scene from “The Revenant.”

I wanted to like this film more than I did. It looks sensational, and Clooney brings weight and gravity (not the film) to his role. The astronauts, to a one, are wasted, with only Jones and Oyelowo even given remotely dimensional characters. When the parallel plots finally click into place, some may be willing to take the ultimate

It’s incredibly suited for these pandemic times, in other words. And it’s frequently

Clooney’s astrophysicist, the fancily named Augustine Lofthouse, bids farewell to leap. It was a trip too far for me. (Available now on Netflix) “PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN”: Unsettling, yet vibrant and shockingly funny, “Promising Young Woman,” the debut feature from writer/director Emerald Fennell (“Killing Eve,” “The Crown”), offers unexpected thrills in what appears to be a familiar package.

on targeting allegedly “nice” guys who are so nice that they’re capable of taking advantage of an apparently incapacitated woman. That’s Cassie, who’ll feign drunkenness and accept a ride back to her target’s home, only to pop up, stonecold sober, when the nice young man is busy molesting her. Invariably, they play the victim themselves, saying she led them on or that they thought it was consensual even though she seemed virtually unconscious.

Cassie’s mission was inspired by the rape of her lifelong friend Nina, whom school officials and the police don’t believe when she was attacked by another of those nice young men. “What would you have me do? Ruin a young man’s life every time we get an accusation like this?” rhetorically asks the med school’s dean (Connie Britton).

There’s no question how Cassie would answer that question, nor how Fennell herself would. But she complicates Cassie’s story by bringing in another of her former classmates, Ryan (Bo Burnham), who’s now a pediatric surgeon deeply attracted to Cassie, though he can’t understand why she dropped out of school and now works in a coffee shop (alongside the delightful presence of Laverne Cox as her manager, Gail).

In many ways, this feels like a standard-issue revenge film, but it’s more complicated and fascinating than that. As Cassie’s ventures get more outlandish, Fennell pushes boundaries of her own, daring us to continue to sympathize with her. It’s no accident that she cast actors mostly known for playing nice young men – Adam Brody, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Sam Richardson, Max Greenfield, Chris Lowell – and subverts their images, forcing us to consider what lurks in the hearts of those we think we know well. (In theaters now) “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In “Braiding Sweetgrass,” Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert). “ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI”: Regina King makes her feature-film directorial debut with this corker of a chamber drama, a historical fiction imagining a celebratory evening in 1964 shared by boxer Cassius Clay (fresh off beating Sonny Liston) and his friends Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Malcolm X.

Based on a one-act play by Kemp Powers (who also wrote the screenplay), the film walks a delicate balancing beam, recognizing this quartet as major cultural figures but never losing sight of the fact that they’re all complicated men. Malcolm (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is the firebrand we expect, but we see his earnestness and warmth, too. Clay (Eli Goree) is the preening peacock we know, but he’s still young and, surprisingly, a little shy. Brown (Aldis Hodge) is surprisingly deep, and Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) gives as good as he gets from Malcolm; their fight over the responsibilities of the famous, and in particular that of black celebrities, still resonates in these #BlackLivesMatter days. It’s simply sensational, with four powerful performances at its center. (Debuts Jan. 15 on Amazon Prime)

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“The Beak of the Finch” by Jonathan Weiner

On a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent twenty years proving that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. For among the finches of Daphne Major, natural selection is neither rare nor slow: It is taking place by the hour, and we can watch.

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