Review: TUNER

About this episode

The episode reviews the film 'Tuner', exploring its themes of crime and the niche profession of piano tuning.

  by Rob DiCristino What if a piano tuner…was also a CRIMINAL!? Roger Ebert taught us that there are few things in movies more satisfying than watching skilled professionals excel at their work. It’s a true joy, for example, to watch Danny Ocean and his crew robbing casinos. To watch Billy Beane trading for baseball players. To watch Paul Blart mall copping. It’s aspirational, isn’t it? Seeing Bruce Lee roundhouse kick a guy makes us feel like we, too, might one day be able to roundhouse kick a guy. That probably goes double for niche professions like piano tuning. Think about it: How many movies featuring piano tuners — only Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies comes to my mind — have you ever seen? That’s because it’s a dying art practiced only by eccentric devotees like Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman) and his young apprentice, Niki White (Leo Woodall), in celebrated documentarian Daniel Roher’s ( Navalny ) narrative debut, Tuner. But while Roger would have lauded Tuner ’s focus on such a specialized talent, he would have been even more frustrated by the rote and predictable thriller it ends up inspiring. A former piano prodigy whose career was cut short by a debilitating…

People in this episode

Host: Rob DiCristino

Topics covered

• piano tuning
• crime
• thriller
• film review
• documentary
• Roger Ebert

Keywords

• Tuner
• piano tuner
• crime film
• documentary
• film review
• Roger Ebert
• thriller

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: fthismovie.com

Books & works: Werckmeister Harmonies, Tuner

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