“The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivot” should come with a whimsy overload warning. The off kilter tale of a boy genius, suicide and a road trip across the United States is so twee it makes Wes Anderson look stodgy.
10-year-old Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet lives on a Montana ranch with his cowboy father (Callum Keith Rennie), entomologist mother (Helena Bonham-Carter) and bored sister (Niamh Wilson) who has dreams of becoming Miss America dancing in her head. A year before his twin brother Layton (Jakob Davies) had a tragic incident with a rifle and passed away.
T.S. has invented a perpetual motion machine that wins him the prestigious Baird Prize by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. They don’t realize the perpetual motion genius is a preteen and invite him to accept the award in person and deliver a speech. Leaving behind a note to his folks, T.S. packs a bag and hops a freight train headed to DC. On arrival he becomes a sensation due to his age, but a live television interview reveals more about the prodigy’s psyche than the Smithsonian bargained for.
Filtered through the fevered imagination of “Amelie” director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Reif Larsen’s book “The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet” becomes a dark children’s tale that is not exactly for kids. Packed with iconic American scenery, inventive 3D and enough quirk for two movies, the story is about isolation and dealing with loss. Near the end there are some heightened emotional moments but the overall tone is left-of-center, often pushing the Whimsy Meter needle into the red. Glimpses of the inner-workings of Gracie’s mind and on-screen graphics dazzle the eye, but begin to wear on the nerves by film’s end.
As flashy as the film is, the bittersweet tale of loss in “The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivot” is often overwhelmed by the visuals. Like the diagrams that decorate the screen throughout, the movie is more concerned with showing you the nuts and bolts of the story than allowing you to feel the underlying emotion of the piece.
Sam Heughan has become something of a heartthrob playing a fiery 18th-century Scottish warrior married to a Second World War combat nurse who mysteriously transported back in time in the sci fi romance Outlander.
The show, which returns to Showcase for its midseason premiere on Sunday, April 5, has developed a rabid fan base with as many as five million Americans tuning in to catch Heughan and his kilt each week. The British Film Institute even reports that the show’s popularity has inspired a tourism boom in Scotland.
On Heughan’s recent trip to Toronto fans lined up in the cold to catch a glimpse of the handsome 6′ 2½” actor. “They were there,” he says, “waving flags and supporting us. It is fantastic.”
He says “that sort of thing is very new to me,” although a recent trip to Comic Con was met with much excitement and on a stop over in Los Angeles he was recognized for his work on the show.
“On the whole it is very genuine,” he says, “very friendly. They just sort of sidle up next to you and whisper, ‘I really enjoy the show. I’m a big fan,’ and they’ll leave you to do your thing.”
Ironically the one place he isn’t as well known is his home country, which also happens to be where they shoot the series.
“We’ve been filming in Scotland, so we’re kind of in our own bubble. The show has only just aired in the UK so there is no recognition there, which is fantastic because we can concentrate on the job.”
Heughan trained at the prestigious Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama but says before signing on to do Outlander he was a “jobbing actor. I had done a lot of theatre and period drama in the UK.” He cites one strange acting gig in particular, playing the lead role in a touring production of Batman Live, as a real confidence builder.
“A terrific job,” he says. “So different than anything I had done before—doing acrobatics, flying across stadiums over thousands of people. It did give me a lot of confidence to stand in front of twenty or thirty thousand people and have to fight thirty henchmen every night.”
“I’ll always remember the first entrance as Batman, flying two hundred feet across the auditorium with people below and you’re looking down at them thinking, ‘This is something else.’ They don’t teach that in acting school.”
The beauty of the “Fast and the Furious” movies is their simplicity. The high concept of the new film can be summed up in a handful of words—a dead man’s brother seeks revenge on the Toretto gang—but fans don’t flock to the films for the story, they come to see the wild celebration of muscle cars, muscle shirts and muscle heads, and in this, “Furious 7” does not disappoint.
The new film begins with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and company (Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Jordana Brewster) finally attempting to lead normal lives back in the United States. The timely wounding of mercenary and bad guy Owen Shaw (Luke Evans)—he was gravely injured in the last film when the Mercedes G463 he was in flew out of the cargo dock of a moving plane—was the last obstacle between the “F&F” crew and peace and tranquility. Trouble is, Owen’s older brother, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) wants revenge. Adding intrigue to the mix is a mysterious maybe-he’s-a-good-guy-maybe-he’s-not government operative named Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), beautiful hacker Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel)—“That is a woman worth falling out of a plane for,” says Roman.—and a ruthless warlord (Djimon Hounsou) who yells “Get him!” every few minutes.
That’s it. After that it’s all snappy one-liners, wild car chases, fight scenes, etc.
You might want to have your cholesterol checked after “Furious 7.” This much cheese in one serving can’t be good for you. You may also get sunburnt from the reflected glare of all the explosions. The new “F&F” movie might not be good for you, but it is two hours and twenty minutes of no-airbag fun.
It’s also a further step toward the James Bonding of the series. But not the Daniel Craig 007. “Furious 7” has more in common with the realm of the ridiculous gadget heavy Bond movies that featured exotic locations, automobile acrobatics—there’s every kind of car crash here, including a wild car chase inside a luxury apartment!—and villainous characters. Not content with just one bad guy “Furious 7” offers up two, Statham as the revenge starved brother-on-a-mission and, as back-up, the trigger happy Hounsou
It also gives the silliest of Bond stories—I’m looking at you “Moonraker”—a run for its money. The plot isn’t as much a story as it is justification to put the characters in motion. Why risk life-and-limb to get access to a computer program that will help Toretto’s clan located Shaw when he seems to pop up around every corner? It’s the thing that fuels most of the action, and it makes absolutely no sense at all. At best it is an excuse to introduce Ramsey, the picture’s Bond girl.
Not that any of that matters. Audiences don’t go to the “F&F” movies to engage their brains; they go for the crazy stunts and the cocky swagger. They go for the “vehicular warfare,” the “No way!” moments and Diesel’s rumble and mumble line delivery. Here Vin goes head to head with Statham for the title of Gravelliest Voiced Action Star, and winds up in a tie.
Subtle it ain’t but that is the beauty of these movies. They know what they are and they deliver time in and time out. From Diesel’s “unleash the beast” scenes to mano- a-car action, “Furious 7” exists in its own ecosystem where Dwayne “Daddy’s got to go to work” Johnson’s can remove a cast from his broken arm by simply flexing his oversized biceps and cars can effortlessly glide from one high rise to another.
As important as the action are the camaraderie and loyalty. “I don’t have friends,” says Dom, “ I have family,” a point nicely made in a touching coda paying tribute to star Paul Walker who died in a car accident in November 2013.
“Furious 7” is a bit long—a movie like this should be a down-and-dirty eighty-eight minutes—but it’s also a loud-and-proud crowd pleaser that never misses a chance to rev its engine.
You get a lot of movie for your dollar in “Woman in Gold.” Two movies in fact.
The framing device is the true story of Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), an Austrian Holocaust survivor who enlists the help of young lawyer Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to help her reclaim five Gustav Klimt paintings, including one of her aunt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Looted by Nazis at the outset of WWII the iconic artwork—it’s referred to as the “Mona Lisa of Austria” in the film—had hung in the state gallery for five decades. The years-long case wound its way slowly through the courts until it reached the Supreme Court of the United States and then binding arbitration by a panel of three Austrian judges.
Running parallel is the harrowing story of the Bloch-Bauer and Altmanns, rich Jewish families torn apart by the Nazi occupation of Austria. Young Maria (Tatiana Maslany) is a beautiful new bride forced to leave her mother, father and extended family and make the dangerous journey to a new life in to America to avoid the concentration camps.
It’s two thrillers, one legal, one humanistic, mixed and matched to form a whole but “Woman in Gold” isn’t strictly a movie about a lawsuit or Holocaust horror, it’s really a story about the power of memories and heritage.
Despite frequent flashbacks director Simon “My Week with Marilyn” Curtis delivers a straightforward retelling of this true story. Occasionally it feels a tad too straightforward but Mirren gives Maria a wistful, powerful spirit that provides the emotional underpinning to propel the stories forward. It is the sometimes pained, sometimes joyful looks that cross her face as she remembers her long gone family that makes the story compelling, not the legalese or Reynolds’s lawyer character. On Mirren’s face is the story, a vision of loss and anguish, but tempered with a tale of determination.
As a thriller “Woman in Gold” occasionally feels conventional but the performance of its lead actress is anything but.
The generation gap that lies at the heart of “While We’re Young,” the latest film from “Squid and the Whale” director Noah Baumbach, can be summed up in one short but clever scene.
Twenty-something hipster Jamie (Adam Driver) offers up a pair of headphones to Josh (Ben Stiller), a forty-five-year-old documentary filmmaker. As “Eye of the Tiger” blares on the soundtrack Josh says, “I remember when this song was just supposed to be bad.”
Josh and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are a childless married couple living in Manhattan. They’re comfortably easing into middle age when they meet Jamie and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), an impossibly hip married couple who live in a Harlem loft stuffed with vinyl records, manual typewriters and good vibes.
The young’uns lead an intoxicating life, connected to every neo-New York trend. They eat at artisanal restaurants, raid thrift shops for clothes and partake in ayahuasca ceremonies (which leads to one of my favourite lines: “Maybe don’t flirt with the shaman.”). While Josh and Cornelia bash away on the latest smart phones, Jamie and Darby have embraced the retro chic of VHS. They’re so cool they don’t even use Google. When Josh pulls out his phone to search for a word they’ve all blanked on, Jamie and Darby demur. “Let’s just not know,” Jamie says.
The relationship between the two couples is one of mutual mentorship. Josh and Cornelia go to hip hop classes and bourbon tastings, feeling young again alongside their new found friends while Jamie and Darby look to the older couple for help with a film Jamie is trying to make.
The dramatic conflict comes late in the movie when it becomes clear that Jamie isn’t as easy going as everyone first thought.
It’s a bit too easy to compare writer/director Baumbach to Woody Allen, but it’s apt. Both are New York filmmakers to the core and both, at their best, comment on life in the microcosm of that city’s life. Their stories are both specific and universal, micro and macro, and hone in on the behaviour that makes us human, for better and for worse.
In “While We’re Young” Baumbach inhabits Allen’s turf, making a comedy for adults that by turns skewers and embraces the very people he’s making the movie for. It’s a grown up look at growing up. Intelligent and funny, it highlights the insecurities attached to middle age, while celebrating the wisdom and sense of purpose that can only come with experience.
Bambauch is generous with his characters–Jamie and Darby aren’t caricatures of trendoid NYC dolts but nicely etched portraits of Generation Y kids struggling to find a place in the world—and is aided by terrific performances. Nobody does pent up anxiety like Stiller and for Driver this is the next step up the ladder to huge mainstream success. Watts and Seyfried aren’t given as much to do, although they have some of the film’s best lines. “If I stay here any longer I’ll Girl, Interrupt,” says Darby with mock seriousness. Charles Grodin has a small but important part as a legendary documentarian—think vérité hero D. A. Pennebaker—whose caustic charm and way with a line—”You just showed me a six-and-a-half hour long film that felt seven hours too long.”—is worth the price of admission alone.
“While We’re Young” is a terrific film with razor sharp insights to the differences and similarities between Gen X and Y.
“Last Knights,” the new feudal lord drama starring Morgan Freeman and Clive “The man who might have been Bond” Owen, is set in the manly world of honour, loyalty and revenge. It plays a bit like “Game of Thrones,” but without the dragons or the nudity.
At the heart of “Last Knights”—and no, this isn’t another of Freeman’s “Last Vegas” old geezer on the town movies—is the relationship between Lord Bartok (Freeman), a nobleman tired of paying exorbitant taxes to the Emperor’s (Peyman Moaadi) ambitious and greedy first minister Gezza Mott (Aksel Hennie), and warrior Raiden (Owen). The soldier isn’t just hired muscle, he’s a trusted confidant and extremely loyal. When a double-cross forces Raiden to perform an unthinkable act, the kingdom is thrown into chaos until the inevitable revenge plot kicks into action.
From Morgan Freeman’s majestic opening narration to the pounding score and wild swordplay, the first moments of “Last Knights” are ID. That’s Incredibly Dramatic in bolded, capital letters with a flourish of calligraphy thrown in for good measure. It sets the slightly over-the-top tone for the rest of the film, but despite some wild performances—I’m looking at you Hennie—a “Rambo” inspired action sequence and a beheading or two, director Kaz I Kiriya’s deliberate pacing eats into the theatrics. Couple that with a long mid-movie stretch that sets up the climatic battle but actually sucks the guts out of thirty minutes of running time, and you’re left with a film with expertly staged sword fights, suitable grimy warriors and a paranoid and dangerous villain, but not as much entertainment value as the opening promises.
Woman in Gold is director Simon Curtis’s follow up to the Academy Award nominated film My Week with Marilyn. His first feature chronicled seven days in the life of Marilyn Monroe during the production of the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl.
In the new movie Dame Helen Mirren plays Maria Altmann, an Austrian Holocaust survivor who enlists the help of young lawyer Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to help reclaim five Gustav Klimt paintings, including one of her aunt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Looted by Nazis at the outset of WWII the iconic artwork—it’s referred to as the “Mona Lisa of Austria” in the film—had hung in the state gallery for five decades. The years-long case wound its way slowly through the courts until it reached the Supreme Court of the United States and then binding arbitration by a panel of three Austrian judges.
He spent a week with Marilyn, the director teases, but years with Maria.
Altmann’s story first grabbed his interest when he saw a BBC Imagine documentary on her struggle to reclaim the artworks that were rightfully hers. He was taken with the character of Maria, who reminded him of many people he grew up with. “I’m from a Jewish family in London,” he says, “and I met many women like Maria.”
The resulting film plays like two thrillers, the present day legal story and the backstory, told in flashbacks.
One is a procedural, one a horrifying look at the rise of Nazism in Austria, mixed and matched to form a whole but “Woman in Gold” isn’t strictly a movie about a lawsuit or Holocaust horror, it’s really a story about the power of memories and heritage.
Curtis says the casting of Mirren was crucial to the success of the film. He needed an actress of a certain age and one who could portray the emotional range of a woman trapped between her real world pain and the memories she holds dear. On Mirren’s face is the story, a vision of loss and anguish, but tempered with a tale of determination.
Curtis first met Mirren almost thirty years ago when he assistant directed a production of Measure for Measure in 1979. He remembers her as a formidable force and jokingly calls himself “her tea boy.”
“I sat with her in the kitchen and helped her answer fan mail and boiled water for tea,” he says. “I did essentially the same job on this film.”
Furious 7 has already generated its share of column inches from entertainment journalists. The cast has spent the last few weeks doing the junket rounds, talking to everyone with a microphone or a notepad, generating sound bites and stories that have fed newspapers, websites and television shows.
Star Michelle Rodriguez, who plays Letty Ortiz, spoke of getting “pretty crazy” after co-star Paul Walker’s death. “I was pushing myself to feel,” she said by way of explanation of some of her tabloid level behaviour in the last year.
Ludacris, who has played technical expert Tej Parker in four F&F films, told the Today show, “We’re about to make history as the most successful franchise of all time.”
Vin Diesel has talked about naming his daughter after his friend and co-star Walker—“ “There’s no other person that I was thinking about as I was cutting this umbilical cord.”—and made grand pronouncements about the quality of his film.
“Universal is going to have the biggest movie in history with this movie,” Diesel said, likely sounding as though he’s dragging every word through sandpaper. “It will probably win best picture at the Oscars, unless the Oscars don’t want to be relevant ever.”
He’s likely only half wrong. In 2011 he made a similar award season prediction about Fast 5 and while that didn’t pan out, the movie made a fortune, grossing north of six hundred million dollars worldwide.
He’s right to say that the new film will surely put the pedal to the metal and sell a lot of popcorn. Despite so-so reviews the Fast and Furious franchise has an EZ Pass to the box office fast lane, grossing two billion plus dollars since racing into theatres in 2001. “Just because they are for the working class doesn’t mean they’re not great,” Diesel said.
F&F fans enjoy the formula, which can be broken down to essentially this: Swagger interrupted by a snappy one liner, a wild car chase, a fight scene, repeat.
The movies aren’t Kierkegaard, and that’s one of the reasons they haven’t run out of gas yet. Over seven entries they’ve remained loud and proud, lowbrow and unashamed. They’re a wild celebration of muscle cars, muscle shirts and muscle heads. Like an engorged Hot Wheels set, the films are playthings for the directors—there have been 4 over the run of the series—who tow the company line time after time offering up a car crushing stew where sophisticated line readings and nuanced storytelling take a backseat to frenetic editing and in-your-face explosive action. They exist in a world where people only drink Budweiser and bastardizations like Bud Lime don’t exist. That purity of vision is the beauty of the series.
Sure, they change things up from time to time by adding new characters but casting The Rock or Jason Statham isn’t much of a stretch. Both have migrated from the kind of turbo charged action movies that could be considered companion pieces to the F&F films and both have the kind of poly-appeal that makes men want to be them and women want to see them.
Despite the loss of Paul Walker, you can bet Furious 7 won’t be the last movie in the series. As long as the formula works and the money continues to come in fast and furious Diesel and company won’t put these films in the rear view mirror.
