The flowery prose of Nicholas Sparks has singlehandedly kept Kleenex in business since “The Notebook” made the former pharmaceutical salesman the King of the Weepie. The latest big-screen Sparksisms—tearstained romantic letters, lines like, “Love requires sacrifice… always,” and passionate make-out sessions—come in the form of “The Longest Ride,” an intergenerational romance starring Clint-spawn Scott Eastwood, Britt Robertson, Oona Chaplin and Alan Alda.
This time around Sparks tells of “Two stories separated by time, connected by fate.”
The first couple is twenty-something sorority sister Sophia Danko (Robertson) an art major—“I love art,” she gushes, “I love everything about it.”—lured to the rodeo by her housemate with the promise of “the hottest guys you’ve ever seen.” There she lays eyes on a cowboy named Luke (Eastwood)—aren’t all cowboys named Luke?—a bull rider trying to make a comeback after almost being killed the last time he competed. They lock eyes and you know it won’t be long before they’re line dancing off to happily-ever-after land. “Before I met you the closest I got to cattle was steak,” she coos.
Fate brings them in contact with ninety-year-old widower Ira Levinson (Alda). Driving home from a date the newly besotted couple spots a nasty car crash on a remote road. They rescue Ira, but the accident has left him near death. The only thing that keeps him going is the urging of his late wife Ruth (Chaplin).
That’s right, dead Ruth gets Sparksified, brought back to life as an ephemeral spirit through the reading of old letters (and sepia toned flashbacks) that recount their life and the ups and downs of marriage.
Brought together by circumstance, the couple’s lives mix and match, as the stories—one existing in memory, the other at the rodeo—converge and they learn about sacrifice, bull ridin’ and the power of love to overcome the challenges life throws in the way of romance.
“The Longest Ride” made me cry, but not in the way Nicholas Sparks intended.
The movie takes place in a world where ranch hands and Warhols co-exist and couples are expected to walk off into the sunset hand in hand. In other words it’s Über Harlequin; an alternate universe romance where two tangentially related stories can be fused together by tears and warm group hugs.
There are parallels between the tales—both men are North Carolina “country bumpkins” who fall for women from out of state, both couples take pictures in photo booths, both have “I don’t know how to make this work” moments and Sophia is about to go to New York to intern at a gallery while Ira left town to go to war—but mostly the stories are tied together by an abundance of Sparksian clichés. There’s the “elevated kiss”—most famously used in “The Notebook” when Ryan Gosling hoisted Rachel McAdams over his head and locked lips—which is overused here as are the obligatory “lake scene,” longing glances and reliance on epistolary to tell the story.
Ira’s letters to Ruth make up the backbone of the romance, but they don’t exactly make sense. To push the story forward they are written in a weird stilted way—“I took over my dad’s booming business while you taught at school”—that appears to be telling Ruth a story she was already familiar with, you know, having lived it and all. It’s a strange way to provide exposition and makes the movie narration heavy.
Stranger still are some of director George Tillman Jr.’s choices. The cross cutting between love making and a bull riding lesson may be the least subtle thing ever and couldn’t feel any less romantic. Add to that one of the worst war scenes in recent memory, close-ups of rage-a-holic bulls and you walk away not feeling filled with romance, but as though you have messed with the bull and gotten the horn.
“Danny Collins” begins with a flashback to 1971. The title character is an up-and-coming folk singer promoting his first album. His Chime Magazine interviewer is clearly a fan, telling the young singer that soon he would he rich, famous and have more women than he’ll know what to do with.
Collins squirms in his seat.
“Why are you staring at me like that information scares you?”
“Because it does,” sputters Collins.
Cut to forty years later. Collins is a sell out, a Neil Diamond sound-a-like superstar who has become comfortable with the money, fame and women while developing a crippling cocaine habit. As a birthday gift his long time manager Frank (Christopher Plummer) gives him a letter from John Lennon, written in 1971 in response to the Chime Magazine interview. Collins never received the handwritten note, but its content regarding the Beatles’s thoughts on fame, fortune and not letting them affect your creativity, rock Collins.
“What would have happened if I got that letter when I was supposed to?” he wonders. “My life would have turned out different.”
Taking the letter to heart, he decides to change his life. The first stop on his recovery tour? New Jersey, to contact a son (Bobby Cannavale) he’s never met.
Appropriately enough, I guess, for a movie about music the story spends a great deal of time plucking at heartstrings. Sentimental and sappy, the only rock-and-roll things here are the John Lennon songs that wallpaper the soundtrack.
As edgy as Collins’s big hit “Baby Doll”—which comes complete with its own dance—the movie doesn’t ever feel authentic, but Pacino is Pacino and brings a certain charm to the main character. One of the film’s running jokes has Danny asking hotel manager Mary (Annette Bening) out for dinner, only to have her reject his offer. He won’t give up, however, and neither does Pacino. His Leonard Cohen-esque singing aside, he commits fully to the role and fills in some of the gaps with sheer strength of will.
Cannavale and Jennifer Garner, as the long-lost son and daughter-in-law and Plummer also bring considerable charm but make no mistake, this is Pacino’s peacock show. Like the character, the film is ridiculous but has a lot of heart and it’s hard to deny the underlying good-vibe on display.
“The Clouds of Sils Maria” contains fine performances from its leads, Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloë Grace Moretz, some delicious irony, and some razor sharp commentary on the state of modern celebrity. What it’s missing is entertainment value.
French director Olivier Assayas has made an art house “Birdman,” with stunt casting but allows it to get weighed down by its ideas and melodrama.
Binoche is actress Maria Enders, an international star who got her start decades ago on stage playing the alluring Sigrid in “Maloja Snake,” a young woman who drove her boss Helena to suicide. When she is offered the role of the older woman in an all-star remounting of the play opposite Jo-Anne Ellis (Moretz), a scandal-prone Hollywood starlet, she retreats to the relative calm of Sils Maria, a rural town in the Alps, to rehearse with her assistant Val (Stewart) while contemplating aging, her past and her place in show business.
“The Clouds of Sils Maria” is as self absorbed as the people it portrays. The most interesting tangents, from a pop culture point of view, concern the character Val, who seems to be piercing the fourth wall by allowing Stewart to seemingly comment on her “Twilight” success and subsequent career. “I love her,” she says of Ellis, “she not completely antiseptic like the rest of Hollywood.” In fact, it’s more likely she’s referring to herself and her descent from Tween Queen to serious working actor.
“Clouds” is very much Binoche’s film—she’s in almost every scene and the action revolves around her—but thematically it’s not a stretch to see it as Stewart’s comment on her own career. “She’s brave enough to be herself,” Val says admiringly of Ellis, throwing down the gauntlet to critics who might questions her less than mainstream choices of late.
As interesting as that glimpse into Stewarts ID may be coupled with Maria’s fears of losing credibility, “The Clouds of Sils Maria’s” art vs. life premise takes pains to make the discovery of these points as obtuse as possible. Plot shards hang, interrupted by jarring scene transitions and needless narrative machinations. It’s the rare kind of movie that is undone by the very same cultural elitism it celebrates.
The script for “Cut Bank” appeared on Hollywood’s 2009 black list of the best-unproduced films. Whoever makes up that list must have been desperate for a Coen Brothers fix.
Set in the hamlet of Cut Bank Montana—“the coldest spot in the nation”—the action begins when auto mechanic Dwayne (Liam Hemsworth) accidentally videotapes the murder of the local postman (Bruce Dern). He reports the crime to the inept local sheriff (John Malkovich), hoping for reward money, but there are complications in the form of the suspicious father of his girlfriend (Billy Bob Thornton), a postal inspector (Oliver Platt) and Derby Milton, a reclusive man (Michael Stuhlbarg) violently obsessed with getting his mail.
On its surface “Cut Bank” has all the earmarks of a quirky Coen Brothers style romp. Like an wannabe “Fargo” it’s violent, occasionally funny and populated by a talented acting ensemble (in this case lead by Malkovich) which sounds like a winner but is sunk by an abundance of quirky characters in supporting roles— Stuhlbarg’s Milton is a cartoon come to life—and good looking but bland leads in the form of Thor-bro Hemsworth and Teresa Palmer as his budding beauty queen girlfriend.
Old pros Dern, Malkovich, Thornton and Platt cut through this material like a hot knife through butter, but it is mostly the sheer strength of their collective wills that they manage to keep the script, which is ripe with exposition, from rotting on the vine.
Director Matt Shakman has an eye for the setting—the Alberta locations look great—but the town should be a character à la David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” and here it is simply a backdrop to the action.
“Cut Bank” is one of those movies where there is more to every character than meets the eye, but ultimately is a blink and you’ll miss it experience.
“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.
Fidelity Investments andSteamWhistle present Art, Beer and Reciprocity– All are welcome – Tickets $35.00 and are still available via website – Art Show and Lakeshorts Fundraiser at the SteamWhistle Roundhouse. Live Entertainment by the fantastic Brandi Ward. Inclusive of food and beverages.
Friday, May 1st, 2015
Loved and Local – Host Award Winning Actor Rick Roberts – Blue Carpet 6:30p.m. – Tickets $40.00 (includes food and beverages by SteamWhistle and East Dell) After screening mingle. Location – Assembly Hall
Saturday May 2nd, 2015
10:30a.m. – “The Long and Short of It” panel discussion on the making of a short film – Free to the Public – location – Assembly Hall – Please join us!!! Currently the panel includes these short film lovers:
Moderator – Zoie Palmer (Lost Girl)- Panelists – Jeremy Lalonde (Sex After Kids), Avi Federgreen (Prisoner X), Ryan Goldhar (The Characters, At Home By Myself With You), David Lester (Frozen Marbles)
12:15p.m. – The Official Etobicoke Cultural Hotspot Launch – Free to the Public – Location Assembly Hall
Through The Eyes of The Artist Art Exhibit, Lakeshorts Best Of Screening,Dignitary Address,Why I Love Etobicoke Screening,Live Entertainment,Food and Beverages – Free to the Public
6:30p.m. – Lakeshorts Gala Screening – Host Richard Crouse –Blue Carpet – 6:30p.m. Screening begins at 8:00p.m. After Party begins at 11:00p.m. – – Entertainment is “Charlie Don’t Surf” – Tickets $65.00 (includes all food and refreshments courtesy of SteamWhistle and East Dell) Location – Assembly Hall
All tickets are available HERE! Please follow us @lakeshortsfilm for daily updates about the Festival!
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.
