Fresh from a festival run—TIFF and the Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d’Or—comes Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin in a drama about an idealistic FBI agent working with an elite task force to stem the flow of drugs between Mexico and the US. One critic in Cannes referred to it as a “French Connection for the drug-fuelled Mexico-US border war,” so expect tension, moral ambiguity and no happy endings.
After a grizzly discovery courtesy of the Mexican drug Cartels, by-the-book CIA kidnapping specialist Kate Macer (Blunt) volunteers to be part of a special task force led by freelancers Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and the enigmatic Alejandro (Benicio del Toro). She thinks they’ll be trying to stem the flow of drugs from the US side of the border, but soon she learns that she’s working in a situation where the boundaries have been moved. On her first assignment a wild public shootout leaves a dozen people dead, but yet violence is so common that a showdown at the US -Mexican border is hardly news. “This will make the front page of every newspaper in America.” “No, it won’t even make the paper in El Paso.”
The plan is to disrupt the cartels. Despite prosecuting twice as many drug cases in one year as the previous two years combined, none of the arrests have made a difference. To truly get at the heart of the drug trade they have to break the rules, and, as Graver says, “shake the tree and create chaos.” That means bending the very principles that Macer holds dear.
“Sicario” (it means “hitman” in Spanish) begins with a tightly wound sequence and doesn’t go slack for the next ninety minutes. Director Denis Villeneuve has made a slow burn of a film, deliberately paced, that weaves complex quasi-morality with a sense of hopelessness into an edge of your seat story.
Leading the charge is Blunt. A multifarious mix of vulnerability, stone cold confidence and outrage, she’s the most interesting female action star since Imperator Furiosa.
Del Toro is a badass supreme as a man caught between doing the right thing completely the wrong way. Vicious and malicious, he doesn’t mind collecting a handsome paycheque while quenching his thirst for revenge against the cartel leaders.
The third part of the triangle is Graver, a jovial rule breaker who calls the shots. Brolin, the manliest man currently working on film, is an edgy presence joking and laughing his way through one dangerous situation after another.
The real stars here, however, are director Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins. Villeneuve treats the story like an onion, peeling off layer after layer, taking his time to get to the core of the story. Deakins, an eleven time Oscar nominee, turns aerial shots of sprawling cities into metaphors for the magnitude of the problems facing the police. Later he transforms a standard night vision raid from videogame action to a wonder of texture and tension.
“Sicario” isn’t a feel good movie about winning the war on drugs. Instead it’s a powerful look at a seemingly unwinnable battle and the toll it takes on its soldiers.
The last time Lily Tomlin had a lead role in a film was almost three decades ago. It’s been too long. “Grandma” shows her at age 75 in fine form as a cantankerous poet who goes on a journey, both physical and metaphysical, on one busy afternoon.
Tomlin plays Elle Reid, a once famous poet, now an unemployed seventy-something living alone following the death of Violet, her companion of thirty-eight years. Her quiet life is interrupted when her granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) arrives at her door looking for $630 to have an abortion. Her high school boyfriend promised to pay but now doesn’t have the money or the interest to help out. Elle doesn’t have the cash either but hits the road with Sage in search of the cash.
“Mom says you’re a philanthropist,” says Sage. “Wait, that’s not it… misanthropic.”
“That’s an understatement,” `snorts Elle.
Over the next few hours they drop in, unannounced, on the slacker boyfriend (Nat Wolff), an old friend of Elle’s (Sam Elliott), an angry café owner (the late Elizabeth Peña), an old flame (Judy Greer) and the one person who intimidates both Elle and Sage (Marcia Gay Harden).
The premise of “Grandma” is provocative. A young woman and her grandmother trying to raise cash for an abortion is bound to raise an eyebrow or two, but the movie isn’t really about that. The abortion is the McGuffin, the reason for the journey but not the reason for the story. The abortion is treated matter-of-factly, it’s the relationships that count.
It’s a pleasure to watch Tomlin let loose as Elle. As Elle she’s an unstoppable force of nature, unrepentant and resourceful. It’s great fun to watch her bully her way through life but Tomlin adds dimension to the character, allowing her vulnerable side to peak through from time to time. She commands the screen whether she’s being argumentative, beating up a teen (yup, she does that) or crying in the shower at the remembrance of lost love. It’s the moments of openness that elevate “Grandma” from “Grumpy Old Lady” movie to interesting character study.
Good performances keep “Grandma’s” relationships dynamic and by the time all is said and done the message of life goes on, hiccups and all, is subtly but powerfully enforced.
There was a time when one of the best-known sportsmen in the world didn’t wear a uniform, cleats or throw a ball. As unlikely as it seems in the summer of 1972 chess master Bobby Fischer held the world transfixed, battling against Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky.
Tobey McGuire is Fischer, a child chess prodigy determined to be recognized as the best player in the world. As a young, cocky player he easily decimates his opponents, earning national ranking and the opportunity to play the best players in the world.
At Fischer’s side are Paul Marshall (Michael Stuhlbarg) as a shadowy government figure who sees Fischer’s triumph over the Russians as a Cold War triumph for all of America and a chess whiz priest (Peter Sarsgaard) who provides guidance, both personal and professional.
Between Fischer and his goal is Spassky (Liev Schreiber), a stately Russian genius who thoroughly unnerves the American, highlighting his descent into mental illness and paranoia. By the time to two face off at the 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavík, Iceland, Fischer’s obsessions—anti-Semitism (even though he himself is Jewish) and a deep seeded distrust of his Russian opponents—threaten to incapacitate him.
Considering Fischer’s ability to think several steps ahead of his opponents, “Pawn Sacrifice” is surprisingly straightforward. Fischer’s life is divided into major events laid out end to end, from prodigy to world champion to eccentric recluse. McGuire transcends the basic biopic structure with a nuanced performance that breathes life into Fischer’s brilliance and demons. The reason for his torments aren’t examined as deeply as it might have been—his issues with identity seem to only stem from his mother’s taunts about his absent father—which may have deepened the character but McGuire plays him with confidence and vulnerability.
Also strong is Schreiber, performing here in Russian, as the august but human grandmaster.
“Pawn Sacrifice” kicks into gear in its final third as Fischer and Spassky go mano e mano over a chess board as the world watches.
Canadian horror, and I don’t mean Tim Horton’s running out of Timbits just before your coffee break, but the kind of scary movies we make, tends to turn convention on its head.
How many hack comics have joked about the beastly effects of PMS? “Ginger Snaps” takes those jokes one step further in a wickedly humorous feminist werewolf allegory. Other examples of distinctive CanCon horror include “Black Christmas,” a movie shot in Toronto that set the template for most of the slasher films of the 1980s and ’90s, “Cannibal Girls,” an early horror comedy, and don’t even get me started on the squirmy body terror of David Cronenberg.
“Hellions,” a new film that smashes up “The Brood” and “Are You Afraid of the Dark,” is a fresh look at the Devil Child genre.
Chloe Rose is Dora, a pregnant high schooler left home alone on Halloween. She’s waiting for her boyfriend (Luke Bilyk) to come over but before he gets there kids in creepy costumes come to the door. At first it seems harmless, but when the same kids reappear, this time with Dora’s boyfriend’s head in their candy sack, things take a terrifying turn for the macabre.
Director Bruce McDonald, working from a script by “The Colony” screenwriter Pascal Trottier, has made a film hat is short on actual hardcore scares, but long on unease. McDonald uses visual tricks—nightmarish red and pink colour palettes, slow motion and inky darkness—dreamy sequences and a spooky children’s chant to underline Dora’s mounting fear.
“Hellions” isn’t the kind of slice-and-dice movie we’ve come to expect from home invasion movies like “You’re Next.” Instead it’s a loosely plotted, hallucinogenic horror that is more weird than scary.
Marlon Brando’s life has passed into legend. The late actor was an enigma on screen and off, a mass of contradictions who provided no easy insight into his life or process. “Listen to Me Marlon,” a new documentary from director Stevan Riley, cuts through the mythology to present a complex but trippy portrait.
Riley doesn’t go the usual route, so no talking head interviews with Brando’s friends and family. Instead he pieces together Brando’s own words from private recordings, never before seen footage and, most intriguingly, the actor’s self-hypnosis tapes. The cumulative effect of this material goes beyond a standard bio. “Listen to Me Marlon” hits the factual signposts of the actor’s life but, using Brando’s words, is dreamlike in its assessment of those events. From the isolation of fame, the death of his daughter to career highs and lows, the movie covers it all in a biography unlike any other.
No less an authority than Variety called War Room filmmakers Alex and Stephen Kendrick the “Steven Spielbergs of Christian cinema.” Modestly budgeted religious dramas Fireproof, Courageous and War Room, which recently unseated Straight Outta Compton to take the top of the U.S. box office and now opens in Canada this week, have connected with an audience who feels underserved by traditional Hollywood fare.
“Christians like a well told story,” says Alex on the line from his native Georgia. “What we don’t like is when our saviour’s name is abused or taken in vain or our morals trashed so that keeps us away from many movies. It’s amazing to me that if Hollywood knew how many movies we stayed away from on purpose because of some of the offensive aspects they would change because it means much more money for them.
“We want well told stories and that’s what we want to do. The only difference is that my brothers and I try to make movies that leave the audience with something more than just entertainment or eye candy. We want to leave them with hope and inspiration and a reminder that God is real and he loves them and that he has a plan for their lives. That is what’s most important to us, so I think the audience that is responding to War Room is resonating with that.”
War Room, the story of a woman who learns to solve marital problems through the power of prayer, is the highest grossing faith based film since Heaven Is for Real made almost $100 last year.
“We prayed that it would do something we did not expect. We’re hearing so many reports where the people will stay in the theatres or in the hallways of the theatres and pray after they’ve seen the movie. I’m talking about across racial and denominational lines. It’s been extraordinary.
“From a filmmaker’s standpoint we did not expect this. Our films in the past have been at number four at the box office and have had strong results but nothing like this. We prayed for God to do something extraordinary, and now we’re seeing it happen, part of me says we can’t be surprised at God, I can only be surprised at a movie on a human level doing this well.”
Here are Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Black Mass” and “Everest,” plus a look back at the highlights from the Toronto International Film Festival!
Fresh from a festival run—TIFF and the Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d’Or—comes Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin in a drama about an idealistic FBI agent working with an elite task force to stem the flow of drugs between Mexico and the US. One critic in Cannes referred to it as a “French Connection for the drug-fuelled Mexico-US border war,” so expect tension, moral ambiguity and no happy endings.
