Richard’s CP24 reviews for Michael Fassbender as iCon Steve Jobs in the movie of the same name, Ellen Page and Julianne Moore as LGBT trailblazers in “Freeheld,” Deepa Mehta’s “Beeba Boys” and the Alison Brie rom com “Sleeping with Other People.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard’s reviews Michael Fassbender as iCon Steve Jobs in the movie of the same name, Ellen Page and Julianne Moore as LGBT trailblazers in “Freeheld,” Deepa Mehta’s “Beeba Boys” and the Alison Brie rom com “Sleeping with Other People.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Photos and a cool time lapse video from Richard and Andrea’s wedding in New York City were featured on Jeff Hutcheson’s “Things We Found on Twitter” segment on Wednesday October 14, 2015!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Steve Jobs” is a portrait of a person who sought perfection in his work but admits that personally he is “poorly made.”
The film, directed by Danny Boyle, isn’t a biopic but rather an impressionistic look at a man told through three vignettes pulled from crucial moments in his career. The vast bulk of the movie takes place backstage at the launches of the Macintosh in 1984, the Nextcube in 1988 and the iMac in 1998. It’s a three act play populated with characters from Jobs’s life, like his daughter Lisa, her mother (Katherine Waterston), the visionaries’ “work wife,” marketing chief Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), Apple CEO John Scully (Jeff Daniels) and computer geeks Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogan) and Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg).
What follows is a flurry of words and ideas from screenwriter Aaron Sorkin that don’t act as a traditional biography but as a tool to peel away the layers of the man’s personality to provide a an intimate glimpse into his psyche. Jobs’s life has been the subject of features, documentaries, books and much speculation but the new film is the first attempt to truly turn the camera on the man and really see what was going on behind his steely gaze.
Michael Fassbender is on screen virtually every second of the film, anchoring the action by allowing Sorkin’s crackerjack script to take center stage. This is a movie whose special effects are the performances and the actor’s facility with the dialogue. Fassbender spits out vast blocks of words, nailing the cadence of Sorkin’s voice, milking every line for maximum effect. As nimble as that performance is Jeff Daniels appears to have been born to speak Sorkin’s rat-a-tat dialogue.
Sorkin, who after pending “The Social Network” has cornered the market on writing vivid portraits of troubled computer nerds, is the real star here. His script is kinetic, complicated, unrelenting and yet accessible. Whether it’s historically accurate may be up for debate, but this isn’t a documentary, it’s a sketch of a man that’s not concerned with the details–iPods and iPhones don’t even rate a mention–and certainly doesn’t play as an ad for Apple. Instead it Steve Jobs as an almost Shakespearean character, a man with a vision but who remained a “closed system” even for those who knew him best.
Steve Jobs changed the world. His unrelenting perfectionism changed the way we communicate with one another but Sorkin and Boyle were astute enough not to try and reinvent the biopic. This is a bold film that thinks differently about its subject, but at it’s heart it is about a typical movie subject. Think Charles Foster Kane, a person who wasn’t a nice man, but was a great man.
“Freeheld,” a new true-to-life drama starring Julianne Moore and Ellen Page, is that rare kind of movie that manages to be depressing and uplifting simultaneously.
It’s love at first serve when Stacie Andree (Page) and Laurel Hester (Moore) meet at a volleyball game. Laurel is a decorated New Jersey cop who has stayed closeted, even from her partner Dane Wells (Michael Shannon) because, as she says, “In law-enforcement women don’t get important cases; gay women, never.” Stacie is a mechanic in Pennsylvania whose big dream is for a simple life with a house, a dog and a loving wife.
Stacie’s dream comes true when the couple buy a house, get a dog and settle down. Their quiet life is turned upside down when Laurel is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
“If anything happens I want my pension to go to Stacy,” Laurel says to Dane. “That’s the only way she can keep the house.”
“But that’s only for married people isn’t it?”
With Laurel’s cancer spreading and the town council’s refusal to recognize Laurel and Stacie’s domestic partnership as legal, a small group of supporters—including Wells and lawyer Steven Goldstein (Steve Carell)—fight for the couple’s right to secure Hester’s pension benefits.
“Freeheld” is set in 1999 but the story feels ripped from the headlines. It’s a story of cancer and a detective tale but mostly it’s a story about the fight for equality in the LGBT community. It can be a frustrating watch as the town council, the Freeholders (Kevin O’Rourke, Tom McGowan, Dennis Boutsikaris, Josh Charles), argue against bestowing Laurel’s pension for political and moral reasons, despite having a clear right to do so under the law. The usual old boy excuses prevail—So anyone can marry anyone and assign their benefits? It violates the sanctity of marriage!—until (SPOILER ALERT EVEN THOUGH IT’S ON THE HISTORIAL RECORD!) mounting pressure forces their hand.
Moore has the showier role but it is Page who keeps the story earthbound. The issue of gay rights is so huge, so monumental it is sometimes easy to forget that it’s not simply a movement, but a cause that affects real people. The looks that register on Page’s face during Laurel’s illness and the ensuing pension battle make it personal in the most effective and beautiful way. Her face takes the story beyond Goldstein’s rhetoric and political theatre—“It’s Stephen with a V for Very gay,” he says, “and when people disrespect my brothers and sisters I reign down terror on them.”—stripping it of everything except for love and concern.
“Freeheld” is a crowd pleaser—unless, of course, you’re a Kentucky county clerk—that dramatizes and humanizes a landmark case in the ongoing battle for gay rights.
Deepa Mehta’s new film plays like Tarantino sprinkled with garam masala. Or Scorsese run through a spice grinder. The director of “Water,” “Bollywood/Hollywood” and “Midnight’s Children” adds a gangland twist to her latest film “Beeba Boys.”
Jeet Johar (Randeep Hooda) is the ruthless leader of a gang of second and third generation Indo-Canadian thugs. Known as the Beeba Boys (it ironically means Good Boys, like nicknaming a giant “Tiny”) they are a young, flashy, attention-seeking group who wear bespoke suits, brag about their exploits on television and never back down from a fight as they try and take over Vancouver’s drug and arms trade.
Their flamboyant behaviour doesn’t sit well with the area’s rival old school crime family led by Robbie Grewal (Gulshan Grover). Into this mix comes Nep (Ali Momen), a recent Beeba Boy recruit who may be playing for both sides.
The movie begins with a violent sequence that sets it apart from Mehta’s films. Jeet and the gang set off to even a score, driving flashy cars and joking before getting down to business. There’s gunfire and street violence, certainly not Mehta’s milieu but it soon becomes apparent that thematically “Beeba Boys” follows in the footsteps of the director’s other films in its examination of identity and assimilation.
The film literally starts with a bang, but don’t expect that level of intensity all the way through. Random violence and underworld one-liners abound but the takeaway here is the Mehta’s examination of the South Asian immigrant experience. When Jeet’s alcoholic father (Kulbushan Kharbanda) tells of eking out a living as a cranberry bog worker, one of the few jobs available to him as a new Canadian, he paints a vivid portrait of his experience, describing a life his son rejects.
“Beeba Boys” works better as an examination of culture than as a gangster movie. Hooda is a charismatic and dangerous presence but the movie just doesn’t have the swagger Tarantino and Scorsese bring to their work.
Despite a lack of Katherine Heigl the new romantic comedy “Sleeping with Other People” follows the patented Heigl Method© rom com design to a tee—unlikely couple meets, falls in love, overcomes obstacles, breaks up and… well, I’m not going to give away the ending but if you don’t know it already then either you don’t have a romantic bone in your body or you’ve never seen a Katherine Heigl movie (“Under Siege 2: Dark Territory” excluded).
When we first meet Lainey (Alison Brie) and Jake (Jason Sudeikis) it’s 2002 and they are students at Columbia. They meet cute and wind up losing their virginity to one another. Cut to twelve years later, he’s a tech whiz of some sort, she’s a teacher and both have sex addiction issues. She’s hung up on her college romance Matt (Adam Scott), a married doctor Jake describes as “having all the charm of a broken Etch-A-Sketch.” He’s a slick talking ladies’ man who cheats on his girlfriends rather than tell them he doesn’t like them anymore. The pair reconnect at a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting and after one date decide they will remain friends, removing the element of sex that always lands them in romantic hot water. Of course, this is a Heigl Method© rom com, so the only people who don’t realize that Lainey and Jake are a perfect couple is Lainey and Jake.
“Sleeping with Other People” might have been more effective if it didn’t adhere so strictly to the old possum that men and women can’t be friends. Lainey and Jake have a wonderful platonic relationship, spending quality time walking in Central Park, sharing secrets and generally doing the things friends do in lieu of pawing at one another. In the end it feels like a cheat (MILD SPOILER ONLY IF YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN A ROM COM AND CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO THESE TWO) to pair them off at the end when it would have been far more interesting for the pair to remain platonically involved and explore the dynamics of that relationship. To have them fall into one another’s arms and beds is the crowd-pleasing way out, but less satisfying as a look at the way actual humans relate to one another.
Sudeikis and Brie are a fetching couple and have good chemistry. In their quieter moments they’re quite appealing but this is no 21st century “When Harry Met Sally.” Jake’s fast patter is only about half as charming as the movie thinks it is and Lainey’s obsession with Matt feels overwrought and unreal, like “Fatal Attraction” without the simmering rabbit. The occasional bits of sharp dialogue and the laughs are welcome, but generally everything—the plot points and base emotions—are telegraphed early and often.
Watching “Sleeping with Other People” I couldn’t help but think the movie focused on the wrong couple. Jake’s business partner Xander (Jason Mantzoukas) and his wife Naomi (Andrea Savage) are a much more dynamic duo. Too bad director Leslye Headland didn’t give them more attention while Lainey and Jake worked through their issues off screen.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
“The whole point of doing work is to surprise yourself and others,” says Deepa Mehta. The director of art house hits like Water, Bollywood/Hollywood and Midnight’s Children will certainly raise a few eyebrows with her new film Beeba Boys.
The movie is a violent look at a Vancouver gang of second and third generation Indo-Canadian criminals known as the Beeba Boys. It features the first car chase in any of her films and certainly contains more gunplay and violence than any other of her personal, introspective movies.
“I’ve always been a sucker for gangster films,” she says. “Tarantino, eat your heart out.”
The Toronto-based Mehta first became aware of Vancouver’s Sikh gangs from a CBC documentary. It’s a violent culture she says the rest of the country is largely unaware of—“After you cross the Rockies it’s like everybody has amnesia about what happens in our own country.”—but one that gripped her.
“As a director it is really exciting for me to explore a world I don’t know much about. It is a learning process. Exploring this world of Beeba Boys, of gangsters, the search for identity, the desire to be seen, the looking for acceptance is a world that is very familiar to me but the way it is told is completely unfamiliar. That was exciting.
“They’re not like the Mafia. They’re not at all like the Triads. They’re not at all like the Yakuza and they’re not like the Hell’s Angels. They are very culturally based and I found that fascinating.”
Whether it is a period piece or a modern day film Mehta’s work turns the camera on her community and the underpinnings of that culture. Critics have expressed surprise at Beeba Boys because when you put a gun in somebody’s hand in a Deepa Mehta movie that’s what draws all the attention.
“I’m just happy they are talking about the film,” she says. “The ones who want to focus on the guns will focus on the guns and that’s fine. Each to their own. The ones who know my work and wish to see something that is not just on the surface will see that it is a continuation of my work. Thematically it is a continuation of everything I’ve done because it is a film about identity but the story is different and the story calls for gangsters and of course they are not going to be carrying lollipops in their hands. Let’s get real.”
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
Few modern directors raise the hair on the back of your neck like Guillermo del Toro. From the eerie Pale Man character in Pan’s Labyrinth to the deadly mechanical scarab of Cronos, he has trained viewers to expect the unexpected.
His latest, Crimson Peak, is a spooky thriller starring Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska and Tom Hiddleston that del Toro describes as an “almost classical gothic romance ghost story,” before adding, “it has two or three scenes that are really, really disturbing in a very, very modern way.” Also expect a fest for the eyes. “I’m not giving you eye candy,” he says. “It’s eye protein.”
Films like Pacific Rim, The Devil’s Backbone and Hellboy have made del Toro a fan favourite but for every film he makes there is Internet buzz about the movies he didn’t make.
“I’m famous for the ones I turned down,” he told me a few years ago in a candid conversation on my radio show.
Indeed a quick Google search reveals a list of hit films he said no to.
The script for Se7en came his way but was judged to be too cynical for del Toro’s tastes. Horror hits Blade: Trinity and AVP: Alien vs. Predator went to directors David S. Goyer and Paul W.S. Anderson respectively when Guillermo declined because he was too busy getting his version of Hellboy to the screen.
I asked him about that period. “To get Hellboy made you turned down…” “A lot,” he said, finishing my sentence.
More recently he walked away from The Hobbit, a decision he called “extremely painful,” and took a rain check on Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens because “basically I have so much stuff already of my own, and I’m pursuing stuff that I’m generating already.”
One project has kept the del Toro fan base purring for years, a proposed version of Frankenstein.
“This is the one that I pursue and drop. It’s daunting. This is the most important story in the history of narrative. The most important book in my life is Frankenstein and the most important movie is James Whale’s Frankenstein.
“It’s like that girl you have been dating for 35 years and you can’t say, ‘Would you marry me?’
“I read the book and realized nobody has done the book. It is amazing to me that nobody has done the emotions that are in the book. The way I want to treat the one I do is not to be slavish to the book but create the same effect the book has which is the incredible journey of the creature.”
I ask if he has any second thoughts about the films he turned down.
“Every movie I have left behind or not done I don’t regret at all but there’s one that I can’t help but wonder (about), Prisoner of Azkaban. I really loved the books. I don’t love all the movies but at that stage I saw the first two movies and they were a little too happy for me. I thought, ‘Do I really want to go on and try to change the entire universe like that?’”
The job of directing the third Harry Potter movie eventually went to one of del Toro’s friends, Alfonso Cuarón. “When I saw that movie I told Alfonso, ‘I love you and I hate you. You made a great movie.’ That’s the only one that went away that I will always wonder about.”
