The title of a new historical drama works on two levels. On the surface “Race” is about Jesse Owens, the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history. It is the story of his early career and the Ohio State races that made him a legend but it is also about how an African American runner stared down Hitler and won.
The story begins 28 months before the 1936 Olympics in Germany. Owens (Stephan James) is a freshman at Ohio State University. As one of the few African American students at the school he faces daily indignities like not being allowed to use the showers until all the white athletes are finished.
Track and field coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis) senses Jesse’s potential and trains the young man, refining his technique. “Everyone says he’s a natural, best they’ve ever seen.” The pair work towards a goal, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. “If he works on his ‘start,’” says Snyder in a telling bit of foreshadowing, “you’re looking at a 1936 gold-medal winner at the Olympics.”
In the ramp-up to the games Owens smashes long-held world records, becoming a local celebrity and a natural choice to lead America’s entry in Berlin, but he has doubts.
“I heard they don’t care much for coloured folk over there,” he says.
“Don’t care much in Columbus either,” replies Snyder. “Is that going to be a problem?”
Add to that the enormous demands on him to win and pressure from the NAACP to stay at home and to show solidarity for the oppressed people of Germany and Owens is conflicted. Eventually the weight of race and politics are pushed aside—“Out there on that track you’re free of all of this,” says Owens. “There’s no black-and-white just fast and slow.”—and the rest, as they say, is history.
We all know pretty much how “race” will end so the trick for director Stephen Hopkins is to keep it entertaining along the way. For the most part he does, amping up the story with melodrama and an old fashioned story of triumph.
The racing scenes are effectively rendered and a sequence where Jesse learns to block out all the distractions brings the audience into the mindset of a runner for whom focus is the key to winning. Also, in the parallel story of the Olympics committee’s decision to partake in the games is a particularly chilling shot of the proposed Nazi Embassy next to the White House.
Melodramatic though the presentation, there is an undeniable gut-punch that comes along with the dramatization of inhumanity, whether it is the personal slight of Owens being called names on and off the track or the Nazis ousting Jewish families from their homes. Hopkins infuses both with meaning, using them to push the story forward.
It’s in the Synder character the movie stumbles. Sudeikis plays this tough-talking, hard-drinking excuse for an inspirational character with a kind of heightened reality that adds to the melodramatic feel of the film.
Stephan James remains at the heart of the film, steady and strong able to convincingly play the athlete and the man.
Ultimately “Race” isn’t really about race or, specifically racing. It’s about sportsmanship and the ability of sports to cut through personal prejudices of all sorts. As a sports movie it gets less exciting when it leaves the track but as a story of human determination and will it earns a gold medal.
“The Witch” is the kind of horror film that is not content to simply say “Boo!” There are few, if any, jump scares in the film. Instead, it’s the kind of puritanical folk tale that slowly burrows itself into your brain, leaving you queasy and uneasy.
Set in New England, 1630 the movie centers on Christian settlers William, Katherine (Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie, both of “Game of Thrones”) and their five children, a family banished from their church and community to eek out a life on the outskirts of town. Bordered by an ominous forest, their remote new home offers little in the way of comfort, spiritual uplift or sustenance.
Plagued by grinding poverty and crop failure, the devote family is rocked when their baby son baby son is stolen while under the care of eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy). The disappearance is chalked up to something satanic—perhaps a witch from the woods—and a pall of distrust and fear envelops the family, tearing away at the very core of their lives—their faith.
“The Witch” is a slow burn (in hell). Screenwriter and first time director Robert Eggers takes his time building up to a bewitchingly strange climax, toggling between paranoia and illusory (or are they?) elements to allow the dread to mount.
He creates a compact but complete and complex world for his characters to inhabit, chock-a-block with interesting details. Much of the dialogue was borrowed from contemporary trial transcripts and journals and comes heavily laden with religious fervour and the wilderness provides a gloomy backdrop, providing with creepy sounds and the possibility of evil. Everything, every creaking tree branch, every image seems to take on meaning as the hysteria increases.
As William, Ineson is a stern, austere man ruled by his religion, even if it means denying his daughter. The real revelation here is Anya Taylor-Joy as the put-upon daughter whose tests the family’s ideas of faith, loyalty and love.
“The Witch” won’t be for everyone, and certainly not for casual horror fans. There’s no Freddys or Jasons in sight, just pure terror.
Paul Dalio who wrote the screenplay, directed, edited and even wrote the musical score for his new film “Touched With Fire.” It’s a personal story for him, not simply because he was so involved with the production, but because it’s in part based on his own struggle with bipolar disease.
Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby star as bipolar poets who meet in a treatment facility. They bond over a shared love of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “Starry Night” and the story of the “Little Prince,” drawing parallels between the art, their lives and their creativity. Their connection is intense, surviving the powerful highs and anguished lows of their disease but when she becomes pregnant they must take drastic steps to make their relationship work.
Dalio is deep inside his subject here, and the movie drips with compassion and heartfelt emotion that, luckily, overrides the melodrama which seeps into the love story. His portrayal of manic behaviour takes us inside the feeling by using a shifting colour scheme to emphasize the euphoric sensation that characterizes the highest of highs. Coupled with strong work from Holmes and Kirby it’s a lyrical portrayal of the experience of mania.
It’s a tricky subject and while Dalio occasionally overstates his thesis that creative genius lies within the disease—“think about if you’d medicated van Gogh”—he presents it with power and without a hint of exploitation.
Less effective is the story’s tendency to walk a predictable path. As startling as the depiction of bipolar is, a more traditional “Romeo and Juliet” vibes hangs heavy over the proceedings. As parents and doctors work to keep them apart some of the air gets sucked out of the story.
“Touched With Fire” is a flawed but ultimately fascinating look at a delicate topic.
Look! Up on the screen! It’s Blade: Trinity. It’s The Proposal. It’s Ryan Reynolds!
Yes, it’s Ryan Reynolds, strange visitor from Vancouver who came to Hollywood with powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men. He speaks faster than a speeding bullet! He can leap tall scripts in a single bound! He’s more versatile than a roomful of Sexiest Men Alive!
I’ve paraphrased the famous opening of Superman, even though Reynolds has never played Superman in the movies. Careerwise, however, he has been a super man, leaping from genre to genre, piecing together an IMDB page so varied it’ll make your head spin.
This weekend brings us another exciting episode in the adventures of Ryan Reynolds.
In Deadpool he’s a former Special Forces operative subjected to an experimental treatment that gifts him with regenerative healing power and increased agility. Unfortunately it also leaves him filled with rage; thirsty for revenge against the doctor who changed his life. The character’s greatest superpower, according to Reynolds, “is annoying the s— out of people.”
It’s not the first time the 39- year-old actor has played someone with superpowers. It’s not even the first time he’s played Deadpool. That character debuted in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and he starred as Captain Excellent in Paper Man, the darkly heroic Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity as well as donning the super-tight tights of the Green Lantern.
When he isn’t battling crime, however, Reynolds has been more adventurous in his roles than people give him credit. Peppered throughout his major Hollywood successes like The Proposal have been roles like The Amityville Horror’s psychologically unstable father, Woman in Gold’s relentless lawyer, and the crackhead Gary in the thriller The Nines.
Successful or not, those movies showcased a performer looking to stretch his acting muscles (and not just display his prodigious ab muscles). Here are some other Reynold’s roles that show his super-versatility:
The Voices: Reynolds plays the wholesome-looking Jerry, an eager to please factory worker with a crush on the cute accountant upstairs. When she stands him up for a date it becomes apparent Jerry has serious problems. As bodies pile up he grapples with voices in his head that tell him to do terrible things. Kitschy, strange and decidedly off kilter, The Voices has funny moments but revolves around Reynolds’s winningly odd performance.
Buried: Reynolds is a civilian truck driver in Iraq, taken hostage, buried underground, who will be left to die unless a ransom is paid. The entire movie happens inside the four walls of a coffin with only Reynolds and a cell phone on display. Unable to rely on his usual comic timing and bulging muscles, Reynolds hits a career high, keeping the audience intrigued for most of the 90-minute running time.
The Change-Up: Starring Reynolds and Jason Bateman, this film is like several movies in one. It’s part gross-out comedy, part heart tugger and all switcheroo. The set-up is Freaky Friday simple; the two leads swap personalities but it works because Bateman adds a little hyper Van Wilder inflection to his speech and Reynolds drops his energy a few notches to match Bateman’s more laconic style. Both are likeable actors, with charm and charisma to burn.
The opening narration of “How to be Single,” a new rom dram—romantic dramedy—starring “50 Shades of Grey” star Dakota Johnson, informs us that it isn’t about relationships, it’s about the times in between. And so it goes that the main character is basically single for most of the movie, but in reality the film is about relationships and nothing more.
On the eve of graduation Ivy Leaguer Alice (Johnson) has “the talk” with her long time boyfriend Josh (Nicolas Braun). She’d like to spend some time apart and find herself before they make a lifelong commitment. “I can’t wonder ‘what if,’” she says. “This is going to be great for both of us.” To learn what it means to be alone, she moves to New York, gets a job as a paralegal and kicks off the “Sex and the Sex” phase of her life with new workmate Robin (Rebel Wilson) as her guide.
“Where are you going?” asks Robin.
“Hone,” says Alice.
“I never want to hear you say that again,” snorts Robin. “You’re single.”
And so it begins.
At first, under the brazen Robin’s tutelage, Alice is an awkward flirt but soon embraces what her new friend calls a “sexual rumspringa” or rite of passage. She learns that drinks are a man’s “sexual currency” and just how long to wait before returning a text from a one night stand. From womanizing bartender Tom (Anders Holm) she discovers the trick to getting pick-ups out of the house the next day—turn off the water so thirsty “hungover chicks have to leave to survive.”
It’s a steep learning curve that sees her have flings with the above-mentioned bartender—“He’s sexual sorbet,” says Robin—and single father David (Damon Wayans Jr.) as several other characters swirl around her. Her workaholic sister Meg (Leslie Mann) begins a May-December relationship with Ken (Jake Lacy) while upstairs neighbour Lucy (Alison Brie) searches Manhattan looking for Mr. Right.
“How to be Single” is a messy retelling of Liz Tuccillo’s novel of the same name. It’s part slapstick comedy, part heart-tugger, part coming-of-age. The kitchen sink approach isn’t as bad as it sounds because director Christian Ditter has taken pains to cast the right people in the right roles. Wilson provides over-the-top comic relief—I don’t know if she has any range, but she’s very funny here—the guys represent various stereotypes—the playboy, the damaged single father, the puppy dog—and Mann makes the most of a role we’ve seen before, the workaholic who feels the ticking clock.
It’s a nice, appealing ensemble but it’s Johnson who brings the charm. She has a natural way about her, like Greta Gerwig gone slightly Hollywood, that allows complex emotions bleed through a seemingly simple performance. She makes Alice compelling, delivering funny lines—“I’ll be alone forever but at least my dead body will be food for the cats.”—and sad with equal skill.
“How to be Single” doesn’t add much, other than entertainment value, to the genre. Its basic premise is blurred as everyone ends up with someone—some romantically, some platonically, all hooked up—following the film’s sombre realization that being alone is OK as long as you aren’t… I don’t know, lonely? As a statement on modern relationships it’s muddled—”Why do we always tell our stories through relationships?” it asks, before doing just that.—but it does deliver enough laughs and romance to make it a pleasing enough Valentine’s Day diversion.
Don’t expect the usual kid-friendly superhero fare from “Deadpool.” He’s part of the Marvel family, a distant cousin to Iron Man, The Hulk and Captain America, but he’s a superantihero, a weaponized bad attitude come-to-life with a chip on his shoulder and a raunchy quip on his lips.
Ryan Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, a former Special Services operative who now spends his days as the “Patron Saint of the Pitiful,” a mercenary who takes care of life’s little problems for people who can’t take care of themselves. “I’m a bad guy who get paid to BLEEP worse guys,” he says. When he meets Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin) he finally feels like he has a shot at a normal—or at least normalish—life.
They’re a match made in heaven. “Ever had a cigarette put out on your skin?” she coos. “Where else do you put them out,” he says. In love, they have plans to get married until he is diagnosed with late stage liver, prostate and brain cancer. Grasping at straws he signs up for an experimental treatment that promises to cure his disease. Instead, he is subjected to round-the-clock torture by an evil doctor named Francis (Ed Skrein), who uses immense physical stress to trigger super power mutations in his patients.
The treatment leaves him disfigured, both physically—”You look like an avocado had sex with an older avocado,” says his best friend.—and mentally—the treatment “cell stomped my sanity,” he says.—but with accelerated healing powers and a sarcastic way with a word that earns him the nickname The Merc [mercenary] with the Mouth.
Estranged from Vanessa, who thinks he’s dead, he searches for Frances, the only person who can right the wrongs done to him and give him back his life. Decked out in red leather suit that resembles a Spider-Man ninja costume—Why is it red? “So bad guys can’t see me bleed.”–he adopts the alter ego Deadpool.
“Deadpool” is unlike any other origin story. It’s a snarky, violent, fourth-wall-breaking collision between “Van Wilder” and Marvel Comics. The opening credits–which scream the movie stars God’s Perfect Idiot, A Hot Girl, A British Villain, A CGI Character and features a Gratuitous Cameo–set the tone. This isn’t your grandfather’s superhero movie. With one bloody shot across the bow “Deadpool” makes the other Marvel movies look a little less Marvel-ous. No joke is too crass. No lines are left uncrossed. Where the last couple of Marvel superhero films have felt like odes to market research, “Deadpool” feels like an antidote to the repetition of recent superhero offerings. Politically incorrect and rowdy, it’s a down-and-dirty movie that has more in common with “The Toxic Avenger” than “Iron Man.”
This may be the role Reynolds has been waiting for. It mixes-and-matches his skill at dropping a one liner with his physical side and finally gives his bland leading man mien some edge. Self-effacing, he pokes fun at his other attempts at superhero notoriety. “Please don’t make this super suit green or animated,” says the former Green Lantern and suddenly we forgive his past transgressions.
“Deadpool” won’t be for everyone. It’s occasionally a little too rude and crude, bloody and bowed for it’s own good but at least it tries to do something a little different in the well-worn context of the superhero genre. It exists in a meta universe where Deadpool is aware he’s in a movie–“Whose BLEEP did I have to BLEEP to get my own movie?” he asks.–while another character suggests the name Deadpool “sounds like a franchise.” I hope so. Like them or not, superhero movies aren’t going anywhere soon but at least every now and again there may be a new “Deadpool” film to shake things up a bit.
“Zoolander 2,” the fifteen years in the making follow-up to the 2001 comedy hit, finds former “Blue Steel” supermodel Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) “out of fashion,” literally and figuratively. Following a tragic event involving his wife and his Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good, Derek stepped away from fashion and the world. He now lives the life of a “hermit crab,” complete with a long beard that obscures his “really, really, really, really, really ridiculously good looking face.”
When some of the most beautiful people in the world turn up dead, their Instagram images frozen in time in perma-duckface, Derek’s most famous facial expression, Zoolander and his past partner Hansel (Owen Wilson) are tricked into travelling to Rome to uncover who is behind this evil plot to rid the world of good looking celebrities.
In the Eternal City the dim-witted models will search for Derek’s long-lost son—whose blood may contain the secret to eternal fashionability—battle fashion criminal Mugato (Will Ferrell) and meet new high-powered fashionista All (Benedict Cumberbatch). Aiding the boys is Valentina (Penélope Cruz), a former swimsuit model troubled by her inability to “transition to print and runway work,” now working as an agent for Interpol’s Global Fashion Division.
“Zoolander 2’s” main joke isn’t the Blue Steel, the pouty-lipped move that made Zoolander a superstar, or the dim-witted antics of Derek and Hansel. No, the movie’s best joke is its commentary on how quickly the best-by date comes for modern day celebrities. The speed of popular culture has revved considerably since 2001 and what seems hip today may be passé tomorrow. Fashion is fleeting, as cameos from Anna Wintour, Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Jacobs demonstrate, but the big question is has “Zoolander 2” reached its expiration date?
I usually avoid the scatological in my reviews but suffice to say any movie whose best joke involves the morphing of the word “faces” into feces over and over, that features a hotel made of “reclaimed human waste” and subtitles itself with “No. 2” is really asking for it.
To put it more delicately, villain Mugato marvels at how “super white hot blazingly stupid” Derek is, and you’ll do the same thing about the film. Stupid can be OK if it’s funny but “Zoolander 2” leaves the laughs on the runway. Stiller’s mugging gets tired quickly and the simple, juvenile jokes were much funnier fifteen years ago when we heard them the first time. To use the movie’s own dialogue against itself, “You guys are so old-school,” says Don Atari (Kyle Mooney), “so lame.”
Stiller, who directs and co-wrote the script, jam packs every frame with with cameos in a desperate grab for relevancy. Everyone from Justin Bieber (who appearance may please non- Beliebers) to Joe Jonas and Katy Perry to Ariana Grande decorate the screen, while Susan Sarandon does a “Rocky Horror” call back and Billy Zane demonstrates that he is no longer an actor, but a pop-culture punchline. I doubt even Neil deGrasse Tyson could scientifically explain why he chose to appear in this dreck.
Fred Armisen as an eleven-year-old manager of social media tries his best to make his brief role strange-funny while Will Ferrell’s Mugatu is essentially an audition to play an alternate universe Bond villain.
The best thing about “Zoolander 2” that it is such a fashion faux pas and so desperately unfunny it’s hard to imagine Stiller and Company making a third one fifteen years from now.
The Coen Brothers have spent most of their careers as critical darlings, favourites of people like me who love the offbeat sensibility they bring to their films.
Their classic work, which includes O Brother Where Art Thou, Barton Fink and of course, the Oscar winning Fargo dates back to the early eighties with their breathtaking debut Blood Simple.
The Coens made their name mixing off-the-wall comedy with crime stories. Raising Arizona redefined quirky and The Big Lebowski is a cult classic.
The sibling directors set their new film Hail, Caesar! in a fictional movie studio called Capitol Pictures but populated the story with characters ripped from Hollywood history. Josh Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s legendary producer and “fixer.” In Tinseltown’s Golden Age Mannix solved star’s problems, allegedly using his influence to keep some of the most notorious crimes and scandals on the LAPD blotter under wraps.
They don’t hit a homerun every time up at bat—their romantic comedy Intolerable Cruelty lacked both romance and comedy and The Ladykillers was an ill-advised remake of an Ealing Studios classic—but their genre-jumping resume contains many marvellous films that are as varied, subject wise, as they are entertaining.
Here are three of their movies that translate easily from the arthouse to your house.
No Country for Old Men: The Coens faithfully adapted Cormac McCarthy’s novel, keeping the dark humor, unbearable suspense and high body count—the ultra-violence would make David Cronenberg proud—while at the same time tightening up their notoriously loose narrative style. This is muscular filmmaking, highly structured but not predictable; it’s well paced and suspenseful. Couple the terrific story with great performances and beautiful New Mexico photography and the result is one of their best films.
A Serious Man: Though billed as a comedy, this may be the bleakest film the Coen Brothers have ever made. And remember these are the guys who once stuffed someone in a wood chipper on film. The story of a man who thought he did everything right, only to be jabbed in the eye by the fickle finger of fate is a tragiomedy that shows how ruthless real life can be. Set in 1967 Minnesota A Serious Man is apparently a thinly veiled look at the early life of the Coens, and if this is true, they deserve the designation of tortured artists. This film is darkly brilliant and funny, but a celebration of life it ain’t.
Inside Llewyn Davis: This one is a fictional look at the vibrant 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene. Imagine the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan come to life and you’ll get the idea. More a character study than a traditional narrative, Inside Llewyn Davis lives up to its name by painting a vivid portrait of its main character, played by Star Wars’ star Oscar Isaac. Sharp-eyed folkies will note not-so-coincidental similarities between the people Llewyn meets and real-life types like Tom Paxton, Alert Grossman and Mary Travers, but this isn’t a history, it’s a feel. It gives us an under-the-covers look at the struggles and naked ambition it takes to get noticed. Once you get inside Llewyn’s head you probably won’t want to hang out with the guy in real life, but you won’t regret spending two cinematic hours with him.
Coen Brothers fans will recognize the backdrop of “Hail, Caesar!,” the new screwball comedy from the prolific siblings. Fifteen years ago they doomed screenwriter Barton Fink (John Turturro) to a hellish stint fighting writer’s block at Capitol Studios. This time around the fictional studio is the setting for one day in the life of a Hollywood fixer.
James Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, a shady figure from Tinseltown’s Golden Age. Loosely based on the legendary MGM “producer” of the same name, he solves star’s problems, using his influence to keep some of the most notorious crimes and scandals on the LAPD blotter under wraps. He is, an associate says, a babysitter to “oddballs and misfits.”
As Capitol’s “Head of Physical Production” he’s about to have the busiest day of his career when an up-and-coming starlet is caught in a compromising “French postcard situation” while his leading lady, DeeAnna Moran’s (an Esther Williams-esque Scarlett Johansson), is about to have an out-of-wedlock baby. “is there any way she can adopt her own child?” he wonders.
If that wasn’t enough Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), the studio’s biggest star, is drugged and kidnapped from the set of his sword-and-sandal epic Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ. “This is bad!” exclaims actor Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich). “Bad for movie stars everywhere.”
The action revolves around Brolin’s character, but this is truly an ensemble piece made up of many moving parts. Maybe too many.
“Hail, Caesar!” is a buoyant movie and when it is firing on all cylinders it can only be described as delightful. Clooney’s stagey reaction to meeting Jesus in the movie-within-the-movie—“Squint against the grandeur!”—and Ralph Fiennes as the marvellously named director Laurence Laurentz giving southern hick Hobie an on-set lesson in elocution—“Would that it were so simple.”—are a slices of comedic heaven. An editing mishap involving Frances McDormand, a scarf and a cigarette and Johansson’s hard-boiled dame accent are great character pieces while Channing Tatum channels Gene Kelly in an athletic tour-de-force dance number called “No Dames.” Add to that a breakout performance from Ehrenreich and the wonky Coen sensibility and you have a movie with much to admire.
It’s the other stuff, the connective tissue, that doesn’t hold up. In “Hail, Caesar!” the Coens seem more interested in set pieces than story. In between inspired bits—see above—the movie meanders looking for Mannix to bind it together. Brolin certainly looks the part of a 1950s tough guy but he is a device more than a character. His job is to connect the various story threads but he gets lost between the subplots. From communism to wayward movie stars to nosy twin gossip columnists (both played by Tilda Swinton) and manufactured romances the Coens leave no old Hollywood stone unturned.
“Hail, Caesar!” doesn’t quite come together as a fully formed movie but it does play as a love letter to the cinema. Its a satirical portrait of Hollywood’s Golden Age and the underlying message about the importance of movies should appeal to cinephiles but may have less impact on casual viewers.
