Ewan McGregor makes his directorial debut with “American Pastoral,” a crime-drama based on a novel by Phillip Roth. He deftly presents nice performances from Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly, Rupert Evans and Valorie Curry but tells a story that feels disjointed.
McGregor stars as Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov, a man with a charmed life. He was a football star in high school, married Dawn (Connelly) his beautiful girlfriend, inherited a thriving business and was blessed with a daughter, Merry (played by Hannah Nordberg as a child, Fanning as a teen). He was “Our hero, our Kennedy,” says a schoolmate.
When little Merry, aged eleven, sees a news report of Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burning himself to death to protest the war in Vietnam, it awakens something inside her. “Why does that gentle man have to burn himself?” she cries. “Doesn’t anyone care? Doesn’t anyone have a conscience?”
Cut to several years later. Merry is now a politically engaged revolutionary teenager living under her father’s suburban Old Rim Rock, New Jersey roof. She calls the president, “Linden ‘Baby Burner’ Johnson,” and heads off to meet her radical friends in New York whenever possible. “What do you care about the war?” she shrieks at her parents. “You’re just contented middle-class people!”
The ‘Swede,’ concerned about his daughter’s behaviour forbids her to go to the city. Instead, he suggests, why doesn’t she protest a little closer to home? When the local post office blows up, killing the postmaster, and Merry disappears the human cost of her actions becomes clear. The bomb destroys the building, kills a man and presents ‘Swede’ with the first crisis of his charmed life.
“American Pastoral” is a handsome movie that tackles one of the most tumultuous times in American history. McGregor gets inside the stateside protest of the Vietnam War by keeping the story tight, focussed on one family and the devastating effect of radicalism has on them and, peripherally, on the victims of Merry’s crimes. Getting inside the head of a young woman driven to push away the comfy-cosy life provided by her wealthy parents for a life on the run would be fascinating. Too bad it isn’t here. Instead, Fanning plays Merry like a petulant teen, more likely to sneak out to meet boys than blow up government buildings.
Ditto the resulting toll Merry’s actions take on her decent, hardworking parents. Dawn falls apart, ending up in hospital before taking the most superficial way out of her heartbreaking problems.
There’s an affair and some intrigue but it’s all skin deep. There are many shots of McGregor looking concerned, but the full weight of the family’s tragedy is never truly felt. It feels by times as though sections of the movie are missing, either edited out from a longer version or left unfilmed. It’s a shame because what could have been an interesting look at what happens when radicalization comes home is neutered by some swiss cheese storytelling—lots of holes.
On Sunday October 23, 2016 Richard hosted a Q&A with Hollywood legend Warren Beatty and actress Lily Collins. Beatty wrote, co-produced, directed and stars in “Rules Don’t Apply,” co-starring Collins as a young, naive woman who comes to Hollywood in the late 1950s.
In the spirited question and answer session Beatty met his Toronto doppelgänger (another man named Warren Beatty) who said he frequently gets upgraded in hotels because of his name. When asked about politics and the current American election, Beatty said he has one reply he gives everyone who asks. “Don’t get me started!”
“Rules Don’t Apply” opens everywhere on November 23, 2016.
Jason Zinoman says one of the pleasures of getting scared at the movies is “that it focuses the mind.” The author of Shock Value, a book about horror films, uses the example of a baby being born.
“Try to imagine the shock of one world running into another,” he writes. “Nothing is familiar and the slightest detail registers as shockingly new. Think of the futility of trying to process what is going on. No wonder they scream.
“Overwhelming terror,” Zinoman continues, “may be the closest we ever get to the feeling of being born.”
Whether it’s as deep seeded as that or not, there is no denying terror is a primal feeling. It’s part of our DNA but, counter intuitively, it isn’t horrible when experienced at the movies.
Sam Zimmerman, the co-curator of the new horror streaming service Shudder, says watching scary movies is, “a beautiful way of confronting our anxieties and fears and laughing at those anxieties and fears. It’s a way of touching the void without actually stepping foot in it.”
Zimmerman, along with long time Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes, have populated Shudder with a comprehensive collection of horror films from around the globe, everything from classic horror like The Hills Have Eyes and newer shockers such as Sadako vs. Kayako.
“We are a curated streaming service and we’re trying to find the perfect medium between the streaming service and the best aspects of what we got out of video store days.”
In short, Zimmerman says, there are four main criteria when programming the service: Is it really cool? Do we think our members will love it? Is it contextually or historically interesting? Or is it just awesome?
“We want you to really trust us,” he says.
“Whether the movies are under the radar or mainstream, we want you to feel like we’re looking out for what’s going on the service as opposed to just filling the service with an old thing just because it is horror.”
Available in the U.S. since last year, Shudder makes its Canadian debut on Oct. 20, just in time for Halloween.
“I think horror fans are optimists,” Zimmerman says. “I think we find the good in things even when the movie doesn’t come together as a whole, we’re really excited to point out what stuck with us within it. Horror can be made up of such striking imagery. Even when we watch movies as kids and perhaps now re-watch them and think, ‘It wasn’t that great a movie to begin with,’ we still remember those images that grabbed us. You can’t deny the power of that. I think we are inherently excited about what’s good about a movie.
“I also think horror fans are really film fans. Horror, at least for me, was a real gateway into experimental cinema and really surreal, strange work because of the nightmare logic of them.
“But I think it’s an avenue into all other sorts of arts and media.”
At the end of the day horror fans will check out Shudder not for a lesson in horror history but for the variety of chills and thrills. But why do people like to be terrified while watching movies? Alfred Hitchcock summed up the appeal of the scary movie in one brief sentence: “People like to be scared when they feel safe.”
Richard talks to “Mean Dreams” stars Sophie Nelisse and John Wiggins about what it was like working with acting greats Colm Feore and Bill Paxton on CTV’s NewChannel.
Welcome to the House of Crouse. C’mon on in, settle into a comfy chair by the fireplace and meet Cobie Smulders and director Uwe Boll. Cobie has been in action movies a plenty, but she’s rarely part of the action. That changes in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. She talks about it hear. Then Uwe tells us why, after making thirty movies, the critics won’t have him to kick around anymore. Join us. It’s more fun in here than it is out there!
Richard and CP24 anchor Stephanie Smythe have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the up-close-and-personal action of “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” the supernatural thrills of “Ouija: Origin of Evil,” the spy comedy “Keeping Up with the Joneses” and the new Canadian indie “Mean Dreams.”
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the up-close-and-personal action of “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” the supernatural thrills of “Ouija: Origin of Evil,” the spy comedy “Keeping Up with the Joneses” and the new Canadian indie “Mean Dreams.”
Ewan McGregor makes his directorial debut with “American Pastoral,” a crime-drama based on a novel by Phillip Roth. He deftly presents nice performances from Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly, Rupert Evans and Valorie Curry but tells a story that feels disjointed.
