Based on the play “Blackbird” by Scottish playwright David Harrower, “Una” is an uncomfortable look into an uncomfortable subject.
Rooney Mara is the title character, a twenty-something who takes action after seeing a picture of Ray (Ben Mendelsohn) in a magazine. The two have a past. Fifteen years earlier, when she was thirteen and Ray was a middle-aged man, he seduced her, a crime he paid for with four years in prison. “You wanted to be treated like an adult,” Ray says. “That’s what children say.”
Convinced his actions put her in a downward spiral, she goes to his place of work to confront him. He’s re-established himself with a new name, wife and job. She demands to know why he did what he did, and why he abandoned her when they were about to make a run for it and leave England to start a new life together.
What might have been a straightforward story of a search for answers defies preconceived audience expectations with the ethical landmines Harrower (who also wrote the script) plants along the way. In its most startling turn “Una” asks the audience to consider the interaction between Ray and Una, the abuser and the abused, as some kind of love story. Rooney and Mendelsohn, both very good in difficult roles, explore the thin lines the story draws between abuse and love, between right and wrong, between desire and guilt. It’s complicated and messy as Ray is forced to confront a past he’d rather subvert while Una looks for answers. “I don’t know anything about you except you abused me,” she says.
“Una” lurches headlong into controversial territory, unflinchingly presenting a painful story that offers no easy answers.
Laird Hamilton describes himself as “full of testosterone and just obnoxious.” That may have been true during his 1980s heyday as the world’s best big wave surfer, but these days he has channelled those qualities into an obsession with the ocean that drives him to grow and evolve, personally and professionally, with the sport.
In surfing circles Hamilton is a household. Less so on dry land. A new documentary from Rory Kennedy, “Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton,” aims to rectify that. Laird didn’t make his name the way other professional surfers did; he made his name by being innovative, moving away from mainstream surfing into the early days of wind surfing and acrobatic surf moves. “We all thought he was crazy,” says big wave surfer Terry Chung.
He did things no one else thought of. He put Velcro on his board, which allowed him to go airborne. He invented foil-boarding, a technique that allows him to glide above the water, as if he’s flying over the waves. It’s beautiful to behold but we get it, he’s an innovator. We don’t need to be told over and over.
There’s something that feels a bit too authorized about “Take Every Wave.” It feels like an exercise in legend building more than an in depth portrait of Hamilton. His early years as a troubled youth are detailed but once he hits the water the movie turns into a hagiography. Hamilton is a likeable subject, if a bit egomaniacal, but instead of digging deep and showing the consequence of his actions we’re given a Biography Channel level glimpse into his psyche.
On the upside the photography—both from director Kennedy and Hamilton’s Strapped Crew—is breathtaking. The primal power of the sea juxtaposed with one man’s notions of how to conquer it make for impressive visuals.
Also entertaining is the colourful lingo. “The ride after the ride,” is what happens when you wipe out and plummet to the bottom. Even better is the self-explanatory “wave of heaviest consequence.”
“Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton” has a few moments of intrigue, mostly from the first person tales of waves gone wrong. Other than that it’s a visually pleasing collection of Sport Illustrated style photography that offers little insight into Hamilton or the sport.
Freedom means different things to different people. “Freedom for the Wolf,” a new documentary from director Rupert Russell, takes a worldview on what liberty means for people in places where democracy is a new concept.
Drawing its name from philosopher Isaiah Berlin—“Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”—the film travels to Hong Kong, Tunisia, India and America to examine the reaction to the rise of a toxic mix of dictatorship and democracy called illiberal democracy. It’s an academic idea that comes to life once filtered through the experiences of Hong Kong’s Occupy Movement, #BlackLivesMatter in America, Tunisian rappers and Indian comedians.
Democracy, the film tells us, is experiencing an erosion of the freedoms that once were its cornerstones, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. We are shown how pro-Beijing forces in Hong Kong actively worked against the Occupy movement to squash the fundamentals of freedom. It’s a potent glimpse at how governments impose rules on freedom that erode the potency of the core idea.
“Freedom for the Wolf” takes large ideas and, by humanizing them, showing the people involved in the struggle for freedom, creates a vivid and thought provoking portrait of the struggle for the most basic of human rights.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s all-new talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, legendary rock star Meatloaf, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actor and best-selling author Chris Colfer, celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower, and many more.
Watch the fifth episode with stand up comedian and host of CNN’s “United Shades of America” W. Kamau Bell and the Gender Wars Panel, broadcasting legend Jeanne Beker, NewsChannel anchor Beverly Thomson and music journalist Michael Williams! They wonder if things improved when it comes to gender disparity. Watch the whole show HERE!
Watch all new shows every Saturday at 8:30 pm on Saturday or 2:30 pm on Sunday on the CTV NessChannel! (channel 1501 on Bell Fibe, 62 on Rogers)
Have things improved when it comes to gender disparity? The “Pop Life” panel, broadcasting legend Jeanne Beker, NewsChannel anchor Beverly Thomson and music journalist Michael Williams, shares their responses to different challenges women are facing.
This week on POP LIFE find out the first lesson in race ever given to “The Untied Shades of America” host W. Kamau Bell and stay for the Gender panel, Beverly Thomson, who takes about the pay gap, Jeanne Beker and Michael Williams.
Watch Beverly Thomson on the pay gap between men and women HERE!
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s all-new talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, legendary rock star Meatloaf, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actor and best-selling author Chris Colfer, celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower, and many more.
Watch Pop Life every Saturday at 8:30 pm and Sunday at 2:30 pm on the CTV NewsChannel, channel 1501 on Bell Fibe, 62 on Rogers.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s all-new talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, legendary rock star Meatloaf, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actor and best-selling author Chris Colfer, celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower, and many more.
Watch Pop Life every Saturday at 8:30 pm and Sunday at 2:30 pm on the CTV NewsChannel, channel 1501 on Bell Fibe, 62 on Rogers.
“Happy Death Day’s” advertising tagline sums up the entire plot in eight words. “Get Up. Live Your Day. Get Killed. Again.”
Like “Groundhog Day” with a terrifying twist, it’s the story of Tree Gelbman (“La La Land‘s” Jessica Rothe). She’s a sharp-tongued Bayfield University mean girl who begins her birthday, Monday October 18, waking up in the dorm room of a young guy named Carter (Israel Broussard). Hungover from the night before she’s late for class and has lunch with her sorority sisters before being stabbed to death by a stranger wearing a creepy Bayfield Babies mascot mask.
Stuck in the twilight zone, she’s forced to relive the day of her murder again and again. “Maybe I’m like a cat with nine lives,” she worries, “and I’m running out.” The only way to save her life is to search for clues and solve her own murder. Trouble is, the suspects could be anyone. “It could be the tiny girl at TJ Max I got fired,” she says, “or the Uber driver I spit on last week.” She is doomed to keep dying until she figures out who her killer is.
Blumhouse, “Happy Death Day’s” production company, are known for their low-budget high concept scares. They scored earlier this year with the brilliant “Get Out” and changed b-movie horror with their “Paranormal Activity” movies. Their latest thriller isn’t likely to be remembered as anything other than a politically incorrect thriller with a strong cast whose engaging performances keep the “today is the first day of the rest of your life… and death” premise interesting.
As snarky sorority sister Danielle newcomer Rachel Matthews is a scene-stealer elevates condescension to an art form and Broussard is goofily charming but it is Rothe’s movie. A combo of great comic timing, charisma and running mascara she does all the movie’s heavy lifting. Whether she’s in full-blown panic mode or on the inevitable journey of self discovery that comes with living your life on a loop—think Jennifer Garner’s “13 Going on 30” redemption—or cracking wise, she’s the star of the show.
“Happy Death Day” morphs from time loop murder mystery to spiritual rebirth story to romance to revenge all in a tight 90 minutes. The rewound days are varied enough to keep things interesting, with each new morning more frantic than the last. The PG13 rating means it’s not a thrill-a-minute but in addition to the fun performances it also has a few vulgar laughs, a few shocks and enough twists to be worth the price of the popcorn.
Kids know and love martial arts legend Jackie Chan from flicks like “The LEGO Ninjago Movie” and “The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature.” With the release of the revenge drama “The Foreigner” he’s back into adult territory.
Sixty-three-year-old Chan plays London-based restaurateur Quan Ngoc Minh whose daughter Fan (Katie Leung) is an innocent victim of a bomb attack on a fancy Knightsbridge dress shop perpetrated by a group called the Authentic IRA. Stricken with grief and fuelled by anger he embarks on a mission to track down the people responsible for killing his child. His journey of revenge takes him to Belfast where he zeros in on Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan), a Martin McGuinness type politician and former IRA member.
Quan, as it turns out, while old, frail looking is no one to be trifled with. I mean, this is Jackie Chan we’re talking about here. Before he was the counter man at the Happy Peacock Restaurant he was a special forces solider, trained in all manner of bomb laying and bone breaking. When Hennessy rebuffs Quan, denying any knowledge of the murderous events—“I realize you are angry,” he says, “but there’s not much I can do.”—and kicking the desperate man out of his office, he sets into motion a series of events that will see the restaurateur show his true colours.
“The Foreigner” is an action film but when the fists aren’t flying it concentrates on the fraying edges of Hennessy’s political career.
Chan’s presence dropkicks what is otherwise a rather straightforward story of revenge, directed with simple elegance by Martin Campbell, into the realm of the enjoyable. He walks like a hunched over grandpa but packs a punch like Bruce Lee.
There’s a buzz that comes with a Jackie Chan fight scene. Who else, at an age when CARP brochures start showing up in the mail, would jump through a window, grab hold of a drainage pipe and slide 20 feet down to a rooftop. Jackie Chan, that’s who. The action feels real because it is and that authenticity gives “The Foreigner” much of its electro-charge.
Brosnan is a coiled spring, a politician with secrets and an iron will. His tale of political intrigue overshadows Quan‘s story—Chan disappears for a big chunk of the movie—but it does give him a chance to chew the scenery and have some fun.
“The Foreigner” isn’t a memorable movie but it is a welcome return to the action genre for Chan and Brosnan after too long a time away.
