When I recently spoke with Anthony Daniels, the “Star Wars” legend who has played C-3PO for almost fifty years, I let two bad words escape my mouth. “You said the two horror words in the English language: ‘holiday special,’” he said with a laugh. “It remains one of the most shocking, undignified pieces of non-entertainment. Something so abusive of the basic premise of ‘Star Wars.’”
To be clear, he was talking about “The Star Wars Holiday Special,” not the new “The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special,” a new animated movie now playing on Disney+, but his reaction speaks to the legend of the 1978 Christmas show. It’s been called “the worst two hours of television ever.” It’s so cringy Nathan Rabin wrote, “I’m not convinced the special wasn’t ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine.”
Against that intergalactically awful backdrop comes a new special that shares nothing with the original save for the “Star Wars” DNA and the celebration of Life Day.
Chronologically placed after the events of “Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker,” as the film begins ‘twas the night before Life Day, in a galaxy far, far away. Jedi Rey and roly-poly robot BB-8 are on a journey to Kashyyyk, the tropical, forested Wookiee home world in a quest for a deeper understanding of the Force.
Back at the Millennium Falcon preparations are underway for the Wookiee festival of Life Day celebrations as Rey is diverted, thrown off course by a key that unlocks the galaxy’s past. Travelling across space and time, she goes on an intergalactic adventure that puts her in contact with many of “Star Wars’” most beloved and villainous characters.
Question is, will she make it home to celebrate the most important day on the Wookiee calendar with her pals?
If you are going to riff off one of the silliest shows of all time, you should be at least sorta silly. The bland humour of “The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special” doesn’t compare in any way to the inventive, anarchic spirit or the frenetic storytelling of the big-screen LEGO movies. Those movies break the rules, whereas “The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special” feels tame, afraid to take chances in the melding of two beloved franchises. It often seems like an excuse to take threadbare holiday themes of the importance of family and finding the true spirit of the season and moulding them around familiar characters.
The good news is “The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special” is a step up from “The Star Wars Holiday Special.” But, then again, almost everything is. See the above comment from Anthony Daniels. Other than some silly Dark Side moments, it feels like a franchise unwilling to really let go and have some fun. It needs a touch more “What Can You Get A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb?)” and touch less of playing it safe.
“Sound of Metal,” a new drama starring “Rogue One’s” Riz Ahmed, is a cautionary tale about getting what you wish for.
Ahmed is Ruben, a drummer in Blackgammon, a heavy metal duo fronted by his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke). The pair live in an RV, criss-crossing the country on tour before going into the studio to make an album. He’s an aggressive player, part Lars Ulrich, part Chuck Biscuits, whose booming style is the sound of frustration and bellicosity manifested on stage six nights a week. At a gig in Missouri his ears ring and soon stop working. On stage and off all he hears is a muffled roar. A visit to the doctor reveals he has lost more than seventy percent of his hearing is gone and won’t come back. “Eliminate all exposure to loud noises,” he’s told. “Your first responsibility is to preserve the hearing you have left.”
As he and Lou try and plot a way forward Ruben becomes obsessed with the idea of cochlear implant surgery than accepting his hearing loss. At a cost of $40-$80,000 they are out of reach for now so in the short-term Lou takes Ruben, who has been sober for four years, to a “clean” house, run by deaf counselor Joe (Paul Raci). He’s welcome to stay but this is a solo gig. As Ruben learns how to be deaf Lou must give him space. In the coming weeks anger and dissatisfaction lead to acceptance as he learns about his new life but never lets go of the idea that implants will allow him to return to his old life. “Our main tenet is that deafness is not a handicap,” says Joe, “not something to be fixed.”
“Sound of Metal” makes you walk a mile in Ruben’s shoes. Applying immersive sound design, writer-director Darius Marder toggles between Ruben’s point-of-view and real-world sounds. The muffled sound of the world filtered through his damaged ears portray his sensory deprivation in an intense way. As his desperation and frustration grow the sound design hammers home the devastating effects of hearing loss.
In addition, Marder close captions much of the film, dropping the subtitles when Ruben is learning sign language, once again involving the audience in his learning curve.
As Ruben, Ahmed brings a nervous energy to the role. He’s always in motion, unable to find a still moment for contemplation or acceptance. As his frustration gives way to a reluctant acceptance, he brings us along for the journey, giving us insight into a person’s whose life has been blown apart.
Raci as Joe, a Vietnam vet who lost his hearing in the war emerges as a force. In real life Raci grew up with deaf parents, is a Court Certified American Sign Language interpreter, and the lead singer for a heavy metal band that performs in American Sign Language. With great warmth, tinged with firmness, he steals every scene he’s in.
“Sound of Metal” is specific in its setting but ultimately is a story of accepting the curveballs life throws at you.
Formatted almost like a film school lecture, “Leap of Faith,” a new documentary about the making of “The Exorcist” and now streaming on Shudder, is a master class in how a classic movie was made.
In the almost fifty years after the release of a movie that was heralded as everything from “religious porn” to “pure cinematic terror,” “The Exorcist” has not lacked for critical analysis. Thousands of gallons of ink have been spilled printing books and articles on the subject while in the internet age everyone who has ever stepped into a theatre seems to have written something about the film. “Leap of Faith” does everyone who has ever posited an opinion on the film’s meaning one better. It goes to the source with an in-depth interview with the movie’s director William Friedkin.
Documentary filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe goes long with the director on the creative process, nailing down the definitive stories of how the 1973 horror film came to be. Much of the information was covered in the 2014 autobiography, “The Friedkin Connection,” but here the director’s way with a story and Philippe’s use of visuals makes the stories cinematic.
This isn’t a casual fan doc. Friedkin and Philippe dig deep to uncover the film’s visual influences—everything from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1955 “Ordet” to Magritte’s “The Empire of Light” series—to how recording the score ended a long-time friendship. There is great detail on the casting, the filming of controversial scenes and why star Max von Sydow, who once played Jesus in a film, had so much trouble performing one of “The Exorcist’s” most pious and famous sequences.
Over and over Friedkin talks about following his instincts and making decisions that either seemed counterintuitive or deemed too costly by the studio. “I didn’t question my instincts,” he says, which I suppose is at least part of the reason the film is called “Leap of Faith.” There’s the obvious reason and then there’s the small leaps of faith that those working with Friedkin had to take along the way. Hearing about his battles with everyone from studio heads on down to get his vision to the screen is an interesting reminder of Hollywood when creative vison could trump corporate interference.
“Leap of Faith” isn’t a flashy film. It’s a detailed, if straightforward, making of documentary that connects the dots between the filmmaker and his faith in an interesting, if long winded way.
COVID-19 has forced film distributors to get creative. Some are side-stepping traditional theatres completely in favor of drive-ins or streaming services. Other movies they release to iTunes and there’s even a resurgence in direct to DVD titles.
“The Donut King,” a new rags-to-riches-to-rags documentary from director Alice Gu may have the most unique release plan yet. Its distributor, Films We Like, is making the doc available to stream via top artisan donut (or, doughnut) shops across Canada. Each purchase of a stream, the press release says, “will help support these local purveyors of sweetness.”
Ted Ngoy is not a name you will recognize, but his influence in California is immeasurable. A refugee from the genocide in Cambodia, he relocated to Los Angeles in 1975 looking for a better life. “I could choose any country,” he says. “But I chose America because I love America.” After a series of odd jobs he enrolled in the three month training program at Winchell’s Donut House. A good student he absorbed everything about the business and soon went out on his own. “It was kind of ironic,” says food journalist Greg Nichols. “They trained the enemy.”
Within four years he had 25 donut shops and would soon build an empire of 65 stores so pervasive it kept Dunkin’ Donuts out of the L.A. marketplace. “It spread like wildfire,” he says. He was a self-made millionaire who lived a high life, made $100,000 a month and lived in a giant mansion, complete with a chandelier that wouldn’t be out of place in Versailles and an elevator. “My parents enjoyed the fruits of their labor,” says one son.
Ngoy had the trappings of wealth but also used his money to sponsor and mentor thousands of other Cambodian refugees. It is estimated that almost 90% of all the donuts sold in California are made by Cambodian immigrants who can trace their businesses back to the Donut King.
His great success, however, was followed by a great fall as his American Dream becomes a nightmare.
“The Donut King” isn’t all sweet but it is a treat. The detailed background accounts of the fall of Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge are wrenching and Ngoy’s fall from grace, having thrown away the family’s business and money, is shocking. “It’s a monster in me,” he says of his gambling addiction. “The more you chase, the more it is gone.”
Gu presents the downfall effectively with a series of fast cut talking head style interviews with fiends and family. By the time they sell the last donut shop for $85,000 in cash—which goes missing—the story functions as a cautionary tale of unchecked ambition.
By the end “The Donut King” takes a more traditional approach, winding things up with a Food Network style wrap up that tells the story of the next generation of Donut Kings and Queens. It’s an uplifting end to a story with more flavours than your corner donut shop.
“Rustic Oracle,” a hard-hitting new drama written and directed by Sonia Bonspille Boileau and now on VOD, begins with a trigger warning. “This film contains scenes and themes that may be traumatic or cause anxiety to some individuals.” It is a sobering start to a movie that explores a story experienced by countless Indigenous families who have faced trauma caused by the disappearance of a loved one.
Set in the mid-1990s, the story involves single mother Susan (Carmen Moore) living in a Mohawk community with her two daughters, 8-year-old Ivy (Lake Delisle) and teenager Heather (McKenzie Deer Robinson). The sisters are very close but Heather and her mom regularly bash heads. After one big blow out Heather disappears. She doesn’t pick Ivy up from school and is nowhere to be found. Fearing the worst Susan contacts the police. When they are no help Susan and Ivy begin their own investigation, beginning with an older boy, a suspected drug dealer, Heather was last seen talking to on the schoolground. As they hit the road, following clues throughout Ontario and Quebec, Ivy is plagued by nightmarish visions of her sister’s fate as she tries to make sense of a senseless situation.
There is a naturalism to “Rustic Oracle” which perhaps stems from the origin of the story. Boileau based the film on her teenage experience growing up in Kanehsatake, a settlement on the shore of the Lake of Two Mountains in southwestern Quebec. The realism and heartbreak on display is deeply felt and deeply affecting. The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is one of the most important, yet frequently overlooked, social ills in our country. Heather’s story, as seen through the eyes of an innocent, 8-year-old Ivy, is fictional, but it is an important entry into a much larger story. As the film’s end credit sequence tells us, “Although Indigenous women represent only 4% of the Canadian population, they represent one-quarter of the country’s missing and murdered cases and at least half of all sex trafficking victims. It is currently estimated that we have lost close to 4000 of our Indigenous sisters in the last 40 years.”
Written, directed and produced by an Indigenous team, “Rustic Oracle” is a powerful story that with several unforgettable moments. In one heart-wrenching scene, Ivy sees her sister’s missing posters covered by mundane places to let and lost animal flyers. It’s a small moment that brings crystal clear clarity to years of institutional cover-ups and ignorance. It’s in moments like this that the film is most effective.
On the Saturday November 14, 2020 episode of “Pop Life” we meet Canadian icon Gordon Lightfoot, in a special interview shot at his home. He talks about childhood singing with the Orillia St. Paul’s United Church, writing songs and his favorite cover version of all of his songs… and you’ll never guess what it is.
Then, the “Pop Life” panel, opera star Measha Brueggergosman, broadcaster Denise Donlan and filmaker Paul Saltzman discuss what makes a legend.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s 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 rock legends Sting and Bob Geldof, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
A more accurate title for “Freaky,” the new Vince Vaughn slasher comedy now playing in theatres, might have been “Freaky Friday the 13th.” A mix and match of the classic body swapping kid’s comedy and the Jason Voorhees horror movies, it has laughs and a surprisingly high body count.
The film opens with a killer on the rampage. The Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn), part urban legend, part serial killer, is doing what he does best, finding interesting ways to murder young, attractive people. In an attempt to gain supernatural powers he stabs teenage outcast Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) with a ceremonial knife called the La Dola Dagger. Something mystical happens, alright, but not the transformation the Butcher hoped for. As he stabs the high school senior, they switch bodies. The hulking serial killer’s body is now inhabited by Millie’s essence and vice versa. According to the legend of the dagger they have just twenty-four hours to reverse the curse or they will be trapped in the wrong bodies forever. “Look, I know I look like The Butcher. But it’s Millie.”
Part of the built-in fun of director Christopher Landon’s “Freaky” is Vaughn’s performance. His change from menacing killer to teenager is as ridiculous as it sounds, but it takes advantage of the actor’s comedy chops. He adopts Millie’s mannerisms in subtle ways and adds in other touches, like constantly bumping his head because her new body is a foot or so taller than the old one. He even brings a genuine lightness to a budding romance between his alter ego and her crush Booker (Uriah Shelton). By the time he proves that he’s actually Millie in the Butcher’s body by answering questions—“I tell people my favorite movie is Eternal Sunshine but it’s actually Pitch Perfect 2.”—the transformation is complete. It’s fun work from an actor whose recent resume doesn’t contain many laughs.
“Freaky” rides the line between slasher movie, dark comedy and satire. As it has fun with high-school stereotypes it delivers some genuinely creepy moments even if Landon has some trouble calibrating the humour and the horror. After a strong start, and some engaging moments, it gets trapped trying to reinvent the movies that inspired it.
The plot of “Ammonite,” a new romantic drama starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan now playing in theatres, is simple but the film is not. A complex study of love, what it lacks in plot it makes up for in masterful performances.
Set in the 1840s, Winslet plays self-taught paleontologist Mary Anning. Her scientific glory days behind her, she now supports her ailing mother (Gemma Jones) selling fossils found on a nearby beach in the barren Southern English coastline of Lyme Regis. Still feeling the sting of the breakup of her last relationship with fossil-hunter Elizabeth Philpot (Fiona Shaw), she has developed a an exterior as hard as the rocks she cracks open to find fossils.
When wealthy Scottish geologist Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), whose wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) suffers from “mild melancholia,” passes through Lyme Regis, he hires Mary to look after his wife while he travels.
It’s not an easy fit. Mary is all work and no play, but needs Murchison’s money. Charlotte is used to being coddled and of getting her own way from the hired help. Soon, it becomes apparent that Charlotte’s melancholia is caused by a lack of passion in her marriage, a excitement she rediscovers with Mary.
Director Francis Lee begins the picture in a shroud of grey. Dull matte hangs over every frame of the film, echoing the icy relationship between… well, almost everyone on screen. As Mary and Charlotte’s relationship heats up, so does the movie’s visual sense. Colours are introduced and flowers, once mere stems, bloom. It’s a lovely backdrop for the blossoming of love, or at the very least, infatuation.
“Ammonite” is, first and foremost, a vehicle for two wonderful performances. Ronan and Winslet deliver austere, quiet performance but share electrifying chemistry. Their initial disdain of one another is palatable, and later, their attraction is fervid. Even when they aren’t reciting pages of dialogue, their inner most thoughts are clear and unmistakable. Every gesture and glance fills in a blank and helps move the story forward.
Despite the passion from the leads “Ammonite” feels listless for much of its running time. It’s a serious story—although apparently not based on the actual facts of the real-life Mary Anning’s life—that feels as though it is trying to exerting a sense of gravitas through spare dialogue, depiction of grief and the use fossils as a metaphor for what was once alive and vital.
