The road to legal weed has been a twisty, turny journey with many strange detours along the way, including a Canadian study called Project Venus. A new film, “The Marijuana Conspiracy,” now on VOD, details the inner workings of a true-to-life experiment that assigned “toke times” to a group of female test subjects.
Set in 1972, the story begins as a group of young women are recruited to take part, as paid subjects, in a provincially funded cannabis study. The women were isolated and supplied with marijuana. In return a team of nurses and scientists studied their reactions and did brain, kidney and blood tests.
What the women didn’t know is that they are being used as shills, test subjects in a clinical investigation determined to prove that marijuana use will lead to lowered productivity.
When the 98-day study didn’t return the results the organizers hoped for, they secretly increased the THC levels in an attempt to prove their hypothesis that smoking weed will lead to some kind of reefer madness.
“The Marihuana Conspiracy” is a multi-pronged story. It’s an historical exposé of the unethical treatment of human subjects in a bogus medical study. In light of the pandemic, it’s also a timely comment on the efficacy of government studies in regards to health concerns. Most of all, and best of all, it is also a carefully constructed portrait of the friendship and resilience of the women.
Director and screenwriter Craig Pryce gives the ensemble cast time to establish their characters and allow the audience to understand why each and every one of them signed up for this unorthodox experiment. What could have been an exercise in finger pointing instead has a deep core of humanity. As we follow these characters they grow and adapt to their circumstances, always with an eye to the future. Solid performances from Tymika Tafari, Julia Sarah Stone, Morgan Kohan, Kyla Avril Young and Alanna Bale and carefully curated 70s period details bring the individual stories to life. Marie Ward’s performance as Nurse Alice, imagine a Nurse Ratched type, has a nice, unexpected arc that adds layers of texture to an already detailed story.
“The Marijuana Conspiracy” mixes and matches docu-drama with humour and even a taste a of horror to tell an interesting story of ulterior motives, exploitation and regulation all bound together with empathy and just a bit of intrigue.
“The Courier,” a new Benedict Cumberbatch Cold War drama now on PVOD, is the mostly true tale of how an unassuming British businessman helped prevent World War III. “You must convince them you are an ordinary businessman,” he is told, “and nothing more than an ordinary businessman.”
Set in 1962, Cumberbatch is Greville Wynne, a buttoned-down Brit chosen by a joint task force, CIA agent Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan) and MI6’s Bertrand (Anton Lesser), to go undercover and act as a courier between them and Soviet officer Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze). Wynne’s down-to-earth manner and the fact that he already was doing business in Eastern Europe made him a perfect undercover agent.
As presented, the job was simple. Travel to Moscow under the pretense of work, up a package from Penkovsky and return home. Of course, international intrigue is never that easy, particularly when the information they are passing back and forth is related to preventing a nuclear confrontation.
When the Americans learn that Russia has positioned nuclear warheads on Cuba it becomes a race to get Penkovsky to safety. Out of a sense of loyalty to his business partner-turned-friend, Wynne volunteers to make one more trip to Russia.
“The Courier” is an old-fashioned espionage drama that is more about relationships than it is about James Bond style antics. Loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness go hand-in-hand in the complicated game of making the world a safer place and it is in its portrayal of those qualities that “The Courier” shines.
Wynne has several important relationships in the film. There is his wife, Jessie Buckley bringing much to an underwritten role, and his handler Emily, but it is with Penkovsky that he truly bonds. Trust forms over dinners and even at the ballet, but it is their shared desire to prevent a war that binds them.
Cumberbatch brings much to the role, allowing true feelings to slip past Wynne’s stiff-upper-lip. It’s subtle yet commanding work that steers the film past its grey-ish, icy façade to a place where the cloak-and-dagger story becomes driven by feelings and not intrigue.
Cumberbatch‘s wouldn’t be nearly as effective if he didn’t have such a strong actor playing Penkovsky. Ninidze plays the Russian as an idealogue, a man convinced his country is playing a very dangerous game with the world, It’s a quietly powerful performance, one where what he doesn’t say is as important as what he does say. Ninidze nails it, playing a man whose every move could have massive consequences for him and his family.
“The Courier” is a welcome addition to the Cold War genre.
Father Peter (Guy Pearce) is a priest with a past I the new exorcism drama “The Seventh Day,” now on VOD.
The rough-and-tumble holy man comes complete with Sonny Crockett stubble, a fistful of smokes and a muscle car. He’s a badass who says, “An exorcist doesn’t hide from evil. He runs TOWARD it, feels the evil in his bones and can sense when it’s close.”
He stands in stark contrast to his latest protégé, novice priest Father Daniel (Vadhir Derbez). The trainee does not have his mentor’s swagger and Father Peter is less than impressed with Daniel‘s “two grueling weeks of exorcist nursery school.”
Nonetheless, the duo are a team, buddy exorcists off in search of evil to expunge. After a run in with the devil at a homeless encampment they come across Charlie (Brady Jenness), a pre-teen who murdered his family with an axe. Is he a bad kid or is he possessed by the devil?
“The Seventh Day” starts strong with the exorcism gone wrong that formed Father Peter’s hardened exterior. “The evil was the strongest I’ve ever seen,” he says. Unfortunately, after that it goes downhill faster than you can say “Father Karras” three times fast. The mix-and-match of “Training Day” with “The Exorcist” could have offered up some edgy thrills but instead falls prey to clichés borrowed from dozens of other devil movies dating back to when Father Merrin first bellowed, “The power of Christ compels you!”
Pearce, who also co-produced, attempts to inject some life into “The Seventh Day” with a big hammy performance but his flamboyance is counter-balanced by flat work from Derbez whose work mimics the film’s listless pacing.
“The Seventh Day” seeks to reinvent the exorcism movie via the buddy cop genre but succeeds only in combing the most hackneyed bits of each.
It’s difficult to know how to classify “The Violent Heart,” a new movie on VOD starring Emmy nominee Jovan Adepo and Grace Van Patten. It’s part “Romeo & Juliet,” part thriller and mostly melodrama. Director Kerem Sanga juggles the movie’s tonal shifts to create a movie about the aftershocks of trauma.
Set in the American heartland, the story centers around twenty-four-year-old Daniel (Jovan Adepo), a small-town mechanic struggling to move forward with his life after the murder of his sister, which he witnessed, and a stint in jail for accidentally blinding a schoolmate. When 18-year-old high school student Cassie (Grace Van Patten) drops off her dad’s (Lukas Haas) car to the autobody shop, sparks fly and romance blossoms.
Despite her parent’s disapproval the young couple bring out the best in one another, sharing secrets as Cassie encourages Daniel to follow his dream of joining the Marines. Both are looking to the future but soon learn tragic lessons on how the past has a nasty way of sneaking up from behind.
“The Violent Heart” never really gets the pulse racing, but is made compelling by the chemistry between the two charismatic leads, Adepo and Van Patten.
Adepo exposes Daniel’s deep wounds, psychological trauma that manifests itself in angry outbursts. “You start to not even notice it,” he says of his deeply rooted ire. “You just kind of become an angry person.” Still, he’s a work in progress, with his eyes locked on a better future. It’s an impressive, internal performance.
Van Patten is more external, a naïve young woman whose confidence is shaken by secrets and echoes from the past.
Together they are compelling, overcoming obstacles as a couple. But when “The Violent Heart” makes a hard U-Turn from star-crossed lovers into a detective story it loses itself in the plot’s twists and turns.
The supporting cast, including Mary J. Blige as Daniel’s mother and Haas as Cassie’s dad, do what they can with underwritten roles, but they’re mostly there to provide the puzzle pieces that complete the backstory of the leads.
In the end “The Violent Heart” succumbs to melodrama, but before the climax sucks the life out of the story, it is an interesting look at legacy and how the weight of the past can slowly crush a person’s spirit.
The pandemic forced The Geneva Centre for Autism Foundation to close for the first time in organizational history. Their clients experienced significant changes to their daily routines, which can have major psychological impacts on those on the spectrum. COVID 19 has further exposed and exacerbated the challenges that individuals living with autism experience. These challenges include but are certainly not limited to social isolation, unemployment, and mental health issues. Find out how you can help HERE!
Richard has a look at what happened to some of the biggest stars of TV and the movies in the Toronto Star article, “A look at what happened to some of pop culture’s favourite rides.” From the Batmobile and the Ecto-1 to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and James Bond’s Lotus Esprit S1, Richard finds out where they are all parked today.
Let’s meet we meet Jessica Bruder, author of the 2017 book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,” and Bob Wells, a real-life nomad and one of the stars of the Oscar nominated film “Nomadland.”
A blend of fiction and nonfiction, “Nomadland,” the melancholy new Frances McDormand drama, is a timely story of a woman who learns to adapt and survive after losing everything she held dear.
Just as Fern (McDormand) cuts herself off from the norms of regular society, “Nomadland” is not tied to traditional storytelling structures. Its unhurried 107-minute running time is leisurely, not plot driven but utterly compelling. Director Chloé Zhao follows the widowed Fern as she leaves Empire, Nevada, a small company town now bleeding residents after the closure of the U.S. Gypsum Corporation factory. So many people have fled to greener pastures that the post office discontinued the local zip code.
Leaving all that she has known behind, Fern loads up her beat-up old van and hits the road, crisscrossing America looking for seasonal work at every stop. She’s not homeless, just unencumbered, solo but not solitary. “I’m not homeless,” she says. I’m just houseless.”
Along the way she discovers a community of fellow nomads, people who teach her the ropes of life on the road. Here’s what I learned: If you have bad knees you need a taller bathroom bucket for your van.
Fern does what it takes to get by, working at an Amazon fulfillment center or taking on caretaker gigs at rec parks, but her iterant lifestyle isn’t about disconnection or colored by loneliness. Her journey is one of self-discovery, of survival, of serenity. She is gritty, but open and friendly, independent and generous. She’s not an exile from “The Grapes of Wrath,” she’s simply living life on her own terms without a drop of self-pity and McDormand never overplays her. There is an authenticity to the performance, aided by Zhao’s casting of real-life nomads like “van-dwelling evangelist” Bob Wells, and travelers Linda May and Charlene Swankie, that never feels less than real, sometimes almost uncomfortably so.
At times “Nomadland” feels like a documentary. Zhao and McDormand have created a beautiful character study about the flipside of the American Dream. As Fern makes her way from gig to gig Zhao decorates the screen with eye-popping visuals courtesy of Joshua James Richards’s cinematography of the landscapes that form the backdrop to Fern’s journey. The story is poetic but never cloying and always reaching for the horizon.
The last time we saw William Shatner and Christopher Lloyd on screen together they were outer space enemies battling over a doomsday device in “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.” Reunited in “Senior Moment,” a new old-codger rom com now on VOD, their relationship this time around is more earthbound.
Shatner is retired NASA test pilot Victor Martin. He tools around Palm Springs with the love of his life, a vintage Porsche convertible. One afternoon, after spending the day with his BFF Sal Spinelli (Lloyd), he’s stopped at a light when Pablo Torres (Carlos Miranda) pulls up and challenges him to a street race. Never one to back down Victor agrees, and a few out-of-control minutes later, his license is pulled and his beloved car impounded by DA Tess Woodson (Beth Littleford).
A chance encounter with cafe owner Caroline Summers (Jean Smart) on public transit leads to romance. At least, when Victor’s jealousy of Caroline’s friendship with painter Diego Lozana (Esai Morales) doesn’t get in the way.
“Senior Moment” offers the pleasures of watching the seasoned cast breathe some life into the hackneyed material. For instance, Shatner talking dirty to his car — “A good shower before a wild ride is all you need. Ooh my, you make heads turn. I like that.”— is a joke that’s been around for as long as there have been filthy cars to talk dirty about. The jokes may be stale, but Shatner, Smart and Lloyd milk whatever entertainment value can be squeezed from a script that feels like it migrated to the screen from another era.
