“Joe Bell,” a new based-on-true events drama starring Mark Wahlberg and now on VOD, is a film with a message and a disarming way of delivering it.
Wahlberg is the good man of the title, Joe Bell, husband to Lola (Connie Britton), father to sons Joseph (Maxwell Jenkins) and Jadin (Reid Miller), a young gay man who took his own life after repeated bullying from the jocks at his high school. Unable to resolve his feelings, Joe hits the road, vowing to walk from La Grande, Oregon to New York City, the city of Jadin’s dreams. It’s a time of solitude for Joe to wrestle with his own complicity in his son’s death and make stops along the way to mumble his way through halting speeches about bullying at local high schools.
Written by the “Brokeback Mountain” screenwriting team of Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, “Joe Bell” has its heart in the right place but makes missteps along Joe’s journey.
Told with flashbacks interspersed throughout the present-day action, (the story takes place in 2013), “Joe Bell” looks for new ways to tell the true story. Using Joe’s anguish as a starting point, it conjures up images from his imagination to fill the screen while he is on his solitary journey. (MILD SPOILER ALERT) Jadin appears as a device for Joe to ease his guilty mind. It’s a way of establishing what could have been, had Jadin not ended his life and mostly it works as Reid gives his character a youthful exuberance that makes his absence in real life more acute.
Minus those scenes “Joe Bell” is a slight film. The message, that kids are marginalized and bullied every day, everywhere, is potent and important but the film’s earnest repetitiveness threatens to reduce the point to a series of platitudes.
Good supporting performances from Miller, Britton and Gary Sinise as a sympathetic police officer, share the screen with Wahlberg who is, essentially, a one note character with a scraggly beard. His inability to truly articulate his feelings hinders the character’s effectiveness. A message movie should have a central character able to bring the moral to life. Wahlberg’s take on Bell is not that character.
“Joe Bell” is a movie about soul searching, with a good message, that never finds its way.
Reminders of real life were all around us at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. From the digital screenings we watched at home to half empty, socially distanced screenings at venues like The Princess of Wales Theatre. But when my mind wanders back to September 2021, I won’t be thinking of having to show my proof of vaccination or the social distancing in theatres.
What will linger?
The images of Anya Taylor-Joy in “Last Night in Soho,” crooning an a cappella version of the Swingin’ Sixties anthem “Downtown,” and “Dune’s” Stellan Skarsgård doing his best impression of Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now,” come to mind immediately.
Those moments and others like them are the reason the movies exist. They transcend the vagaries of real life, transporting us away from a place where masks, vaccine passports are the reality.
And boy, did we need that this year.
Here a look back at some of the moments that made memories at this year’s TIFF:
“Night Raiders,” a drama from Cree-Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet, draws on the historical horrors of the Sixties Scoop and Residential Schools to create an unforgettable, dystopian scenario set in the new future. It effectively paints a somber portrait of totalitarian future, packed with foreboding and danger. The story is fictional but resonates with echoes of the ugly truths of colonization and forced assimilation. Goulet allows the viewer to make the comparisons between the real-life atrocities and the fictional elements of the story. There are no pages of exposition, just evocative images. Show me don’t tell me. The basis in truth of the underlying themes brings the story a weight often missing in the dystopian genre.
I asked Danis Goulet about having many of her characters in Night Raiders speak Cree: “It is everything to me,” she said. “My dad is a Cree language speaker. He grew up speaking Cree. He learned to speak English in school. His parents were Cree speakers. And coming down to my generation, I’m no longer a Cree speaker and there are entire universes, philosophies and poetry and beauty contained in the language. When we think of where our heritage lies, maybe some people think of museums. For me I think it is in the language. I think that richness doesn’t just offer Indigenous people something. I think if others looked closer at what the language tells us about the history of this land, they would be incredibly amazed. My dad has looked at references in the language that talk about the movement of the glaciers, so, foe me to have the Cree language on screen is everything. I’m in my own process. I go to Cree language camp to try and learn back the language and the language gives back in a way that is so healing and incredible. It is one of the greatest gifts in my life. So, the opportunity to put my dad’s first language on the screen, and the language of the Northern Communities where I come from, and my language that I lost, is the best. It’s incredible.”
From Twitter: @RichardCrouse Was just sent this: “Wanted to check and see if you’d be able to either send proof of vaccine OR a negative covid test prior to your interviews with the talent.” I sent my proof in, but added, “Will the talent be providing me with proof of vaccination?” #TIFF21 #fairquestion 4:48 PM · Sep 9, 2021· 8 Retweets 3 Quote Tweets 206 Likes
There is no mention of COVID-19 in the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller “The Guilty.” But make no mistake, this is a pandemic movie, A remake of 2018 Danish film “Den skyldige,” it is essentially a one hander, shot on a just a handful of set with strict safety protocols in place. Gyllenhaal, as 911 operator Joe Baylor, may be socially distanced from his castmates, but his performance is anything but distant. Played out in real time, “The Guilty” builds tension as Baylor races against a ticking clock to bring the situation to a safe resolution for Emily. Director Antoine Fuqua amps up the sense of urgency, keeping his camera focused on Gyllenhaal’s feverish performance. The close-ups create a sense of claustrophobia, visually telegraphing Baylor’s feeling of helplessness and his crumbling mental state.
The sound of an audience laughing, applauding, crying, or whatever. Just being an audience. The big venues were socially distanced, and often looked empty to the eye, but when the lights went down and folks reacted to the opening speeches or the films, it didn’t matter. Roy Thomson Hall, with its 2600-person capacity, may have only had 1000 or so people in the seats, but for ninety minutes or two hours they formed a community, kindred souls brought together after a long break, and it was uplifting to hear their reactions.
“Flee” is a rarity, an animated documentary. A mix of personal and modern world history, it is a heartfelt look at the true, hidden story of the harrowing life journey of a gay refugee from Afghanistan. Except for a few minutes here and there of archival news footage, “Flee” uses animation to tell the story but this ain’t the “Looney Tunes.” Rasmussen used the animation to protect Amin’s identity, but like other serious-minded animated films like “Persepolis” and “Waltz with Bashir,” the impressionistic presentation enhances the telling of the tale. The styles of Rasmussen’s animation change to reflect and effectively bring the various stages of Amin’s journey to vivid life. It is suspenseful, heartbreaking and often poetic.
I asked “The Survivor” star Vicky Krieps about working opposite Ben Foster: “The first day I came [on set] I was very intimidated,” she said. “I wouldn’t say scared, but it felt like a wall to me. It began like this. There was no small talk. There was no, ‘How are you?’ He was already in character and it was very clear. I thought, ‘OK, I have to play his wife.’ And then, something really interesting happened. I like having a challenge and this felt like a challenge. So, I needed to find a way [to relate to him] because I knew I was going to be his wife. How do I do that? Imagine it as a wall, but then in the wall there are eyes. I used those eyes and I felt like I could open a window, and inside of those eyes was a horizon where I could go. I liked to say to Ben, ‘And then we would dance.’ Sometimes I wrote to him and said, ‘It was nice dancing today.’”
“Last Night in Soho,” from director Edgar Wright, is a love letter to London’s Swingin’ Sixties by way of Italian Giallo. Surreal and vibrant, and more than a little bit silly, its enjoyable for those with a taste for both Petula Clarke and murder. It begins with verve, painting a picture of a time and place that is irresistible. A mosaic of music, fashion and evocative set decoration, the first hour brings inventive world building and stunning imagery. Wright pulls out all the stops, making visual connections between his film and the movies of the era he’s portraying and even including sixties British icons Rigg, Tushingham and Stamp in the cast.
I asked “Dune” star Rebecca Ferguson why she said reading Frank Herbert’s novel was like doing a crossword puzzle: “Sometimes I wonder what comes out of my mouth,” she said. “My mother and many of my friends sit and do crosswords, but I have never been in that world. There is a way of thinking around it. It’s logical, mathematical. You need to be able to see rhythms. Whatever it is. Reading “Dune” was quite dense and I think for people who are immersed into the world of science fiction, they understand worlds and Catharism and this planet and that planet. It is just another picture, which, not to stupefy myself, I am intelligent enough to understand it, but there is a rhythm. I think it is me highlighting the fact that people who live and breathe science fiction, they get it at another level.”
“Dune,” the latest cinematic take on the Frank Herbert 1965 classic, now playing in theatres, is part one of the planned two-part series. “Dune” is big and beautiful, with plentiful action and a really charismatic performance from Jason Momoa as swordmaster Duncan Idaho. It is unquestionably well made, with thought provoking themes of exploitation of Indigenous peoples, environmentalism and colonialism.
A new biopic hopes to rehabilitate the reputation of Tammy Faye Bakker, the scandal plagued televangelist who may be best remembered for her outlandish taste in make-up. But “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” now playing in theatres and starring Jessica Chastain in the title role, looks at the unusual rise and fall of a woman many wrote off years ago as a pop culture joke, through fresh eyes. “I won’t go forward looking in the rearview mirror of my life,” she says. “This is who I am.”
The eldest of eight children raised by stern mother Rachel (Cherry Jones), Tammy Faye (played as a youngster by Chandler Head) makes an impression at her mother’s Pentecostal Church when she speaks in tongues over a glass of sacramental wine.
Cut to 1960, Tammy Faye (now played by Chastain) is studying at the North Central Bible College in Minneapolis when she meets a charismatic student named Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield). His approach to religion flipped the script from God fearing to expecting God to exalt those who made money in His name.
“God does not want us to be poor,” he says.
The pair, now man and wife, take their act on the road. Jim preaches, Tammy does puppet shows and both dream of starting their own church. After a meet cute with a producer for Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, the couple get a TV gig and their biggest audience to date. Their folksy blend of religion, songs and hellfire catch on and within five years their Praise the Lord (PTL) Network hits the airwaves and the seeds of a scandal that will rock the televangelist community, and turn the Bakkers into tabloid fodder, are planted.
“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” features a bravado performance from Chastain, but like the make-up painted on the actress’s face, it is all surface. She is an entertaining combination of pluck, nervous giggle and giant eye lashes, but despite the occasional flash, the work is all personality with not enough going on behind the titular eyes. It’s big, bold and even admirable work, but never gets to the core of what made Tammy Faye run.
Chastain isn’t aided by a Wikipedia style script that hits the high and low points of the Tammy Faye’s life, career and marriage, but often forgets the connective tissue that brings these elements together. Despite the disjointed storytelling, the movie does do some interesting world building in its recreation of the PTL broadcasts and the presentation of the Bakkers’s elaborate lifestyle in all its lurid 1980s detail.
“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” entertains the ocular orbs but blinks when it comes to really digging deep into what was behind Tammy Faye’s eyes.
Richard writes about five things that used to be standard on cars, but have disappeared over the years.
“Times have changed. Other than steering wheels, seats and brake and gas pedals, just about the only thing that still comes standard with a new car now, as opposed to years ago, is that new car smell. Features that used to be customary, like ashtrays, tail fins and flower vases, are now viewed as antiques…”
Pick up today’s Toronto Star or CLICK HERE to read the whole thing!
This week on the Richard Crouse Show Podcast we get to know best-selling author Guy Vanderhaeghe. His previous fiction includes the award winning “A Good Man,” “The Last Crossing,” “The Englishman’s Boy.” He is a three -time Governor General’s Award winner. He has the Writers’ Trust Timothy Findley Award, and the Harbourfront Literary Prize. He has received many other honours including the Order of Canada. His first novel in nearly a decade is “August Into Winter” is an epic story of crime and retribution, of war and its long shadow, and of the redemptive possibilities of love. Guy Vanderhaeghe joined me via Zoom from Saskatchewan
Then comedian and actor Shaun Majumder joins me to talk about his new CBC television show “Race Against the Tide.” On the show 10 teams of two world-class, highly skilled sand sculptors compete to create extraordinary works of art made entirely out of sand while avoiding elimination. Not only are these best-in-show duos competing against each other, they are competing against, as the press release says, “Mother Nature’s unstoppable ticking clock and the world’s highest tide at New Brunswick’s iconic and beautiful Bay of Fundy.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Link coming soon)
Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Ethan Hawke, director Brad Bird, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Roberts, Brian Henson, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. “The most interesting man in the world,” and best selling author Linwood Barclay.
Listen to the show live here:
C-FAX 1070 in Victoria
SAT 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM
SUN 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
CJAD in Montreal
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
CFRA in Ottawa
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 610 CKTB in St. Catharines
Sat 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1010 in Toronto
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1290 CJBK
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
AM 1150 in Kelowna
SAT 11 PM to Midnight
BNN BLOOMBERG RADIO 1410
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed!
Richard joins Ryan Doyle of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today he talks why Donn the Beachcomber never told his bartenders the recipes to his most famous drinks, including the classic Zombie, the new Clint Eastwood movie “Cry Macho” and the TIFF hit “Belfast” from director Kenneth Branagh.
Director Joe Carnahan’s films are usually high octane, ultraviolent affairs that don’t spare the blood or the bullets. His latest, “Copshop,” now playing in theatres, walks a similar path but doesn’t forget to bring the fun along for the journey.
Set in Nevada, much of the action takes place at the sleepy Gun Creek Police Department. Earlier in the evening con artist Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo) was arrested after he sucker punched Officer Valerie Young (Alexis Louder) outside a casino. He’s a bad guy who should be avoiding the police but circumstances forced his hand because an even worse guy, hitman Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler), had tracked him down.
The quick-thinking con man figures Viddick won’t go near him if he’s in jail.
He figured wrong.
Turning the tables on Murretto, Viddick manages to get himself brought in on a bogus drunk driving charge. The hunter and the hunter are now just one cell apart. Young knows something nefarious is going on, and is determined to get to the bottom of it, even if Murretto warns her to keep her nose of his business.
“This is way beyond anything you want to get involved in lady,” he says. “You don’t understand.”
“No,” she replies, “you don’t understand how incredibly bored I am.”
“Copshop” has echoes of “Assault on Precinct 13.” Like the 1976 drama, most of the action happens inside the station and the cops and baddies must work together to find safety. The barebones storytelling builds quiet tension before Toby Huss shows up as sadistic killer Anthony Lamb. He’s quick with a bullet and a one-liner. Eyeing Teddy’s tight manbun he jokes, “You look just like Tom Cruise in that samurai movie nobody watched.”
Huss chews the scenery, breathing life into a man who brings death. He’s a hoot, simultaneously menacing and just a bit ridiculous.
Grillo and Butler are perfectly matched adversaries. They are the source of the cat-and-mouse plot; character actors laying the groundwork for the events that are the movie’s engine. Just as impressive is Louder as the no-nonsense Young. She’s at the center of the movie, the one character everyone will root for.
“Copshop” is a simple b-action movie that feels like a holdover from the 1970s. There are some generic elements, like side characters who seem to have walked straight out of Central Casting, but Carnahan makes up for that with energy, suspense and a dark sense of humour.
“Blue Bayou,” a new immigration drama starring Justin Chon and Alicia Vikander, tells a fictional, but all-too-true, story that is sincere but heavy-handed.
Written, directed and starring Chon, the story takes place in the Louisiana bayou. Chon plays the Korean-born Antonio LeBlanc, adopted by an American family when he was three. Now married to Kathy (Vikander) he’s raising step-daughter Jessie (Sydney Kowalske) with another child on the way.
A loping Cajun twang disguises the anxiety he feels with a new baby coming but not enough money coming in. His two felonies make it tough to find extra work, and his job as a tattoo artist does not cover the bills. Still, the family is happy, even if Jessie is concerned Antonio, the self-proclaimed “fun” parent, won’t spend time with her when the new baby arrives.
A little spat between Kathy and Antonio in a grocery escalates when Ace, a cop and her ex-husband, and his violent partner (Emory Cohen) get involved. Antonio is arrested. When Kathy attempts to pay his bail, she’s told, matter-of-factly, “He’s not here anymore. ICE took him.”
Seems his adoptive parents didn’t follow the proper procedures to make him a citizen, and now, after thirty years in America he may have to return to a country he doesn’t remember.
“I understand your frustration,” says the lawyer (Vondie Curtis-Hall) the couple hire but can’t afford. “Depart voluntarily,” he continues, “and have a chance to get back in. You can fight, but if you lose, you can never come back.”
“I’m not leaving my family,” Antonio replies.
“Blue Bayou” has much going for it. Chon has a poetic eye for visuals and frames the hot button story nicely. There are enough details about the family to make us care about them and Antonio’s backstory adds some mystery to the proceedings. The chemistry between the core group—Antonio, Kathy and Jessie—feels genuine—Kowalske is a real find—and, as the immigration situation spins out of control, we’re along for the ride. But as the story gets heavier, so does the story-telling. Like leaden.
Chon’s characters are so compelling and much of the tale so heartfelt, that it’s a disappointment when the movie turns to melodrama in its final third. Nuance goes out the window and the quiet naturalism of the first half disappears. Add to that a villain in the form of Cohen’s bad cop character who seems to have wandered in from a British pantomime and you’re left with a case of the let-downs.
“Blue Bayou” details a very important, and for many people, very personal story, but falls victim to ham-fisted storytelling.
Clint Eastwood is a legendary in Hollywood for his no nonsense approach to filmmaking. He’s not Stanley Kubrick who would do 200 takes of a head turn, or Christopher Nolan whose camera technique is sharp as a tack. His unfussy approach to storytelling often gives his films a unique energy all their own, a style born out of confidence and almost 70 years I’m standing in front of or behind a camera.
Depending on your level of cynicism, “Cry Macho,” his new road trip movie now playing in theatres, is either the work of a filmmaker so confident in his craft he trusts the audience will follow him wherever he goes, no matter how meandering, or a slender, slapdash exercise in myth building.
Set in 1979, the story begins when wealthy Texas ranch boss (Dwight Yoakam) calls in a favor from former employee Mike Milo (Eastwood). He wants the former rodeo star and ranch hand to travel to Mexico, find his estranged thirteen-year-old son Rafo (Eduardo Minett) and bring him back to the States. The boy’s mother (Fernanda Urrejola) is an aristocratic woman with a short temper who seems to care nothing about her son. “Take him if you can find him,” she hisses. “He’s a monster.”
Mike tracks down Rafo at a cockfight, where he is about to put Macho, his prizewinning rooster, into the ring. “He is not a chicken,” Rafo says, “he’s Macho.” The boy agrees to head to the States with Mike, excited at the prospect of becoming a real cowboy on his father’s ranch.
Along the way the surrogate father and son duo hide out from the Federales, meet a kind-hearted cantina owner (Natalia Traven) and learn the true meaning of what it means to be macho.
Based on a neo-Western book by N. Richard Nash that Eastwood has been circling around for decades, “Cry Macho” isn’t story driven as much as it latches onto the framework of the road trip genre to find momentum. It’s a low energy film that is more character study of a man forced to reassess the way he has lived his life. “This macho thing is overrated,” he says.
The movie’s meta aspect is its strongest feature. Eastwood has spent his career as a personification of machismo, and now, at a frail looking 91 years-old, he is making a comment not only on his character Mike, but of all the characters he has played before. It’s hard to watch “Cry Macho” without picturing “The Outlaw Josey Wales” or “The Unforgiven,” and those memories color every frame of the new film.
Unfortunately, those reminders may also make you nostalgic for the days of “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and “The Unforgiven.” “Cry Macho” has compelling ideas at its core, but is marred by Minett’s emotive performance, direction that feels directionless and the most laughably inept henchman in the history of film. Eastwood is stately, a lion in winter, but the film feels unambitious, lacking in the drama that would have made its messages on masculinity more potent.
