Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to tie a bowtie! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the family drama “Here,” the odd couple “A Real Pain” and the courtroom drama “Juror #2.”
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SYNOPSIS: A throwback to the twisty-turny courtroom dramas of the 1980s and 90s, “Juror #2,” now playing in theatres, sees Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) called for jury duty. Like many people, he has a laundry list of reasons why he shouldn’t have to do his civic duty. Nonetheless, he’s chosen to serve at a high-profile murder trial, one that will test his pledge of being fair and impartial in the jury box.
CAST: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J. K. Simmons, Chris Messina, Zoey Deutch, Kiefer Sutherland. Directed by Clint Eastwood.
REVIEW: Clint Eastwood’s 40th directorial effort is a potboiler, but with the high-minded purpose of examining issues of justice and the price of doing the right thing.
No spoilers here, what follows is the story of the film, but if you want to go in with a blank slate, skip the next paragraph.
Once seated on the jury, Kemp, a man who has pulled his life together since quitting drinking four years previous, realizes that he, and not the accused, is responsible for the death at the center of the prosecution’s case.
That provides the moral dilemma at the heart of “Juror #2.” Kemp’s feelings of self-preservation versus his responsibility to truth and justice hangs over the entire film like a shroud.
Hoult shows us Kemp’s dilemma rather than tell us about it. It’s an introspective performance, one that relies on his anxious exterior and the tortured look behind his eyes. Hoult isn’t flashy, but in his restraint, he paints an effective portrait of a soon-to-be father who is torn up inside.
For the second time in as many months J.K. Simmons, after his bravura work in “Saturday Night,” swoops in and steals every scene he’s in, and then gets out of the way to let Eastwood and Hoult finish the job.
For the most part Eastwood keeps the storytelling taut, allowing Kemp’s quandary to take center stage. It’s not exactly suspenseful, but Eastwood, who turned 94 last May, unfurls the story of conflicted morals in a solidly entertaining, if not exactly innovative, way. The story beats feel reminiscent of the big courtroom dramas of years ago, but Eastwood carefully, and cleverly works his way through moral conundrums to ends up at a restrained, but devastating finale.
“Juror #2” is a little old fashioned, but in all the right ways. Age has not diminished Eastwood’s ability to tell a story, keep the audience engaged and give them something to think about once the end credits have rolled.
SYNOPSIS: In “Here,” a new, experimental intergenerational family drama starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and now playing in theatres, director Robert Zemeckis sets a century of love, loss and life in the living room of a one-hundred-year-old American home.
CAST: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, and Kelly Reilly. Directed by Robert Zemeckis.
REVIEW: At one point near the end of “Here,” Richard Young (Tom Hanks) says, “Time flies,” as he reflects on his daughter’s progress in life. In reply, his increasingly exasperated wife Margaret (Robin Wright) snaps, “You always say things that are kind of obvious.”
Richard is not alone in the expression of easy platitudes. Director Robert Zemeckis may be daring in his use of “Here’s” technology, but the story takes no chances.
Based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, the film chronicles thousands of years, on one piece of land, from rampaging dinosaurs to the building of a house in 1900 whose front room provides the location for 99.9% of the action. With the camera locked into position, Zemeckis ping pongs through history, focusing on three generations of the Young family in the one setting.
Major historical events are seen on television, or heard on the radio, but this isn’t a history lesson, it’s an “if these walls could talk” look at the lives lived in the cozy home. It’s a clever idea, but you can’t help but wish “Here” would narrow its focus. The constant transition from one era to the next prevents any one of the stories to work up a head of steam or make us care about the characters.
From a technical point of view, Zemeckis’s transition from one time frame to the next are sometimes clever—a Halloween party, with Richard dressed as Benjamin Franklin, that morphs into a colonial era scene works—and sometimes silly, as in the scene where a leaking roof, dripping puddles on the floor, transitions into Maragret’s water breaking on the same spot. It’s in those moments, and there are many of them, that the movie feels trapped, unable to cast off the restraints of its concept and truly come to life.
Most of the families on display are given a short shrift. The Harter’s (Michelle Dockery and Gwilym Lee) turn of the century story, for example, is meant to provide some emotional heft but falls short because of the film’s inability to make us care much about characters we hardly know. I would have liked more time with Leo and Stella Beekman (David Fynn and Ophelia Lovibond), the inventor and pin-up model who make the most of their vignettes, but the brief glimpses of their free-spirited time in the house are short lived.
It is nice to see Hanks and Wright together, but for much of the runtime they are rendered digitally de-aged and dead-eyed, which takes some of the fun out of the “Forrest Gump” reunion.
“Here” is ambitious, but its technical prowess overwhelms whatever heart is embedded in the story.
SYNOPSIS: A mix of humor and pain, “A Real Pain,” a new dramedy from writer/director Jesse Eisenberg, and now playing in theatres, sees polar-opposite cousins David and Benji (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) embark on a tour of Poland to honor their Holocaust-survivor grandmother. As their odd couple trip progresses the double meaning of the title becomes apparent. Is Benji’s wild behavior a pain, or is it the result of pain?
CAST: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy, and Daniel Oreskes. Directed by Jesse Eisenberg, produced by Emma Stone.
REVIEW: “A Real Pain” is both an oddball couple comedy and road movie, but, most importantly, it’s about personal pain and coping mechanisms. As David, Jesse Eisenberg says his, “pain is unexceptional,” and yet he is anxious and medicated, hobbled by feelings he cannot control.
Benji (Kieran Culkin), on the other hand, is a raw nerve, charming and charismatic, but quick to temper and bitterly selfish. “Forgive me if I don’t see his magical spark,” says Mark (Daniel Oreskes), another traveller on their heritage tour.
The characters share DNA and a handful of memories, but despite their familial love, they are oil and water, and it is that dynamic that drives the movie.
Despite its subject, “A Real Pain” is a gently amusing movie. There are no jokes in the traditional sense, just situational and character-based humor that bubbles forth through their interactions. David’s exasperation with his cousin’s antics is milked for some laughs, but it is Culkin who delivers the goods.
As Benji he is an anti-establishment motor mouth who makes pronouncements like, “Money is like heroin for rich people,” and never entertains an unexpressed thought. Benji is overbearing, but this isn’t a big performance.
The beauty of it is in the small details.
The way he snaps an elastic band against his wrist as a coping mechanism is a subtle touch but speaks loudly about his state of mind. Culkin grabs Benji’s complexities, his kindness and cruelty, his humor and pain and folds them into one fascinating character.
“A Real Pain” is a quiet movie, with some somber moments, like the tour’s visit to the former concentration camp Majdanek, but Eisenberg finds the tricky balance between the heartfelt moments and the humor.
SYNOPSIS: “Emilia Pérez,” a new Spanish-language musical crime drama starring Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez and now playing in theatres, is a subversive story about the search for happiness and affirmation of identity. Zoe Saldaña plays a burned-out Mexico City lawyer tired of defending drug related clients. When she is offered the biggest fee of her life by a fearsome cartel leader, who hires her to facilitate his “retirement” (i.e.: disappearance) and transition into an authentic self, she can’t say no. “What do I risk?” she asks. “Becoming rich, “replies the cartel leader.
CAST: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Mark Ivanir, and Édgar Ramírez. Written and directed by Jacques Audiard.
REVIEW: “Emilia Pérez” mixes-and-matches Broadway style production numbers with telenovela melodrama and pulpy crime drama to create a genre-bending, emotionally authentic story about the possibility of erasing the past to create a new future.
A full-blown musical, with three lead performances—Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Karla Sofía Gascón—characters who burst into song and inventive and enthusiastic choreography, the story may seem overstuffed, but director Jacques Audiard’s pedal-the-the-metal staging ensures the various story threads weave together.
Gascón (the first openly trans actor to win a major prize at the Cannes Film Festival when she shared the Best Actress Award with her “Emilia Pérez” co-stars) provides the film’s heart. As Emilia, she is as benevolent as she was vicious when she was a cartel boss. On her path she not only learns to love herself, but also the people around her, and in return, be worthy of love. The scenes with her kids—particularly a song in which her young son, who thinks his dad is dead, remembers his father—are tender and coloured with a bittersweet quality.
If all the action revolves around the title character, it is Saldaña, in a career best performance, who takes command. She has sung and danced on screen before—in “Vivo” and “Center Stage”—but never with this kind of passion, ferocity and fearlessness. Her character Rita is the audience surrogate, a guide through the increasing labyrinthine story.
She is aided by composers Clément Ducol and Camille Dalmais whose score and show tunes provide the emotional underpinnings of scene after scene, but also forward the story with songs that jump styles as often as the movie cycles through genre.
Gomez is given less to do but delivers the film’s strongest vocals and hands in a fine dramatic performance.
Ultimately, Emilia’s journey to happiness begs the question, Can the sins of the past be remedied by the actions of the present? Audiard, who also wrote the script, clearly has ideas on the subject, but no spoilers here. Suffice to say, the film’s dramatic final third keeps with Audiard’s penchant for envelope pushing.
“Emilia Pérez” is quite simply, unlike any other film that will be released this year. Is it a musical, a cartel story, a musical soap opera or a eulogy to those lost to cartel violence? The truth is it is all those things, banged together in a form that feels fresh and exciting.
SYNOPSIS: In “Level,” a new indie sci-fi thriller starring Peter Mooney and Cara Gee, and now playing in theatres, bookseller Joe (Peter Mooney) falls for Ash (Cara Gee), a woman with a mysterious past… and present.
“I need to tell you something,” she says. “I’m not from here.” “I know,” he replies, “you’re from Bridgewater.” “No,” she clarifies, “I’m not from here.” Emphasis on the word here.
Before she can explain, she is killed, leaving Joe shattered, with just one clue, a book she left behind called “On Being Human.” With his life in pieces, he questions what is real and what is not in his pursuit of Ash’s killer. “I don’t know if I’m real,” he says. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
CAST: Cara Gee, Peter Mooney, Aaron Abrams, Jade Ma, Adam Hurtig and David Hewlett. Directed by Adam Stern.
REVIEW: Big ideas abound in “Level.” Writer/director Adam Stern questions the very fabric of reality, asking if answers to the world’s problems can be found in simulations. “The world is shit,” evil genius Anthony Hunter (Aaron Abrams) says, outlining his plan to use simulations to find out what happens before it happens; before climate change happens, before a fascist can get elected, and before millions of people die because of outdated ideologies and misinformation. With his plan, however, comes an even bigger question, Are his dangerous methods worth the results?
Stern’s sci fi movie is of the mind. There are some cool images and special effects—Stern’s resume features 75 visual effects credits—but “Levels” is Christopher Nolan Lite, with big philosophical notions but without the eye-popping images to accompany them.
It wants to engage the brain more than it wants to dazzle the eye, and it may spark up the synapses, but first you’ll have to wade through a lot of exposition. This is a tell-me, don’t-show-movie, and, as such, frequently gets a bit too wordy for its own good.
Debating the very idea of reality should up the stakes, but the volume of exposition slows down the film’s forward momentum. As a result, Stern’s messages of hope for the future of humankind are heartfelt but come packaged in a movie that lacks urgency.
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” to talk about the hottest costume trends for Halloween and why we like to be scared at the movies.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards and tech expert Carmni Levy to react to a video from director Robert Zemeckis who predicts the rise of a “completely digital” AI-assisted category of film, but says the human touch remains essential.
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From apparitions to zombies, this season offers up a variety of scary movies, and finding something to watch on Halloween is as easy at ABC. I write about those movies at CTVNews.ca.
Read the whole thing HERE!
