SYNOPSIS: In “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” a new whodunnit now playing in theatres before switching to Netflix on December 12, Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is thrust into a hellish new case involving a fist-fighting priest, his congregation and a murder most foul. “The devil didn’t do this,” Blanc announces, “a parishioner did. The devil’s just jealous he didn’t think of it first.”
CAST: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Church. Directed by Rian Johnson.
REVIEW: A tribute to locked-room mysteries, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and novelist John Dickson Carr, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” mixes spirituality and death in a story that crackles with life.
The action begins when rebellious young priest Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) is assigned to a parish called Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude in upstate New York to work with hellfire preacher Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin).
The two butt heads, and when the charismatic Monsignor turns up dead amid mysterious circumstances, the congregation including tightly wound lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), former concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), town doctor Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner) and church matriarch Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) suspect Father Jud to be the doer of the dirty deed. “I came here to save souls,” Father Jud says, “not count stab wounds.”
As the local police, led by chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) investigate, Benoit Blanc, “the world’s greatest detective,” played by Daniel Craig, sorts through the clues to bring his own expertise to the case. “This was dressed as a miracle,” Blanc says, “it’s just a murder. And I solve murders.”
The most fleet-footed, and best, entry in the “Knives Out” franchise, the star-studded “Wake Up Dead Man” benefits from the chemistry between Craig, as Southern detective Blanc and the young priest played by O’Connor. Their scenes pop with energy and mystery, while Josh Brolin, as an unpredictable priest, brings an unexpected sense of menace.
Director Rian Johnson carefully reveals clues, building the on the whodunnit part of the mystery, but it’s the whydunit that gives the movie some unexpected depth. No spoilers here but Johnson, who also wrote the script, infuses the story with different kinds of spirituality. Wicks is all fire and brimstone, Judd preaches mercy, and the film asks, which is more effective, fear or love? Complete with the startling image of a bleeding cross, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” is a look not just at sinners, but their sins as well, wrapped up in an entertaining mystery.
I joined CTV NewsChannel to have a look at new movies coming to theatres including the rock biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” the Broadway drama “Blue Moon” and the psychological drama “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”
SYNOPSIS: “Blue Moon,” the new biographical comedy now playing in theatres, stars Ethan Hawke as legendary Broadway figure Lorenz Hart, songwriter of “Blue Moon,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Manhattan,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “My Funny Valentine,” on one long, melancholy night at the bar at Sardi’s.
CAST: Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott. Directed by Richard Linklater.
REVIEW: Anchored by a tour-de-force performance from Ethan Hawke, “Blue Moon” is a deceptively simple character study of an artistic genius who was equal parts brilliance and frailty.
Set at the bar of the legendary Broadway restaurant Sardi’s, the action takes place on a single evening, March 31, 1943, opening night of “Oklahoma!” A triumph for composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein, the show’s success left Rogers’s previous partner, lyricist Lorenz Hart, isolated, alone at the bar, save for the company of a bartender Hart nicknames Dr. Bacardi (Bobby Cannavale) and the restaurant’s piano player (Jonah Lees).
“We write together for a quarter of a century,” Hart says, “and the first show he writes with someone else is gonna be the biggest hit he ever had. Am I bitter? Yes.”
Charming, witty but with a deep sadness, Hart props up the bar, slowly losing the battle with the bottle, waiting for 20-year-old Yale student, Elizabeth Weiland (a sparkling Margaret Qualley) to arrive. Though closeted, he loves her, and she loves him, “just not in that way.”
As the evening unfolds, liquor flows in Hart’s direction as he pines for Elizabeth, lobs jabs at his former partner’s use of an “!” in the title of “Oklahoma!” and inspires essayist E. B. White (Patrick Kennedy) to write his novel “Stuart Little” as the evening takes a decidedly bittersweet turn.
A chamber piece—pretty much the whole thing takes place in the downstairs bar at Sardi’s—“Blue Moon” is a complex, humanizing slice of Hart’s life.
Hawke’s remarkable performance embraces the extremes of what Hammerstein and cabaret performer Mabel Mercer said about Hart. Hammerstein commented, “He was alert and dynamic and fun to be around,” while Mercer called him, “The saddest man I ever knew.” Hawke embodies those polarities and touches on many things in between in ways subtle and overt.
An extroverted introvert, Hart put on a brave face, spitting out witticisms—“Leave the bottle,” he tells the bartender, “it’s a visual poem.”—but each barb and every funny line betrays an undercurrent of insecurity and torment.
Hawke is in virtually every frame of the film, reciting pages of dialogue—“Who are you talking to?” asks the bartender. “Me,” Hart replies. “I gotta talk to someone interesting.”—and yet his stream of consciousness always engages because each speech, every word illuminates part of this complicated character.
“Blue Moon” is a showcase for a Hawke—he uses an elaborate combover and director Richard Linklater’s shoots him to reflect Hart’s diminutive stature—but the performance doesn’t rely on the physical transformation. Instead, it is Hawke’s nuances that create this sometimes funny, sometimes sad valentine to Hart.
SYNOPSIS: In the new Netflix action comedy “Back in Action” Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz star as retired CIA spies drawn back into action when their secret identities, and quiet family life, is compromised. “I always knew you guys were lying about something,” says daughter Alice (McKenna Roberts), “but I never thought you were cool enough to be spies.”
CAST: Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Kyle Chandler, Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Jamie Demetriou, McKenna Roberts, Rylan Jackson. Directed by Seth Gordon from a script he co-wrote with Brendan O’Brien.
REVIEW: After appearing together in the 1999 sports drama “Any Given Sunday” and 2014’s all-singing-all-dancing “Annie” remake, Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz reteam for the amiable Netflix action comedy “Back in Action.”
Tasked with pulling off a dollop of romance and large-scale action, all set against a backdrop of a “Married with Kids” style family comedy, the frequent co-stars bring versatility and charm to the predictable, but entertaining story.
Diaz, in her first movie in a decade, reminds us why she was such a commercial and critical success before she stepped away from the spotlight. Toggling between relatable mom and kick-ass spy, she delivers the funny and some high-flying action.
Foxx makes short work of Matt. Like Diaz, he makes the mix-and-match of action and comedy look easy and shares effortless chemistry with his co-star.
As the kids, McKenna Roberts and Rylan Jackson ably assist the headliners, with Jackson delivering some of the movie’s funniest lines. “They’re not criminals,” he says of his parents. “They belong to a pickleball league! They watch HGTV!”
Glenn Close shows a previously unseen flair for action (no spoilers here) and British comedian Jamie Demetriou takes a role we’ve seen before—a bumbling fool who aspires to greatness—and milks it for all it is worth.
It’s the characters and performances that make “Back in Action” a bit of distracting fun.
The movie itself delivers on its promise. There are laughs and a big action set piece every fifteen minutes or so, but, story wise, there isn’t much here we haven’t seen before. It plays a like a sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist, something that seems familiar, but you can’t quite put your finger on where you’ve seen it before.
“Back in Action’s” story may be as generic as its title, but although predictable, it’s still an old-school crowd pleaser.
There will likely not be a more melancholic movie this year than “All of Us Strangers,” a new, otherworldly study of grief, adapted from a Japanese ghost story by Taichi Yamada, that is grounded by real, earthbound emotion
Andrew Scott, best known for portraying James Moriarty in the BBC series “Sherlock,” and his role as the “hot priest” on “Fleabag,” is lonely screenwriter Adam. He lives alone in an abandoned London high rise, empty save for Harry (Paul Mescal), who lives on the sixth floor.
They meet when Harry, unannounced, arrives at Adam’s door with a bottle of whiskey. “I saw you looking at me from the street,” he says. “I’ve seen you a bunch of times, coming and going with your head down.” He’s fishing for an invite in, but Adam keeps the door between them.
Adam’s new project is a script set in 1987. To put himself in the right mindset he listens to music from the era, and makes a visit to his childhood home. There, he encounters the ghosts of his parents, played with warmth by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell. Killed in a car accident when Adam was twelve, they are stuck in 1987, while he exists in present day.
“You were just a boy,” says mom, “but now you’re not. You look different but it’s you. I thought you’d be hairier, like your dad.”
Visiting with these apparitions from the past provides a measure of closure for him, as he attempts to make up for decades of missed moments.
Back in London, he and Harry begin a relationship, the first meaningful connection of his adult life. “I’d always felt alone,” says Adam. “This is a new feeling.”
“All of Us Strangers” is a supernatural family drama, but it isn’t an “I see dead people” rehash. It is a chance for Adam to get to know the parents who left him, to tell them about his life, hear them tell them they love him and are proud of him, and possibly most importantly, get to say goodbye. It’s a work of melancholy, a study of one man coping with grief and loss, that is both gentle and devastating.
It’s never clear whether the parents are hallucinations, dreams or actual ghosts, but Scott’s contemplative performance renders that question moot. What’s important is Adam’s relationship to them, how they make him feel, not if they are real or not.
You may question what is real, and what is not throughout, but the individual moments—a father embracing his son for sins committed years ago, a mother’s comforting touch, Harry and Adam relaxing at home, happy and in love—feel real, and are by times moving, painful and utterly earthbound expressions of the power of love in the face of Adam’s unbearable loneliness.
“All of Us Strangers” is an intimate, haunting film that comforts and aches in equal measure.
Richard sits down with Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay, the two stars of the Fist World War epic “1917” to discuss creating the characters and the challenges of the one-shot technique used to film the movie.
SYNOPSIS: At the height of the First World War, two young British soldiers, Schofield (Captain Fantastic’s George MacKay) and Blake (Game of Thrones’ Dean-Charles Chapman) are given a seemingly impossible mission. In a race against time, they must cross enemy territory and deliver a message that will stop a deadly attack on hundreds of soldiers—Blake’s own brother among them.
“1917” is a simple story of duty wrapped up in a high gloss technological package that delivers a vividly immersive look at life during wartime.
Designed to look like one continuous shot, the action in “1917” begins in the trenches of Northern France with two men, Lance Corporals Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), assigned a dangerous mission. With telephone lines down, their general (Colin Firth) dispatches the pair travel through No Man’s Land on foot to the front lines. If they can make it past the barbed wire, booby traps and German snipers, they are to deliver the message that the Germans have set a trap, enticing the unwitting British to attack. “If you fail,” says the general, “it will be a massacre.” If Schofield and Blake are successful they could save 1600 lives, including Blake’s Lieutenant brother (Richard Madden). But first they must travel through eight miles of the most dangerous territory on earth.
It’s easy to feel that “1917” is a gimmick film. In the opening scenes I found the continuous, one shot nature of the filmmaking a distraction. I kept wondering, “How is Sam Mendes doing this?” or looking for clever, surreptitious edits. It took me out of the story but once accustomed to the gliding camerawork by the legendary Roger Deakins I began to focus on the story’s tale of bravery and resilience and less on the trickery that created it.
The horrors of war are duly represented—there’s barbed-wire, dead, rotting bodies litter the landscape and a bombed-out town is nothing more than the skeletons of buildings—but “1917” doesn’t focus on that. This is a contemplative story of a mission and the men who sacrifice their own safety for the greater good. It highlights the ever-present danger of attack but it’s the character’s emotional journey that makes for the compelling story. Blake wants to stop his brother from walking into a trap while Schofield is driven by a sense of duty. Both men are working for the collective, which in our era of the individual, is a potent reminder of the importance of cooperative effort.
“1917” is a beautifully grim movie. Death lurks around every corner and the success of Blake and Schofield’s mission is never assured. Hope is a remote, elusive concept in the theatre of war but Mendes weaves in enough humanity—the relationship between the soldiers, a scene with a French mother and her daughter—to give us a window into the horrors of war.
Richard sits down with Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay, the two stars of the Fist World War epic “1917” to discuss creating the characters and the challenges of the one-shot technique used to film the movie.
SYNOPSIS: At the height of the First World War, two young British soldiers, Schofield (Captain Fantastic’s George MacKay) and Blake (Game of Thrones’ Dean-Charles Chapman) are given a seemingly impossible mission. In a race against time, they must cross enemy territory and deliver a message that will stop a deadly attack on hundreds of soldiers—Blake’s own brother among them.
Richard chats with “1917” co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns about tending bar, working with Sam Mendes and writing a film that is presented in one shot.
SYNOPSIS: At the height of the First World War, two young British soldiers, Schofield (Captain Fantastic’s George MacKay) and Blake (Game of Thrones’ Dean-Charles Chapman) are given a seemingly impossible mission. In a race against time, they must cross enemy territory and deliver a message that will stop a deadly attack on hundreds of soldiers—Blake’s own brother among them.
SYNOPSIS: In “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” a new whodunnit now playing in theatres before switching to Netflix on December 12, Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is thrust into a hellish new case involving a fist-fighting priest, his congregation and a murder most foul. “The devil didn’t do this,” Blanc announces, “a parishioner did. The devil’s just jealous he didn’t think of it first.”
