For a short time Richard Jewell was a household name, first for being a hero, then a villain, then a curiosity, a man who was railroaded by the press and the very people he revered, law enforcement. “Richard Jewell,” a new film from director Clint Eastwood looks at the man behind the headlines.
Based on the 1997 Vanity Fair article “American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell” by Marie Brenner the film stars Paul Walter Hauser as Jewell, a law and order man, who believes in rules and dreams of being a police officer. When he isn’t studying the penal code in the bedroom of the house he shares with his mother (Kathy Bates) he works security gigs, like patrolling the grounds at Centennial Park in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics.
When he spots a suspicious package the on-duty cops say, “It’s probably someone who run off drunk,” but Jewell insists they investigate. What happens next few minutes came to define his life.
The abandoned backpack contains three pipe bombs. “The biggest I’ve ever seen,” says a bomb expert.
Jewell’s suspicious nature saves lives and at first he is treated like a hero. Book deals are offered and he’s on every news broadcast in the country. “Tom Brokaw was even talking about you,” says his mother. But soon the story changes. His socially awkward nature and law enforcement aspirations make him the target of an FBI investigation. They wonder if he manufactured the crisis so he could be a hero.
After a loose-lipped FBI agent (Jon Hamm) spills the story to seductive reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) Jewell becomes front page news as a false hero with only lawyer Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) to help navigate the firestorm of controversy that follows.
Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray paint in rather broad strokes. The villains of the piece—the FBI agents who think Jewell is “guilty as hell.” and Wilde’s reporter, not the real-life bomber who is barely mentioned—twirl their metaphorical moustaches as they work in tandem to prove Jewell’s guilt, both offering up a cartoonish but entertaining take on their characters.
The heart of the film is closer to the Jewell home. Bates brings some real emotion to the role of a loving mother whose life is turned upside down but, by the time the end credits roll, this show belongs to Hauser and Rockwell. The chemistry, obvious affection and occasional exasperation between the two is winning and authentic. Rockwell brings his usual offbeat charm to the role of the dogged attorney but it is Hauser who leaves the lasting impression. In what should be his breakout film, the actor, best known for a supporting role in “I, Tonya,” gives an indelible performance. Jewell is an underdog, a Paul Blart with a heart of gold nearly crushed under the weight of powers far more powerful than him. His growing sense of frustration at his treatment by the FBI comes to a crescendo in a scene that allows him to win back some of the dignity that has been stripped away from him. In Hauser’s hands a character that could have been played as a bewildered screw-up becomes a likeable man with both pride and a sense of purpose.
“Richard Jewell” is the best film of 2019 to include a Macarena dance scene. It’s also a timely and searing indictment of the abuse of trial by media; of how an everyman’s life was almost ruined at the hands of people who traded on misinformation. Eastwood gives Jewell his due, humanizing a man who was treated like a story and not a person. Unfortunately, Eastwood also takes liberties in the way he portrays the reporter Scruggs, who died in 2001. Playing fast and loose with the unproven accusation that she traded sex for information, he does exactly what the media did to Jewell, point a jaundiced finger at someone who did nothing wrong.
Richard and “Terminator: Dark Fate” director Tim Miller discuss working with icons Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger and bringing the franchise back to life.
There may be six “Terminator” films but James Cameron would like you to ignore half of them. Cameron, who returns to the producer’s chair after a twenty-eight year gap from the franchise, designed the new movie, “Terminator: Dark Fate,” to be a direct sequel to 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” So, forget about “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” Christian Bale’s meltdown on the set of “Terminator: Salvation,” and “Terminator: Genisys,” they have been relegated to the delete bin.
The time-shifting reset, directed by “Deadpool’s” Tim Miller, dials the way-back machine to the end of “T2.” The tough-as-tacks Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), her teenage son John (a mix of actor Jude Collie and CGI to recreate original actor Edward Furlong) and a T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) have saved the world from a take-over by the artificial neural network Skynet.
Cut to 2022 and a familiar set-up. Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) and brother Diego (Diego Boneta) are living quiet, unassuming lives in Mexico City when—wait for it—a shape-shifting Rev-9 “My whole body’s a weapon” Terminator (Gabriel Luna), is sent from the future to eliminate Dani before she can become a threat to the Legion Machine Network. “Two days ago, I had this nice, simple life,” Dani says. “And now it’s a nightmare.”
Her survival depends on two warriors, Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a time-traveling augmented soldier and Connors, the original Terminator butt kicker. “I hunt Terminators and I drink till I pass out,” she says.
Along the way they meet Carl (a salt-and-pepper Schwarzenegger), a retired T-800 “Model 101” who left Skynet behind to integrate into human society. He found his humanity, married a human, raised a stepchild but is brought back into the fold to battle against the new Terminator, even though he is a Commodore 64 compared to Rev-9’s quantum computer.
“Terminator: Dark Fate” feels familiar. The basic plot holds true to the classic original. The time travel, the protective force, the relentless evil, are time-honoured tropes that date back thirty-five years. Grace is even a cinematic echo of Kyle Reese and there are not one but two riffs on the famous, “I’ll be back” line. Director Miller and a long list of screenwriters including David S. Goyer and Billy Ray keep things current with references to undocumented immigration between Mexico and the United States and diverse and gender-blind casting but by the time the end credits roll it feels like we’ve been down this road before.
The main difference between then and now are the special effects. The original “Terminator” was a low-budget beauty that focused on story telling over wild effects. “T2” was more advanced but now our eye is accustomed to the kind of superhero CGI that allows Rev-9 to liquify and reconstitute. It doesn’t shock or charm, it just is. The Terminator characters must have remarkable capabilities but his gooey reformations don’t have the impact of the cool T-1000 liquid metal sequences.
Miller provides the kind of big set pieces we expect, wild car chases, and helicopter stunts but the interesting stuff lies in the characters. It’s fun to have Hamilton back as Connors, equal parts badass and wise ass. She’s snaps off one liners with ease and re-establishes her place as an action icon one bazooka shot at a time.
Schwarzenegger returns with a new twist on his famous cyborg character. He still weighs four hundred pounds and can punch his way through metal doors, but he’s discovered his human side. He gets a few laughs, provides some old-school heavy metal action but there’s a twinkle in his LED eye that hasn’t been there in past Terminator movies.
By not straying far from the roots of the franchise “Terminator: Dark Fate” is the best “Terminator” movie since “T2” but feels more like a chance at setting up a new batch of sequels than a rebirth of the story.
Richard interviews “Terminator: Dark Fate” director Tim Miller. They talk about Miller’s love of the Terminator franchise, what it was like having Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger on board for this sequel.
More than two decades have passed since Sarah Connor prevented Judgment Day, changed the future, and re-wrote the fate of the human race. Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) is living a simple life in Mexico City with her brother (Diego Boneta) and father when a highly advanced and deadly new Terminator – a Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) – travels back through time to hunt and kill her. Dani’s survival depends on her joining forces with two warriors: Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an enhanced super-soldier from the future, and a battle-hardened Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). As the Rev-9 ruthlessly destroys everything and everyone in its path on the hunt for Dani, the three are led to a T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from Sarah’s past that may be their last best hope.
Richard sat down with “Gemini Man” director Ang Lee for CTV NewsChannel. The pair discuss the technological challenges in making the film, including creating a “clone” of Will Smith.
RC: What you have here in this film, and this doesn’t give anything awa,y but there is Will Smith at his current age, 50, or 51, that’s the joke in the film, fighting against his 23 year old self. You’ve created a computer generated image. So that means I guess you had to shoot everything twice,
Ang Lee: There were endless measurements to put everything together and a lot of efforts in the post. 500 artists, working for a year.
RC: There are technical challenges in this film that, it occurs to me, just made it a harder film to make. Let’s talk about the frame rate, a little bit, this sounds kind of technical but really what it is, instead of shooting at 24 frames a second, you’re shooting 60 which makes everything look really realistic. But there’s no place to hide. Right. Is it a more complicated process for you as a director?
AL: Of course, because that’s something new to us. The equipment is doesn’t quite accommodate it. It’s not as not handy. It is very clumsy in operation. To raise the frame raise is just raise it to normal for 3D. I think 3d, because your perceptions is sharper, it is more like real life. It’s less tolerable to the strobe, which we actually learn to like in the past. So this is something else is uncomfortable zone but but it is exciting because it’s a new experience.
RC: There’s not so much CG in Brokeback Mountain, but you do use CGI in your other films. Do you just see it as another tool in your toolbox as a filmmaker?
AL: Yeah, ironically, I’m a really low tech I am like really down when it comes to that. Ask the experts. I ask the smart guys to figure out for me how I can see certain things and pursue images that do things to you.
RC: I would think at some point it becomes less about the storytelling. At a certain point and then more about what we have to make sure that the eyeline is right and we have to make sure that when you’re dealing with such technology, how do you as a director as a storyteller as someone who says you’re, you’re not so technologically minded. Keep your enthusiasm up for a project like that,
AL: If it doesn’t look right get scared. You’re making a mess and people are spending a lot of money on it. Also you just want to see that image, how it plays. So naturally, is painstaking, and hopefully we’ll go through there so the audience don’t go through the same thing. They’re just enjoy the picture, and don’t think about that. The visual effects people will tell you that. Ironically, it’s the best compliment they can get is that people don’t know is they had a hard time.
“Gemini Man,” a glossy new action-thriller starring Will Smith, feels like a cinematic stew of ideas lifted from other movies. Mix and match “Looper” and “Replicant” with a dash of “Deadpool” and “Unforgiven” and you have a film with that feels like a mild case of déjà vu.
Smith plays highly trained government sniper Henry Brogan. When we first meet him he’s on mission to assassinate a bio-terrorist from a perch two kilometers away. He aims, blasts his target, who happens to be travelling on a train at over 200 KPH, through the neck, completing the job as assigned. It’s a spectacular shot but Brogan doesn’t feel great about it. “There was a girl,” he says, “a beautiful little girl next to him. If I was six inches off…” After 72 confirmed kills he feels it’s time to hang up his guns. “Deep down my soul is hurt,” he says. “I need peace.”
Trouble is, he knows too much. Retiring means he is a loose end and his Defense Intelligence Agency bosses, Clay Verris (Clive Owen) and Janet Lassiter (Linda Emond), don’t like loose ends. He must be controlled or killed. “Mutts like Henry were born to be collateral damage,” Verris sneers. First they send newbie Agent Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to keep an eye on him. When that doesn’t work a hit-squad is dispatched. When Brogan dispatches the squad the international adventure begins.
With Zakarweski and ace pilot Baron (Benedict Wong) in tow, Brogan blows through his air mile points, travelling to Cartagena, Colombia, Budapest, Hungary and Savannah, Georgia. They’re on the run from a new breed of soldier sent by Verris, a weaponized human who makes the mission personal for Brogan.
(ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE, THERE BE UNAVOIDBALE SPOILERS AHEAD) There is no way to discuss the plot of “Gemini Man” without giving away a major plotline. It’s a not a secret but let’s just pretend you didn’t hear it from me: the weaponized human is Brogan’s clone, complete with the skill set but without most of the annoying human traits like fear and pain. Playing the clone is a de-aged Smith and while it is fun to see a cocky, spry version of him on the big screen, the young Smith often looks like a digital echo of the real thing. It’s all fun and games when the two are doing battle in any number of director Ang Lee’s frenetically staged action scenes but when their relationship becomes an emotional mano a mano the limitations of the digital imitation become obvious and distracting.
Shooting in 60 frames per second and in 3D, Lee fills the screen with hyper-realistic images that seem to pop off the screen. Shrapnel cascades into the audience and a gravity defying ninja hop scotches across the screen to great effect but, for my money, the digital imagery treatment doesn’t have the warmth of film. It feels hard-edged and stark, like old-school video tape, which works well in the action scenes—e motorcycle chase in Columbia is breathtaking—but less so in the more intimate moments.
“Gemini Man” will likely garner more attention for its startling look than for its content. An olio of clone and one-last-job movies it feels out of date, like a slick looking relic from the age of direct to DVD action movies.
Richard and Academy Award winning director Ang Lee presented a sneak peak of his new film “Gemini Man” at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto on Wednesday night. They talked about why Lee chose to shoot in 4K digital 3D at 120 frames per second and how Will Smith has changed as an actor in the last thrity years.
If I have one complaint about “Overlord” it’s that there aren’t enough Nazi zombies. The J.J. Abrams-produced is a smart addition to the sub-sub-sub-sub genre of undead Third Reich films but plays more like one of those episodes of “The Walking Dead” where they talk about the zombies as much, if not more, then battle them.
The film begins with the stuff of 100 war movies. A platoon of young American soldiers, some cocky, some terrified, are aboard a plane, June 1944 just hours before D-Day. Their mission? Locate and bomb a tower located on the top of a church in a tiny French town. Why did the Nazis put this tower on top of the church? “Because they’re evil SOBs.“
When their plane takes serious fire from the Germans the paratroopers bail. A small number of them, including newbie Pvt. Boyce (Jovan Adepo), Cpl. Ford (Wyatt Russell), the de facto leader with 1000 yard stare, gunner (Rosenfeld Dominic Applewhite), war photographer Chase (Iain De Caestecker) and loud mouth Tibbet (John Magaro)—survive the perilous parachute jump into German occupied France. On the ground they dodge bullets and the enemy before connecting with Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier), a French woman who lives with her brother (Gianny Taufer) and aunt in their target town.
There they come into contact with the local SS commander Wafner (Pilou Asbæk) and, after some grizzly discoveries in a Nazi lab, learn of a nefarious plan to create “the blood of eternity” which gives anyone injected with it super strength, immunity to pain and a really bad attitude. “A thousand year Reich needs thousand year soldiers,” snarls Wafner. Question is, the Americans survive the jump, landmines and regular Nazis but can they survive Nazi Zombies?
“Overlord” is a hybrid of styles. An old school war film meets zombie action film is given a Lovecraftian bio-horror twist courtesy of a Josef Mengelesque evil Nazi scientist. It’s pure exploitation; a movie that drips with chemically engineered blood and guts. Director Julius Avery embraces the pulp aspects of the story, from the stereotypically cocky soldier Tibbet to the heroic Ford to the pure evil of Wafner (“They have been given a purpose,” he says. “They will contribute in ways you can’t imagine.”). Combined it adds up to a heightened experience that delivers within the confines of the zombie genre. If only there had been more zombies.
“Secret in Their Eyes,” a loose adaptation of “El secreto de sus ojos,” the 2010 Argentian Oscar winner for Best Foreign film, stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts in a crime drama that made me want to close my eyes and take a nap. This one almost made me wish for the high drama and excitement of last week’s most boring movie “By the Sea.”
The “action” begins when Ray (Ejiofor) a former FBI counter-terrorism expert, blows back into Los Angeles claiming to have new evidence in a thirteen year old murder case. Now living in New York and working in private security, he is still obsessed with finding the killer of his colleague Jess’s (Roberts) daughter. For the better part of a decade he’s been working alone trying to come up with new clues. He’s uncovered something but needs to convince District Attorney—and former office roimance—Claire (Kidman) to green light a new investigation.
What follows is a number of close calls, 911 paranoia—complicating matters is the fact that the main suspect is a snitch providing info on a sleeper cell of terrorists—and some tepid flirtation between Ray and Claire.
Told in a series of flashbacks between present day and thirteen years ago during the active investigation of the crime—with the occasional flashback within a flashback—“Secret in Their Eyes” is a confused mess. Ray has sprigs of gray hair on his head so it must be the present day. Or is it? Do I still care? Nonetheless the story plods along unaffected by the urgently emotional performances by the three leads.
Roberts stands out (and not in a good way) in a stripped-down Academy Award grab of a role while both Ejiofor and Kidman are uncharacteristically dreary. All three allow melodramatics to turn what might have been a good procedural into a soap opera.
The most interesting case in “Secret in Their Eyes” isn’t the murder case but the case the film makes for not remaking perfectly good Oscar winners.
