I appear on “CTV News at 6” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the World War II drama “Pressure” and the crime drama/rom com “Tuner.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 37:04)
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Michelle Dube to talk about new movies in theatres including the World War II drama “Pressure,” the romantic crime drama “Tuner” and the existential horror of “Backrooms.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 14:55)
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Akshay Tandon to talk about the new releases in theatres, including the World War II drama “Pressure,” the romantic crime drama “Tuner” and the existential horror of “Backrooms.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the World War II drama “Pressure,” the romantic crime drama “Tuner” and the existential horror of “Backrooms.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the World War II drama “Pressure,” the romantic crime drama “Tuner” and the existential horror of “Backrooms.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Pressure,” a new World War II drama starring Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser, and now playing in theatres, a meteorologist plays a vital role in the scheduling of the largest amphibious assault in history.
CAST: Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, Damian Lewis. Directed by Anthony Maras.
REVIEW: A study of courage in the face of uncertainty, “Pressure” is a ticking clock drama that takes a well-known historical event and infuses the story with suspense and high-stakes intensity.
Based on true events, “Pressure” takes place in the 72 hours leading up to D-Day in June 1944. The planned Allied forces’ amphibious invasion of Normandy, France is the largest seaborne invasion force in history, but there’s a catch.
“All the pieces are in place,” says Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser). “The only imponderable is the weather.”
Unpredictable weather in the form of two aggressive storms threaten to scuttle the mission.
“If you invade tomorrow,” says Britain’s tenacious chief meteorologist, Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott), “they’re going to be washed away.”
As Stagg attempts to convince the brass that moving ahead will come with the cost of thousands of lives, the ultimate decision lies with Eisenhower.
“The final decision on the timing of D-Day,” he says, “will be mine and mine alone.”
The wrong decision not only puts lives in jeopardy, but also the fate of the free world.
“The storms that I’m talking about are real,” says Stagg. “And the wrath of nature is real.”
“Pressure” is all about the weather and whether or not to postpone D-Day. It is a war epic, but only in the sense that the decisions made by Stagg and Eisenhower are epic in their scope. The movie itself is a rather intimate retelling of events that doesn’t bother diving deep into the inner lives of its characters.
Instead, the characters are broken down into stereotypes. Andrew Scott leaves behind his “Fleabag” Hot Priest persona to play Stagg as a meticulous meteorologist, uncompromising and curt. He does good work, bringing a quiet, internalized intensity to Stagg that effectively conveys the character’s coiled confidence.
As Eisenhower’s aid and left-hand Captain Kay Summersby, Irish actress Kerry Condon acts as an anchor, emotionally grounding her boss as he makes world altering decisions.
Chris Messina as Irving P. Krick, the American meteorologist who butted heads with Stagg, is brash, if a little bland.
It’s with the casting of Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower that the movie runs into stormy weather. Physically imposing, he opts for melodrama over gravitas, a choice that runs counter to the stoic real-life character.
Dialogue driven, “Pressure” is a chamber piece that values its intimacy over action but occasionally veers into theatricality.
SYNOPSIS: In “Rental Family,” a new dramedy now playing in theatres, Brendan Fraser is a lonely, Tokyo based professional stand-in, portraying friends or family members at funerals and social gatherings, who discovers the meaning of true connection through his work.
CAST: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Akira Emoto. Directed by Hikari.
REVIEW: Low key and heartfelt, “Rental Family” succeeds because of star Brendan Fraser’s innate ability to portray an expressive soulfulness without slipping into performative mawkishness.
In a tender performance, Brendan Fraser plays Phillip Vandarploeug, an American actor living in Japan. His shot at fame, playing a superhero in a toothpaste commercial, was years ago and now he struggles to get by. When another acting audition goes south, he takes a job with Shinji (Takehiro Hira) at a company called Rental Family whose perky slogan reads, “Happiness Tailored to You!”
The gig sounds simple—provide commitment free companionship, stand-in for a long-lost relatives at funerals, essentially be a rent-a-relative in an era of alienation—but over time Phillip finds himself using less of his acting techniques and giving more of himself to the clients who have hired him for faux emotion.
“Rental Family” is a gentle movie with a simple message. Phillip learns the importance of being there for another person; how companionship, finding your logical family, benefits both parties. It’s not a new idea, but the unique setting and circumstance prevents the episodic story from slipping too far into fish-out-of-water cliché.
As he did in “The Whale,” Brendan Fraser brings quiet empathy to an introspective character who feels disconnection from society. The situations are different, but both characters create bonds with others to self-heal. Phillip is awkward, but Fraser goes deep, turning him into a nuanced character, more defined by the character’s inner life than his physical self. It’s a warm, respectful performance that anchors the film in tenderness.
He’s ably supported by Mari Yamamoto as a fiercely independent, morally conflicted Rental Family employee, Takehiro Hira as the unflappable agency owner and Akira Emoto whose moving work as a retired actor with a failing memory provides many of the film’s poignant moments.
“Rental Family” is a quiet comedy, but with a loud, beating heart.
Greed and murder are not new themes in the work of Martin Scorsese, but the effects of those capital sins have never been more darkly devastating than they are in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
A study in the banality of evil, the story, loosely based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name, is set in 1920s Oklahoma, a time of an oil rush on land owned by the Osage Nation. The discovery of black gold made the Indigenous Nation the richest people per capita on Earth. With wealth came an influx of white interlopers, “like buzzards circling our people.”
Among them is William King Hale (Robert De Niro), a seemingly respectable Osage County power broker. He speaks the area’s Indigenous language and publicly supports the Osage community, but, as we find out, it is his insidious and deadly dealings with his Indigenous Osage neighbors that filled his bank account. “Call me King,” he says unironically.
When his nephew and World War I vet Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives, looking to start a new life, Hale brings him into a years long con to defraud the Osage people through marriage scams and murder by setting up a connection between Mollie (Lily Gladstone), a wealthy Osage woman, and Ernest.
“He’s not that smart,” says Mollie, “but he’s handsome. He looks like a coyote. Those blue eyes.”
Mollie sees through the overture, noting, “Coyote wants money,” during their first dinner, but despite the economic angle, the pair marry, making Ernest an heir to her fortune if something should happen to her.
That economic element lays at the dark heart of Hale’s plan. He orchestrates matches between the monied Osage mothers, sisters and daughters with carefully chosen white men, who exploit them, murder them, and siphon off the oil money from their estates.
This reign of terror claims the lives of more than two dozen Osage women, attracting the attention of the newly formed Bureau of Investigation agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) and his crew.
The murderous real-life scheme behind “Killers of the Flower Moon” is the most depraved crime and villain Scorsese has ever essayed on film.
The wholesale murder for money is driven not just by greed, but also by white supremacy, oppression of culture and a diabolical disregard for human life. It is pure evil, manipulated by Hale, played by De Niro as the smiling face of doom.
De Niro has played dastardly characters before, but he’s never been this vile. And this is an actor who played The Devil in “Angel Heart.”
The thing that makes Hale truly treacherous and morally irredeemable is the way he insinuates himself into the lives of the very people he was exploiting and having murdered. He is a master manipulator, who will shake his victim’s hand while using his other hand to stab them in the back, and De Niro’s embodiment of him is skin crawling. “This wealth should come to us,” he says, “Their time is over. It’s just going to be another tragedy.”
As Ernest, DiCaprio goes along with the plan, but, unlike his uncle, has a hint of a conscience even as he does horrible things. He’s a weak person, torn between love for his wife and his uncle’s plan to eliminate her and her family.
The center of the story is Mollie, played with quiet grace by Gladstone. Although she disappears from the screen for long periods of time, it is her presence that provides the film with much needed heart and soul. She is strong in the face of illness and betrayal, but her stoicism portrays a complexity of emotion as her family members are murdered and her own life is endangered. Mollie is as spiritual as Hale is immoral, and that balance is the film’s underpinning.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” earns its three-and-a-half hour runtime with a classically made, multiple perspective, slow burn of a crime story that sheds light on, and condemns, the brutal treatment of Indigenous people.
Despite its dark subject matter, “The Whale,” Oscar nominated director Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, is coloured by a swirl of love, understanding and empathy.
Brendan Fraser, in his first leading role in nearly a decade, plays Charlie, a house-bound, 600-pound online English professor. Agoraphobic and unable to leave his apartment, the only outside contact Charlie has is his nurse and only friend Lis (Hong Chau) and the occasional visit from a pizza delivery guy (Sathya Sridharan). He is large to the point where even simple tasks, like standing up to retrieve a dropped remote from the floor, becomes a Herculean task.
“You will die by the weekend,” Lis says, clocking his blood pressure at 238/134. “Then I have to get to work,” he says optimistically. “I have papers to grade.”
Charlie suffers from a twice broken heart; once by congestive heart failure, the second by the death of his partner Alan. “Someone close to me passed away and it had an effect,” he says with great understatement. “I was always big,” admitting he binge-eats to make himself feel better. “I let it get out of control.”
Now, with just days left to live, he has one wish. He wants to repair the relationship with his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), a 17-year-old he hasn’t seen since he left his family after falling in love with Alan, one of his students. “I need to know I did one thing right in my life,” he says.
Ellie, just eight-years-old when he deserted her, wants nothing to do with him—“I’m not spending time with you,” she says. “You’re disgusting. You’d still be disgusting even if you weren’t fat.”—but reluctantly relents when he offers to pay her and tutor her in exchange for spending time together.
As Charlie’s condition worsens, Ellie spends more time at the apartment, uncovering aspects of her father’s life with the help of a new friend, a naïve missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins).
Aronofsky brings us into Charlie’s world, a place where grief and forgiveness live side by side to create an intimate and compassionate portrait of a man who allowed his life to spiral out of control.
The specter of death hangs over every frame of “The Whale,” and yet Fraser manages to bring optimism to a character not long for this world. He’s looking to set things straight and make sure Ellie will have the tools to have a decent life after he goes. It is a tremendous performance that soars, transcending the stage-bound nature of the story.
