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.
In “I.S.S. (International Space Station),” a new sci fi/horror drama starring Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina, and now playing in theatres, the conflict that drives the outer space story is very much earthbound.
In the spirit of international co-operation, astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station hail from the United States and Russia. The Americans, team leader Gordon Barrett (Chris Messina), biologist Dr. Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) and Christian Campbell (John Gallagher Jr.), work alongside Russians Alexey Pulov (Pilou Asbæk), Weronika Vetrov (Masha Mashkova), and Nicholai Pulov (Costa Ronin).
“We don’t talk politics. Here we are one.”
Despite having virtually no privacy in the cramped quarters, tensions are kept to a minimum, although Pulov ominously hints at the trouble to come when he notes that it won’t end well for the laboratory mice Foster brought on-board and keeps in a small paddock.
For now, however, all is well. They play chess, do sing-alongs and drink booze in zero gravity.
“You forget everything that happens down there,” Pulov says, “when you can see the beauty from up here.”
The peaceful ship’s tranquil atmosphere is shattered when a sudden burst of flame appears on Earth. Foster first thinks it is a natural phenomenon, like a volcanic eruption, but when a cluster of explosions occurs in rapid succession, it’s clear something devastating is happening below.
Stepping outside the ship to repair a broken antenna, Barrett witnesses a terrible sight. War has broken out between the U.S. and Russia, and the Earth is on fire.
NASA has instructed the Americans to “take the I.S.S. by any means necessary.” Trouble is, both countries see the I.S.S. as an asset, and both want control. “We have to assume the Russians have the same order,” says Campbell.
What began as an exercise in co-operation soon becomes a matter of survival as they lose communication with Earth, and must overcome their mistrust of one another to keep the I.S.S. from plummeting from the sky.
A study of human nature rather than a sci fi epic, “I.S.S.” is a fairly simple, yet effective, story of loyalty, sabotage and treachery. The I.S.S. setting is compelling, providing horror elements like claustrophobia and isolation, but this is essentially a locked room drama that is more about human nature than it is about zero gravity. The monsters here isn’t from outer space, it’s the mistrust and paranoia that forms in the face of adversity.
Set to an anxiety-inducing soundtrack by Anne Nikitin, the movie doesn’t rewrite the isolation horror playbook, but delivers tension with interesting characters and their ever-shifting, murky allegiances.
DeBose leads the small cast, acting as the story’s focus and moral core. All the other characters interact with her and it is, more often than not, up to her to guide the audience through the plot’s many machinations. She brings gravitas and likability to her first big screen dramatic role, after winning an Oscar for her work in the musical “West Side Story.”
The rest of the cast add capable support, particularly Asbaek, whose character is torn between duty and the humanity of the situation.
“I.S.S.” is a barebones effort with decent special effects and some good zero gravity visuals, but don’t expect the lavish treatment of a film like “Gravity.” Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite does a lot with a little, effects wise, but is more concerned with the life-and-death, us-vs-them conundrum at the story’s heart as paranoia and suspicion give way to sabotage and betrayal.
The Boogeyman may be the most prevalent and terrifying creature to haunt the night. With no specific appearance, the Boogeyman can be anyone or anything that hides in the dark recesses of your mind, or under your bed.
In the new horror film, “The Boogeyman,” based on Stephen King’s short story of the same name from the 1978 anthology “Night Shift,” and now playing in theatres, the titular character is a murderous, malevolent force who feeds off grief.
The movie focusses on 16-year-old Sadie (“Yellowjackets” star Sophie Thatcher) and younger sister Sawyer Harper (Vivien Lyra Blair), both still smarting from the tragic death of the mother. Their father, therapist Will (Chris Messina), is so consumed by his own grief he is unable to provide the support his daughters need.
When Lester (David Dastmalchian), a disturbed man who claims that someone or something killed his children, shows up at their home, desperate for help, he unwittingly brings with him a dangerous entity that feasts on their anguish.
At first Sadie and Sawyer’s fear of this mysterious presence is brushed off as a “manifestation” of their imaginations. “When there are scary things we don’t understand,” says Dr. Weller (LisaGay Hamilton), “our minds try and fill in the blanks.”
As the terror continues, however, Will begins to take the danger seriously, as Sadie seeks ways to neutralize the threat.
“The Boogeyman” is another entry in the low light horror movie sweepstakes. Director Rob Savage keeps the aperture turned down, shooting in most scenes in the near dark, which is a perfect incubator for horror, but begs the question, “If the boogeyman only comes in the dark, why not turn on the lights?”
That quibble aside, “The Boogeyman” is an effective slow-burn tale of terror. It takes its time with the scares, introducing jump scares and slamming doors early on, building anxiety and tension, before getting face-to-face with the face of evil.
The monster itself is nothing much special, but the idea of it is the stuff of nightmares. A creature that feeds off you at your lowest point, that “likes to play with its food” to “scare them until they’re done,” is something that can burrow its way deep into your subconscious. It is at the center of the film, but Savage opts for jump scares over the psychological, blunting some of the story’s true emotional horror.
Having said that, the relationship between the two sisters ups the ante as Sadie risks it all to protect her younger sibling.
“The Boogeyman” is more anxiety inducing than actually scary, but it is an interesting take on grief, and how sometimes you have to put the past behind you to move forward.
It may be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the words Nike and basketball were not synonymous. Way back in the early years of the Reagan administration, Nike was a third tier sneaker company, better known for lagging behind Adidas and Converse than for their now famous swoosh logo.
“Air,” a new sports drama that reteams Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, tells the story of the celebrity endorsement that changed the game for Nike, sports merchandising and popular culture.
Damon is Sonny Vaccaro, a pudgy marketer who tries to convince basketball stars to align themselves with Nike. Trouble is, back then the company was best known for making comfortable shoes for middle-aged joggers.
“There’s nothing cool about Nike,” says college basketball coach George Raveling (Marlon Wayans).
When Vaccaro finds rookie Michael Jordan (Damian Delano Young), he is convinced the 21-year-old backboard-shattering phenom could be the face of the company. “I believe he is the future,” says Vaccaro. Now all he has to do is convince his skeptical boss, the elaborately toupéed Phil Knight (Affleck), and Jordan’s even more skeptical parents James and Deloris (James R. Jordan Sr. and Viola Davis) that this is a good deal for everybody.
“I believe in your son,” he says to Deloris. “And his story is going to make us want to fly. But a show is just a shoe.”
“Until my son steps into it,” she replies.
“Air” is a biography of a brand that, somehow, doesn’t feel like a two-hour advertisement for basketball shoes. That’s because it’s really not about the shoes, although there are several beauty shots of the prototype Air Jordans. Like all good sports stories, the specificity of the story, in this case Vaccaro’s journey, becomes a universal story of inspiration, determination and risk taking.
Damon is in likable puppy dog mode here, handing in an affable performance that relies on his considerable charm as an actor to buoy the movie’s never-say-die themes. We know how this story ends, but because Damon is easy to get on side with, we go along for the ride.
He’s supported by a terrific secondary cast, including Jason Bateman and Chris Tucker as the rule-breaking members of the Nike marketing team and Chris Messina as an over-the-top agent who says, “I don’t have friends. I have clients.”
As Michael Jordan’s mother Deloris, it is Viola Davis who delivers the film’s most potent message. In a performance fueled by grit and warmth, the character’s steadfast belief in knowing the value of a person is conveyed without a trace of sentiment or manipulation.
The lack of Michael Jordan, in what is essentially a Jordan origin story of a sort, is puzzling. Affleck, who also directed the movie, says because Jordan is so well known, he felt making him a character would be distracting. We’ll never know for sure, but it does feel odd that on the handful of times he appears—other than in archival footage—we never see his face, only his back and shoulders and usually out of focus.
According to “Air,” number three on Nike’s business manifesto was “Break the rules,” and certainly, in the courting and signing of Jordan, they did. Affleck breaks fewer rules, using standard montages and a lot of needle drops to establish the 1980s backdrop. We’ve seen a lot of this stuff before, usually in movies that aren’t as good as this one. But despite some familiar visuals and music, “Air’s” underdog story is still a crowd-pleaser.
In an early scene in “I Care a Lot,” the new thriller starring Rosamund Pike as professional legal guardian to the elderly Marla Grayson, says “I care. I care a lot,” referring to her wards, but it soon becomes clear that she really only cares for one thing. Money.
If you were to look up the word irredeemable in the dictionary you may well find a picture of Marla Grayson alongside the definition. She is an elegantly dressed, smiling viper who takes advantage of the old and infirm for profit. She’s a court appointed guardian who swoops in, cuts off family members as she sequesters her wards in care homes that feel more like prisons while she siphons their bank accounts and sells their homes to cover her exorbitant fees.
When Grayson and girlfriend Fran (Eiza González) pay off Dr. Karen Amos (Alicia Witt),a crooked doctor who gussies up medical records so Grayson Guardianship can take control of her patient’s lives.
On the face of it their latest mark, Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), seems like a perfect victim. Wealthy and without family, she’s vulnerable and just waiting to be bilked. Or is she? Turns out Jennifer has some secrets, and worse than that, some very important and dangerous friends. “I’m the worst mistake you’ll ever make,” Jennifer hisses at Marla.
With stories of elder abuse making front page news far too often, “I Care a Lot” provides a modicum of revenge, turning the tables in a delicious way.
Pike revisits the cold and calculating character that won her raves in “Gone Girl” but ups the ante to plumb the depths of depravity. To describe the predatory Marla as a shark does a disservice to Great Whites. “Playing fair. Being scared, that gets you nowhere,” she says. “That gets you beat.” Seemingly born without a heart, she masks her viciousness with a veneer of professionalism and her well-practised mantra of “I care, a lot.” Pike is clearly having fun here playing cold and calculating, but never resorts to the usual villain schtick. Her composure is disarming but, like an Oleander bloom, cut her and she bleeds poison.
Wiest is devilishly engaging as a woman with secrets and Peter Dinklage brings a barely contained rage to his role (NO SPOILERS HERE) but it is Pike who dominates.
“I Care a Lot” is a rarity, a truly mean-spirited movie where the best you can do is find yourself rooting for the least terrible person to persevere. It sags in the last half hour, becoming slightly more conventional but ends with a bang.
“The Secrets We Keep,” a new revenge thriller starring Noomi Rapace and coming to digital and on-demand, is a riff on the claustrophobic revenge story of “Death and the Maiden.”
Set in 1960, Rapace plays Maja, a Romanian refugee and Holocaust survivor, now living in a small American town with her physician doctor Lewis (Chris Messina) and son Patrick (Jackson Vincent). One day at the park she hears a man whistle for his dog and a flood of memories come back. Following him home she gets a good look and her worst fears are confirmed. He is the SS officer who, near the end of the war, raped her and killed her sister as they fled a concentration camp.
Blinded by anger and horrific memories she kidnaps him, hitting him in the head with a hammer and shoving him in the trunk of her car. When Lewis gets home to find the man, who denies Maja’s charges and claims to be a Swiss citizen named Thomas (Joel Kinnaman, who, in real life went to high school with Rapace), tied up in the basement he is rightfully perplexed. Maja had never shared to the details of her ordeal with her husband but he trusts her and goes along with plan to get a confession, one way or another. “I’m not the man you think I am,” Thomas (or whatever his name is) says, begging to be let go. She is tortured by the memory of what happened and why her sister was shot and she wasn’t. “Help me remember,” she says to him. “It is your only way out of here.”
“The Secrets We Keep” raises questions of trust, survivor’s guilt and the corrosive nature of secrets. It’s a gritty, unsentimental movie that ratches up the tension with ideas, not action. How reliable is Maja’s memory? What amount of scepticism should Lewis bring to this situation? Is vengeance morally correct? Those questions and more hang heavy over the plot, confronting the viewer to assess their own feelings and biases. The story isn’t particularly tricky but it is carefully calibrated to make you wonder who is telling the truth, who is lying and even, who can trust their memories of long-ago events.
Rapace does her best work ever in an English film, bringing some nuance to a character who could have been played with a much harder, vengeful edge. Messina brings the sense of his character’s confusion to life—You said we were going to do things together,” he says supportively, “and you torture him while I’m not here?”—while Kinnaman remains a cypher, a person who may or may not be the man Maja thinks he is. Each performance fits in place, creating a mosaic of truths and lies that is as compelling as it is confounding.
“She Dies Tomorrow,” a surreal new horror film on VOD, is a timely and unsettling story where the fear of death is passed from person to person like a virus.
The story begins with Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), once a joyful young woman looking forward to setting up her newly purchased home. But now it’s a job that comes with no joy as Amy is gripped with deep, soul-shredding anxiety. For some reason she is convinced she will die the next day. Not by suicide or illness, just death. “There is no tomorrow for me,” she says. She’s so convinced of her inevitable fate she changes her voicemail message. “There’s no need to leave a message.”
Seeking a connection, she invites her friend Jane (Jane Adams) over. Jane swings by and after some awkward conversation about death leaves, also consumed by thoughts of her own, impending passing. As Jane moves through the night, visiting a doctor (Josh Lucas), her brother (Chris Messina) and friends (Olivia Taylor Dudley and Michelle Rodriguez) she leaves an existential trail of fear with everyone she meets.
Directed by Amy Seimetz “She Dies Tomorrow” is not a regular horror film. It’s an experiment in atmosphere building aided by a premise that feels very timely in the midst of a pandemic.
Questions are asked—What is this virus and how is it transported?—but no answers are provided. The film requires you to accept the situation and feel the anxiety of something that may or may not be real. For Seimetz’s characters the dread is palpable, forcing them to examine their choices, in relationships and life, and re-evaluate in whatever time they have left. In this time of real-life uncertainty Seimetz paints a vivid picture of mortality on a countdown that, while speculative, feels rooted in recent headlines.
Fittingly “She Dies Tomorrow” has a hallucinogenic, experimental style. Throbbing, flashing swaths of colour fill the screen as the virus—or whatever it is—attaches itself to a new host. It’s trippy, slightly psychedelic and may test the patience of less adventurous viewers but in a time where COVID-19 has spread worldwide, bringing with it angst and unease, a movie that examines human behavior in the face of transmittable trauma is, perhaps, a nightmarish artistic inevitability.
As “Joker” sweeps through Awards Season, scooping up a motherlode of Best Actor gold for Joaquin Phoenix, along comes the standalone story of the Clown Prince of Crime’s former female sidekick. “Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)” sees Margot Robbie revisit her unpredictable “Suicide Squad” character in an R-rated film that is part action, part comedy and all attitude. More in tune with the antics of “Deadpool” than the serious tone of “Joker,” “Birds of Prey” is a fourth-wall-breaking story that doesn’t feel like other superhero movies.
Picking up after the events of “Suicide Squad,” Gotham City has become a cesspool of crime. Batman has flown the coop leaving the city unprotected from the likes of crime lord Black Mask (Ewan McGregor). The baseball wielding Quinn has rid herself of her former “partner in madness,” the Joker—” I am so over clowns!” she says—and now travels with a new squad of vigilantes. “As it turns out, I wasn’t the only dame in Gotham looking for emancipation,” she says. Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) come together to help Harley protect Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), a young pickpocket who had the bad luck of coming into possession of a diamond ebcoded with a valuable secret, a secret Black Mask desperately wants. “I’m back on my feet,” Harley says, “ready to embrace the fierce goddess within.”
“Birds of Prey” is a story of survivors, of feminism, of tough women out on the town and it is the most fun DC has offered up at the movies. The stripped-down story sheds “Suicide Squad’s” nihilistic nonsense in favor of empowerment and general kick assery.
It gets off to a slow start, establishing the characters and situation, but erupts in the last third with bombastic action choreographed by director Cathy Yan and “John Wick” fight maestro Chad Stahelski. Forget the CGI finales of the Marvel Universe, this is blood-soaked up-close-and-personal stunt action with a wicked sense of humour.
Robbie has a gleeful, cheeky commitment to the character that sets the tone for the movie’s 80s new wave kaleidoscopic aesthetic. With a habit of settling disputes with a baseball bat to the groin she isn’t a role model but is unpredictable, scrappy fun to watch on screen. Ditto McGregor who actually seems to be having fun wearing Black Mask’s hyped-up wardrobe after a series of movies that have left his charisma relegated to the backroom.
“Birds of Prey” is loads of fun but manages to weave some serious ideas about not needing men to survive into the chaos. Most of all, though, it feels like a welcome antidote to the monotony of so many comic book inspired films.
“Live By Night’s” stylish story of gangsters and redemption sees Ben Affleck reteam with crime writer Dennis Lehane. Their last collaboration, “Gone Baby Gone,” was a story of two detectives embroiled in a professional and personal crisis. This time around the personal and professional intermingle once again, but from the other side of the badge.
Affleck, who stars, directs and wrote the screenplay, is Joe Coughlin, the son of a Boston police captain (Brendan Gleeson) who returned from WWI an outlaw, determined not to take orders from anyone ever again. “No man shall rule another man’s life,” he says. A botched bank robbery lands him in jail, at a reduced sentence thanks to his father’s influence. Jail is a breeze, worse for him is his romantic involvement with flapper Emma Gould (Sienna Miller) who also happens to be the girlfriend of powerful Boston gangster Albert White (Robert Glenister).
Sprung from the lockup and beaten to a pulp by White’s men, Coughlin teams with Boston’s other gang boss, Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). He’s sent to Ybor City, Florida with the task of taking over the lucrative prohibition bootleg booze business, currently run by White. To that end he leaves a trail of blood and bodies but when this demon rum purveyor tries to find a legitimate way to make cash by building a casino, a religious zealot (Elle Fanning) puts a crimp in his less-than-godly pursuits and interests.
“Live by Night” is a muted, sombre film punctuated by Baptists, bullets, broads and booze. Affleck creates a hard-boiled look at gangster life complete with corruption, betrayal and all the usual crime genre tropes but opens it up to include passion, family and redemption.
Coughlin is an interesting character, a man who coveted his amateur crook status and only turns pro—in other words, becomes a gangster—when he is painted into a corner. He’ll gun you down, but he’s no Scarface. Instead Affleck plays him as a stoic man who leads with his heart and only resorts to violence when all other options are exhausted. Later, when his legacy of violence comes back to haunt him, it packs a wallop.
There’s a lot going on in Ybor City. “Live By Night” tackles racism—the KKK plays a big role in the Florida section of the story—religion—thanks to Fanning’s troubled but angelic character—love—in the form of Graciella Corrales (Zoe Saldana)—loyalty and betrayal. It’s a literary stew of themes, held together by the violence and pulpier aspects of the movie.
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.
