By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
Dean Norris is best known for portraying police officers. “I play DEA, CIA, FBI, LAPD; I got ‘em all,” he once said. He became instantly recognizable to a generation of TV fans as the boisterous DEA agent Hank Schrader on Breaking Bad, and in his new film he’s once again playing a cop, but with a twist.
“You almost feel sorry for him,” says Norris, “until you realize who he is.”
The film is Remember, a road movie of sorts. Christopher Plummer plays Zev, a man on a journey to justice, a quest to find the Nazi guard who killed his family 70 years before. Along the way he meets Norris as Officer Kurlander, a sad and lonely man with a connection to one of Zev’s suspects.
Their explosive meeting is difficult to discuss without giving away a plot point, but suffice to say Norris reveals when he had a chance to watch it he did so with his hands covering his face.
“We had three cameras going and I was like, ‘Just run them and let me hit it,’” says the fifty-two-year-old actor. “It was one of the few times where I almost felt out of body. You know when you see red and get kind of blinded? I’m not even sure what I said some of the time.”
Norris credits his director and co-star with making the five-day filming of the wild sequence possible.
“(Atom Egoyan) does what the good directors do,” he says, “and makes a comfortable space for you to play in and feel safe, which was important on this damn thing because it is so crazy. You want to feel safe to be able to go to wherever you have to go to, and I did with him.”
Norris describes Plummer as one of the greats. “It was like working with Laurence Olivier.”
“It was a pleasure to watch him,” he says. “There would be moments where I’d be in the scene and saying to myself, ‘I’m looking into the eyes of a man who has been in these scenes for decades. Been in the moment with unbelievable people in unbelievable movies.’ It’s like I wanted that to seep into me. Steal his essence.
“It’s a memory I’ll have for the rest of my life.”
With a cast headlined by Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau, Atom Egoyan’s new film “Remember” brings over 150 years of acting experience to the screen. Plummer is Zev, a man set on delivering justice to the Nazi guard who killed his family 70 years before. Plummer and Landau are both Academy Award winners and early buzz suggests they may both earn Oscar attention again for this film.
Revenge is on Max’s mind of (Martin Landau). After a lifetime of bring Nazis to justice with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, he’s now an octogenarian living in a senior’s home confined to a wheelchair. An Auschwitz survivor, he has made it his life’s work to “find the man responsible for the murder of my family,” but time is running out and there is one last name left on his list, Rudy Kurlander. Trouble is, there are multiple Kurlanders who fit the profile. In the dying days of World War II SS soldiers stole the identities of their victims and four Rudy’s emerged in the aftermath. One is an alias for the man responsible for the deaths of Max’s family.
To track down and dispatch Kurlander Max recruits Zev (Christopher Plummer), a ninety year-old widower from the senior’s home. Like Max, Zev was at Auschwitz and as the last living survivors from the prison block is, as Max tells him, “the only person left who can recognize the face of the man who murdered our families.” Despite a failing memory—“Sometimes I forget things,” Zev says.—Zev embarks on the search for Kurlander, armed with a detailed letter from Max to remind him of the operation’s details and a loaded Glock.
“Remember” is a road movie, a journey to justice. Along the way we meet several Rudy Kurlanders, a neo Nazi with a dog named Eva and several very helpful hotel clerks. Despite the constantly changing scenery and situations the constant is Christopher Plummer in a remarkable performance as a man on a mission. Struggling, he methodically works his way through the list, years of anger bubbling under the surface. He’s genteel—“Let us not argue,” he says while holding a gun on one of the Rudys. “We are too old for lies.”—but deeply wounded by events that he can now barely remember. Plummer conveys it all, confusion, anger, fear, resignation and in one extraordinary scene, deep sorrow as he shares a tender moment with one of the Kurlanders.
Egoyan parcels out the story carefully, building tension to an explosive climax. The thrills come with the search, but “Remember’s” main buzz comes from Plummer’s heartfelt and assured performance as a man struggling to reconcile the past with the present.
Here are Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Black Mass” and “Everest,” plus a look back at the highlights from the Toronto International Film Festival!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “The Longest Ride,” “Danny Collins,” “The Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Cut Bank.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Danny Collins” begins with a flashback to 1971. The title character is an up-and-coming folk singer promoting his first album. His Chime Magazine interviewer is clearly a fan, telling the young singer that soon he would he rich, famous and have more women than he’ll know what to do with.
Collins squirms in his seat.
“Why are you staring at me like that information scares you?”
“Because it does,” sputters Collins.
Cut to forty years later. Collins is a sell out, a Neil Diamond sound-a-like superstar who has become comfortable with the money, fame and women while developing a crippling cocaine habit. As a birthday gift his long time manager Frank (Christopher Plummer) gives him a letter from John Lennon, written in 1971 in response to the Chime Magazine interview. Collins never received the handwritten note, but its content regarding the Beatles’s thoughts on fame, fortune and not letting them affect your creativity, rock Collins.
“What would have happened if I got that letter when I was supposed to?” he wonders. “My life would have turned out different.”
Taking the letter to heart, he decides to change his life. The first stop on his recovery tour? New Jersey, to contact a son (Bobby Cannavale) he’s never met.
Appropriately enough, I guess, for a movie about music the story spends a great deal of time plucking at heartstrings. Sentimental and sappy, the only rock-and-roll things here are the John Lennon songs that wallpaper the soundtrack.
As edgy as Collins’s big hit “Baby Doll”—which comes complete with its own dance—the movie doesn’t ever feel authentic, but Pacino is Pacino and brings a certain charm to the main character. One of the film’s running jokes has Danny asking hotel manager Mary (Annette Bening) out for dinner, only to have her reject his offer. He won’t give up, however, and neither does Pacino. His Leonard Cohen-esque singing aside, he commits fully to the role and fills in some of the gaps with sheer strength of will.
Cannavale and Jennifer Garner, as the long-lost son and daughter-in-law and Plummer also bring considerable charm but make no mistake, this is Pacino’s peacock show. Like the character, the film is ridiculous but has a lot of heart and it’s hard to deny the underlying good-vibe on display.
There are as many different kinds of Easter movies as there are colours on the most psychedelic Ukrainian Easter egg. From kid-friendly romps like Hop, Russell Brand’s cartoon about an errant Easter Bunny, to the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar to all-singing-all-dancing spectaculars like Easter Parade to sword-and-sandal epics like Ben Hur and solemn retellings of the biblical Easter story like The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Then there are horror films like Easter Bunny, Kill Kill and the terrifying Easter Bunny from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey… so many diverse takes on Easter, but since there’s no way to watch all these movies on Easter weekend, let’s hippity-hop through a list of the bunny’s greatest hits.
Controversial in its time—fundamentalist Bob Jones III denounced it as “blasphemy” without actually watching the film—Jesus of Nazareth, director Franco Zeffirelli’s epic 1977 mini-series, is now considered a classic. Clocking in at a whopping 382 minutes, it’s a reverent look at Jesus’s life from his birth to resurrection starring heavyweights like Laurence Olivier, Anthony Quinn, Anne Bancroft and Christopher Plummer.
From the sacred to the sublime, It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown continues Charles Schultz’s tradition of providing a story for every holiday, both secular and spiritual. The twelfth Peanuts cartoon special sees Linus try to hype up the arrival of the Easter Beagle but only Sally believes him. The rest of the gang is still unsure in light of Linus’s Great Pumpkin Halloween fiasco. This special, now available on DVD, features one of the only times Snoopy ever spoke on screen. He shouts “Hey!” before dancing with bunnies in a fantasy sequence.
Fred Astaire, the legendary song-and-dance-man was no stranger to holiday entertainment. His Christmas special, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, is a Yuletide favorite but he also appeared in no less than three Easter-themed movies and TV shows. Astaire’s movie, Holiday Inn, the 1942 story of a singer who turns his farm house into a dinner theatre on the holidays, is best known for introducing Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, but also produced the tune Easter Parade, which, six years later turned up in the hoofer’s film of the same name.
Finally, years later he played the narrator in the Rankin/Bass stop-motion animated The Easter Bunny’s Coming to Town. Set in Kidville, the most child-friendly place on earth, it is the story of how the Easter Bunny came to be.
The main thing that this movie suffers from is that it has been condensed to an almost absurd degree. The copy that sits on my shelf clocks in at over 900 pages, written by Charles Dickens with great energy and humor. Director (and frequent Woody Allen collaborator) Douglas McGrath trims the story down to a commercial length, and revs up the pace to an astonishing degree. This film seems like it is in a hurry to get to the closing credits, which in one sense is great because it’s not very good.
The movie begins with Young Nicholas (Charlie Hunnam) and his family enjoying a comfortable, idyllic life. The idyll comes to an end when Nicholas’s father dies, leaving the family bankrupt. Nicholas, his sister and mother journey to London to seek help from their Uncle Ralph (Christopher Plummer), but Ralph’s only goal is to separate the family and take advantage of them. Nicholas is sent to teach at a ramshackle school run by the merciless Wackford Squeers (Jim Broadbent). Eventually, Nicholas runs away with schoolmate Smike (Jamie Bell), and the two set off to bring the Nickleby family back together.
There are some good elements. Christopher Plummer is worth watching as the wicked uncle. Nathan Lane is interesting. Dame Edna as his wife is fun to watch, but by and large the film is beige. Just average. In the title role of Nicholas is Charlie Hunnam a British television actor who made his name on Queer As Folk, and unfortunately he’s not very interesting. As the central character you have to want to watch him. You have to care about his character. You have to want him to succeed. You have to want him to marry the right girl. You have to want all that for him, and you don’t.
The problem is that while you are traveling with him you meet all sorts of characters that are far more interesting than the central character. You want to say, ‘Nick, you go on. We’re going to stay here for a while.’
Historical drama doesn’t have to be this dull. Dickens is brimming with juicy characters and interesting plots, if only the filmmakers had trusted the source material, a book that has been delighting people since 1839.
There’s a reason why “Beginners,” a melancholy new family drama starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Mélanie Laurent feels so authentic. Director Mike Mills (the “Thumbsucker” filmmaker, not the R.E.M. bassist) based elements of the story on his real life. The result is an intimate portrait of a man shaped by the influence of his parents.
In this nonlinear story we follow the broken timeline of Oliver’s (McGregor) broken life. He’s having a strange year. First his mother dies of cancer, then, just as he is coming to grips with her passing, his 75-year-old father Hal (Plummer) comes out of the closet, announcing that he’s always been gay and now that his wife is gone he’d like to explore that long buried aspect of his life. Hal’s news is followed by turns both good and bad. First he meets a wonderful man, but just as their relationship is blossoming he is diagnosed with stage four cancer. The cumulative effect of all these events sends Oliver deep inside his own head to a sad and bad place until he meets Anna (Laurent), a beautiful actress with father issues of her own.
Told in flashbacks embellished with many stylistic flourishes, the movie never allows Mill’s montages and other frills to overwhelm the story. Mills, who along with his personal connection to the story, brings a keen sense of how real people conduct themselves in times of stress, isn’t afraid to allow his characters to be introspective. A good portion of the story is internal, conveyed by McGregor’s dour expressions, Plummer’s dignity and Laurent’s vulnerability.
Even the meet cute of the McGregor and Laurent characters—her voice is shot, laryngitis, and she has to communicate with a notepad—which would normally be too quirky by half for me, works because this isn’t a fluffy rom com but a textured look at why people behave the way they do.
Mills has also drawn expert performances from his cast. Plummer looks ripe to earn another Oscar nomination for his touching take on a man who finds happiness only to have it taken away too soon and McGregor and Laurent make a compelling couple.
Topping off the tender tale is the cutest on-screen dog since Benji who provides unique insight into Oliver’s emotional maturation.
