Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to tie a bowtie! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the family drama “The Piano Lesson,” the creeptastic “Heretic” and the Cillian Murphy in “Small Things Like These.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with hosts Jim Richards and Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the family drama “The Piano Lesson,” the creeptastic “Heretic” and the Cillian Murphy in “Small Things Like These.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 27:29)
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres and streaming including the family drama “The Piano Lesson,” the creeptastic “Heretic” and the Cillian Murphy in “Small Things Like These.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: The morality play “Small Things like These” is Cillian Murphy’s follow-up to his Oscar winning work in “Oppenheimer.” Lowkey though it may be, this study of religious morality and individual responsibility allows him space to hand in a quietly powerful performance that speaks volumes.
CAST: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson, Clare Dunne, and Helen Behan. Directed by Tim Mielants.
REVIEW: Adapted from the novella by Claire Keegan, “Small Things Like These” is a story of courage in an era of complicity.
Set in 1985, Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a taciturn coalman in a small, conservative Irish town, where he lives with wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and five daughters. As Christmas, his busiest season, approaches he has a chilling encounter with Sarah (Zara Devlin), a young, unmarried and pregnant woman, cold and afraid, in the coal shed of the local Catholic run Magdalene Laundry.
As she begs for help, Bill is haunted by memories of his youth as an orphan, the son of an unmarried mother who passed when he was a child. In a community held in sway by the church, Bill is torn between offering aid and the potential blowback from Mother Mary (Emily Watson), head of the convent and a powerful figure in the town. “You better watch what you say about what’s there,” he’s told. “People can make things difficult for you.”
Poetically paced, “Small Things Like These” is a serious film that showcases not only the abuses of the Magdalene institutions, but the moral complicity of those who knew about it and did nothing. “If you want to get on in this life,” says Eileen, “there are things you have to ignore.”
As Bill, Murphy is quietly restrained, observant and empathetic but it is the inner torrent of torment that bubbles just beneath the surface that makes him so compelling. There are long stretches spent in silent close-up of Murphy’s face that speak volumes about Bill’s
moral conundrum and feelings of indecisiveness in the face of injustice. The film’s real action happens inside his head and Murphy’s gift is the ability to externalize the character’s interior mechanisms.
“Small Things like These” is a powerful study of quiet heroism in the face of self-interest, buoyed by Murphy, and his committed cast’s, deeply felt, rich performances.
“Oppenheimer,” the story of the father of the atomic bomb, isn’t exactly a biopic of scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. In his twelfth film, director Christopher Nolan includes biographical details in the telling of the tale of the man who invented the first nuclear weapons but the movie is more about consequences than creation. “Just because we’re building it doesn’t mean we get to decide how it’s used,” he says of the Atomic Bomb.
Nolan divides the story into two sections. The brightly colored “Fission” portrays the prickly Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) life as a tortured genius who overcame anti-Semitism to rise through the ranks of the European and American scientific elite to be recruited by the gruff Lieutenant General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) as the director of the Manhattan Project. Charged with beating the Nazis and the Russians in a race to build a weapon of mass destruction, he became, by his own words, “the destroyer of worlds.”
His close ties to the Communist Party, through his ex-girlfriend, psychiatrist Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and brother Frank (Dylan Arnold), is just one element of the left-leaning beliefs that eventually got his security clearance revoked. His political views, and second-thoughts about the destructive power he unleashed on the world, pitted him against his military bosses and founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). Those events provide fodder for the film’s other section, the austere black-and-white “Fusion.”
An adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird, the three-hour “Oppenheimer” is as downbeat as its weekend competition “Barbie” is upbeat.
Nolan takes his time with the telling of the tale, weaving together the scientific, psychological and political story threads to create rich tapestry that transcends the talky nature of the script. He teases great drama and tension out of a story that is essentially, a retelling of two tribunals, punctuated by the big bang that would change history.
Much of the film’s success is owed to Murphy, who, despite reciting teams of dialogue, goes internal to portray Oppenheimer’s towering intellect. Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema frames Murphy’s stoic face in wide screen close-ups that showcase the actor’s ability to expose not only the character’s great intelligence, but also the realization that the power he spearheaded wouldn’t be fully understood until it was too late.
The Trinity Test sequence, the depiction of first detonation of a nuclear weapon, is a masterclass of less is more filmmaking. Nolan expertly builds tension with a countdown clock and Ludwig Göransson’s anxiety inducing soundtrack, but it is the look of scientific accomplishment tempered by an accompanying moral reckoning that spreads across Murphy’s face the moment the bomb goes off that cuts to the film’s core theme of innovation vs. consequences.
Murphy is supported by an a-list cast, including Matt Damon, who exudes movie star charisma and Downey Jr, who erases memories of Tony Stark with a blustery performance that, Marvel aside, is his most interesting since “Zodiac.”
The real star, however, is Nolan. “Oppenheimer” is the director firing on all cylinders, delivering a personal story of responsibility made epic. The brainiest blockbuster of the season is a period piece about a man who moral conundrums regarding power and the way it is wielded, that resonates just as loudly today as they did when the events took place.
In a summer packed with sequels comes a movie that isn’t a sequel but feels like one. “Anna,” the new action-adventure from writer-director Luc Besson, is a new story but breathes the same air as fist-in-the-air Luc Besson thrillers like “La Femme Nikita” and “Lucy.”
Here’s the barest of outlines. Anna (Sasha Luss) is a former prostitute saved from a life on the streets when she’s recruited by the KGB. Her handler Alex Tchenkov (Luke Evans) admires her calm under pressure, smarts and the way she uses her anger. She’s also, he says, “a blank key that can open many doors.“ In other words she’s a beautiful unknown who is not in the radar of their enemies.
She signs on, becomes a killing machine and, in one elaborate mission, is scouted as a high fashion model by a prestigious Paris agency. Cue the modelling, mayhem and murder. When a job goes wrong she finds herself caught between the KGB and the CIA. Working one against the other she attempts to get the one thing she’s never had, freedom. “Is this my life,” she wonders aloud, “waiting to take a bullet between my eyes?”
“Anna” plays with time. The presentation of the story can’t rightly be called a broken timeline as much as a shattered, twisted and torn timeline. Besson loves his “Five Years Earlier,” “Six Months Later” and “Three Years Earlier” title cards to the point of distraction. H. G. Wells didn’t tinker with time as much as Besson does here. “Memento” seems linear by comparison. What is meant to be a playful storytelling device bogs the movie down to point of narrative puzzlement.
Besson, who was accused of sexual misconduct in 2018 (BTW he “categorically denies these fantasist accusations.”), has clearly tried (and failed) to address the #metoo movement in “Anna.” Anna gets violent with a fashion photographer who bears a striking resemblance to Terry Richardson and one of her KGB handlers tells her, “Never put your faith in men Anna. Put faith in yourself.” It would even likely the pass the Bechdel Test—does a film feature at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man?—but despite cursory acknowledgements it still manages to wring the misogyny out of what should have been a female empowerment tale.
Besson has a habit of making films about female assassins—see “La Femme Nikita,” “The Professional and “Lucy”—but “Anna” suggests he has nothing left to say on the topic.
At the end of the chamber dramedy “The Party,” you’ll be glad you were able to be a voyeur and not actually attend the get-together in person. It’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” with more characters and twice the vitriol.
Kristin Scott Thomas is Janet, the newly appointed U.K. Health Minister and host of the party. When we first see her she’s holding a gun on a guest. It’s that kind of party.
Cue the flashback.
Gathered together are Janet’s nearest and dearest. There’s sharp-tongued best friend April (Patricia Clarkson), her almost ex and professional life coach Gottfried (Bruno Ganz), Martha (Cherry Jones) and her pregnant partner Jinny (Emily Mortimer), jumpy financial whiz Tom (Cillian Murphy), whose cocaine and aforementioned gun add some spice to an already edgy situation. On the periphery, for a time anyway, is Bill (Timothy Spall), a ticking time bomb with a glass of champagne.
Director Sally Potter wastes no time in presenting her sophisticated but sour soiree. The verbal—and text—fireworks begin almost immediately. Sparkling dialogue drips from the mouths of these actors like liquid gold. When Jinny announces she’s have more than baby Martha says, “Triplets. People. Small people.” It doesn’t sound like much on paper, but the magic is in the delivery. The best lines are reserved for Clarkson, whose blunt, plainspoken words add fuel to the already hot state of affairs. “Although it may have a deleterious effect on your career I think you could consider murder,” she purrs at one point.
Canapés smoulder, truths are revealed—there will be no spoilers here—and lives are shattered, all in just 71 minutes. “The Party” is a delightfully nasty piece of work, artfully realized by Potter and delivered with just the right amount of venom by a dedicated cast.
THE GOOD (in alphabetical order)
Baby Driver: Although it contains more music than most tuneful of movies “Baby Driver,” the new film from director Edgar Wright, isn’t a musical in the “West Side Story,” “Sound of Music” sense. Wallpapered with 35 rock ‘n roll songs on the soundtrack it’s a hard driving heist flick that can best be called an action musical.
The Big Sick: Even when “The Big Sick” is making jokes about terrorism and the “X-Files” it is all heart, a crowd-pleaser that still feels personal and intimate.
Call Me By Your Name: This is a movie of small details that speak to larger truths. Director Luca Guadagnino keeps the story simple relying on the minutiae to add depth and beauty to the story. The idyllic countryside, the quaint town, the music of the Psychedelic Furs and the languid pace of a long Italian summer combine to create the sensual backdrop against which the romance between the two blossoms. Guadagnino’s camera captures it all, avoiding the pitfalls of melodrama to present a story that is pure emotion. It feels real and raw, haunted by the ghosts of loves gone by.
Darkest Hour: This is a historical drama with all the trappings of “Masterpiece Theatre.” You can expect photography, costumes and period details are sumptuous. What you may not expect is the light-hearted tone of much of the goings on. While this isn’t “Carry On Churchill,” it has a lighter touch that might be expected. Gary Oldman, not an actor known for his comedic flourishes, embraces the sly humour. When Churchill becomes Prime Minister his wife, Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) makes an impassioned speech about the importance of the work he is about to take on. He raises a glass and, cutting through the emotion of the moment, says, “Here’s to not buggering it up!” It shows a side of Churchill not often revealed in wartime biopics.
The Disaster Artist: The key to pulling off “The Disaster Artist” is not recreating “The Room” beat for beat, although they do that, it’s actually about treating Wiseau as a person and not an object of fun. He’s an outrageous character and Franco commits to it 100%. From the marble-mouthed speech pattern that’s part Valley Girl and part Beaker from The Muppets to the wild clothes and stringy hair, he’s equal parts creepy and lovable but underneath his bravado are real human frailties. Depending on your point of view he’s either delusional or aspirational but in Franco’s hands he’s never also never less than memorable. It’s a broad, strange performance but it may also be one of the actor’s best.
Dunkirk: This is an intense movie but it is not an overly emotional one. The cumulative effect of the vivid images and sounds will stir the soul but despite great performances the movie doesn’t necessarily make you feel for one character or another. Instead its strength is in how it displays the overwhelming sense of scope of the Dunkirk mission. With 400,000 men on the ground with more in the air and at sea, the sheer scope of the operation overpowers individuality, turning the focus on the collective. Director Christopher Nolan’s sweeping camera takes it all in, epic and intimate moments alike.
The Florida Project: This is, hands down, one of the best films of the year. Low-budget and naturalistic, it packs more punch than any superhero. Director Sean Baker defies expectations. He’s made a film about kids for adults that finds joy in rocky places. What could have been a bleak experience or an earnest message movie is brought to vivid life by characters that feel real. It’s a story about poverty that neither celebrates or condemns its characters. Mooney’s exploits are entertaining and yet an air of jeopardy hangs heavy over every minute of the movie. Baker knows that Halley and Moonie’s well being hangs by a thread but he also understands they exist in the real world and never allows their story to fall into cliché.
Get Out: This is the weirdest and most original mainstream psychodrama to come along since “The Babadook.” The basic premise harkens back to the Sidney Poitier’s classic “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” In that film parents, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, have their attitudes challenged when their daughter introduces them to her African American fiancé. The uncomfortable situation of meeting in-laws for the first time is universal. It’s the added layers of paranoia and skewered white liberalism that propels the main character’s (Daniel Kaluuya) situation into full-fledged horror. In this setting he is the other, the stranger and as his anxiety grows the social commentary regarding attitudes about race in America grows sharper and more focussed.
Lady Bird: Greta Gerwig’s skilful handling of the story of Lady Bird’s busy senior year works not just because it’s unvarnished and honest in its look at becoming an adult but also, in a large degree, to Saoirse Ronan’s performance. I have long called her ‘Lil Meryl. She’s an actor of unusual depth, a young person (born in 1994) with an old soul. Lady Bird is almost crushed by the weight of uncertainty that greets her with every turn—will her parents divorce, will there be money for school, will Kyle be the boy of her dreams, will she ever make enough cash to repay her parents for her upbringing?—but Ronan keeps her nimble, sidestepping teen ennui with a complicated mix of snappy one liners, hard earned wisdom and a well of emotion. It’s tremendous, Academy Award worthy work.
The Post: Steven Spielberg film is a fist-pump-in-the-air look at the integrity and importance of a free press. It’s a little heavy-handed but these are heavy-handed times. Director Spielberg and stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are entertainers first and foremost, and they do entertain here, but they also shine a light on a historical era whose reverberations are being felt today stronger than ever.
The Shape of Water: A dreamy slice of pure cinema. Director Guillermo del Toro uses the stark Cold War as a canvas to draw warm and vivid portraits of his characters. It’s a beautiful creature feature ripe with romance, thrills and, above all, empathy for everyone. This is the kind of movie that reminds us of why we fell in love with movies in the first place.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: The story of a mother’s unconventional war with the world is simple enough, it’s the complexity of the characters that elevates the it to the level of great art.
Wonder Woman: Equal parts Amazon sword and sandal epic, mad scientist flick, war movie and rom com, it’s a crowd pleaser that places the popular character front and centre. As played by Gal Gadot, Diana is charismatic and kick ass, a superhero who is both truly super and heroic. Like Superman she is firmly on the side of good, not a tortured soul à la Batman. Naïve to the ways of the world, she runs headfirst into trouble. Whether she’s throwing a German tank across a battlefield, defying gravity to leap to the top of a bell tower, tolerating Trevor’s occasional mansplaining or deflecting bullets with her indestructible Bracelets of Submission, she proves in scene after scene to be both a formidable warrior and a genuine, profoundly empathic character.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
Director Christopher Nolan doesn’t remember the first time he was told about the events at Dunkirk.
“Like most British people I have grown up with this story,” Nolan says.
The first minutes of Dunkirk, Nolan’s big-screen adaptation of the evacuation of 400,000 soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France, sets the stage. Early on in the Second World War the German army had driven the British, Belgian and Canadian armies to the sea.
“Dunkirk is where they will meet their fate,” the opening reads. “They are hoping for deliverance, hoping to find a miracle.” Between May 26 and June 4, 1940, allied soldiers were evacuated from the beset beach in Operation Dynamo.
“The resonance of the Dunkirk story to me has always been about a sense of communal heroism,” Nolan says, referring to the “little ships of Dunkirk,” a makeshift flotilla of hundreds of fishing boats, pleasure crafts and lifeboats called into service to aid in the evacuation.
“When I think about it now I realize we live in a time that bizarrely fetishizes individuality to the extent where we don’t even require ourselves to watch the same news as other people. We just watch the news we want to watch and hear what we want to hear. That is how fragmented our society has become. This elevation of the individual has come at the expense of the community and what community can achieve. There needs to be a balance and I think Dunkirk as a story is a wonderful reminder of the power of community. The power of what we can do, not just as individuals but together.”
Best seen large and loud, Dunkirk succeeds as pure cinema with minimal dialogue and electrifying visuals.
“I love the great silent films of the past,” he says. “I think that is the closest you get to pure cinema. We are now able to use sound and music and all kinds of things to enlarge the idea of what cinema can be but I wanted to strip away a lot of the theatrics we use as filmmakers in the sound era. The reason is, Dunkirk is such a simple story. It doesn’t need to be over-explained. It doesn’t need any excess of dialogue. I like the idea of using the language of suspense because suspense is the most visually based and cinematic of the movie genres.”
Dunkirk inspired Winston Churchill’s famous, “We shall fight on the beaches,” speech, an address that describes reaching for victory, “however long and hard the road may be.” It’s a journey Nolan understands both in a historical context and in his own decade-long attempt to get this film made. It’s a movie he feels passionate about, just don’t call it his passion project.
“That makes it sound like I didn’t give a s—t about the other ones,” he laughs before adding, “I find filmmaking really difficult. Yes, it’s not coal mining but I find it tough. I love it and I love movies so I don’t ever want to do it for something that I don’t really, really care about. There are filmmakers who find it easier than I do and so ‘one for me, one for them’ works, but I want to do the film I would want to see as an audience member.”
