Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including Tim Burton’s flying elephant epic “Dumbo,” the terrorism drama “Hotel Mumbai,” Tantoo Cardinal’s “Falls Around Her” and “Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes” by Swiss film-maker Sophie Huber, a deep dive into the history of the storied label with CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Don’t let the word ‘hotel’ in the title of Dev Patel‘s new film trick you into thinking it’s another entry in his lighthearted “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” series. “Hotel Mumbai” is a harrowing retelling of the terrorist attacks on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in November 2008.
The film begins with 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic terrorist organisation based in Pakistan arriving in Mumbai. They split into small groups and soon reports of armed gunman rampaging through the city hit the news. They shoot up Mumbai’s main rail terminal, a café and other hotspots, guided by an ideologue who has convinced these young jihadists that paradise awaits if they do the job by spreading terror.
Director Anthony Maras builds tension by cutting between the chaos in the streets and the measured, elegance, of Taj Mahal Palace Hotel where Arjun (Patel) and Chef Hemant Oberoi (Anupam Kher) work among the 500 staffers who keep the place running like a fine tuned watch. It’s the kind of place where the bathwater is always exactly 48° and, as the staff says, “the Guest is God.”
Soon a small group of the terrorists invade the “otherworld luxury” of the Taj, indiscriminately slaughtering guests and staff alike. Inside the strong willed Chef and Arjun help the guests survive the siege, which lasted almost three days. With the closest Special Forces army 800 miles away in New Delhi the understaffed and unprepared local police must take action. “If we stay in here and wait,” says one cop (Nagesh Bhonsle) looking at the carnage from the street, “there will be no one left.“
There are many moving parts in “Hotel Mumbai.” We follow the sprawling cast—including Armie Hammer and Nazanin Boniadi as an upscale couple staying at the hotel—in various parts of the hotel as they fight for their lives. Despite some boiler-plate flourishes—cell phones that run out of juice at the worst possible time etc— Maras crafts an edge-of-your-seat thriller that puts you in the middle of the action. With so many characters it can be hard to stay invested in them all but the horror of the situation becomes more visceral with every loud gunshot on the soundtrack.
“Hotel Mumbai” is a nicely executed thriller that looks beyond the terror to focus on the resilience of the human spirit in the face of surreal adversity.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including Tim Burton’s flying elephant epic “Dumbo,” the terrorism drama “Hotel Mumbai” and Tantoo Cardinal’s “Falls Around Her.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard’s latest column for the Edmonton Prime Times on what to see and what NOT to see in March.
“Remember those wild Monster Trucks ads, “You Pay for the Whole Seat but You’ll Only Need the Edge!”? They were selling you on the excitement of watching giant trucks careening around an arena, but the sales pitch could just as easily be used for the new thrillers coming to theatres this month…” Read the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Office Christmas Party” with T.J. Miller, Jason Bateman and Jenifer Aniston, “Jackie” starring Natalie Portman, “Lion” with Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman and Jessica Chastain as “Miss Sloan.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with Erin Paul to have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Office Christmas Party” with T.J. Miller, Jason Bateman and Jenifer Aniston, “Jackie” starring Natalie Portman, “Lion” with Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman and Jessica Chastain as “Miss Sloan.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Lion,” the heart-tugging true tale of Saroo Brierley, is the story of one determined man’s attempt to connect with a past he barely remembers.
When we first meet Saroo (played as a child by Sunny Pawar) he’s a lively five-year-old boy living in abject poverty in a small town in India. His mother is a labourer, moving rocks to eek out a living for her family. Saroo and his brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) help out, stealing coal from passing trains to make money to buy milk. When the boys get separated while looking for work the youngster ends up on a train, destined for Calcutta, 1600 km from home.
Alone and lost, he desperately tries to find his way home, but without knowing the name of his town or mother—“Her name is Mum,” he says.—he wanders the streets, his only possession a piece of cardboard to sleep on. For weeks he navigates through the dangerous city streets, learning who to trust and when to run. Found and sent to an orphanage, he is then adopted by Australians Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham). “Did you really look for my mom?” he asks as his caseworker signs off on the paperwork.
Cut to twenty years later. Saroo (now played by Dev Patel), raised by loving parents, has grown into a handsome young man, but is increasingly troubled by the question marks of his early life. “I’m lost,” he says to girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara). “Do you have any idea knowing what it is like knowing my real mother and brother spent every day looking for me?” Thoughts of his early life plague him until he begins to piece together the details of where his journey began.
Nicole Kidman may be the Academy Award winner in the cast, and she is very good, but the performances you’ll remember come from the two Saroos, Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel. Two actors, one character; both looking to find themselves, physically and spiritually. It’s an engrossing and often heart-wrenching journey and the pair keep us interested for the whole trip.
Pawar is a wide-eyed charmer, innocent but fearless, who conveys both the desperation to get home and the will to survive in dangerous situations. It’s a performance completely free of the preciousness that often mars kid’s work; one that effortlessly cuts through to the core of the character.
Patel navigates a different part of Saroo’s journey. As an adult he speaks English with a heavy Australian accent and can no longer remember the Hindi of his youth. Thoroughly westernized it isn’t until he accesses some long repressed memories that his need to find his real home surfaces. Patel embodies the emotional battle between the home he has grown up in, with all the comforts of a loving adopted family, and a need to understand where and who he came from.
“Lion” isn’t perfect—some of the Google Earth searches are as interesting as you might imagine a Google Earth search on the big screen to be—but it is emotionally engaged with all of its characters, and you will be to.
Everyone knows the names Isaac Newton and Archimedes even if they don’t quite understand the theories that made them famous. Not as well known is the name Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian autodidact who died at age 32 in 1920 but left behind contributions to mathematical analysis and number theory that are still being studied today. “The Man Who Knew Infinity” aims to do for Ramanujan what “A Beautiful Mind” did for John Nash.
We first see Dev Patel as Ramanujan as a twenty-five-year-old struggling to find work in India after following his obsession with math to the detriment of all his other subjects. In desperation he forwards samples of his mathematical theory to British academic G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons). Startled by the quality of the work Hardy invites the young man to study at Cambridge’s Trinity College. There, in the shadow of Newton’s greatest discoveries, the genius’s work can take the step from theory to tangible, but first he must battle indifference and intolerance.
Unlike other films that sought to help us understand the mathematics on display, “The Man Who Knew Infinity” chooses to focus on the relationship between Ramanujan and Hardy. Their tales of awakening, Ramanujan’s intellectual blossoming and Hardy’s personal growth from cold theoretician to… well, a less cold theoretician, isn’t exactly epic or the stuff of great drama, but the story of their friendship doesn’t need bells and whistles when it has Patel and Irons.
They anchor this straightforward “Masterpiece Theatre” style look at Ramanujan’s beautiful mind, building a relationship with one another and the audience. I suppose the film’s main purpose is to establish Ramanujan’s place alongside Einstein et al and in that it succeeds. We’re told his work is still used in the study of black holes decades after his death. Impressive stuff. Less effective is an undercooked love story between the mathematician and the wife he left behind. In life that may have been Ramanujan’s main relationship but for the purpose of the film it takes away from the story’s main hypothesis.
“The Man Who Knew Infinity” is a study of relationships, the bond between the two men, mentor and student, and Ramanujan’s connection with mathematics. It’s a bit by the numbers but nonetheless deserves a place on the shelf between “A Beautiful Mind” and “The Imitation Game.”
Richard reviews “Chappie,” “Unfinished Business,” “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and “Kidnapping Mr. Heineken” with CP24 anchor Nneka Eliot.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
