Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Erin Paul to have a look at the big weekend movies including the wild-and-wooly action of “Baby Driver,” the Coppola-ness of “The Beguiled,” “Despicable Me 3’s” adorable and funny Minions and “Okja’s” tale of super pigs, the people who love hem and the people who want to eat them.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
In 1971 the Don Siegel/Clint Eastwood Civil War drama “The Beguiled” was written off as “heavy handed,” “funny when it shouldn’t be, sentimental to a fault.” The story of a wounded Union soldier convalescing at a Southern girls’ school didn’t find an audience in North America but was a substantial hit in Europe.
Forty-six years later Sofia Coppola’s remake of the overwrought story grabbed the attention of a European audience, wining Coppola the Best Director Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Whether the film, which stars Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell in the roles originated by Geraldine Page and Eastwood, will be a hit on these shores remains to be seen, but one thing is certain, the damning reviews from 1971 are unlikely to be repeated.
Coppola has taken the simple story, toned down some of the lurid aspects of the take to create a film that corrects the knocks against Siegel’s version. The director’s touch is lighter, the laughs are earned and has replaced the sentimentality with subtlety.
It’s 1864 Virginia, three years into the Civil War. Farrell is gravely wounded Union deserter Corporal John McBurney, an Irish charmer, fresh off the boat who took a payday of $300 to fight in a war he didn’t understand. Discovered by Amy (Oona Laurence), a young student at Miss Farnsworth’s Seminary for Young Ladies, he convinces her to help him. She brings him to the white columned school where the headmistress Martha Farnsworth (Kidman) and teacher Edwina Dabney (Kirsten Dunst) make a fateful decision. Sensing he will die soon they patch him up. If he lives they’ll turn him over to the first passing Confederate Army patrol. If not they’ll bury him. It is, as they say, “the Christian thing to do.”
His presence causes quite a stir in the house. Despite initial misgivings the residents of the house fall for McBurney’s charisma. At first its subtle—they start dressing nicer, wearing necklaces and pins that haven’t been taken out of the jewellery box for years—the flirtations increase during his convalescence. A profession of love to Edwina sets in motion a series of events that leads to betrayal and a life or death decision.
Coppola’s telling of the story takes its time establishing the atmosphere inside and outside of the Seminary for Young Ladies. As the war rages on around them, the teachers and five students (Laurence, Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice, Addison Riecke and Emma Howard) are sheltered, self-sufficient. They study French, learn to do needle point and become proper ladies. But life during the Civil war has also exposed them to the harsher realities of life. The younger ones may look like giggling schoolgirls but even they are no strangers to the dangerous vagaries of life during wartime. Coppola establishes their ecosystem and deftly displays the subtle changes that occur with McBurney’s arrival.
Removing the pulpy aspects of the story, Coppola is able to focus on the characters. Kidman is terrific as the pious but protective headmistress. A woman who could have been played as a one note straight and narrow caricature—all Southern charm and clasped hands—is instead given layers as the situation spins out of control.
Dunst is the model of repression while the younger actors are given distinct personalities from the bratty—Fanning and her devious grin—to sweet to infatuated. It’s a showcase for each and every one of them.
Farrell plays McBurney as a kind-hearted rapscallion, a man who can’t help but be charming. With sly wit and an even slier grin he is at once a welcome guest and a menace.
“The Beguiled” is an interesting and entertaining feminist take on a story that in the past was played as a sexualized fantasy.
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Logan,” the latest (and greatest) Wolverine flick, the time travel teen angst movie “Before I Fall,” the animated “Ballerina,” the quirky “Table 19” with Anna Kendrick and the controversial Christian movie “The Shack.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Paris’s 19th-century cityscape has ignited filmmaker’s imaginations for decades. Everything from “Charade” to “Rush Hour 3” have used the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame cathedral to add glamour to their stories. A new film, “Ballerina” does as well, but with a twist. Instead of real locations the story showcases the City of Lights with state-of-the-art animation.
Set in the 1880’s, Elle Fanning voices Félicie Milliner, an 11-year-old orphaned girl from rural Brittany with dreams of becoming a ballerina dancing in her head. She has no training but her will is string and soon she and her inventor friend Victor (Dane DeHaan) make their way to la Ville des Lumières. Using a bit of trickery—she assumes the identity of the snobby Camille Le Haut (Maddie Ziegler)—Félicie gets the chance to audition for the Paris Opera Ballet. Tough times follow as her lack of experience slows her progress. “You have the energy of bullet,” says the dance master, “but the lightness of a depressed elephant.” It’s only with the help of Victor and mentor Odette (Carly Rae Jepsen), a former prima ballerina turned cleaning lady, that Félicie gets the gumption to follow her dream and win the role of dancing the role of Clara in The Nutcracker.
Part “Cinderella” and part “The Karate Kid,” “Ballerina” feels like less than the sum of its parts. Like it’s “never give up” message the movie feels generic. The animation is fine, occasionally beautiful, but the character work and storytelling is strictly by the book. Standard-issue pop songs litter the soundtrack, providing Félicie with a chance to indulge her passion, although much of the ballet dancing is fetishized to such an extent it often looks more like martial arts than ballet.
“Ballerina” feels second tier. From the predictable story to that most 90s of showdowns—the dance off—it feels lazy, as though it is content to not only borrow from, but also sit in the shadow of Pixar, Dreamworks or Disney.
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Patriot’s Day,” “Live By Night” from director-actor Ben Affleck and the terrible “Monster Trucks.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies, Peter Berg’s ripped-from-the-headlines “Patriot’s Day,” “Live By Night” from director-actor Ben Affleck, the terrible “Monster Trucks” and the sublime “20th Century Women” and “Paterson.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
Meryl Streep has a body of work that speaks for itself and, as she proved last Sunday night from the stage of the Golden Globes, is unafraid to challenge the status quo. But last week while the world formed opinions about Streep as she mouthed off about Donald Trump—She’s an icon! She’s overrated!—I had my eye on someone in the audience.
During Streep’s speech the camera landed on Annette Bening, who, for my money gives the Grand Dame a run for her money acting wise.
This weekend Bening adds 20th Century Women to her already stellar IMDB resume. As free-spirited single mother Dorothea she is, as writer David Edelstein wrote, irreducible. In other words she’s complex, loving yet stand-offish, warm but steely, a hippie who studies the stock market and Bening brings her to vivid life.
It’s that density of character that sets Bening apart from her peers, Streep included. Warren Beatty, her husband and sometimes director says she has, “talent, beauty, wit, humility and grace,” a combination that makes her “the best actress alive.”
Biased? Likely, but the evidence is on the screen. Bening works sporadically, sometimes taking years between projects or taking small supporting roles in idiosyncratic independent films like Ruby Sparks, but her characters are always compelling.
She became a star playing femme fatale Myra in 1990’s con artist caper The Grifters. Gleefully embracing her character’s deviousness, she stole the movie away from vets John Cusack and Anjelica Huston. Then came intricate portrayals of everything from a muckraking lobbyist in The American President and neurotic real estate broker in American Beauty to Bugsy’s tough-talking Hollywood starlet and In Dreams’ psychic vigilante. Each performances is a polished gem even when the movies aren’t as good as she is.
The last of her Best Actress Oscar nods came with 2010’s The Kids Are Alright. At the center of story are Nic (Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), a long time lesbian couple raising their two kids. It’s a happy family until their daughter contacts her biological father Paul (Mark Ruffalo) via the sperm bank.
A scene near the movie’s end displays the complexity of Bening’s work. Nic and Paul sing a Joni Mitchell song at a dinner party. Their wild act is joyful, ridiculous and poignant simultaneously and is a perfect microcosm of Bening’s performance. Bening is unpredictable, sometimes funny, sometimes not, just like real life. It’s her well-drawn character that keeps the basic story afloat with its lived-in, realistic feel.
Less known is Bening’s fine work in The Face of Love, a 2014 film about a widow obsessed with a man who looks exactly like her late husband Tom. Trouble is, she never tells him about his resemblance raising the question, Is she in love with Tom or a memory?
Another question: Is she a selfish conniver, a grief stricken widow or one brick short of a load? The movie allows for interpretation, but regardless of your take, Bening’s performance is so raw and vulnerable it’s difficult to completely condemn her behaviour.
Bening’s name may not always be mentioned in the hushed tones as Streep, but I suspect she doesn’t care for the accolades as much as shattering the clichés of how women are portrayed on film. On that score she is at the top of her field.
The word quirky gets thrown around a lot in reference to character driven indie films. “20th Century Women,” the Mike Mills (the director not the REM guitarist) coming of age story starring Annette Bening and Greta Gerwig, falls under that umbrella, presenting an off beat story of mothers, friends and lovers that luckily never allows it’s idiosyncrasies to become twee.
The film is set during one turbulent summer in 1979 in a creaky old boarding house run by single Santa Barbara mom Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening). Boarders include artsy cancer survivor Abbie (Gerwig) and William (Billy Crudup), a good-looking hippie carpenter with a way with a hammer and women. At the center of the story is Dorothea’s 15-year-old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), a sensitive boy with an unrequited crush on platonic friend Julie (Elle Fanning).
At the cusp of the eighties Dorothea, a “child of the Depression,” finds herself disconnected from Jamie, unsure if she knows exactly how to raise a teenage boy in a changing world. William and the boy didn’t bond so she turns to Abbie and Julie for help. “You get to see him out in the world as a person,” Dorothea saus to Abbie. “I never will.”
Based on Mills’s teenage years, “20th Century Women” is a coming-of-age filtered through the lens of a very specific era. The music of The Talking Heads fills the soundtrack, Abbie’e punk style includes a shock of purple hair and loose-limbed dancing while Julie embraces the feminist principles of the day. In this swirl of art, change and sexuality Jamie enters manhood with a trio of twentieth century women as his cobbled-together family.
It’s the story of a teenage boy but it is just as much a study of the women in his life, each of whom is unique, interesting and arrive in the film fully formed. No mother or girlfriend figureheads here.
Leading the charge is Bening who heads the ensemble with supreme ease, playing Dorothea as an eccentric but warm presence, a woman grappling with change and the idea her son is growing up too fast.
Gerwig borders on typecasting, taking on the role of the gloomy, sexualized Abbie. It’s a character that seems to fit comfortably in her wheelhouse and then, with no noticeable effort she reminds us why her delicate portrayals of interesting people strike such a chord in movie after movie.
Fanning, the third corner of this triangle, mixes sweetness and ferocity, brewing up a potent cocktail of teenage rebellion.
Structurally the film suffers from the odd hiccup but tremendous performances that feels airy and grounded at the same time bring humanity and empathy to a story that is specific in its time and place but universal in its scope.
“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.
