There are many life lessons in “The Tender Bar,” a new easygoing drama starring Ben Affleck based on the life of journalist and author J.R. Moehringer, and now streaming on Amazon Prime. Set in and around The Dickens, a bar named after the author of “David Copperfield,” barstool wisdom about the value of books, education, taking care of your mother and “not keeping money like a drunk” in the front pocket of your shirt, abounds.
The story begins in 1973 Long Island. “Radar Love” by Golden Earring out of the car the car radio and the impressionable J.R. (played as a youngster by Daniel Ranieri) lives with his mom Dorothy (Lily Rabe) and cranky grandfather (Christopher Lloyd). His father, a radio DJ nicknamed The Voice (Max Martini), isn’t in the picture.
J.R.’s father figure is Uncle Charlie (Affleck), charming bookworm and owner of the Dickens. He is a font of advice, all of which J.R. soaks up “the male sciences” like a sponge. Charlie’s instructions range from the pragmatic—never order bar scotch neat—to the ideological—he urges J.R. to study philosophy. “You always do well in that class,” he says, “because there’s no right answers.”
Charlie’s guidance and the colorful regulars who populate the bar, like Bobo (Michael Braun) and Joey D (Matthew Delamater), help form J.R.’s young life. “When you’re 11 years old,” he says, “you want an Uncle Charlie.”
Cut to a decade later.
J.R., having inherited his Uncle Charlie’s love of storytelling and words, is a student at Yale, studying law but with aspirations to be a writer. Now played by Tye Sheridan, he falls in love with Sidney (Briana Middleton), a smart, “lower upper middle class” schoolmate who gives J.R. another lesson in heartbreak.
“The Tender Bar” is a low key coming-of-age story that works best when it has a glass in front of it. That is to say, when it concentrates on the Dickens and the life lessons young J.R. absorbs at the bar. Those scenes have a lovely nostalgic feel. Director George Clooney vividly recreates a time when ten-year-olds were sent to the local corner bar to by a pack of cigarettes for grandpa. Clooney sets the stage, but it is the actors who bring it to life.
As Affleck settles in to the character actor phase of his career, he’s doing some of his best work. His Uncle Charlie has an effortless charm, a fierce intellect and is a bit of a scoundrel. It’s a performance that feels perfectly shaped and worn in, like an old baseball glove.
The scenes Affleck shares with Ranieri provide the film’s highlights. The young actor, making his film debut, brings genuine curiosity to J.R., a kid who has been knocked around but who always has his eyes to the future. It’s a delightful performance. Sheridan nicely mirrors the character as a young adult, but it is Ranieri who makes us care about J.R.
“The Tender Bar” is a nicely crafted, circumspect look at J.R.’s life. The stakes feel low and big dramatic moments are few and far between, but this textured look at the importance of community, including the drunks at the bar, in the formative stages of J.R.’s life is an understated winner.
Richard speaks to “CTV News at 11:30” anchor Andria Bain about movies on VOD and in theatres to watch this weekend including “Wonder Woman 1984” (available in theatres and as a 48-hour rental on various digital movie stores for $29.99), the timely sci fi of George Clooney’s “The Midnight Sky” (Netflix) and Tom Hanks, western style in “News of the World.”
Richard joins CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the return Diana Prince in “Wonder Woman 1984” (available in theatres and as a 48-hour rental on various digital movie stores for $29.99), the existential animation of “Soul” (Disney+), the timely sci fi of George Clooney’s “The Midnight Sky” (Netflix) and Tom Hanks, western style in “News of the World.”
Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with guest host Matt Harris to talk the new movies coming to theatres, VOD and streaming services including Gal Gadot’s return to superhero-dom in “Wonder Woman 1984” (available in theatres and as a 48-hour rental on various digital movie stores for $29.99), the existential animation of “Soul” (Disney+), the timely sci fi of George Clooney’s “The Midnight Sky” (Netflix), Tom Hanks, western style in “News of the World” and “Chicago 10” (The Impact Series, VOD/Digital).
Guest morning show host Matt Holmes talks to Richard about the much anticipated superhero flick “Wonder Woman 1984” (available in theatres and as a 48-hour rental on various digital movie stores for $29.99), the existential animation of “Soul” (Disney+), the timely sci fi of George Clooney’s “The Midnight Sky” (Netflix) and Tom Hanks, western style in “News of the World.”
Although “The Midnight Sky,” a new apocalyptic thriller from George Clooney and now streaming on Netflix, was written and filmed before the pandemic, timely themes of isolation and the importance of human connection resonate loudly throughout.
Set in the near future, Clooney, who directed, produced and resembles q post “Late Show” David Letterman here, stars as Augustine, an astronomer battling cancer and loneliness at the Barbeau Observatory, a remote Arctic research station. Some sort of global nuclear catastrophe has devastated life on earth, leaving him isolated and alone until Iris, a wide-eyed, silent girl (Caoilinn Springall) mysteriously turns up at the station.
While tending to his new charge, Augustine is duty bound to contact and warn the Aether, a NASA space station returning home after a two-year mission exploring a newly discovered moon of Jupiter.
Led by husband-and-wife Adewole and Sully (David Oyelowo and Felicity Jones), the crew (Kyle Chandler, Demian Bichir, Tiffany Boone), hurtle toward the barren planet, unaware that life as they knew it on earth has ceased.
“Are you receiving this?” Augustine, says, fruitlessly trying to communicate with the Aether. “Is anyone out there?” To reach them Augustine and Iris take on a dangerous mission, a trek through kilometres of deadly ice, snow and 80-kilometre-per-hour winds. “There is antenna that’s stronger than ours,” he says. “If we can get to that antenna, they’ll hear us.”
“The Midnight Sky” is a multi-hyphenate, a dystopian-sci-fi-outer-space-thriller. While that’s accurate, that’s also six too many words to correctly describe what Clooney has created. All those elements exist in the film but the unwieldy list leaves out the film’s humanity. Sure, there’s some wild blue yonder action with people floating through space capsules and a barren planet, but this is a story of regret and redemption, handled with subtlety and grace.
The story has two distinct halves. Clooney says “half of it is “Gravity” and the other half of it is “The Revenant,” and sometimes they feel too distinct; disconnected. Augustine’s journey to redemption as he nears death is heavy-hearted and austere. The crew’s situation is different. Although they are cut loose in space, they represent the future of humankind, in whatever form that may take. The two halves sit side-by-side but don’t always fit together like puzzle pieces.
The thing that binds the story threads is a search for salvation. Augustine and Iris and Sully, who is expecting a child, are among the last of human life, and face an uncertain future. Each is doing what they can to determine whether mankind has a chance or not. And while the film offers hope and a chance of recovery, both personally for the characters and for the world as a whole, it does so without pandering to easy plot points.
Based on the 2016 Lily Brooks-Dalton novel “Good Morning, Midnight” with a screenplay by Mark L. Smith (screenwriter of “The Revenant”), “The Midnight Sky” is deliberately paced, humanistic sci fi that values ideas over action. It has epic scenes—particularly the snow storm trek—but feels more like an intimate drama than high action film. Clooney uses silence to speak loudly about the film’s most timely and important theme, the need for connection. It’s the lesson of the film and, these days, in real life.
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Erin Paul to have a look at the weekend’s big releases, “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the Christopher Plummer road trip “Boundaries,” the family drama “Leave No Trace” and the love letter to one of Manhattan’s most famous hotels, “Always at the Carlyle.”
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at the latest Marvel superhero flick “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the Christopher Plummer road trip “Boundaries” and the glitz documentary “Always at the Carlyle.”
“Always at the Carlyle” can’t rightly be called a documentary. It’s more of a love letter to one of Manhattan’s great hotels. Plump with celebrity interviews, glamorous people and the attentive—if somewhat secretive—staff who coddle the one percenters who stay there, it’s a glossy, uncritical look at a hotel whose rooms can cost as much as a car.
Director Matthew Miele lines up a who’s who of a-lister types to talk about the hotel’s special charms. George Clooney and the late great Anthony Bourdain wax poetic, while Harrison Ford grouses, good naturedly, about not ever being housed in the hotel’s $20,000 a night suite. Sophia Coppola describes what it was like to live there when she was a child and rich people you’ve never heard of describe the hotel’s upwardly mobile ambiance in hushed reverential terms.
Miele provides a peak at the colourful murals in Bemelmans Bar, painted by Ludwig Bemelmans, artist of the “Madeline” books, and tells of the legendary Bobby Short’s musical contributions to New York nightlife via his work at the equally legendary Carlyle Café.
It’s not very deep, but it is all very swanky, as crisp as the monogrammed pillowcases that adorn every bed. “Always at the Carlyle” works best when it recounts the hotel’s sophisticated history, told by former guests and employees with eye candy photos for illustration, but like the best hoteliers the doc chooses discretion over gossip. That’s good for the guests, but not good for the viewers of the film who might want something more. If only those walls could talk—they might tell a more interesting story.
There are many life lessons in “The Tender Bar,” a new easygoing drama starring Ben Affleck based on the life of journalist and author J.R. Moehringer, and now streaming on Amazon Prime. Set in and around The Dickens, a bar named after the author of “David Copperfield,” barstool wisdom about the value of books, education, taking care of your mother and “not keeping money like a drunk” in the front pocket of your shirt, abounds.
