“Golda,” a new biopic of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir is not a cradle to grave look at the life of the first women in the world to serve as a head of government in a democratic country. Instead, the film, now playing in theatres, focuses on the eighteen days of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.
Hidden under an inch or two of make-up, Helen Mirren plays the chain-smoking, seventy-five-year-old Meir with equal parts fragility and steeliness. Confronted with the news that Syrian forces are gathering on the Golan Heights, she convenes a military consultation with Mossad chief Zvi Zamir (Rotem Keinan). Ignoring his warnings of imminent invasion, she approves full-scale mobilization but rejects a preemptive strike, fearing the perception of warmongering would affect Israel’s access to foreign aid and military support from their allies, especially the United States.
My gut told me that war was coming and I ignored it,” she says. “I should have mobilized that night. All those boys who died, I will carry the pain of that to my grave.”
Told primarily in flashbacks— Israeli director Guy Nattiv uses Meir’s testimony to the Agranat Commission into the failings of the Israel Defense Forces in the prelude to the war as a framing device—“Golda” is actually the story of two battles, the Yom Kippur War against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and Meir’s struggle with cancer.
Narrowing the film down to the Yom Kippur War allows for a focused look at those events but feels like part two of three of the Golda Meir story. A life of the magnitude and influence of Meir’s deserves and requires historical context. Watching the truncated story of “Golda” I found myself wishing for a more detailed account à la “The Crown,” but without the soapy elements.
The casting of Mirren was controversial—critics said an Israeli or Jewish actor should have been hired to play Israel’s most important female figure—but in Meir’s more intimate scenes, Mirren dives deep to portray the character’s many facets. Her eyes moisten at the reports of the horrors of war, she is resolute as the only woman in the room and, surprisingly, even humorous.
The film works best in Mirren’s scenes with Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) and her assistant Lou Kaddar (Camille Cottin). Her cat-and-mouse with United States Secretary of State Kissinger is far more playful than you might imagine.
“I am first an American, second a secretary of state, third a Jew,” says Kissinger. “In this country,” Meir replies, “we read from right to left.”
The relationship with Kaddar is grounded in respect and trust, and in the little moments, like when she solicitously takes a cigarette out of Meir’s mouth as she is undergoing cancer radiation therapy.
“Golda” isn’t the definitive telling of Meir’s story. It feels a little too stage bound, a little too condensed, but the collective effect of Mirren’s intimate moments and the sound design by Niv Adiri that brings the battlefield to Meir’s war room, make “Golda” an interesting, if flawed, retelling of one of the seminal events of the 1970s.
I join NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards on the coast-to-coast-to-coast late night “NewsTalk Tonight” to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the pedal to the metal “Fast X,” the drama “Master Gardener” and the rom com with a twist, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to talk about the pedal to the metal “Fast X,” the drama “Master Gardener” and the rom com with a twist, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Tim Denis to have a look at the pedal to the metal “Fast X,” the drama “Master Gardener” and the rom com with a twist, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres. Today we talk about the pedal to the metal “Fast X,” the drama “Master Gardener” and the rom com with a twist, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
I join “CP24 Breakfast” to talk about what to see in theatres and on streaming service this weekend, including the pedal to the metal “Fast X,” the rom com with a twist, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” and the Paramount+ reality show “The Family Stallone.”
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the pedal to the metal “Fast X,” the drama “Master Gardener” and the rom com with a twist, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to button your shirt! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the pedal to the metal “Fast X,” the drama “Master Gardener” and the rom com with a twist, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
Everything about “Fast X,” the latest entry in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, is big. Really big.
The a-lister cast list is a laundry list, including returning stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Charlize Theron along with the addition of Marvel superheroes Jason Momoa and Brie Larson. The villain is faster and more furious than ever before and the action can only be described as bigly. There’s even a surprise cameo from one of the world’s biggest movie stars.
But is bigger always better?
A jumble of the usual mix of family, friends, fast cars and flashbacks, “Fast X” begins with relative calm in the world of former criminal and professional street racer Dominic Toretto (Diesel). The patriarch of the “F&F” gang, he has left the fast life behind, and retired with wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), and his son Brian. “We used to live our lives a quarter mile at a time,” he says. “But things change.”
Not so fast, there Dom.
Dom’s past comes back to haunt him in the form of flamboyant villain Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), the sadistic, revenge fueled son of drug lord Hernan Reyes. “I’m Dante,” he says by way of introduction. “Enchanté.”
Way back in “Fast Five” Dom and Co. were responsible for the loss of the Reyes family fortune. “The great Dominic Toretto,” Dante snarls. “If you never would’ve gotten behind that wheel, I’d never be the man I am today. And now, I’m the man who’s going to break your family, piece by piece.”
Cue the set-up to the second part of the franchise’s three-part finale. It is, as they say on the movie poster, just the beginning of the end.
In the “Fast & Furious” world the word “ludicrous” is not just the name of prominent cast member Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, it’s also the name of the game. Since the franchise’s humble 2001 debut, the movies have grown bigger and sillier with each entry. “If it can violate the laws of God and gravity,” says Agent Aimes (Alan Ritchson) in “FX,” “they do it twice.”
The latest one redefines ridiculousness.
The out-of-control car stunts that crowd the screen have no touchstone in reality, other than the cars have four wheels and drive along streets when they aren’t bursting into flames or flying through the air. It’s as if the wild car chases were dreamed up by fourteen-year-olds playing with their Hot Wheels sets as images of canon cars danced in their heads. Anything goes, and no idea is too big or too ludicrous.
When the tires aren’t squealing, Dom is whinging on about the importance of family with a straight face and a serious tone that makes Leslie Nielsen’s “Naked Gun” deadpan look positively flamboyant. Only Momoa seems to understand how colossally silly the whole thing is, and has fun pulling faces, doing a Grand Jeté or two and peacocking around as he rolls a neutron bomb through the streets of Rome. It’s a ludicrous performance in a completely ludicrous movie and it fits.
The bombastic “Fast X” is overstuffed with characters—it seems like every actor in Hollywood has a cameo—plot and, if this is possible, it is overstuffed with excess. The very definition of “go big or go home,” it is for “F&F” fans who have been along for the ride for more than two decades everyone else may want to take a detour.