The most surprising thing about “Judas and the Black Messiah,” now playing in select theatres, is that it took 51 years to bring Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton’s story to the screen.
In 1969 the charismatic Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) was shot in his bed during a state-sanctioned predawn raid conducted by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, the Chicago Police Department and the FBI. Director Shaka King vividly details how and why he met his premature end.
The story begins when career criminal William O’Neal’s (Lakeith Stanfield) plan to impersonate an FBI agent in order to brazenly steal a car goes awry. He winds up beaten, in the hands of Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), an actual agent who offers him a deal. Either do one-and-a-half years for stealing the car and another five for impersonating an officer or go undercover and infiltrate the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers. He chooses freedom in exchange for supplying details on the comings-and goings of deputy chairman Hampton and his girlfriend, revolutionary Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback). Rising to the trusted position of security captain O’Neal is torn between loyalty to Hampton’s revolutionary ideas and self-interest, i.e., the deal he made to stay out of prison. “Imagine what they would do if they found out their security captain was a rat,” says Mitchell.
As the title suggests “Judas and the Black Messiah” is a story of epic betrayal. King carefully fits the puzzle pieces together to create a complex picture of its characters.
Stanfield, who has been handing in strong performances in films like “Selma,” “Get Out” and “Sorry to Bother You” hits a career high here. His take on O’Neal portrays the conflict of a man who took a dangerous and deadly road to salvation, only to discover he was in way over his head. There’s a complexity to Stanfield’s work as he breathes life into his conflicted character. In real life, years after the events portrayed in the film, O’Neal said of his legacy, “I think I’ll let history speak for me.” History may judge him, call him a Judas, but Stanfield doesn’t. Instead, he helps us understand O’Neal’s bad decisions.
Kaluuya unfolds Hampton as much more than a title. History records him as the assassinated Chairman of the Black Panthers, but “Judas and the Black Messiah” remembers him as a captivating speaker who rallied people for his cause as he established free breakfast programs and negotiated a détente between rival gangs. Kaluuya’s work jumps off the screen, with show stopping speeches and emotional scenes he brings Hampton off the pages of the history books with a well-rounded, fiery performance.
The vivid performances, including Fishback who brings depth to a supporting character, reel you in. King takes the time to let us get to know Hampton and O’Neal, which makes the deadly dance they engage in, leading up to the violent climax, all the more emotionally shocking.
Set more than fifty years ago “Judas and the Black Messiah” feels timely. Many of the issues at play in the story are still hot button topics today. The work Hampton began continues because, as he once said, “you can kill the revolutionary but not the revolution.”
Check out episode thirty-three of Richard’s web series, “In Isolation With…” It’s the talk show where we make a connection without actually making contact! Today, broadcasting directly from Isolation Studios (a.k.a. my home office) we meet Iain Reid the Canadian author of the bestselling novel “I’m Thinking of Ending Things.”
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” has been described as a psychological thriller and horror fiction, and is about a young man who takes his girlfriend to see his parents on a remote farm and the disturbing aftermath that follows. It sounds simple, but this is anything but. It’s a story of predetermination and free will that bears up to reading and rereading.
It’s now also a Netflix film, directed by Charlie Kaufman, starring stars Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons and Toni Collette.
I started the interview by congratulating him on his recent success…
Watch the interview on YouTube HERE or on ctvnews.ca HERE!
Academy Award winner Charlie Kaufman scripted “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” mind-bending movies that essay themes of identity crisis, mortality and the meaning of life through a metaphysical or parapsychological filter. His latest project, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” an adaptation of Iain Reid’s bestselling novel and now streaming on Netflix, fits on the shelf next to his best-known work. It’s a fascinating road trip—and head trip—that is equal parts unsettling atmosphere and tension.
Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons are a new couple on a road to trip to visit his parents at their rural farm. Although she has misgivings about the relationship, and is thinking about calling it quits, they seem well suited, playfully singing show tunes and talking as they stay just ahead of threatening snow squalls.
The storm intensifies after they reach the farm and the couple are snowed in with his welcoming but eccentric parents, mother (Toni Collette) and father (David Thewlis). As they get to know one another over an awkward dinner the young woman’s (she’s never identified by name) feelings of unease intensify as questions arise about her boyfriend’s mental health.
On the way home a detour to an empty high school sends her further down the rabbit hole of doubt.
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is a cerebral, slow burn story of suspense and menace anchored by four terrific performances. Collette and Thewlis are wonderfully weird, bringing these strange, somewhat inappropriate characters to vivid life without giving away spoilers as to what’s to come. Plemons is well cast as the All-American boy with a secret but it is Buckley who dominates. As written the role is internal, much of the interesting stuff happens in her head, but her work is never cold or clinical. She brings warmth to the character as the very fabric of her psyche is being challenged. It’s a long strange trip but Buckley’s exploration of the frailty of the human spirit is compelling.
As director and screenwriter Kaufman takes his time, allowing the characters to mix and mingle, physically and perhaps mentally, and the suspense to build. It’s a tricky dance. He dispenses just enough information to move the story forward while creating an atmosphere that grows until the film’s final twenty, trippy minutes. Kaufman artfully brings the movie’s themes of regret and longing into focus with a bizarre and beautiful climax.
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is a haunting film made human by terrific performances.
What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Five! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movies to stream, rent or buy from the comfort of home isolation. Today, too much money, a murderous game and SSSHHH! They’re listening!
“The Irishman,” starring septuagenarian powerhouses Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, is based on “I Heard You Paint Houses” Charles Brandt’s book about a man who claims to have offed mobster Crazy Joe Gallo and Teamster Jimmy Hoffa. It’s familiar territory for the trio of stars, all of whom have made a career out of playing wiseguys, and for director Martin Scorsese, but it feels different. The heady, rambunctious filmmaking of “Goodfellas” and “Casino” is gone, replaced by the richly, contemplative tone of a man at the end of his life wondering if he did the right thing.
De Niro is Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, an 82-year-old World War II veteran, truck driver, union leader and hitman. He developed his deadly skills as a combat veteran in Italy, talents he put to use as an associate of Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), head of a notorious crime family.
Now wheelchair bound in a retirement home Frank recounts, in flashback, how he rose from smuggler to hitman to Bufalino’s inner circle. “It was like the army,” he says. “You followed orders.” It’s a wild story that reads like it was torn out of the pages of a colorful twentieth century history book. In Frank’s tale crime and politics are bedmates, bound together by power struggles between the underworld and Washington, involvement in elections and even the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Frank rise is accelerated when Bufalino gives him the job of overseeing Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). Hoffa ushers Frank through the corridors of power and becomes a family friend but when the Teamster’s actions threaten to expose his mafia co-conspirators Frank is pressed to choose between his loyalty to Hoffa and Bufalino.
Much has been written about “The Irishman’s” three-and-a-half-hour running time and the movie hocus pocus that de-ages the leads, allowing them to play their characters from cradle to grave. Don’t buy into the distractions. Scorsese wrestles the story and technology into shape, making a film that plays like a requiem for the kind of characters that made him famous. Unlike the cocky “Goodfellas,” which is all about the rush, “The Irishman” is ripe with themes of loss and legacy, regret and mortality. It’s about the consequences of the life Frank chose for himself and is a devastating portrait of a forgotten man who did terrible things out of a sense of duty.
Lead by the trio of marquee actors, the cast is uniformly fine. Anna Paquin as Frank’s daughter takes a role made up of sideways glances and terse dialogue and turns it into a damning condemnation of Frank’s work. She conveys depths with just a turn of her head. Bobby Cannavale as the colourfully named Felix “Skinny Razor” DiTullio and Ray Romano as a mob lawyer add interesting hues to an already colorful story.
The holy trinity, De Niro, Pesci and Pacino, hand in late career work that feels like the culmination of a lifetime of character studies. This is an examination of men who live by a brutal code that leaves little wiggle room for mistakes and disrespect but each actor find ways to humanize their characters. Rich in detail, these actors riff off one another, finding internal rhythms in the repetitious way they speak to one another.
Pesci lets go of his famous “Like I’m a clown? I amuse you?” film persona to present understated work that is equal parts loyalty and menace. Pacino plays an over-the-top character with an unhinged gusto that breathes life into someone who is now a name from the history books but was once, as is said in the film, as popular as Elvis with the working man.
Strong work abounds but De Niro has the resonate moments. The look on his face as (MILD SPOILER ALERT) he makes the grim trip to Detroit to kill his friend is stoic but pained. Placed in an unthinkable position he grims up but you can sense the wheels turning in his head. He fuels a remarkably tense thirty-minute lead up to a senseless act of violence that will have you leaning forward in your seat.
It’s in the film’s elegiac final moments that De Niro brings all of Franks humanity to the fore. “You don’t know how fast it goes until you get there,” he says. It’s a quiet, unhurried analysis of a man’s final days as he looks back that erases the memory of De Niro in movies like “Dirty Grandpa,” reminding us why he was thought of as the best actor of his generation.
“The Irishman” is an event, a movie that feels like the obvious conclusion to the gangster stories the director and cast have been telling for decades.
Recently a clever twitteratti dubbed Adam McKay, director of “The Big Short,” the “funny Oliver Stone,“ in reference to his ability to make movies that hit hard with humour.
His new film, the double entendre-ly titled “Vice,” is the twisted tale of Dick Cheney (Christian Bale), former White House Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defence under George H.W. Bush and, most famously, Vice President to George W. Bush, from college drop out to Washington insider. “Big shot DC Dick,” his father-in-law calls him.
The story begins on September 11, 2001 in the White House situation room. George Bush is on Air Force One and Cheney is the man in charge. How did this happen to a man who got kicked out of Yale for drinking too much?
“The following is a true story,” the title credits read. “Well, at least as true as it can be given that Dick Cheney was one of the most secretive leaders in history. We did our ‘bleeping’ the best.”
McKay, a self-styled historian of troubled times, works backwards to unveil Cheney’s rise. Using voiceover and his unique informational interstitials the director pieces together Cheney’s career from so-so student and OK athlete to finding his calling as a “humble servant to power.” Hired by Donald Rumsfeld (Steven Carell) as a congressional intern the young Cheney quickly shows an aptitude for navigating the halls of power. “What do we believe?” he earnestly asks Rumsfeld.
Later, on the eve of Nixon’s resignation, having tasted power, he tells Rumsfeld, “the plan is to take over the place.“ Under Gerald Ford he became the youngest ever White House Chief of Staff and then a long serving congressman for the state of Wyoming.
It’s while Cheney is serving in the House of Representatives that McKay begins to shape the portrait of the man as one of the architects of the current political situation. He emerges as a fan of deregulation and an expert in finding elasticity in the rules.
With Roger Ailes he strikes down the Fairness Doctrine, an FCC policy that required news outlets to present both sides of the story. This move, as much as anything else, helped give rise to opinion based news outlets, ie: FOX News, and the spread of right wing ideology.
Cheney weathers the Clinton years as CEO of the multinational corporation Halliburton, re-entering political life at the request of George Bush Junior. “Vice President is a nothing job,” says wife Lynne (Amy Adams) scolds. “You sit around and wait for the president to die.” Nevertheless Cheney accepts the offer and works to turn the position into a power base. His systematic restructuring of the job leaves his mentor Rumsfeld amazed. “Are you even more ruthless when you used to be?”
“Vice” heats up in its retelling of the justification of the war in Iraq. Cheney recognized the need for Americans to have an easily identifiable villain. By and large, the film suggests, the public didn’t understand who or what Al Qaeda was. “Is that a country?” So Iraq, the place with the “best targets,” was chosen in what might be flippantly described as a focus group war.
At its heart “Vice” is a damning and timely portrait of the corruption of power. McKay’s talent is his ability to take complicated situations and ideas and make them eye-level without dumbing them down. “The Big Short” explained the financial crisis of 2007–2008. “Vice” uses clever editing and set pieces to contextualize the timeline of Cheney‘s time in the public eye.
To explain how Cheney and his cronies embraced policies like enhanced interrogation McKay stages a restaurant scene. Alfred Molina plays a waiter reading off a list of specials. “We have a very fresh War Act interpretation,” he says with a flourish. “That sounds delicious,” Rumsfeld purrs. It’s absurd but these are strange times. These set pieces aren’t necessarily meant to amuse but rather display the heightened nature of the situation.
Cheney bet heavily on the notion that, “the last thing people want is complicated analysis of government.” McKay does an end run around that ideology, finding ways to effectively explain how we embraced a war on a country with no WMDs or allowing the monitoring of emails and phones without consent. The genius is, it never feels like a civics class.
Bale, almost completely unrecognizable as the heavy-set Cheney, heads the sprawling cast. His uncanny take on the character is fuelled by a low key performance. He understands that Cheney knew the power of a carefully placed whisper out punches a tantrum every time. It is precise work that will undoubtedly land him an Oscar nomination.
Perhaps “Vice’s” most telling comment on Cheney comes in its final moments. (MILD SPOILER ALERT) “You want to be loved?” he says, “go be a movie star.” He feels the public’s judgement and recriminations but doesn’t care. “I will not apologize for doing what needed to be done.”
“Game Night” is a new thriller comedy with Jason Bateman that is more comedy than actual thriller.
Bateman and Rachel McAdams are Max and Annie, two competitive people who meet at a trivia night, bond over obscure “Teletubbies” facts, fall in love and get married. They’re so into games they even play Just Dance at the wedding reception.
Cut to a couple of years later. They are comfortably tucked away in the suburbs and hosting weekly game nights with friends, the dimwitted Ryan (Billy Magnussen) and long time couple Kevin and Sarah (Lamorne Morris and Hamilton, Ontario-born Kylie Bunbury). They used to invite neighbours Debbie and Gary (Jesse Plemons), but since Debbie moved out they take great pains to ensure that Gary, a creepy cop, doesn’t find out about their get-togethers.
On a personal level they’re trying to have a baby, but it isn’t going well. Their doctor (Camille Chen) thinks stress is making it impossible for them to conceive. The source? Max’s brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler), a good looking, venture capitalist who loves to flaunt his wealth. “He’s like the Mark Wahlberg to Max’s Donnie,” says Ryan.
When Brooks rolls into town, driving Max’s dream car, a vintage Stingray, he throws a special game night at his new, rented mansion. With no Risk, Scrabble or Monopoly in sight, the regular gamers gather for a murder mystery party. The winner gets the Stingray. “This will be a game night to remember,” Brooks says.
When the murder mystery turns into a real kidnapping the game players are sucked into a world of intrigue as they have to solve the “game.“ Seems there’s more to Brooks than meets the eye. “I can’t believe your brother has been lying to us this whole time,” guffaws Ryan. “He’s even cooler than I thought.”
This isn’t a Hitchcock movie. There’s no real mystery in “Game Night,” just some twists and turns and engaging performances from a cast game to have fun. It’s more about spending time with the characters on their wild night out.
Much of the humour comes from the casual back-and-forth between Bateman and McAdams. They interact like an old married couple, not people in a bad situation. Bateman is a natural at this kind of deadpan comedy and McAdams, who generally features in dramas, keeps pace. Their chemistry is one of the reasons this slight comedy works as well as it does.
Magnussen, who plays a likable dim bulb, and Morris and Bunbury who work their way through a mystery of their own making aid the above-the-title stars. The biggest surprise and certainly the film’s oddest performance belongs to Plemons. Best known for his work on “Breaking Bad” and “Fargo,” he mixes deadpan delivery with a thousand-yard-stare that is as unnerving as it is funny.
“Game Night” isn’t slap your knee funny but it is an amiable enough comedy that makes up in charm what it lacks in procedural thrills.
When you think of Christian Bale what picture do you conjure up in your mind’s eye? Is it as American Psycho’s square-jawed investment banker Patrick Bateman? Or is it as the gaunt whisper of a man from The Machinist? Perhaps it’s as 3:10 to Yuma’s scruffy cowboy Dan Evans or the cowled Caped Crusader of the Batman films.
The point is Bale recreates himself from film to film. “It’s helpful not to look like yourself,” he recently told The Guardian. “If I look in the mirror and go, ‘Ah, that doesn’t look like me,’ that’s helpful.”
He could make a fortune playing superheroes in action movies but instead chooses to shake things up. Since his breakthrough performance in 1987’s Empire of the Sun, he has been a chameleon, losing 60 pounds to play the skeletal lead in The Machinist and gaining a beer gut and a combover for his role in American Hustle.
Creating the “Olympian physique” of serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho took some discipline. “I’m English,” he said, “we don’t have many gyms around. We’d rather go to a pub instead.” A trainer and a protein diet took off the pounds.
As boxer and former drug addict Dicky Ecklund in The Fighter he dropped 30 pounds and used makeup and prosthetics to age himself. How did he lose the weight? “Usually I always say, ‘Oh, I do a lot of coke whenever I lose weight.’ I’m not sure if it’s so funny for this movie, to say that.” In reality he trained with the real-life Ecklund and boxed the pounds off.
In Velvet Goldmine he plays a London journalist looking into the life and faked death of glam rock singer Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Once again he had to physically transform, but not in the traditional way.
When his mom saw that he was working out and running at 6 a.m. she said, “Christian, what are you doing? You’re doing a film about sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Why don’t you do it the way they did it? They weren’t out running. They drank a helluva lot and lived unhealthily.” “I took that to heart,” he said.
This weekend he appears in Hostiles as the elaborately moustachioed Joseph J. Blocker, an 1892-era U.S. Army captain approaching retirement, grappling with the anguish and regret that has scarred his soul. The impressive ’stache may be his biggest physical transformation for this role — the AV Club joked “Christian Bale’s moustache is the best thing about Hostiles” — but he says the biggest change here was spiritual.
To create the character’s contemplative demeanour he spent a lot of time “sitting in a room quietly staring at a wall.” He says he likes to get as “distant as possible” from his own personality. Imagining Blocker’s life journey before filming allowed him to internalize the character and “feel like you’re trying very hard by the time you get to be working.”
Next up for Bale is the biopic Backseat. He shaved his head and packed on pounds — “I’ve just been eating a lot of pies,” he says — to play former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney. “I’ve got to stop doing it,” says the 43-year-old actor of the extreme weight gain. “I suspect it’s going to take longer to get this off.”
“Hostiles,” the new Christian Bale drama, is a period piece with a potent message for today. With a nod to the John Wayne classic “The Searchers,” it’s a sombre tale of a man who must confront his deeply held racism.
Set in 1892, Bale plays Joseph J. Blocker, a U.S. Army captain approaching retirement; soul darkened by a career spent warring with indigenous peoples. He’s lost many of his men at the hands of his enemy, seen his people butchered and scalped. In return he turned battlegrounds into killing fields soaked in blood.
Under orders he reluctantly does one last official job before riding off into the sunset. His commanding officer (Stephen Lang) gives him a choice, escort an old enemy, Cheyenne war chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) now dying of cancer, from an remote Army gaol in New Mexico to the Chief’s home in the grasslands of Montana or face a court martial. Putting together a crew of his most trusted men, including his right hand man Sergeant Tommy Metz (Rory Cochrane), he begins the long, dangerous trek. A day or so in the come across Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), a widow whose family was slaughter right in front of her.
The physical journey is ripe with danger—they are ambushed by Comanche and must drop off a dangerous prisoner (Ben Foster) along the way—but the metaphysical journey is more interesting. As the days pass Blocker rediscovers his humanity; the man he was before he allowed hate to overwhelm.
Writer, director Scott Cooper’s film drips with gravitas. It is a serious minded look at the bigotry and brutality that fuelled the U.S. Army dealings with the frontier tribes while making room for Blocker’s redemptive arc. But for as beautiful as the movie is, it never feels authentic. Sure you can almost smell the campfires, blood and sweat. Cooper’s details are evocative of a time and place, it’s the relationships between the characters that don’t ring true. The anti-racism message is a powerful and important one but turned into a cliché in its execution. Underdeveloped indigenous characters, all stoicism and nobility, seem to exist only to aid Blocker’s attitude change, which makes the movie feel lopsided, tilted toward Blocker and his band of white saviours.
I think the movie mostly has its heart in the right place in terms of promoting tolerance but the reconciliation portrayed here feels off kilter. (SPOILER ALERT) By the time the end credits roll on this ponderous story, the white viewpoint of the storytelling is made all too clear in a conclusion that sees the two above the title stars come to the rescue of a young indigenous character.
“Hostiles” is a beautifully turned out film. Cooper fills each frame of this deliberately paced movie with a kind of bleak beauty. But with the elegance of the filmmaking comes frustration at the story’s missteps. Bale digs deep, grappling with the anguish and regret that has scarred Blocker’s soul but his transformation doesn’t seem real, or possible.
