Director Noah Baumbach has made idiosyncratic movies in the past like “The Squid and the Whale,” “Margot at the Wedding” and “While We’re Young.” But his new film, “White Noise,” an adaptation of the 1985 novel of the same name by Don DeLillo, now playing in theatres before moving to Netflix in December, may be his quirkiest to date.
Adam Driver is Professor Jack Gladney, a middle-aged college lecturer whose life’s work is the study of Adolph Hitler’s rise to power. He is a superstar in the world of academia, and a loving father to the blended family he shares with elaborately coiffed wife Babette (Greta Gerwig). In his quiet moments, however, he is obsessed with mortality, afraid that he will outlive his wife, and be left alone.
Babette, or “Babo” as the family calls her, also has a secret. She’s been taking an experimental drug, one that makes her forgetful and furtive.
In the second of the film’s three act structure, the family’s day-to-day lives are turned upside down when a nearby railway accident unleashes a toxic cloud over their town. Forced to evacuate and take shelter from the “Airborne Toxic Event,” they hit the road, and, in new circumstances, cracks in the family structure are revealed.
The final sequence manages to both tie up loose ends while taking the story in a completely new and unexpected direction toward murder, mortality and moral turpitude.
There is much to enjoy in “White Noise.” Gerwig and Driver seem born to recite Baumbach’s dialogue, bringing dry humor to the ever-escalating situations the Gladneys find themselves in. Lines that wouldn’t necessarily read as amusing on the page are brought to life by the delivery of these two perfectly cast actors. A third act back-and-firth between them, a cleaning of the air scene, is masterfully played, poignant and peculiar at the same time.
Baumbach also nails the 1980s time period, in both style and attitude, sharpening the satire with a vintage look that could have been borrowed from any number of contemporaneous sitcoms or big screen comedies. Also, this may be the one and only movie that can cite “National Lampoon’s Vacation” and “Barry Lydon” as stylaistic inspirations.
The look elevates the hectic family scenes, with everyone speaking over one another, wandering in and out of frame, like a mix of Robert Altman and “Family Ties.”
But, and I wish there wasn’t a but, a lack of cohesion between the film’s three sections gives it a disjointed feel, almost as if you’re watching a trio of short films with the same cast and characters. The clear-eyed lucidity of the opening act drifts as the running time sneaks toward the end credits. Once the movie leans toward the spectacle of the “Airborne Toxic Event” it loses its way, valuing the unwieldy, bewildering consequences of Jack and Bobo’s existentialism over clarity.
There are funny, satiric, enjoyable moments and performances in “White Noise,” but the initial suburban satire loses its way, succumbing to the busy script’s white noise.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to talk about the Ryan Reynolds time travel adventure “The Adam Project,” the Toronto set fantasy “Turning Red” and the contemplative “After Yang.”
If you took all the gun play out of “Without Remorse,” the new Michael B. Jordan thriller on Amazon Prime Video, the movie would only be about 10 minutes long. The Tom Clancy adaptation is a bullet ballet that plays like a throwback to 80s matinee action movies.
When we first meet John Clark (Jordan) he’s leading an elite team of US Navy SEALs on a dangerous top-secret mission in Syria to liberate a CIA operative taken hostage by ex-Russian military forces.
Cut to three months later. Back in the United States, the quiet life Clark and his pregnant wife Pam (Lauren London) have created for themselves is shattered by Russian assassins who invade their home. Looking for revenge, the Russian hit team kill Pam before Clark is able to off three of the four hitmen. The fourth gunman fires back, leaving Clark for dead, riddled with bullets.
As Clark recuperates in hospital, his colleagues, SEAL Lt. Commander Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), CIA agent Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) and Secretary of Defense Thomas Clay (Guy Pearce), determine how to best respond to a Russian attack on U.S. soil.
Not satisfied with the official way of doing things, Clark becomes a one-man army, seeking revenge and answers. He is the very definition of a man you don’t want to mess with. He’s a killing machine, especially when you take away the only thing he had to live for. He tracks down a Russian diplomat he thinks is responsible for the murder of his wife and coerces information out of him in a spectacular and completely illegal way. “They brought the war to my house,” he says. “The contract is broken. They’re going to play by my rules now.”
His act of retribution lands him in prison but he’s able to trade the sensitive information he garnered in his one-man mission for a second chance at revenge. This time with the cooperation of the CIA and military.
One secretive flight to Russia later, cue the carnage and conspiracy.
“Without Remorse” is an extremely violent movie with more bullets than brains.
Director Stefano Sollima stages intense action scenes and isn’t afraid to let the bodies fall where they may. Unfortunately, it’s in the handling of the other stuff, the intrigue, that the movie comes up short. In between bullet blasts a conspiracy slowly comes into focus, but it is never developed. Buried beneath an ever-increasing body count is the broader and more interesting picture of governmental tampering with world politics. Countries need outside enemies, it is suggested, or people will turn on their neighbors looking for someone to hate. It’s a timely message, a bit of debatable ideology, that could have been the underpinning for a rich subplot. Instead, “Without Remorse” is a standard issue shoot ‘em up.
Jordan brings charisma and physicality to the role, but is saddled with Steven Seagal-level dialogue. “Death follows me around,” he says in a line that could be from any number of direct-to-DVD action films from the last thirty years.
“Without Remorse” starts off with a bang—many of them in fact—but ends as a regression to cold war paranoia fuelled by bullets and brawn.
We first meet the title characters, Angela “Queen” Johnson (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Ernest “Slim” Hinds (Daniel Kaluuya) as they are strangers, passing time on a first, awkward date at a Cincinnati diner. “So what’s gonna happen tonight?” asks Slim. “I thought we could hang out and get to know one another.” Then fate intervenes, Tinder may have brought them together but circumstance binds them together forever when Slim gets pulled over for “failure to execute a turn signal and swerving a little bit.”
The situation quickly spirals out of control.
Slim presses the aggressive cop to hurry it up while Queen, an attorney, questions the officer’s motives in searching the car. As the police officer’s dashcam rolls, there are harsh words, a skirmish, a misfire and soon the cop lies dead.
“You are a Black man who shot a cop and took his gun,” she says.
“But I’m not a criminal,” he replies.
“You are now. If you turn yourself in you will never see your family again. We have to move forward.”
Panicked, they flee, heading for New Orleans home of Queen’s shady Uncle Earl (Bokeem Woodbine). By the time they make it out of state a video of the accidental shooting has gone viral and their photos are splashed all over the papers.
The press paints them as “lovers”—even though they have just met—on cross country crime spree but public opinion is mixed. An African-American mechanic (Gralen Bryant Banks) they meet on the journey says, “You gave them a reason to kill us,” while his young son (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) sees them as folk heroes who stood up to authority. “If you don’t make it,” he says, “that’s OK. You’ll be immortal.”
They plan on making a run to freedom in Cuba. First, they have to avoid the police as they weave and wind their way to Florida’s coast.
Written by Lena Waithe and showcasing the style of director Melina Matsoukas in her feature debut, “Queen & Slim” takes a story with echoes of “Thelma and Louise” or “Bonnie and Clyde” and updates it, presenting the couple on the run tale from an African-American perspective. Angela is a lawyer whose first-hand view of the abuses of the justice system has made her a realist. It is her experience that self-defense will never fly solely based on the colour of their skin and it is her who sets the action in motion. The story of police brutality swaps the frequent narrative, presenting the story of two people who refuse to be oppressed by standing up to authority. There will be no spoilers here but know that “Queen & Slim” isn’t a manifesto, it’s a personal story about how quickly lives, ripe with possibility and promise, can be changed forever.
With terrific performances “Queen & Slim” transcends the outlaws-on-the-lam genre. Instead it is a timely humanistic drama that combines resilience with despair.
