LOGLINE: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is Zora, the mother of Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), a terminally ill teenager just days from death. Guiding Tuesday’s passage, much to the annoyance of Zora, is the Grim Reaper, in the form of giant, talking macaw.
CAST: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey, Arinzé Kene. Written and directed by Daina O. Pusić.
REVIEW: Writer/director Pusić, in her feature debut, uses imagination and emotion to tackle human grief in an unusual, but totally relatable way.
A grim fairy tale for adults of loss and resilience, “Tuesday” uses fantasy to tell a story of coping with the passing of a loved one. Allegorical and more than just a little strange, it is a nonetheless a moving showcase for Louis-Dreyfus. With a shelf full of Emmy Awards for comedy, here she digs deep to play a mother who will literally go hand-to-hand with Death to keep her daughter from going over to the other side.
There are lighter moments captured within Louis-Dreyfus’s performance, but it’s the rough stuff, the raw, heartbreaking emotion that makes the character memorable.
The film breathes the same air as “The Seventh Seal,” examining the resistance to the inevitability of death, the afterlife and strength in the face of loss, but with one major difference. Here Death is a giant bird rather than an eerie, black-cloaked, chess playing Grim Reaper.
The anthropomorphic, metaphorical macaw is a swing for the fences, a surreal approach to confronting death and grief that would be ridiculous if it were not so sublime. The concept is otherworldly, but the film, despite its more out there moments, is anchored to the reality of the certainty of death in a profound and very real way.
“Tuesday” is a revelation in its lead performance, but also in the way it reveals the complexity of Zora’s journey through her daughter’s life and death.
“You Hurt My Feelings,” a new Julia Louis-Dreyfus relationship dramedy now playing in theatres, is about the little lies we tell one another that can balloon into much bigger deals.
Louis-Dreyfus is Beth, a memoirist and writing teacher, struggling with the reactions to her second book. As a first reader, her therapist husband Don (Tobias Menzies) has studied each of the drafts of the book, and always told her how much he loves the writing.
Her agent Sylvia (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), however, thinks the novel needs to touch on more hot button topics and needs a complete rewrite. “There’s lots of new voices,” she says. “Refugees, cancer, murder, abuse.” Feeling she is an “old voice” in a rapidly changing world, Beth is devastated.
Meanwhile Don is having trouble connecting with his patients and their 23-year-old son Elliott (Owen Teague) is having a crisis of confidence.
Into this maelstrom of self-doubt comes a cutting remark that sends Beth into a deeper funk. By accident she overhears Don talking to a friend about her book, and he doesn’t like it. “It’s no good,” he says.
“I’m never going to be able to look him in the face again,” Beth says.
Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, “You Hurt My Feelings” has a very “Seinfeld-ian” co-dependency premise. It often feels like nothing is happening—“A show about nothing!”—but within the carefully observed interactions are thought-provoking ideas about how relationships work.
So often, relationship dramas are about infidelity. This one is about a fidelity of a sort, the kind broken with good intentions.
It’s about the fine line between lying and encouraging, sparing someone’s feelings vs. being supportive. Don explains to Beth that he didn’t lie exactly, but that he was trying to be encouraging, even though he didn’t love the book. It isn’t until Beth realizes that she has done the same thing in her relationships with her son and sister (Michaela Watkins) that she begins to understand her husband’s sentiments.
Holofcener keeps the story low-key, focusing on the intersection of honesty and ego between longtime relations. It’s a small, but very human story of the way we interact, brought to vivid life by a tremendous cast, led by a terrific Louis-Dreyfus. She is fragile and raucous, anxious and hilarious, but always relatable.
“You Hurt My Feelings” is a small movie about big topics like honesty, insecurity and how we protect the ones we love, for better and for worse.
The new rom com “You People,” starring Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy and Lauren London and now streaming on Netflix, has the frank social commentary of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” mixed with “Meet the Parents” family dynamics.
Directed and co-written (with Hill) by “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, “You People” begins as unhappy, socially awkward thirty-something Ezra (Hill) wonders if he’ll ever find a woman who understands him. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a man who ever wanted to be in a relationship so badly,” says Ezra’s best friend Mo (Sam Jay), “besides Drake.”
The part-time podcaster and full-time office worker’s pampering mother Shelley (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) wants him to settle down, but there are no prospects in sight until he mistakenly jumps into fashion stylist Amira’s (London) car, mistaking it for an Uber.
It isn’t exactly love-at-first sight—“You’re a Jew from West L.A.,” she says. “What do you know about culture?”—but over time love blossoms.
“You’re dating a Black girl?” asks Mo. “I have never felt so understood by somebody in my entire life,” he replies.
It’s all sunshine and roses with Ezra and Amira, but this is a romantic comedy, so there have to be obstacles to their happiness. That friction comes in the form of the couple’s parents.
Ezra’s folks, Shelley and Arnold (David Duchovny) are rich, progressive and cringey in their attempts to prove to Amira that there isn’t a hint of racism in the family.
Amira’s parents, the devoted Nation of Islam Muslim followers Akbar (Eddie Murphy) and Fatima (Nia Long), do not warm to Ezra, and make no secret of their feelings over lunch at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.
“So,” asks Akbar, “do you hang out in the hood all the time, or do you just come here for our food and women?”
“You People” takes on hot button subjects, like cultural differences and racial divides, but this is, at its heart, a rom com, so at the end, hurdles will be overcome and happily-ever-afters will be had. That is a given, not a spoiler, just reality, but it is also the weakest part of the movie.
“You People” is at its best when it puts the seasoned cast on screen together. The scenes that gather the young couple and the two sets of parents are highlights, delivering laughs and plenty of situational humour. Subtlety is not on the menu, but Louis-Dreyfus and a deadpan Murphy milk every laugh out of the script, playing up the cultural and faith-based differences that open between the families like a yawning chasm.
“You People” grasps at cultural relevance, but does so with a heavy, although well-intentioned, hand. As the run time moves towards the closing credits, the misunderstandings and accentuation of differences becomes repetitive, miring down the story, despite the efforts of the cast.
The comedy pros keep it as fleet footed as it can be. Only Murphy could get a laugh with a line like, “You shat your slacks?” and I was happy to take the giggles where I could as the movie wound down to its Rom Com 101 ending.
“You People” doesn’t exactly waste its bold face name cast—there are some very funny moments within—but the film’s predictable finish blunts much of the edgy/awkward humour that came before.
In its first non-sequel since 2017’s “Coco” Pixar takes us to a whimsical world where strange winged creatures like The Manticore (voice of Octavia Spencer) run theme restaurants to tell a story with a human heart.
“Spider-Man’s” Tom Holland provides the voice of Ian Lightfoot, a flannel-shirt-wearing elf who, with his blue skin, bushy hair and Converse High Tops, looks like a cross between Krist Novoselic and a Troll. His boisterous older brother Barley (Chris Pratt in a role that once would have been played by Jack Black) is more Judas Priest than Nirvana, and spends his days absorbed in a fantasy role-playing game.
They lost their father to illness years ago when the boys were young. Barley has vague memories of him but Ian doesn’t remember him at all. Dear old dad left behind a present for the guys to be opened when they were both over sixteen. “No way!” says Barley. “It’s a wizard staff. Dad was a wizard!” “No,” corrects mom (voice of Julia Louis-Dreyfus), “Your dad was an accountant!”
Whether Dad was an accountant or wizard doesn’t matter, the staff does have magic powers. When mixed and matched with a Visitation Spell, the right Phoenix gem and a hint of mojo, Dad will appear for one whole day. Eager to meet the man they never knew Ian and Barley start the spell, but, as Dad starts to materialize, something goes wrong and the magic gem dissolves. “Aah!” Barley says. “He’s just legs! There’s no top part. I definitely remember having a top part!”
Hoping for a do-over they set off to find another Phoenix gem. “We’ve only got twenty-four hours to bring back the rest of dad,” says Barley.
A mix of the role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons” and Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life,” “Onward” mixes the journey genre with an absent-father story. The search for the gem is the McGuffin that keeps the action moving forward but ultimately, it’s not that important. It provides an excuse for director Dan Scanlon to stage large scale scenes involving winged fairies, giant gelatinous cubes and dragons but thematically this is more about a journey of self-discovery than search for a magic stone.
As such, “Onward” is at its best when it focusses on the relationships. Ian and Barley’s occasionally rocky but always loving bond lies at the heart of the film, but Pixar also remembers how to ratchet up the emotional content in other ways. The film’s most effective scenes are its simplest. Ian, listening to an audio tape of his late father and improvising a conversation he never got to have with the old man has the sprinkling of Pixar magic we expect from the folks that brought us stone cold classics like “Up” and “WALL-E.”
“Onward” doesn’t rank up with the very best of Pixar but few films, animated or otherwise, do. But what it lacks in storytelling innovation it makes up for in heart. The movie’s strength is in the way it handles the somber subject matter—the loss of Ian and Barley’s father—in the context of an exciting adventure filled with optimism.
This week on “Pop Life,” Timothy Simons stops by to talk about shooting the first episode of “VEEP” even though he was sure he would be fired at lunch, playing politics for laughs and portraying everyone’s favourite punching bag. Then the panel, Scott Reid, Rick Mercer and Kenny Robinson, weigh in on how the rules changed for comedians in the way they poke fun at politicians and if politicians who laugh at themselves have thick skins or big egos or both.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
Timothy Simons on shooting the first episode of “VEEP” even though he was sure he would be fired at lunch, playing politics for laughs and portraying everyone’s favourite punching bag.
“What ended up happening was, when we were filming the pilot and I was incredibly nervous and on my first day when I was worried that I was going to get fired at lunch there was that thing that I had to do, which was compartmentalize the fact that I was on a giant HBO show, directed by Armando Iannucci, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus into this idea that I’ve never been on a giant HBO show before, but I have spoken to 6 people in a room before and if I focus on that it seemed more attainable.”
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
