“Novitiate,” the new drama from director Margaret Betts, is a story of love, piety, obedience and sacrifice that is as tightly wound as one of Reverend Mother’s (Melissa Leo) Rosaries.
Cathleen (played as a youngster by Eliza Stella Mason) is a just seven years old when she falls in love for the first time. Taken to church for the first time by her non-religious mother Nora (Julianne Nicholson) the little girl becomes attracted to the solemnity of the service. It’s the polar opposite of her home life where Mom and Dad (Chris Zylka) are constantly at one another’s throats. When she’s offered a chance to attend Catholic school for free Cathleen jumps at the chance despite Nora’s misgivings.
At the convent school Cathleen (played by Margaret Qualley from age seventeen on) finds the life she was always unable to enjoy at home. Under the watchful eye of Reverend Mother the teenager decides to give herself over to the church, become a nun and devote herself to the worship and servitude of God.
“That’s the craziest thing I have ever heard,” comes Nora’s stunned reaction.
“I was called,” says Cathleen. “I want to become a nun and there is nothing you can do to make me change my mind.”
Her training—from postulant to the novitiate—coincides with the introduction of Vatican II, a reaction to changing cultural practises after World War II that signalled widespread changes in the church. With change afoot Cathleen determines what it means to embark on a life as a servant of God, as Reverend Mother grapples with what the changes mean to her faith.
“Novitiate” is a detailed, sombre look at the nature of faith that sometimes feels like two movies in one. Cathleen’s narrative leads the story and is the most compelling part of the film but her story of love and sacrifice is diluted by Reverend Mother’s reaction to the reformist and more-liberal-than-she’d-like Vatican II dictums. The characters are bookends but even with the two hour run time there isn’t quite enough story to dive deep into their lives and make us care about both.
Better stated are Cathleen’s quandaries. She wrangles but rarely waivers with her faith, presenting a complex look at the personal toll that comes with the gruelling novitiate process. Qualley and her supporting cast of “sisters”— Liana Liberato, Eline Powell, Morgan Saylor, Maddie Hasson and Ashley Bell—are a mosaic of characters placed together to show the various reasons the young women chose to become nuns.
Leo humanizes the severe Reverend Mother, turning her from stern mistress to a person caught in the tide of change and unable to swim.
Betts, who also wrote “Novitiate’s” script, brings nuance and thoughtfulness to most characters but as a whole the meditative mood of the movie’s two storylines never coalesce.
Here are Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Black Mass” and “Everest,” plus a look back at the highlights from the Toronto International Film Festival!
Richard has a look back at the Toronto International Film Festival… find out why Johnny Depp was late getting to the press conference Richard hosted with him!
In Black Mass, Dakota Johnson has a high profile role as the steely-but-sweet girlfriend to notorious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger but for much of her life she was simply known as a child of Hollywood, the daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson.
Despite an acting career that stretches back to 1999, the 25-year-old became a sensation just last year when she landed the lead role in one of the most anticipated films of the decade.
She beat out half of young Hollywood to play Anastasia Steele in the fastest selling R-rated title ever, Fifty Shades of Grey. She bared all, physically and emotionally; and became famous enough to have designers create clothes for her and an avalanche of interesting scripts to tumble her way. She’ll soon be seen in a Fifty Shades sequel and a remake of the legendary Italian horror film Suspiria.
This week she stars opposite her 21 Jump Street co-star Johnny Depp — they appeared in the 2012 film — as Lindsey Cyr, mother of Bulger’s son and the only person in South Boston who would stand up to the infamous killer.
Cyr is still alive but Johnson didn’t think it was a good idea to meet with her.
“It would have been if my goal had been to be extremely accurate but my goal was to bring out a different side of Jimmy. We talked about meeting her but we decided that it would have added a bunch of components. You wouldn’t see them. You wouldn’t see the stories she was telling because it wasn’t part of our story.”
Instead she studied footage of the former diner waitress and lawyer’s assistant.
“I did as much research as was available to me,” she says, “but the majority of the footage I found on her was pretty recent and it was her looking back on her time with Jimmy Bulger.
“Obviously the time that we see them together (in the film) is when she is quite young. A lot of that came from working it out with (director) Scott Cooper and Johnny.”
In her most intense scene she stares down and out-manoeuvres the controlling gangster after personal tragedy strikes the couple.
“There was a very heavy atmosphere on set but because Johnny was really not himself, he was a completely different person and because I’m not a mother and have never experienced anything as profoundly devastating as losing a child, I think we both completely slipped away from ourselves. That allowed us to create the scene the way it was.”
On acting: Edgerton portrays former FBI agent as a ‘bad dude’
Joel Edgerton didn’t meet the inspiration for his character in Black Mass, former FBI agent John Connolly.
“He’s alive and with us, albeit in federal prison and a little hard to reach,” said the Australian actor. The real-life Connolly was convicted of racketeering and obstruction of justice charges stemming from his relationship with gangster James “Whitey” Bulger.
“His version of events doesn’t line up with our version…. I felt like it was a little unfair to go and visit him in federal prison and say, ‘You stay in here while I’m over here making you look like a bad dude.’ It felt like it wasn’t a very genuine thing to do.”
Black Mass sees Johnny Depp playing Jimmy ‘Whitey’ Bulger, a crime lord-turned-FBI-informant who ruled South Boston and was also the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed.
Bulger was a community minded cold-blooded killer. He loved his neighbourhood, kids, cats and choking people to death with his bare hands.
Depp says “a responsibility to history and truth to some degree” was very important to him going into the project.
“When you’re playing someone who exists or existed,” he says, “there’s a tremendous kind of amount of responsibility, at least for me, no matter whether they’re deemed good or bad or whatever. You have a responsibility to that person.”
The fifty-two year old actor’s performance is already earning early Oscar buzz for the chilling authenticity he brings to a man described in the film as “ripened psychopath.”
Director Scott Cooper says, “I don’t think people come to narrative features for the facts, or for truth. I think you go to documentaries for that. What you do come to narrative features for is psychological truth, emotion and deep humanity. I did not want to make a film strictly about criminals who happened to be humans. I wanted to make a film about humans who happened to be criminals.”
Like many underworld figures, Bulger created his own mythology based on his exploits, making it difficult for co-screenwriter Mark Mallouk and Cooper to discern what was true and what wasn’t.
“Jimmy Bulger had his version of the truth which was different from (accomplice) Stephen Flemmi’s,” said the director, “that was different from (henchman) Kevin Weeks and (hitman) John Martorano. I had to determine what was the story I was going to tell… and tell it as accurately as I could from a very emotional place.”
It’s a hard-edged tale to be sure, fuelled by Bulger’s violent and grim behaviour, but Depp found it best not to judge the character.
“I don’t think any of us wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m so evil. I’m so horrible,’” Depp said. “I approached James Bulger as a human being, who’s multi-faceted and did have a side to him that was human and loving.”
Depp’s performance and the work of his co-stars Dakota Johnson and Joel Edgerton among others, ensure that Black Mass is a complex study of human behaviour, but hopefully, according to Mallouk, not a glamorous one.
“None of wanted anyone walking out of the theatre to go, ‘I want to be Whitey Bulger,’” said Mallouk. “You feel that way after Scarface or Goodfellas or after The Godfather, and I love those movies, but there is a responsibility to not do that here. It feels more like Donnie Brasco. We did not want to create more fuel for the Whitey Bulger myth.”
Cooper says his responsibility as a filmmaker and storyteller was with “the victim’s families because Jimmy Bulger and the men we chronicle in this film left a deep emotional scar on the city of Boston that is still very fresh and widely felt.
“I care what they think about the film and I hope I didn’t trivialize these events.”
In real life Bulger, now eighty-six years old and serving two life terms plus five years at a penitentiary in Florida, was convicted of racketeering, money laundering, extortion, weapons charges and was found to have been involved in 11 murders.
“You talk about six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” says Cooper. “In South Boston or Boston in general it’s two degrees of Whitey Bulger. Everybody had a story and everybody knew him.”
“Southie kids went from playing cops and robbers in the playground to doing it for real on the streets,” says Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons), “and like on the playground sometimes it was hard to tell who was who.”
It’s not that hard, really. Not in “Black Mass” anyway. The story of Jimmy ‘Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp), the crime lord-turned-FBI-informant who ruled South Boston and was the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Departed,” is populated by bad men who do terrible things.
Bulger himself was a community minded cold-blooded killer. He loved his neighbourhood, kids, cats and choking people to death with his bare hands. He was, in the words of FBI agent Charles McGuire (Kevin Bacon) a “ripened psychopath.”
“It’s not what you do,” Bulger says, “it’s when and where you do it. If no one sees it didn’t happen.”
“Black Mass” is a gangster thriller in the same vein as ”Goodfellas.” It follows a familiar pattern, the rise, fall and eventual ratting out of a crime boss, but provides more than enough underworld intrigue to keep things interesting. Depp is all coiled menace, a dark-eyed malevolent force capable of helping an old neighbourhood woman with her groceries one moment and killing an old friend the next. He’s unpredictable in the most predictable of ways, but Depp makes sure that Bulger isn’t just an echo of Michael Corleone or Tony Montana by giving him some tender moments with his family, son, mother and brother. It’s terrific work and a welcome change from his recent, extended Caribbean trip.
This is very much Depp’s movie but it is populated by an array of interesting and well-performed characters.
Joel Edgerton is John Connolly, a Southie kid who grew up to become the FBI agent who convinced Bulger to become an informant. Edgerton is always interesting, often in supporting roles. Here in a large, showy part he is all swagger and Brut cologne.
As the assorted bad guys and crooked FBI agents Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, Peter Sarsgaard bring the scuzz, but while this is a very male movie, there are three solid performances from the female cast. As Connolly’s wife Julianne Nicholson brings the right amount of scepticism about being airlifted into a world she doesn’t understand and Juno Temple is heartbreaking as a street waif who makes the mistake of trusting Whitey. Dakota Johnson, as Bulger’s common law wife Lindsey Cyr, stands out, riding the line between steeliness and sweetness in her scenes with Depp.
The gangster saga may be the great American movie genre. From Howard Hawks and William A. Wellman to Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, bullets and bangers have been a staple on the big screen. “Black Mass” is another piece of that puzzle, but unlike “Scarface” or “The Godfather” it doesn’t glamourize gang life—this is the underworld’s more down-and-dirty side—but neither does it break much new ground. Perhaps given the extensive Hollywood history of on-screen thuggery there aren’t many new ways to present the rise-and-fall story but director Scott Cooper, Depp and cast at least keep it compelling.
Richard hosted the press conference for the movie Black Mass held during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival on Monday September 14 with Dakota Johnson, Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Peter Sarsgaard, Kevin Bacon, Julianne Nicholson, Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, as well as director Scott Cooper.
And you thought your family get-togethers were weird.
Take the worst family dinner party ever, times it by infinity and you can begin to imagine the discomfort and distress at the Weston clan table. “August: Osage County,” the all star remounting of Tracey Letts’s hit Broadway play never met a disparaging remark it couldn’t place in the mouth of one of its mean-spirited diners.
The film reunites the Weston sisters, Barbara (Julia Roberts), Karen (Juliette Lewis) and Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) along with soon-to-be ex-husbands, grumpy granddaughters and secret lovers, with their pill-popping mommy dearest Violet (Meryl Streep). They come together when Dad (Sam Shepard) goes missing, but his disappearance is simply a backdrop to bring this desperate group of people together and allow them to wallow in their dysfunction.
“August: Osage County” is ram-packed with unlikeable characters played by likeable actors. There’s more baggage on display here than at any airport carousel and while it is occasionally difficult to buy in to the level of petty behavior displayed by Violet and her prey, the vindictive dialogue often does sound delicious rolling off the tongues of these actors.
A case in point is the dinner scene. It features the best example of ensemble acting on screen this year, giving everyone around the crowded table a chance to show what they can do. Chris Cooper’s rambling, extended saying-of-grace is worth the price of admission, but the powerhouse back-and-forth between Streep and Roberts is the main attraction.
Roberts hasn’t had a juicy role like this in years. Her Barbara is a bit of an enigma. She’s a jumble of mixed, complicated emotions, capable of both great kindness and compassion but seems only to express herself through tough love. When she explodes she’s letting loose a lifetime of rage stemming from her mother’s mistreatment.
When they go head-to-head it is the clash of the titans and an unforgettable scene.
Streep is shrill, and purposefully so, but it is far from a one note performances. For instance a porch swing monologue shows her mastery of the form. What could have been an interminable acting class monologue is transformed into an epic bit of storytelling with more range and character development in the five minutes it takes to play out than most movies contain in their entire running time.
“August: Osage County” sometimes feels like you’re watching “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” with all the tender parts removed. Unhappy people abound and so do inappropriate situations to the point where it becomes hard to imagine that this much dysfunction could be squeezed into one story, but director John Wells holds steady, creating a setting where this kind of behavior can thrive.
Only a misplaced smile in the film’s closing minute feels out of place. It’s an attempt at a Tinsel Town feel good moment in a film that has been uncompromising it its world view up until a final, unnecessary Hollywood touch.
Hollywood is full of hyphenates, the kind of people who introduce themselves as a model-actor-writer-waiter-personal-trainer-dog-walker.
Lately there is one Tinsel Town citizen, however, who has actually earned every word in his hyphenated title.
Tracy Letts is an actor-writer-producer-Pulitzer-Prize-winner who is going to have to get longer business cards if he gets any more successful. You may not recognize the name unless you pay attention to the end credits of Homeland (he plays Senator Andrew Lockhart on the popular show) or if you know who won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
He’s a multi-talent with a shelf of awards, some heavyweight acting credits and a new movie screenplay on his resume.
His latest project, the script for August: Osage County, puts words into the mouths of some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. The film brings together the Weston sisters, Barbara (Julia Roberts), Karen (Juliette Lewis) and Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) with their pill-popping mommy-dearest Violet (Meryl Streep).
As a writer Letts says inspiration came from Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and Jim Thompson, which might explain the dark vein that runs through his work.
How twisted are his plays? “Everybody in Tracy’s stories gets naked or dead,” says his mom, author Billie Letts.
Tracy jokingly says that his mother is “a liar” for saying that, pointing out that “not all of the people in my plays wind up naked or dead.”
Still there is no denying that his screenplay for Killer Joe, the 2011 Matthew McConaughey thriller, is written with what Roger Ebert called, “merciless black humor.” The story of a corrupt cop and a bad insurance claim earned critical praise even if the Women Film Critics Circle cited the film for its presentation of what they called “the worst female and male images” of the year.
According to Entertainment Weekly his script for Bug, starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon as a lonely woman and unhinged war veteran trapped in a bug infested Oklahoma motel room, contains an “enjoyably icky heart.”
Tracy Letts seems willing to take on any challenge to add to his hyphenate status. There’s just one thing you can’t ask him to do. “I don’t act in the stuff that I write,” he says. “I have no interest in doing that.”
