I sit in with CKTB morning show guest host Karl Dockstader to have a look at movies in theatres and streaming including the sequelitis of “Moana 2,” Angelina Jolie in “Maria” and the bad assery of “The G.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the sequelitis of “Moana 2,” Angelina Jolie in “Maria” and the bad assery of “The G.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Maria,” a new psychological biopic now playing in theatres before moving to MUBI on December 11, Angelina Jolie stars as Maria Callas, the world’s greatest opera singer, as she lives the last days of her life in 1970s Paris, after a glamorous yet tumultuous life spent in the public eye.
CAST: Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Directed by Pablo Larraín.
REVIEW: “Maria” finishes director Pablo Larraín’s trilogy of films about iconic women of the 20th century. Having already examined Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana, this third, and final film features a commanding performance by Angelina Jolie as the temperamental opera star Maria Callas, a woman who no longer performs but admits, “There is no life off the stage.”
She may feel the absence of her voice, of performing for adoring crowds, but her life provides a dynamic backdrop for this ornate, hypnotic film. “There’s a point where self-confidence becomes a kind of insanity,” she says.
In Jolie’ hands the opera singer is every bit a diva. She is now a pill popper whose gift, a voice that once mesmerised the world, has left her, but she remains a diva nonetheless. Regal and occasionally ridiculous, she spends her days barking orders at her loyal staff (Alba Rohrwacher and Pierfrancesco Favino)—”Book me a table at a café where the waiters know who I am,” she says. “I’m in the mood for adulation.”—reminiscing about her life with an imaginary interviewer (Kodi Smit-McPhee) named Mandrax after her drug of choice and refusing to return an important call from her doctor because he said she “must” call him.
Even when there’s not much is happening in “Maria,” Jolie is captivating, emanating the larger-than-life star power that made “La Divina” beloved personally and professionally. In one playful moment Mandrax asks, “What would you say if I told you I was falling in love with you?”
“That happens a lot,” she replies with a smile.
Character study aside, the film itself is more of a mixed bag. Stunning work from cinematographer Edward Lachman and production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas create a beautiful canvas for Jolie’s work, but it feels incomplete. There are flashbacks (mostly shot in black and white) and some paparazzi style footage that provide a sense of Callas’s elevated place in the opera world, but director Pablo Larraín, working from a script by Steven Knight, is more interested in her struggles and foibles than her triumphs. It provides Jolie the dramatic space to give the crowning performance of her career so far but doesn’t allow the character the privilege of a fulsome portrait.
Maria Callas died forty-one years ago but “Maria By Callas,” a new documentary from Tom Volf, allows one of classical music’s best-known vocalist’s story to be told in her own words.
“Maria By Callas” is not a typical music doc. Volf, who has authored several books on the singer, forgoes the usual biographical timeline, instead focussing on more speculative interests regarding fame and her relationship to public life. Pushed on stage by her mother—“Destiny forced me into this career,” she says.—she lived in the glare of the spotlight, both on stage and off. Apart from her voice, her fame was the thing that defined her. The press, who delighted in reporting on the dramatic aspects of her life, couldn’t get enough of her and documented her every move, including a relationship with shipping magnate Ari Onassis. Volf spends time on this, probably the most sensational tabloid expose offered by the film, allowing her to comment on it via contemporary television print interviews and recently found letters (read by Joyce DiDonato).
The interviews aren’t particularly revealing. Callas, or La Divina as fans knew her, talks about wanting to have a normal life, as a wife and mother, but it feels like lip service rather than insight.
Volf pieces the story together using a collection of rare footage, unseen photographs, personal Super 8 films and live recordings. It is the latter that gives the movie its spark. “Music is the only language I really know,” Callas says, and it is through the long, uninterrupted performance pieces that we truly her voice, both her bel canto technique and inner voice. Her stage work reveals her passion, natural stage presence and her mastery of the music. These sequences are more enlightening than any of the spoken material.
“Maria By Callas” will likely appeal to opera lovers more than casual viewers, but nonetheless provides an interesting portrait of a person who is still one of classical music’s best-selling vocalists decades after her death. “If one really tries to listen to me seriously,” she says of her singing, “one will find all of myself in there.”
