SYNOPSIS: In “Lee,” a new biopic now playing in theatres, Kate Winslet plays celebrated war correspondent and photographer Lee Miller. The fiercely independent former fashion model became a World War II correspondent for British Vogue, covering the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.
CAST: Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Noémie Merlant, Josh O’Connor, Alexander Skarsgård. Directed by Ellen Kuras.
REVIEW: As a reminder of the importance of journalism and photography, “Lee” contains several unforgettable moments. Recreations of her famous photographs dot the film.
Memorable images of an “unexploded bomb” sign stuck to a tree or a nurse’s underwear hung in a window to dry, mirror her innate visual style, one that combined artful composition with stark matter-of-fact journalism. “Even when I wanted to look away,” she says. “I knew I couldn’t.”
Perhaps Miller’s most famous photograph captured her in front of the camera.
In the iconic image, set up by Miller and taken by Life Magazine photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg), she is topless, bathing in Adolph Hitler’s bathtub on April 30, 1945, the day Hitler killed himself. New Yorker writer Chris Wiley called it an “apt visual metaphor for the end of the war” and it remains a potent symbol of triumph against evil.
When the film focusses on Miller’s trailblazing work, as in the above examples, “Lee” shines.
Winslet is terrific as the fiercely committed photographer, but she is let down by a conventional set-up—an older Miller looking back on her life—and a tendency to drift from the character’s inner life to the story’s more mundane aspects.
“Lee” is a serviceable film, but it is nowhere near as remarkable as the woman whose story it tells.
Another franchise, another eccentric genius. Robert Downey Jr. laves Tony Stark behind to return to the big screen in a reboot of a remake of a classic story of a man who could talk to animals.
When we first meet Dr. John Dolittle (Downey) he’s at the Howard Hughes recluse stage of his life. The passing of his wife has left him despondent, unable to enjoy the company of humans so he lives in seclusion with only a menagerie of animals for company.
To pass the time he plays chess with a timid gorilla named Chee-Chee (voice of Rami Malek) and in conversation with the various animals who crowd his home, including his trusted macaw advisor Polynesia (voice of Emma Thompson) and Jip (voice of Tom Holland), a bespectacled dog.
“I don’t care about anyone, anywhere, anymore,” the doctor says.
Of course, that’s not true. When animal lover Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett) shows up at Dolittle’s gate with an injured squirrel (voice of Craig Robinson)—“I’m too beautiful to die,” the squirrel says.—on the same day the doctor is summoned to Buckingham Palace to see the ailing Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley), he is brought back into the human world. Her Majesty is gravely ill and if she dies the treasury will take the animal sanctuary Dr. Dolittle calls home. Worse, all his animals will be thrown out into the world during hunting season.
To save the Queen‘s life he must embark on a journey to find the Eden Tree and its magical, healing fruit. It’s trip fraught with danger and is the same journey that cost his beloved wife her life. Add to that some palace intrigue, an island of misfits and thieves, turbo boosting whales, a vengeful squirrel and even a dragon and you have a new chapter in the life of the man who can talk to animals.
Kids will likely find “Dolittle’s” chatty animals amusing but this isn’t simply a movie about wise cracking beasts. At its beating heart it is a movie about pain, but, as one character says, not the kind of hurt inflicted by a bullet or a knife. It’s about the agony of losing someone. Dolittle’s heart is broken by the death of his wife, and that ache is the engine that propels the entire movie. So, while the young’uns may giggle at the animals but the movie’s underlying downer vibe and generic approach suggests that Dolittle’s wife isn’t the only lifeless part of this movie.
Downey plays the character with a sense of bemused confusion, topped with a mealy-mouthed Billy Connolly impression that changes from scene to scene. It’s a pantomime performance that makes the best of his finely tuned comic timing but feels sloppy and needlessly mannered.
“Dolittle” contains some good pop psychology for children about working together—”Teamwork makes the dream work!”—and facing their fears but overall a movie featuring talking animals shouldn’t be this banal.
“Assassin’s Creed” may have the highest end cast ever for a movie based on a videogame. Ripe with Oscar nominees and winners like Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson and Charlotte Rampling, it’s the poshest piffle to ever leap from the gaming consul to the big screen.
Based on the wildly popular Ubisoft videogames of the same name, the movie is a standalone that does not follow the storyline of the games.
When we first see Fassbender it’s the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He is Aguilar de Nerha, head of a stealthy brotherhood of assassins charged with making sure that rivals Knights Templar don’t get their hands on a holy relic called The Apple of Eden. “We work in the dark to service the light!” The stakes are high as the mystical device contains “the seed of man’s first disobedience.”
Jump forward to 2016. Fassbender is now Cal Lynch, a career criminal set on a bad path as a child when he saw his father murder his mother. On death row for the murder of a pimp he is to be executed. Instead he is whisked away by multinational corporate conglomerate Abstergo. “What do you want from me?” Callum asks. “Your past,” says lead scientist of the Animus project at Abstergo Foundation Sophia Rikkin (Cotillard).
Using something called the Animus Abstergo unlocks Cal’s genetic memory, essentially seeing through Aguilar de Nerha’s 15th century eyes as they look for clues as to the location of the Apple.
It’s ancestry.ca gone wild! It’s also an almost incomprehensible story about ancient rivalries and, more confusingly, “the genetic code for free will.” What, exactly does that mean? Who knows? The plot, such that it is, is essentially a load of gobbledygook that fills the gaps between the action scenes. Plot points are delivered with Fassbender’s trademarked intense glare and solemn intonations from Irons and the rest of the cast, so they must mean something, right? If you figure it out, let me know.
Showbiz old timers believed any publicity was good publicity. Song-and-dance man George M. Cohan once famously bragged, “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right.” Brad Pitt is a pretty easy name to spell and the press has been using it a lot lately but will the news surrounding his break up with Angelina Jolie and subsequent stories of FBI investigations (no charges were ever filed) have any effect on the box office appeal of his new movie “Allied.”
Casablanca, 1942. Pitt plays Canadian intelligence officer Max Vatan, a deadly spy paired with French Resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard). They are to pose as husband and wife, infiltrate a high level Nazi gathering and assassinate the German ambassador. “Odds of surviving are 60 to 40%,” he says, “against.” They survive (not a spoiler: if they didn’t make it there’d be no movie), fall in love and are soon sharing the same next of kin in London as Max takes on a less rigorous and much safer desk job. Despite Max’s boss’s (Jared Harris) warning that “marriage made in the field don’t work,” the couple settle in, the very model of a nuclear family until a high ranking official (Simon McBurney), who calls himself “a rat catcher,” confronts Max with the words, “We believe your wife is a German spy.”
Pitt and Cotillard like they just walked out a 1942 issue of Silver Screen magazine. Add to that high end period details in the costumes and sets and you have a handsome movie, almost as good-looking as its two leads. That being said, it’s a shame the first hour doesn’t have the pop it needs to really make us care about the characters when the story swerves from wartime romance to personal espionage thriller.
Director Robert Zemeckis keep things interesting with several memorable action scenes. He may be making a war film that frequently feels like a homage to the classic movies of yore but he’s done it with a modern flair, including rougher language and sexuality. Marianne giving birth on a London street as bombs drop around her has the melodrama of an old time picture but a contemporary sensibility.
Anchoring all this beauty are strong performances from Pitt and Cotillard.
At its heart “Allied” a love story despite the bullets and bombs. Pitt plays Max as a stoic but lethal—watch him choke someone to death then shove a biscuit down his throat to make it look like and accident—but most importantly, he’s a man in love. When he is told his wife may be a spy he says, “It’ll be OK because it’s not true,” but the moments of self doubt that wash across his face tell the real story. In his third war flick (following “Inglourious Basterds” and “Fury”) he’s torn between love and duty and Pitt infuses the performance with an appropriate amount of pathos.
Cotillard has the less flashy role, particularly in the second half but gives this femme fatale a real live beating heart that elevates her from stereotype to thoroughly current and exciting character.
“Allied” is really two movies—a “Casablanca” style romance and a spy thriller—bound together by Zemeckis’s adherence to classic filmmaking and the love story that provides the heart.
Visiting family can be trying. Memories can be stirred up and old wounds opened. But I will guess that no matter how surreal your stopovers with the clan may be, they likely aren’t as melodramatic as Louis (Gaspard Ulliel) visit home after a twelve year absence in Xavier Dolan’s “It’s Only the End of the World.”
Louis is successful and gay, a playwright travelling home to see his family, people he barely knows anymore. Terminally ill, he’s determined to visit on his own terms to prove he is, “until the very end the master of his life.” Instead of open arms he walks into a seething mass of hurt and anger from his relatives, manic mother Martine (Nathalie Baye), short-tempered brother Antoine (Vincent Cassel), frazzled sister-in-law Catherine (Marion Cotillard) and Suzanne (Léa Seydoux) a younger sister he barely knows.
Based on Jean-Luc Lagarce’s play of the same name, “It’s Only The End Of The World,” unfolds episodically, like a series of beautifully performed but melodramatic one act plays. An awkward conversation here, an argument there, punctuated by Dolan’s stylistic flourishes. Slow motion and close-up after close-up showcase the interesting and rather exquisite faces of the cast but lend a claustrophobic feel to the film. As the walls close in on Louis the constant up-close-and-personal bickering grates on the audience. Why doesn’t he just pack his bags and leave? Why don’t we? Either way, it would put an end to the on-screen caterwauling.
There are some touching moments in “It’s Only the End of the World,” but they occur mostly in flashback. In the present day the film portrays a clichéd view of family dysfunction that is neither as revealing nor profound enough to maintain interest. If it’s family trouble you want, go visit your own folks. At least you’ll get a home cooked meal out of the deal.
SIDEBAR: How did Seann William Scott like filming just north of home?
“I expected it to be like Minnesota, but the girls were hotter in Winnipeg,” he says. “They dress better and they’re a little more hip. I was confused. Minnesota is just below. How’d they get so hip? I think they just eat better. They’re not stuffing cheese curds down their throats.”
Seann William Scott is best known for playing Steve ‘Stifmeister’ Stifler in the American Pie series of movies. The character was a hard partying lug-head, who, according to the direct-to-DVD sequel Band Camp, became a porno director.
His specialty in films like Road Trip, Dude, Where’s My Car? and The Dukes of Hazzard is playing hapless stoners and lug-heads so it may surprise you that his DVD player is currently hosting La Vie en Rose. That’s right, the life story of singer Édith Piaf.
“That may be my favourite movie of all time,” he says.
I tell him I once interviewed the movie’s star Marion Cotillard.
“Is she hot?” he asks. “I have such a huge crush on her. She’s got a boyfriend though. I went on the computer and looked up who she’s dating. A serious boyfriend for a long time. Sucks.”
That’s the Seann William Scott audiences know and love. As an actor he usually finds the unexpected angle on a joke, and knows how to reel the viewer in.
We have a laugh before moving on to talk about his new film Goon. He plays a hockey enforcer even though he didn’t grow up with the sport. “I’m more of a fan now,” he says. “When I grew up in Minnesota I played baseball, football and basketball. So in the wintertime that’s what I played, which is odd, because it’s Minnesota. All my friends played hockey and I was always envious because all the girls liked the hockey players. Nobody came to the basketball games.”
“Since the movie I have a greater appreciation of it now because it is so intense. I love hockey now. I think the relationship between the players is way cool.
“The guys are just closer and there is a sense of humour about it. Maybe it’s a more manly sport than basketball … I’m sure a lot of basketball players won’t appreciate that.”
