Posts Tagged ‘Martin Donovan’

IHEARTRADIO: DIRECTOR ALI ABBASI + ELIJAH WOOD + AUTHOR JENNY HEIJUN WILLS

On the Saturday October 19, 2024 episode of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet director Ali Abbasi. His film “The Apprentice,” which is now playing in theatres, is a controversial coming-of-age look at Donald Trump’s early years under the mentorship of lawyer Roy Cohn. It paints a picture of the future president of the United States as an ambitious, if slightly awkward guy, who came to believe that there are only two kinds of people in the world, “killers and losers.” Ali Abbasi joined me on the phone to discuss his six year journey to getting this film made and released and much more.

Then, Elijah Wood stops by. He began his career as a child actor, appearing in everything from “Back to the Future II” to “Internal Affairs” opposite Richard Gere. He became an international star after playing Frodo Baggins in the acclaimed “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. His extensive filmography now includes “Bookworm,” an intriguing film about a 12-year-old named Mildred whose life is turned upside down when her mother lands in hospital and estranged, American magician father, Strawn Wise, played by Elijah Wood, comes to look after her. Hoping to entertain the bookish tween, Strawn takes Mildred camping in the notoriously rugged New Zealand wilderness, and the pair embark on the ultimate test of family bonding — a quest to find the mythological beast known as the Canterbury Panther. It’s a lovely film and it was lovely to speak with Elijah Wood about it and his secret regarding “Lord of the Rings.”

Finally, we’ll meet Jenny Heijun Wills. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in Southern Ontario, and currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is the author of Older Sister. “Not Necessarily Related.: A Memoir.” As a self-described transnational and transracial adoptee, she has spent her life navigating the space between ethnicity and belonging, a subject she tackles in her new book “Everything and Nothing at All.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!

Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!

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MOORE IN THE MORNING: I TALK “THE APPRENTICE” WITH HOST JOHN MOORE

I join NewsTalk 1010 morning show host John Moore to talk about the release of the controversial movie “The Apprentice.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE! (STarts at 19:43)

THE APPRENTICE: 3 ½ STARS. “a potent picture of pure ambition run amok.”

SYNOPSIS: “The Apprentice,” the controversial coming-of-age look at Donald Trump’s early years under the mentorship of lawyer Roy Cohn, now playing in theatres, paints a picture of the future president of the United States as an ambitious, if slightly awkward guy, who came to believe that there are only two kinds of people in the world, “killers and losers.”

CAST: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Gabriel Sherman. Directed by Ali Abbasi.

REVIEW: In 1972 photographer Robert Frank was given carte blanch to follo and film The Rolling Stones on their American tour. The result was “Cocksucker Blues,” a film deemed unleasable by the band, but not because of the overwhelming amount of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll on display. Rumor has it the band banned the film because Frank unblinkingly showed the tedium of life on the road and revealed the real lives of the band members.

It’s hardly the high glam life that would be expected from the “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band,” although these are the scenes that humanize the group and put a pinprick in the bubble of fame that surrounded the Stones in their glory days.

Director Jim Jarmusch said, “It makes you think that being a rock star is one of the last things you’d ever want to do.”

I mention all this because I think there is a correlation between “Cocksucker Blues” and “The Apprentice.” The Trump campaign unsuccessfully worked to suppress this film, and I would guess—and that’s all this is—they wanted it shelved not because of the harder edged portrait of Trump in the film’s second half, which falls in line with the candidate’s strongman image, but because of the softer, more humanist tone of the first hour.

When we first meet Trump (Sebastian Stan) he’s a desperate man, going door-to-door in his father’s buildings to collect rents from tenants who clearly loathe him, a lawsuit looms that could potentially bankrupt the Trump family and his brother Freddy is a drunk who is slowly losing his battle with the bottle.

Enter Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), a lawyer Trump affectionately calls “evil incarnate.” The prosecutor in the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations of suspected communists, he had a fearsome take-no-prisoners reputation. The closeted lawyer took Trump under his wing, greasing the wheels for him socially and professionally in 1970s New York City.

“You’re the client,” says Cohn, “but you work for me. You do what I say, when I say.”

The ambitious Trump begins as a lump of clay but is soon molded into an effigy of Roy Cohn, merciless in business and in life.

“The Apprentice” is several things. It’s the making of a monster. It’s a story of unchecked ambition. It’s a cautionary tale. It’s a period piece of New York City in the go-go 1980s.

Mostly though, it’s an entertaining character study of one of the world’s most famous people that comes with the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good? Stan, who (mostly) avoids doing an “SNL” style Trump caricature. In the last hour, when he has absorbed Cohn’s lessons and the student has surpassed the master, he’s recognizably Trump.

Before that, he is more fully rounded as a character. There are flashes of compassion when he interacts with Freddy, frustration at being under his father’s thumb and vulnerability. When he becomes the blustery Trump we’re more familiar with, it becomes less interesting, but still avoids imitation.

As Cohn, Strong is serpentine, to the point of predatorially flicking his tongue. Eyelids at half mast, he exudes maximum confidence in his ability to control every situation. When the tide turns for him, Strong manages to create empathy for a character who never had any in real life. When he complains to Trump that “he’s lost the last trace of decency you ever had,” the words hit hard.

The bad? While Maria Bakalova, who plays Trump’s first wife Ivana, is credible in the role, it feels a bit cheeky to cast her, given her headlining encounter with Trump associate Rudy Giuliani in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”

The ugly? The casual venality on display. It’s the kind that powerful people use to intimidate and control the people in their lives, and it is gruesome. It’s an ugly glimpse into the halls of power where cold-blooded mercenaries like Cohn will do anything to win.

There’s also a graphic and cruel scene of sexual assault, unflinchingly captured by director Ali Abbasi’s camera.

Donald Trump dismisses “The Apprentice” as “pure fiction” and for sure it isn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth. An opening title card acknowledges that, announcing that “some events have been fictionalized for dramatic effect,” but it does capture the tenor of the times and the dynamic between Trump and Cohn. It’s an origin story, and while you may not learn anything new, it paints a potent picture of pure ambition run amok.

BLACKBERRY: 3 ½ STARS. “the study of hubris makes this tech story so human.”

It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time when we were not tethered to our smart phones. A new film, “BlackBerry,” starring Jay Baruchel and Matt Johnson, and now playing in theatres, vividly recreates the scrappy story of friendship, betrayal and hubris that began our obsession with our phones.

Baruchel and Johnson play Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin, founders of small tech company Research in Motion. When we first meet them it’s 1996 and they are about to pitch a new kind of pager to hotheaded executive Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton). He’s the kind of Art of War-style boss who snaps at an assistant who reaches for a bottle of water. “Thirst is a display of weakness.”

Too busy trying to backstab his way to the top of the corporate ladder to give the tech nerds his attention, he dismisses the awkward pitch before they even get to the end. But when his latest grab at a promotion gets him fired from his cushy corporate job, he reaches out to RIM with an offer.

Under his aggressive leadership, coupled with Lazaridis’s uncompromising search for perfection and Fregin’s clever engineering and heart, the Waterloo, Ontario storefront start-up soon debuts “the world’s largest pager.” Or is it “the world’s smallest email terminal?” Either way, it is a handheld game changer that combines a phone with the capabilities of a computer.

The odd little phone, with a QWERTY keyboard, encrypted messaging and low data cost, becomes a status symbol, used by some of the world’ most powerful people. In the hands of everyone from President Barack Obama and Justin Timberlake to Katy Perry and Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, the phones helped the world communicate in a whole new way.

The halcyon days of BlackBerry lasted a few years until shady business dealings, ambition and lack of vision relegated RIM’s products to the scrap heap; the “phone people had before they bought an iPhone.”

“BlackBerry” isn’t just a business story or the story of innovation. Instead, it is an underdog tale that emphasizes the human foibles that led to RIM’s downfall, not just the financial ones.

Baruchel and Howerton, as the characters who provide the story’s yin and yang, hand in strong performances.

Baruchel, topped with a shock of white hair, goes deep to play Lazaridis as a socially awkward man with a rich inner life, a perfectionist who can’t help himself from fixing a buzz on the office intercom in Balsillie’s office on the day of their big pitch.

As Balsillie, Howerton is all bluster, a thin-skinned man who covers his weaknesses with a thick veneer of bellicosity. From attempting to buy a hockey team after a rival slights the game to his wanton manipulation of RIM to suit his own ambitions, he is simultaneously the best and worst thing that ever happened to Lazaridis and Fregin.

As director and writer (as well as co-star), Johnson concentrates on the human side of the story, amping up the anxiety with a terrific sense of pacing and claustrophobic close-ups of his cast as their lives and business unwind.

“BlackBerry” is an interesting slice of recent history, made all the more interesting by the study of hubris that makes this tech story so human.

NEWSTALK 1010: JAY BARUCHEL + MATT JOHNSON OF THE MOVIE “BLACKBERRY”

On this week’s Richard Crouse Show:

It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time when we were not tethered to our smart phones. A new film, “BlackBerry,” starring Jay Baruchel and Matt Johnson, and now playing in theatres, vividly recreates the scrappy story of friendship, betrayal and hubris that began our obsession with our phones.

Today, we going to focus on that story, courtesy of the film BlackBerry, which opens in theatres on May 12.

There was a time when the Canadian made, odd little phone, with a QWERTY keyboard, encrypted messaging and low data cost, was a status symbol, used by some of the world’ most powerful people. In the hands of everyone from President Barack Obama and Justin Timberlake to Katy Perry and Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, the phones helped the world communicate in a whole new way.

They were the original smart phones, which makes their Canadian creators Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin, visionaries, the men who gave us the future.

Recently I sat down with BlackBerry co-writer, co-star and director Matt Johnson, and Jay Baruchel who stars as the awkward genius behind the BlackBerry tech, Mike Lazaridis.

Matt is the director of The Dirties, which won Best Narrative Feature at the Slamdance Film Festival, Operation Avalanche, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and mockumentary television series Nirvanna the Band the Show.

You know Jay from his voice role as Hiccup Haddock in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, and for roles in Knocked Up, Tropic Thunder, The Trotsky, Fanboys, She’s Out of My League, Goon, This Is the End, and the action-fantasy film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. You can also see him as the host of We’re All Gonna Die (Even Jay Baruchel) on Crave.

BlackBerry is the story of the company Research in Motion, Jim Balsillie, the hotheaded businessman, played by Glenn Howerton, who was there for the rise and fall of the iconic company.

“BlackBerry” isn’t just a business story or the story of innovation. Instead, it is an underdog tale that emphasizes the human foibles that led to RIM’s downfall, not just the financial ones.

We began the interview with the idea of talking about the film, but were soon sidetracked by a discussion inspired by the lessons learned from the film, about what it means to be Canadian, why we don’t celebrate our own stories and much more. Stay tuned, it often doesn’t sound like an interview as much as a conversation we might have had over a drink or two. Like the movie we were supposed to concentrate on, before the conversation took a few left turns, the interview is passionate, patriotic, funny and not quite what you might expect.

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!

Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!

Listen to the show live here:

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CRISIS: 3 STARS. “plays like a Saturday afternoon matinee flick.”

“Crisis,” the new Gary Oldham movie now available on demand, aspires to be a multi-pronged thriller in the same vein as “21 Grams” and “Traffic.”

Director Nicholas Jarecki presents three parallel story threads that bob and weave to put a human face on the opioid epidemic. First is Gary Oldman as Dr. Tyrone Brower, a university professor working on developing products for a pharmaceutical company. He is confronted by an ethical dilemma when the company announces a new “non-addictive” painkiller. Bribes and big pharma conspire to push his moral code to the limit.

Elsewhere, architect Claire Reimann (Evangeline Lilly) beats an oxycodone addiction to get to the bottom of her son’s drug related disappearance while DEA agent Jake Kelly (Armie Hammer) goes deep undercover to bust up a multi-cartel Fentanyl smuggling operation as drug movie staple “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’” by the Rolling Stones plays on the soundtrack.

Eventually the trio of story shards resolve, mixing the corporate, revenge and procedural plotlines into an entertaining but not particularly substantive look at a very serious subject.

Jarecki slathers an action movie sheen on the proceedings, heightening every scene, and while the propulsive pacing, “power gangsters” and Brower’s habit of snarling pat lines like, “This is the biggest public health crisis since tobacco!” amplify the movie’s popcorn aura, they minimize its complexity.

Oldman is predictably entertaining, all self-righteousness and bluster, while Hammer (in a role shot before his recent controversies) and Lilly are blandly appealing leads who get the job done in roles that require little from them other than angst and action. Canadian actor Guy Nadon brings a toxic mix of charm and danger as a drug lord named Mother alongside an all-star supporting cast that includes Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez, Kid Cudi and Luke Evans.

“Crisis” aims high as a well-meaning message movie that plays more like a Saturday afternoon matinee flick.

PERCY: 3 ½ STARS. “a universal message of standing up for your beliefs.”

“Percy,” a new based-on-real-life drama from director Clark Johnson now playing in select theatres, is a David and Goliath story with a universal message of standing up for what you believe in. Christopher Walken plays septuagenarian Percy Schmeiser, a small-town farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan, who refuses to be bullied by a giant agrochemical corporation.

Schmeiser and his family have been canola farmers for generations. His cash crop is planted the old-fashioned way, with “the most virile seeds” saved from previous harvests. That’s why it is a shock to be accused by agrochemical Goliath Monsanto Canada of illegally growing their patented canola seed without a license.

“There’s got to be a mistake,” Schmeiser says. “I got my own seeds.”

Determined to prove his innocence, Schmeiser hires a lawyer he can’t afford, Jackson Weaver (Zach Braff), and vows to fight back. When Monsanto legally outguns Weaver, threatening to bury the lawyer under piles of motions, along comes agricultural activist Rebecca Salcau (Christina Ricci) with a way forward. “what you are doing is heroic,” she tells him. “You should be recognized.”

“Percy” is the story of not bowing down to corporate greed. A restrained Walken leaves behind his trademarked vocal tics to bring the principled Percy to life, and Johnson keeps the focus on him. There are courtroom scenes and some legalese but this isn’t “A Few Good Men on a Farm.” It’s about a man struggling to maintain his family farm in the face of an agricultural revolution, a very real and hot button topic across North America and the world. As Percy reluctantly becomes a spokesman for the cause screenwriters Garfield Lindsay Miller and Hilary Pryor find authentic and humanistic ways to illustrate the plight of farmers like the title character. “Farmers know the land. They know their plants,” Percy says. “Monsanto knows winning and losing and profits.”

It is a classic underdog story, one designed to make your blood boil at the disregard corporations have for the little guy.

“Percy” isn’t a flashy movie, although the landscape shots of Saskatchewan’s open skies and fields are often breathtaking. Instead it’s a low-key story of the fight to maintain the integrity of the food we put in our mouths.

WHITE LIE: 4 STARS. “a fascinating study in deception.”

“White Lie,” a new drama now on VOD, is a study in the lengths a person will go to find attention, sympathy and yes, even money, on social media.

Set in Hamilton, Ontario, the story focusses on Katie (Kacey Rohl), a university student diagnosed with terminal melanoma skin cancer. Trouble is, she isn’t sick. To create the illusion, she shaves her head, pretends to go to chemo treatments and takes pills that make her look unwell.

Her make-believe condition has made her a semi-celebrity on campus and the recipient of funds raised by the #Fight4Katie campaign, money that she uses to pay a doctor to fake medical records. “Make something up,” she says. “Whatever you write is what I have.”

Her girlfriend Jennifer (Amber Anderson) is a staunch supporter who really thinks Katie is sick. But not everyone does. Her own father (Martin Donovan) doesn’t believe she’s ill, and fears she is repeating behavior from her youth. When her mother killed herself Katie faked an illness to excuse herself from school. Now, tired of her constant requests for money he goes public with his fears, exposing Katie as a fraud on the event page for her fundraiser. “She is faking cancer,” he writes. “The money she is raising is for herself and not for charity.”

Will she own up to her scam or will she continue to deceive everyone around her?

“White Lie” is a fascinating study in deception. While we never learn exactly what motivates Katie, writer-director duo Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis weave a convincing tale of the seduction of presenting a life on social media that fits a concocted narrative. In Katie’s case it’s an extreme manipulation of the truth, the cousin of the curated Instagram life style posts millions of people post every day.

The film’s most impressive feat is in its treatment of Katie. She is, by all standards, duplicitous and manipulative, and yet Rohl’s sensitive performance humanizes the Machiavellian character without ever cutting her any slack. When Katie’s fears and past trauma are laid bare it reveals the possibility that she is driven by a force that she doesn’t completely understand. It doesn’t excuse her behavior but it creates that psychological push and pull between disgust and empathy that keeps “White Lie” compelling.

COME TO DADDY: 2 ½ STARS. “should please midnight madness fans.”

Family reunions are often fraught with tension. Old wounds are opened by familiarity bred by contempt but few reconciliations have turned as dark and twisted as the father and son get together in Elijah Wood’s new thriller “Come to Daddy.”

Wood is Norval, a self-described music industry big deal, raised by his single mother in Beverly Hills. After receiving a letter from his estranged father requesting a face-to-face meeting, he makes the trip to a remote California home to meet a man he barely knows. He’s met by Brian (Stephen McHattie), a flinty, drunken older man with a sharp tongue. When Brian tries to impress the older man by dropping Elton John’s name, Brian calls him out in an embarrassing and cruel way. The situation doesn’t improve with the introduction of alcohol and soon the situation becomes dangerous.

That’s it! No spoilers here. Trust me when I say that unless your family gatherings include torture and excrement dripped shivs, you haven’t experienced a father and son situation quite like this before.

Darkly humorous and disquieting, “Come to Daddy” is a gonzo thriller that revels in the off-kilter nature of the escalating intrigue of the story. As the running time clicks through to the end credits the stakes for Noval surge in increasingly outrageous ways. It’s all good, gory fun that plays up the absurdity of the situation while still maintaining the complexity of the father-son relationship. It’s a mish mash of revenge, squeamish violence and surreal family drama that should please midnight madness fans but leave others reaching for a barf bag.