I join CTV Atlantic anchor Bruce Frisco to talk about the one-horned horrors of “Death of a Unicorn,” the rompin’, stompin’ deja vu of “A Working Man,” the flightless dramedy of “The Penguin Lessons” and the off-kilter Prime Video film “Holland” with Nicole Kidman.
Watcxh the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the one-horned horrors of “Death of a Unicorn,” the rompin’, stompin’ deja vu of “A Working Man,” the flightless dramedy of “The Penguin Lessons,” the character study of “Darkest Miriam” and the off-kilter Prime Video film “Holland” with Nicole Kidman.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Holland,” a new Nicole Kidman thriller now streaming on Amazon Prime, Nancy suspects her husband of having an affair. Her self-styled investigation hints that nothing, and no one, may be what they seem.
CAST: Nicole Kidman, Gael García Bernal, Matthew Macfadyen, and Jude Hill. Directed by Mimi Cave.
REVIEW: “You think you know someone, then you don’t,” says Holland, Michigan suburban home economics teacher Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman).
Intruding into her perfectly curated world are nagging suspicions that her optometrist husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) is having an affair. When she finds Polaroid film, she tells her friend Dave (Gael García Bernal), that Fred uses it to “take kinky sex photos with his lover.”
As Nancy’s distrust grows, she and Dave begin a homegrown investigation into Fred’s behavior. As they dig deeper and deeper to find proof of his infidelities, they develop feelings for one another.
As their relationship bears fruit, so does their investigation, and for the first time Nancy imagines a life outside of the one she has always known.
File “Holland” under the Suburban Anxiety category. The seemingly perfect small Michigan town is, of course, less than perfect, let alone wholesome, and director Mimi Cave, working in concert with cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, infuses the film with a sense of undefinable unease.
That vibe is continued in Kidman’s performance. Nobody does off kilter like Kidman. Her resume is dotted with eccentric characters, like Nancy, who present a polished veneer but soon reveal a darker underbelly. But Nancy isn’t completely quirky. She is simply a person who allows her dissatisfaction to dictate her extreme actions. Kidman masterfully finds the humanity in her and never overplays her hand, no matter how deep down the rabbit hole she falls.
Unfortunately, Nancy is placed at the heart of movie that is short on thrills. The action unfolds slowly without enough twists and turns to fully immerse the audience in the strange world of Nancy and Holland, Michigan.
I go to the vault to unearth a vintage interview I did with Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman. We don’t talk superheroes, instead, the actor gets personal, talking about the projects that worked, the ones that didn’t and what drives him. “When I started acting I was the dunce of the class,” he says.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join Shane Hewitt on “The Night Shift” to talk about helping to unveil a stamp commemorating the late, great Norman Jewison at the Canadian Film Center.
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 30:36)
Listen to Shane and Richard talk about “Deadpool & Wolverine” HERE! (Starts at 30:49)
SYNOPSIS: Six years after the events of “Deadpool 2” comes “Deadpool & Wolverine,” a new superhero movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, and now playing in theatres.
Now working as a used car salesman, Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has retired his wisecracking mercenary Deadpool persona. His life is up-ended when the Time Variance Authority (TVA) enlists him to undertake a new mission with another reluctant superhero Wolverine (Jackman).
“Wade, you are special,” says TVA agent Mr. Paradox (Macfadyen). “This is your chance to be a hero among heroes.”
CAST: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Rhett Reese, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells. Directed by Shawn Levy.
REVIEW: If the word bombastic took steroids it might come close to describing the R-rated “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Vulgar, gory with a “whiff of necrophilia” and irreverence to burn, it’s a showcase for the bromance stylings of its stars, who pull out all the stops to lovingly put a cap on Fox’s Marvel movies. “Disney bought Fox,” Deadpool explains, “[so there’s] that whole boring rights issue.”
At the film’s start, it takes some doing to explain Wolverine/Logan’s return from the dead—“Nothing will bring you back to life faster than a big bag of Marvel cash,” Deadpool says to Wolverine’s remains.—but once that convoluted (but action-packed) set-up is out of the way, the film barrels through plot with both fists flailing.
Before, during and after the big, bloody action sequences the movie cheekily blurs the line between on-screen and off-screen life. Deadpool obnoxiously calls Logan “Hugh,” and even takes a jab at jackman’s recent divorce. Later he leeringly mentions “Gossip Girl,” the show that made Reynolds’s wife, Blake Lively, famous.
That fourth-wall-breaking riffing suits Reynolds’s trademark delivery, and sets the self-aware “Deadpool” movies apart from other superhero films. ““Fox killed him,” Deadpool says of Wolverine. “Disney brought him back. They’re gonna make him do this till he’s 90!”
Humor has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), in Tony Stark’s one-liners, in Taika Waititi era “Thor” movies and “Guardians of the Galaxy” to name a handful of examples, but none of those subversively poke fun at superhero movies and themselves in the way “Deadpool & Wolverine” does. What other MCU movie would self-deprecatingly admit that the characters are entering the multiverse “at a bit of a low point”?
Jackman mostly plays it straight, acting as a soundboard for “the Merc with the Mouth’s” one liners. Filled with regret over past events, the self-loathing Wolverine is a hard drinking mutant, in full comic book costume, who reluctantly embraces heroism.
Wolverine provides the story’s heart as a counterpoint to Deadpool’s constant quipping.
Both characters may be physically indestructible, but their psyches aren’t. Both are tortured, and when the movie isn’t gushing blood or cracking wise, it’s about lost souls and their search for redemption. That story chord is a grace note that often gets lost amid the film’s cacophonic action, but is a welcome relief from the constant clatter.
A love letter to the now by-gone Fox era of superhero films, “Deadpool & Wolverine” ushers in a new epoch overstuffed with overkill, cameos, Easter eggs, juvenile humour and a villain who reads minds by thrusting their fingers into their victim’s heads. It’s fun fan service, and a good time at the movies, even if the experience of watching it sometimes feels like being on the inside of a blender set to puree.
Based on a British Second World War deception operation to camouflage the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily, “Operation Mincemeat,” now playing in theatres, moving to Netflix on May 11, is an entertaining retelling of a little-known plan to break Hitler’s grasp on Europe.
Based on historical records, the movie details a plan so outlandish it sounds as though it sprung from the fanciful mind of a screenwriter. That the plan was, in part, hatched by a young Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn), who would later go on to create the outlandish 007 spy stories, would seem to be another flight of the imagination, but even that flourish is based on fact.
The plan, nicknamed Operation Mincemeat, involved tricking Hitler into believing the Allies planned to invade Greece, not Sicily. But how to pull it off? QC-turned-Lieutenant-Commander Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and MI5 agent Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) marshal an audacious disinformation plan to drop a dead man off the coast of Spain, where the Nazi spy chain begins. In the pockets of the corpse’s uniform are “wallet litter,” faked love letters, military ID etc. In his case are “classified” military correspondence indicating the Allies were about to invade Greece. If that information falls into German hands and distracts them, it will allow a full-scale Allied invasion of Sicily.
“Operation Mincemeat” is a spirited recreation of the meticulous planning that went into the scheme to fool the Fuhrer. Director John Madden finds the suspense, the espionage and even the romance in the situation. The first two elements work well, creating a forward momentum that builds excitement as the running time ticks by. The romance between Montagu and Jean Leslie, played by Kelly Macdonald, is less convincing and feels wedged in.
Better are the comedic aspects. While some of the dealings with the dead man evoke memories of “Weekend at Bernie’s,” most of the laughs come from the absurdity of the situation, and feel organic to the story.
A welcome addition to the stranger-than-fiction genre, “Operation Mincemeat” is a well-appointed, well-crafted period piece that avoids the stoicism of other war time espionage thrillers.
She is the invisible woman. The assistant to a high-flying New York movie mogul, Jane (Julia Garner) floats around the office, silently collating papers, cleaning up mysterious stains from her boss’s casting couch—“Never sit on the couch,” her co-workers joke—wordlessly doing the jobs nobody else will do. An aspiring filmmaker with hopes of one day producing her own movies she sees the job, low level as it is, as a stepping stone.
When her boss flies in a young, pretty waitress (Kristine Froseth) he met at the Sundance Film Festival to work in his office Jane suspects it is a #MeToo situation in the making. Reporting her feelings to HR in hopes of protecting the new naive hire she is instead reminded of how power works. “I can see you have what it takes to produce,” says the appropriately named HR guy Wilcock (“Succession’s” Matthew Macfadyen). “Why are you trying to throw it all away?”
That harrowing scene lies at the heart of “The Assistant,” now on VOD. A timely study of the systemic mistreatment of vulnerable and defenceless women, Jane’s story is an account of the many slights and indignities suffered by subordinates to power.
“The Assistant” is a quiet movie. Much of the dialogue comes from Jane’s conversations with unseen limo drivers or her boss. We see her limited interaction with co-workers, but mostly we see the day-to-day drudgery that fills her hours. She arrives before dawn, stays well into the night and is treated like she should feel lucky to be there. Director Kitty Green keeps the focus tight, allowing the viewer to feel the soul-crushing drudgery of Jane’s job. She is invisible, a presence simply to absorb her boss’s bad temper and get lunch for the senor staffers.
Green never strays from Jane. We don’t meet the head honcho or learn about anyone’s backstory. It’s not that kind of movie. Instead it is a document of the degradations and power dynamic that are an accepted part of the job. The film’s chattiest scene, between Jane and HR’s Wilcock, is quiet but shattering in its impact. His smugness is the very attitude that enabled the very abuse that Harvey Weinstein is facing trial for today. The casual nature of Wilcock dismissiveness is chilling, punctuated by one last parting shot. On her way out of their meeting he ‘reassuringly’ adds, “You don’t have anything to worry about. You’re not his type.”
“The Assistant” is anchored by a subtle yet devastating performance from Garner. The hard-edged bluster she brings to her character on “Ozark” is missing, replaced by anxiety as she realizes the extent of the exploitation happening around her. It’s quiet, restrained and heartbreaking to watch how she is beaten down.
Based on hundreds of interviews with real-life assistants, this is more than just a movie, it is a timely document of abuse of power and complicity.
Mackenzie Foy, starring as Clara in the Disney fantasy “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” sits with Richard to discuss the film and her dream of directing a movie.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
