I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alamn to talk about new movies in theatres including the rebooted “Superman,” the chilling “Sovereign” and the documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 16:15)
I joined CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to have a look at new movies coming to theatres, including the rebooted “Superman” and the chilling “Sovereign.”
Watch 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 rebooted “Superman,” the chilling “Sovereign” and the documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the rebooted “Superman,” the chilling “Sovereign” and the documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: Based on real events, “Sovereign,” a new psychological true crime drama now playing in theatres, sees a Sovereign Citizen father and his teenage son (Nick Offerman and Jacob Tremblay) travel the country doing anti-establishment seminars. On their journey to sovereignty, a routine traffic stop brings tragedy. “Power is in the people,” Jerry tells his son Joe. “Always remember that.”
CAST: Nick Offerman, Jacob Tremblay, Thomas Mann, Nancy Travis, Martha Plimpton, and Dennis Quaid. Written and directed by Christian Swegal.
REVIEW: A tragic portrait of radicalization and manipulation, “Sovereign” features fine performances from Nick Offerman as an anti-establishment father and Jacob Tremblay as his son. “He says he wants me to be an independent thinker,” Joe Kane (Tremblay) says.
Offerman is best known as Ron Swanson in the sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” a character that echoes “Sovereign’s” Jerry Kane’s endless distrust of government. Both are no-nonsense and skeptical of authority but that’s where the comparisons end.
Offerman played Swanson for laughs, but Kane’s behavior is no laughing matter.
In “Sovereign,” Offerman ups the paranoia and pedantic anti-government wordplay to create a character ground down by the system, a man who would rather die as a “sovereign citizen” than surrender any of his tightly held beliefs. “What we’re after here is not fighting” he says, “it is conquering. I don’t want to have to kill anybody. But if they keep messing with me than I’m afraid that’s what it is going to come down to. And if I have to kill one, I’m not going to be able to stop, I just know it.”
He’s a walking, talking conspiracy theory, a frustrated result of the pain of falling between the cracks and, in his search for autonomy, Offerman gives him a quiet intensity. As he slowly becomes unglued, he’s a coiled spring, ready to pounce, and in his conviction Offerman makes him tragically compelling.
In a mature performance, Tremblay breathes life into Joe’s predicament, stuck between his father’s ideology and his want for a normal teenage life. As his situation spirals out of control Tremblay sees to it that Joe coming-of-age has depth.
The provocative performances are “Sovereign’s” strong point. It’s a slow burn, driven by character and ideas, not by action. Along the way the story drifts, splintering off to include plot shards that distract from the film’s main focus but the chilling portrait of extremism ushers the story along to a tragic and inevitable conclusion.
“Ordinary Angels,” a new faith-based film starring Hillary Swank and Alan Ritchson, and now playing in theatres, is an uplifting film about the virtues of not taking “no” for an answer.
Based on a true story, “Ordinary Angels” sees Ritchson, still pumped-up from playing former U.S. Army military policeman on Amazon Prime’s “Reacher,” as Ed Schmitt, the recently widowed single father of two preteen girls, Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) and Michelle (Emily Mitchell).
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Ed would have any luck at all.
“Have faith,” his mother (Nancy Travis) tells him.
“A lotta good faith is doing me,” he says.
Already drowning in debt from his late wife’s medical bills, Ed is also struggling with Michelle’s life-threatening liver condition. She will need a transplant, but finding a donor could take years, and until then, the medical bills will continue to pile up.
In another part of town, while Michelle waits for a new liver, Sharon Stevens (Swank), a brassy hairdresser with a drinking problem, is doing everything she can to ruin hers. She is bold, the kind of drunk who dances on (and falls off of) bars, and says “I ain’t great with boundaries.”
The morning after a bender, while buying beer at a local shop, a newspaper headline about Michelle’s dire condition grabs her by the heart. Uninvited, she shows up at Ed’s church as the preacher implores his flock to, “Find a way to help this family.”
Sharon trades her enthusiasm for drinking with fund-raising efforts to help Ed and his family dig themselves out of their financial hole. After she arrives at Ed’s home with an enveloped stuffed with $3000, he reluctantly accepts her assistance. “I’m good at a lot of things,” she says. “Taking ‘no’ for an answer isn’t one of them.”
Co-writers Kelly Fremon Craig (who recently wrote and directed the film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”) and Meg Tilly, lean on the details of true story from 1994 in linear fashion. So, there are no big surprises in “Ordinary Angels,” just compelling characters and a three Kleenex story.
Ritchson leaves Jack Reacher’s sarcastic brashness on the shelf to play Ed as a quiet, broken man who puts his family’s needs ahead of his own. Without time to properly grieve his late wife, he has tamped down his heartache as he carries the weight of the world on his very broad shoulders.
Swank gives Sharon a blustery shell that camouflages a troubled past. Her soured relationship with her adult son and alcoholism are confronted, but neither are fully explored. Sharon says she doesn’t like to talk about herself, but a bit more backstory may have fleshed out the psychology behind her extraordinary generosity. Still, Swank makes her forceful in an Erin Brockovich kind of way.
“Ordinary Angels” is formulaic—the highs are really high, the lows are really low—and the climatic race against time goes on too long to be truly exciting, but the film’s themes of the importance of community, of the healing power of kindness and of how one person can make a difference, may tug at the heartstrings.
