For the second time in less than ten years Naomi Watts is playing a woman injured while in Thailand. In “The Impossible” she was nominated for an Academy Award for playing a woman whose luxurious Thai holiday is turned to tragedy by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that claimed 230,000 lives.
Now she stars in “Penguin Bloom,” the based-on-a-true story of a woman paralyzed after a fall during a Thai family vacation.
“Penguin Bloom” has considerably less action than “The Impossible” but both are about a family’s ability to pull together in times of crisis.
Watts is Samantha Bloom, a once active mother and athlete, now confined to a wheelchair after a fall left the lower two-thirds of her body paralyzed. Back home in New South Wales she has trouble adjusting to her new normal, despite support from her immediate family, husband Cameron (“The Walking Dead’s” Andrew Lincoln), Jan (Jacki Weaver) and kids, Noah (Griffin Murray-Johnston) who asked for his mother to sightsee with him that fateful day and now feels responsible for her injury, Oli (Abe Clifford-Barr) and Rueben (Felix Cameron).
When Noah brings an injured magpie home, nicknamed Penguin because of her black and white coloring, Samantha doesn’t want the bird in the house. Soon, however, Penguin becomes a guardian angel of sorts, giving Sam companionship and inspiration. If the bird can heal herself, Sam reasons, so can I.
“Penguin Bloom” is a story of healing written in broad strokes. It is an unabashed feel-good movie that feels a bit too on-the-nose from time to time—”It must be weird to have wings, but not be able to fly,” they say about Penguin, but the dual meaning is not lost on anyone.—but warmth and nice performances ultimately win the day.
Weaver is a pleasure, as always, and the younger kids bring a spark of adolescent realism to the events, but the movie belongs to Watts, who effectively portrays the mix of anger, frustration and tenderness that make her character compelling and Murray-Johnston as Noah, in his debut performance. The young actor brings a heartbreaking mix of kindness and regret to the role as he struggles with his feelings of responsibility.
“Walking Dead” fans will be disappointed that Lincoln is given little to do, but it is a relief to see him play a role that doesn’t require him to be covered in viscera.
“Penguin Bloom’s” story of struggle and survival, both human and avian, is predictable but, just as Penguin learns to take to the skies through trial and error, the film takes some wrong steps but ultimately makes your spirit soar.
Jeannette Walls’s childhood was the stuff of movies. Raised by free-spirited parents, she and her siblings were nomads, shunted around the country chasing the dream of an uncompromised life. “Daddy says where we are,” young Jeannette (Chandler Head) says, “is where home is.”
When we first see Jeannette (played as an adult by Brie Larson) it’s 1989. She is a successful gossip columnist for New York Magazine, engaged to David (Max Greenfield) an up-and-coming investment banker. Her cab ride home from a fancy dinner is interrupted by two homeless people who disrupt traffic as they garbage pick from a dumpster. Upset, she ignores them as the cab drives through the intersection.
Turns out the two are her parents, Rex (Woody Harrelson) and Rose Mary (Naomi Watts). The two are happily squatting in an abandoned building, continuing a lifelong tradition of living off the grid. He schools them by experience. “You learn from living,” he says. “Everything else is a damn lie.”
Rex is short tempered, an often drunk dreamer always looking for a place to start over. Rose Mary is an artist who redefines free-spirited. Together they raised their kids in an uncompromising manner. On the road constantly they hopscotch around the country at Rex’s whim, kept going by his promise of building them a gleaming new home, their very own Glass Castle. “All this running around is temporary,” he says. “We just need the perfect location for our castle.”
Throughout good times and bad Jeannette has a special relationship with Rex but his drinking spins out of control she realizes the kids have to go their own way.
Shades of last year’s ode to antiestablishment living “Captain Fantastic” hang heavy over “The Glass Castle.” Both chronicle overbearing fathers and their pliable children but the new film feels different because it never entirely embraces the alternative lifestyle it portrays. Walls—whose memoir forms the basis of the movie—is ultimately sympathetic in her portrayal of the man who infuriated her as much as he raised her. It is a father and daughter story about overcoming a non-traditional upbringing while also realizing he made her the person she is today.
It’s Jeannette’s life but it is Harrelson who steals the show. Is he the most versatile actor working today? He’s a journeyman who jumps from franchises to character dramas, from comedies to tragedies. As Rex he’s a volatile presence, loving one second, throwing a chair threw a window the next. Harrelson never plays him as a villain. Rather he explores the depths of the complex character, finding the kernels of humanity that allow us to look past his bluster.
By the time the end credits roll “The Glass Castle” feels stretched, as though director Destin Daniel Cretton doesn’t want the story to end. It’s a little too flashback-y in its last half hour, showing us things we already know, and a big epiphany moment—complete with swelling orchestra—feels forced. There are some heartfelt and emotional moments early on but as the story unfolds Creton allows it to melt into a puddle of unnecessary sentimentality.
Chuck Wepner goes by many names. To some he is The Champ, a heavyweight boxer who once went fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali. To others he is the Bayonne Bleeder, a fighter sometimes sidelined by his tendency to bleed out all over the ring. Still others call him the Real Rocky in reference to the rumour that his career inspired the Sylvester Stallone movie. He’s an American brawler played by Liev Schreiber in a new movie simply called “Chuck.”
Wepner became a local hero when he was tapped to take on boxing legend George Foreman. There was just one catch. Foreman had to beat Muhammad Ali first. The odds were in his favour but, in an upset, Foreman lost. That defeat should have put Wepner out of the running but the Ali fight was being positioned as a battle of the races and since he was the only white boxer on a long list of fighters qualified to take on the champ, he got the gig. The odds against him were 40-to-1 but the lure of a $100,000 payday was too great to resist. As expected he lost but the fact he shared the ring with Ali burnished his reputation, if not his bank account.
And thus the template of Wepner’s career was set. He’s an also ran, a man who can see the brass ring but never quite grab hold of it.
In the wake of the Ali fight Wepner’s life was turned topsy-turvy. He coulda been a contender but instead moonlighted as a liquor salesman. He was a star at night, hanging around clubs, cheating on his wife Phyllis (Elisabeth Moss) and developing a cocaine problem. His notoriety increased with the release of “Rocky,” the Stallone movie reportedly semi-based on Wepner’s life. A failed audition for “Rocky 2” forces the fighter further down the rabbit hole into a “Requiem for a Heavyweight-esque” life outside the ring.
“Chuck’s” story is little known but feels familiar. The “Rocky” twist and Ali fight add some nice colour to the tale, but this is, essentially, another retelling of an arrogant also ran boxer whose life outside the ring spiralled out of control. In Schreiber’s hands it’s easy to see why people were drawn to Wepner. He’s charismatic and despite his myriad flaws, likeable.
Good supporting work also comes from Moss (in an underwritten role), Ron Perlman and Jim Gaffigan as Wepner’s manager and best friend respectively but the movie, directed by Philippe Falardeau, like it’s main character, feels workmanlike. It covers large sections of the man’s life when it feels like a concentrated version may have been more compelling.
Grief is no laughing matter, but with Demolition Jake Gyllenhaal has made a whimsical movie about a man on the edge of falling into the abyss.
The film continues Gyllenhaal’s quest to explore characters who aren’t immediately likeable or understandable. No other mainstream actor puts himself or herself out there as consistently or successfully as Gyllenhaal. He takes chances, throwing himself at edgy portrayals of real people. Recently we’ve seen him as Nightcrawler’s reptilian Lou Bloom, a slick-talking drifter who falls into the freelance news gathering business, a man who seeks his doppelganger in Enemy and Southpaw’s inarticulate brute with a heart of gold, World Middleweight Boxing Champion Billy Hope.
In Demolition plays investment banker Davis Mitchell. Wealthy and happy, his life is turned upside down when he and his wife Julia are bickering about banal home stuff when the car they’re in is broadsided and she is killed.
Instead of being plunged into grief Davis becomes numb, impervious to the seven stages that usually accompany grave loss. Going back to work immediately after the funeral, however, his behaviour becomes increasingly strange. When he writes a complaint letter to a vending machine company demanding a refund he finds an outlet for his feelings and a therapist of sorts in customer service rep Karen Moreno, played by Naomi Watts. As his letters grow increasingly heartfelt and raw Karen’s sympathetic ear and later, her rebellious son, help Davis demolish his life so he can rebuild his world.
“It’s a story about a guy who begins the movie in a conventional way and ends the movie through an unconventional journey,” said Gyllenhaal at a press conference I hosted with him at TIFF last year, “feeling however [he wants and needs to], and not how society tells him to feel.”
Here the thirty-five-year old actor delivers strong work, grounding the film’s quirkiness in a character you may not understand but can empathize with. He does the heavy lifting and his work humanizes this offbeat film.
When Davis spontaneously dances on the streets of New York or demolishes his martial home it’s outrageous, but it is the sight of a man in pain refusing to face up to the fact that he wasn’t a very good husband and will never be able to make amends to Julia. It’s occasionally very funny, other times tragic and Gyllenhaal drifts between the two poles effortlessly.
The surreal dance scenes are surprising for the audience, but Gyllenhaal says they were a surprise to him as well. “I always looked on the schedule for when the dancing was going to be,” he said at the presser, revealing that director Jean Marc Vallee shot the scenes spontaneously.
“The first time I danced, we were on the train and [Vallee] said, ‘Okay, the train’s pulling in,’ and handed me an iPod, gave me an earphone and said, ‘Are you ready to dance? Let’s go. By the end, I didn’t want to stop dancing, I made like a whirling dervish.”
Gyllenhaal takes the path less trodden, but it has resulted in a body of work populated by interesting and unusual characters.
“I think the people I admire as artists are the people who really listen to themselves,” he says, “even if it is to the detriment of what people might consider success. I’d rather be myself and do what I love than listen to someone else and follow that role and be unhappy.”
Grief is no laughing matter, but with “Demolition” director Jean-Marc Vallée has managed to make a whimsical movie about a man on the edge of falling into the abyss.
Jake Gyllenhaal is investment banker Davis Mitchell. Wealthy and happy, his life is turned upside down after an accident. The movie begins with a shocking shot of Davis and his wife Julia (Heather Lind) driving and bickering about banal home stuff when they’re broadsided and she is killed.
Instead of being plunged into grief Davis becomes numb, impervious to the seven stages that usually accompanies grave loss. Going back to work immediately after the funeral, however, his behaviour becomes increasingly strange. When he writes a complaint letter to a vending machine company demanding a refund he finds an outlet for his feelings and a therapist of sorts in customer service rep Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts). As his letters grow increasingly heartfelt and raw Karen’s sympathetic ear and later, her rebellious son Chris (Judah Lewis) help Davis tear down his life so he can rebuild his world.
Gyllenhaal continues his quest to explore characters who aren’t immediately likeable or understandable. No other mainstream actor puts himself or herself out there as consistently or successfully as Gyllenhaal. He takes chances, throwing himself at edgy portrayals of real people. Here he delivers strong work, grounding the film’s quirkiness in a character you may not understand but can empathize with. He’s doing the heavy lifting here and his work humanizes this offbeat film. When Davis spontaneously dances on the streets of New York or demolishes his martial home it’s outrageous, but it is the sight of a man in pain refusing to face up to the fact that he wasn’t a very good husband and will never be able to make amends to Julia. It’s occasionally very funny, other times tragic and Gyllenhaal drifts between the two poles effortlessly.
“Demolition” is let down in its final moments when Vallée softens the soul-searching tone but the despite an ending that feels inauthentic, the film offers a welcome chance to see Gyllenhaal push boundaries.
“Demolition,” the TIFF 40 opening night film press conference with Jean-Marc Vallee, actors Judah Lewis, Naomi Watts, Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper and screenwriter Bryan Sipe.
The generation gap that lies at the heart of “While We’re Young,” the latest film from “Squid and the Whale” director Noah Baumbach, can be summed up in one short but clever scene.
Twenty-something hipster Jamie (Adam Driver) offers up a pair of headphones to Josh (Ben Stiller), a forty-five-year-old documentary filmmaker. As “Eye of the Tiger” blares on the soundtrack Josh says, “I remember when this song was just supposed to be bad.”
Josh and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are a childless married couple living in Manhattan. They’re comfortably easing into middle age when they meet Jamie and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), an impossibly hip married couple who live in a Harlem loft stuffed with vinyl records, manual typewriters and good vibes.
The young’uns lead an intoxicating life, connected to every neo-New York trend. They eat at artisanal restaurants, raid thrift shops for clothes and partake in ayahuasca ceremonies (which leads to one of my favourite lines: “Maybe don’t flirt with the shaman.”). While Josh and Cornelia bash away on the latest smart phones, Jamie and Darby have embraced the retro chic of VHS. They’re so cool they don’t even use Google. When Josh pulls out his phone to search for a word they’ve all blanked on, Jamie and Darby demur. “Let’s just not know,” Jamie says.
The relationship between the two couples is one of mutual mentorship. Josh and Cornelia go to hip hop classes and bourbon tastings, feeling young again alongside their new found friends while Jamie and Darby look to the older couple for help with a film Jamie is trying to make.
The dramatic conflict comes late in the movie when it becomes clear that Jamie isn’t as easy going as everyone first thought.
It’s a bit too easy to compare writer/director Baumbach to Woody Allen, but it’s apt. Both are New York filmmakers to the core and both, at their best, comment on life in the microcosm of that city’s life. Their stories are both specific and universal, micro and macro, and hone in on the behaviour that makes us human, for better and for worse.
In “While We’re Young” Baumbach inhabits Allen’s turf, making a comedy for adults that by turns skewers and embraces the very people he’s making the movie for. It’s a grown up look at growing up. Intelligent and funny, it highlights the insecurities attached to middle age, while celebrating the wisdom and sense of purpose that can only come with experience.
Bambauch is generous with his characters–Jamie and Darby aren’t caricatures of trendoid NYC dolts but nicely etched portraits of Generation Y kids struggling to find a place in the world—and is aided by terrific performances. Nobody does pent up anxiety like Stiller and for Driver this is the next step up the ladder to huge mainstream success. Watts and Seyfried aren’t given as much to do, although they have some of the film’s best lines. “If I stay here any longer I’ll Girl, Interrupt,” says Darby with mock seriousness. Charles Grodin has a small but important part as a legendary documentarian—think vérité hero D. A. Pennebaker—whose caustic charm and way with a line—”You just showed me a six-and-a-half hour long film that felt seven hours too long.”—is worth the price of admission alone.
“While We’re Young” is a terrific film with razor sharp insights to the differences and similarities between Gen X and Y.
Every now and again a movie comes along that is so artfully weird, so unconventional in its approach and ethos, that it defies description and earns a recommend even though it isn’t completely successful in reaching its loft goals. “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” the new film from “Babel” director Alejandro González Iñárritu, is that movie.
In what may be the most meta casting coup of the year Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a former movie star whose fame floundered when he left the “Birdman” franchise of super hero movies. Twenty years later with his money running out, he makes a comeback bid in the form of a Broadway show based on a Raymond Carver novel. Surrounded by family—daughter Sam (Emma Stone)—friends—BFF Brandon (Zach Galifianakis)—intense actors—played by Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough and Naomi Watts—and a nasty theatre critic (Lindsay Duncan) who resents movie star Riggins for taking up space in a theatre that could have been used for art, he fights to reestablish himself as a serious actor.
“Birdman” could have been a stunt film. The casting of “Batman” star Keaton as a washed up former superhero is inspired but mostly because he hands in a performance that rides the line between comedic and pathos. “I’m the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question,” he says.
It doesn’t feel like stunt casting because Keaton plays the truth of the situation and not just the situation. His Riggins is obnoxious, self-absorbed and yet earnest in his desire to create great art. Keaton plays it all, wallowing in a stew of self-pity—he says he looks like “a turkey with leukemia.”—and ego while never once trying to appeal to the audience’s good graces. It’s a bravura performance that is the beating heart of this strange beast.
The supporting actors also impress. As an extreme method actor with an uncompromising attitude toward acting and fame—“Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige,” he says—the movie gives Ed Norton the most interesting and challenging part he’s had in years, and Watts is a suitably seething mass of insecurity and sexuality.
Also dazzling is the movie’s style. Filmed to look like one continuous steady-can shot, “Birdman” is as much a technical feat as it is an artistic one. Again, what could have been a stunt turns into a visual rollercoaster that propels the action forward constantly while creating a unique and stylish palette for the story.
But it doesn’t all work. Some of the insight is a bit too on the nose—“You’re no actor. You’re a celebrity.”—and labors to hammer home it’s points. The spiteful theatre critic becomes a caricature of New York intellectuals, scornful of Riggin’s accomplishments in Hollywood. ”You measure your worth in weekends,” she sneers, “and give one another awards for cartoons.” As fiery as that scene is, it feels a little too easy.
That is a small quibble, however, in a movie that takes so many chances and lampoons celebrity culture by having a reporter ask Riggins, “Is it true you have been injecting yourself with seaman from baby pigs?”
Melissa McCarthy admits she was nervous to work opposite Bill Murray in St. Vincent.
“Is that not true for every human being?” she asks rhetorically, before adding she was intimidated, “in every possible way.
“He’s an icon. It’s less about him being one of the funniest human beings, and more about that he’s such a good actor. I thought this role was right in his wheelhouse because I knew he wasn’t going to overplay it. Then to see him do it so subtly and so underplayed, makes you love that character so much. It was a master class for me.”
The Bridesmaids star plays Maggie, a recent divorcee and mother of 10-year-old Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher). Her nursing job requires long hours and without daycare she is forced to leave the boy with her neighbour, the hard-drinking reprobate Vincent (Murray).
“I liked that she was stripped down,” she says. “There are no more tricks. She’s out of tricks. She’s just trying to survive.”
As Maggie, McCarthy takes a step away from her well established comedic persona to deliver a supporting role that has laughs but shows more of her range than we’re used to.
“I’ve played a lot of characters who are very vocal, very aggressive. It’s been what the character has called for, but even within those bombastic parts you still have to let that character touch down. Even in a bigger, straight comedy you always have that moment where something’s got to break. You see why they’re so loud. At least for the women I’ve played there is a reason why they are so ballsy and it is nice when you see the crack in the veneer and you realize, ‘It’s part of their insecurity. They stay loud so nobody yells at them.’ I think the same applies to this one, except that the character wasn’t putting on much of a facade. She was falling apart more openly and she had to buckle down and keep moving forward.”
St. Vincent is a character piece that showcases the actors — like co-star Naomi Watts as a plainspoken, pregnant hooker with an impenetrable accent and, if not exactly a heart of gold, an affection for things made of gold — but makes the point that families can be formed anywhere by anyone, even if one is a prostitute, one drinks too much and one spends too much time at work.
“It’s a lovely message that (director) Ted (Melfi) handled so beautifully, because it doesn’t feel sentimental,” says McCarthy. “It’s not like, ‘And now the message is …’ You just get the feeling in the pit of your stomach that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”