SYNOPSIS: An inside look at the creative process of an iconic performer, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is an up-close-and-personal look at the making of his 1982 album “Nebraska,” a turning point in Bruce Springsteen’s career. “It’s like he’s channeling something deeply personal and dark,” says Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong).
CAST: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Gaby Hoffmann, Marc Maron, David Krumholtz. Directed by Scott Cooper.
REVIEW: Compared to other rock bios “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is unlikely; as unlikely as Bruce Springsteen following up his biggest hit to date, the upbeat, jangly “Hungry Heart,” with the stark, downbeat “Nebraska.”
Set in the early eighties in the weeks and months after the close of the phenomenally success tour for “The River,” the film begins as a standard rock biography. Springsteen’s manager John Landau (Jeremy Strrong) is the buffer between a record company hungry for another record, preferably laden with big hits, and an artist (Jeremy Allen White) struggling to find himself in this wake of fame that came with his new, widespread success and the pressure to “hit it out of the park again.”
Springsteen’s journey “to find the real among the noise” leads him to a rented house in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Equipped with only a lo-fi Teac Tascam 144 four-track cassette recorder, he records the sparse demos inspired by the meditative crime drama “Badlands” intertwined with memories from his troubled childhood. The songs are stark, introspective and the polar opposite of what the record company is expecting.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is a quiet, minor chord portrait of an artist at a crossroads. But what begins as a story of an artist struggling with the pressures of fame and a greedy record company soon turns to the fight for artistic integrity as depression and isolation take hold.
“I know who you are,” says a car salesman, recognizing the rock star. “That makes one of us,” Springsteen replies with a straight face.
Director Scott Cooper, who also wrote the script based on the 2023 book “Deliver Me from Nowhere” by Warren Zanes, avoids most, but not all, of the rock bio genre’s trappings to deliver a brooding character study of a man battling depression as he is cut loose from the world he came from and thrust into an uncertain future.
It sounds like a cliché, but Jeremy Allen White channels Springsteen. His singing voice doesn’t quite match the Boss’s power, but in the film’s contemplative moments, and there are many, White is not afraid to leave space around the performance. His take on Springsteen is a vibe, as reliant on the character’s unspoken moments as it is on what the character actually says.
The movie does rock out from time to time with some randomly inserted concert footage (While “Born in the U.S.A.” was written for the “Nebraska” album, the inclusion of the full-band rave-up here may please fans but feels out of place) but works best when it focusses on White’s stripped-down performance.
The film is really a solo act.
The singer’s relationships are given a short shrift. His courtship of Jersey girl Faye Romano (Odessa Young) is underwritten and, considering how large The E Street Band looms in Springsteen’s mythology, they are barely a presence here. It’s in his bond with longtime manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) and the complicated relationship with his father (Stephen Graham) that he shows the kind of emotional vulnerability that lies at the heart of the performance.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is a solemn movie that drags in its latter section as Springsteen fights for the release of the starkly poetic “Nebraska.” The tortured artist’s insistence on musical integrity is commendable but feels repetitious by the film’s end.
Still, Cooper’s focus on the artist’s path, on resilience, on forgiveness and not simply Springsteen’s Wikipedia page, is admirable.
SYNOPSIS: Based on a real event, “The Order,” a new true-crime drama starring Jude Law and now streaming on Prime Video, gruff Idaho-based FBI agent Terry Husk (Law) identifies crime activity in the Pacific Northwest that could be related to Bob Mathews and The Order, his white supremacist militant group.
CAST: Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, Alison Oliver, Odessa Young, Marc Maron, Huxley Fisher, Sebastian Pigott, Phillip Forest Lewitski, George Tchortov, Victor Slezak, Philip Granger, Daniel Doheny. Directed by Justin Kurzel.
REVIEW: Set in the early 1980s “The Order” is an unsettling film, made all the more chilling in our time of rising white nationalism and extremist militant groups.
Jude Law is firmly in character actor mode as the disheartened Husk. Still stinging from a broken marriage and stationed in a town where, as the local sheriff says, “the only crime around here is catching trout without a licence,” he’s paunchy and world weary, but while he may be burnt-out, he still has a burning desire to find justice.
He is a standard issue rumpled cop with a past and a depressing present. Even more standard is his sidekick squeaky-clean cop Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan). Both are terrific, but how many times have we seen an older, dishevelled cop paired with a younger go-getter?
Their match up may be conventional, but director Justin Kurzel keeps the action taut enough, and the violence visceral enough, to make up for the more familiar elements.
As Matthews, Nicolas Hoult is the disturbing face of extremism. In his reckless pursuit of a racial revolution, he stages risky robberies, bombs synagogues and kills at will. The robberies are meant to finance his plans for an uprising and his followers, who, like him, don’t think the Aryan Nations are hardcore enough in their beliefs, would follow him into hell.
His motives aren’t political as much as they are ideological, and as such, he is more a cult leader than a soldier but Hoult’s cool demeanour and chiseled good looks give his portrayal of the controlling but charismatic Matthews a terrifying edge.
In many ways “The Order” is a run-of-the-mill police procedural about two men, one good guy, one bad guy, who are willing to do anything for their cause. We’ve seen that before, but the way Kurzel builds tension and shines a light on the dark underbelly of white nationalism elevates the traditional plotting.
When reclusive author Shirley Jackson died in 1965 she left behind a body of work, including “The Haunting of Hill House,” a supernatural horror novel sometimes called one of the best ghost stories ever written. An influence on two generations of speculative fiction writers like Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Sarah Waters and Richard Matheson, she is brought to vivid life in a new fictionalized drama, now on VOD, starring Elisabeth Moss.
Set just after the publication of “The Lottery,” a controversial short story about the ritual sacrifice of a town citizen to ensure good crops, published in a 1948 issue of The New Yorker, the film sees Shirley (Moss) paralyzed by the expectations that hang heavy over “Hangsaman,” a novel she is struggling to complete. Prickly and quick with a line, she is less than pleased when Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg), her college professor husband, arranges for his new assistant Fred Nemser (Logan Lerman) and his pregnant wife Rose (Odessa Young) to live in their house while the young couple searches for a place of their own.
As the days and weeks stretch into months the relationship between the two couples becomes a blend of art and reality, a claustrophobic rabbit hole where Rose becomes the model for Shirley’s new main character, a college student who went walking on Vermont’s Long Trail hiking route and never returned.
“Shirley” uses elements of Jackson’s life but places them in context of one of her novels. The result is a psychological drama; a haunting look at a person driven to agoraphobia by the weight of her success and a domineering, philandering husband.
Moss is fascinating as the title character. Her take on Shirley is that of a woman who has lived under years of oppression by her bullying husband, a man whose misogyny has left her embittered, desperate and anxious. “To our suffering,” Stanley says as a toast to his wife. “There’s not enough Scotch in the world for that,” Shirley snorts, in a line that could have been borrowed from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” She’s vulnerable and filled with rage, compassionate and spiteful, often in the same scene.
Shirley and Stanley, as compelling as they are as characters, do not comprise the film’s defining relationship. Director Josephine Decker feeds on the psychological aspects of Jackson’s work to tease out a story of Shirley and Rose, two women drawn together by frustration, talent and obsession over the missing woman at the heart of the new novel. “Let’s pray for a boy,” Shirley says to the pregnant Rose, “The world is too cruel for girls.” Their time on screen together is complicated, occasionally unsettling as reality and imagination meld. It’s fascinating work in a film that is a slow burn.
“Shirley” takes its time to get where it is going, building an atmosphere of oppression slowly and carefully. Decker’s distorted dream-like visual approach is often beautiful, as though we’re watching the film through a psychological prism. It creates atmosphere but doesn’t provide the thrills that Jackson herself might have been able to infuse into the telling of this tale.
You can’t say you weren’t warned. “Assassination Nation,” the new film from writer-director Sam Levinson, comes complete with a long list of trigger warnings. Fragile Male Egos. Torture. Swearing. The list goes on. All, and more, are contained within this lurid look at life in a small town vexed by a computer hacker.
When Salem, Massachusetts high school seniors Lily (Odessa Young), Sarah (Suki Waterhouse), Bex (Hari Nef) and Em (Abra) aren’t in class they spend their time partying, chasing boys, sexting and sending thousands of Facebook, Instagram and twitter posts. When a computer hacker reveals the sexual peccadilloes of their town’s mayor and school principal it wakes up the sleepy suburb’s townsfolk. When the hacking continues, uncovering Lily’s cyber affair with an older man, and the deepest darkest secrets of many others, the town’s men band together to find the hacker. “The media is complicit,” they say. “People are laughing at us. We can no longer be helpless. If the government can’t save our law and order, we will do it ourselves!”
Most every hot button woes of modern life are either literally or metaphorically covered in “Assassination Nation.” Toxic masculinity, privacy concerns, desensitization to violence, mob rule, homophobia and racism for a start. It’s a Pandora’s Box of social ills, told through the prism of a satire that feels both exploitative and timely.
As the story goes on, shifting from edgy teen sex comedy to a manifesto of female empowerment it echoes back to the events of 300 years previous when rumours led to the demise of twenty of the town’s women. Blamed for their sexuality and treated as objects, the four women at the center of the story react against the righteousness and hypocrisy they say has become their town’s sickness.
“Assassination Nation” is in-your-face stuff, a movie that is part slasher flick, part call for revolution. “You may kill us,” says Lily after all hell has broken loose, “but you can’t kill us all.” It’s not always pleasant but it is never less than interesting.
Centred around a motel in a small Alaskan town, Sweet Virginia is a story of people and a place gripped by greed, frustration and murder.
“I’m originally from a small town,” says the Timmins, Ont.-born director Jamie M. Dagg, “so I’m really fascinated by how the lack of anonymity in small communities changes the dynamics and how people relate to one another where everyone is incestuously interwoven into the fabric of the community. Keeping secrets is really difficult.”
In the film, opening Friday, Christopher Abbott is Elwood, a dead-eyed psychopath who comes to town to do a job. He’s been contracted to kill a man. He does the hit, callously killing two innocent bystanders in the process. Waiting for his money, he checks into the motel run by Sam (Jon Bernthal, star of The Punisher on Netflix), a former rodeo star now sidelined by injuries. The two men strike up a friendship as Elwood grows edgy and unpredictable waiting for the person who hired him to cough up his fee… READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!
Centred around a motel in a small Alaskan town, Sweet Virginia is a story of people and a place gripped by greed, frustration and murder.
“I’m originally from a small town,” says the Timmins, Ont.-born director Jamie M. Dagg, “so I’m really fascinated by how the lack of anonymity in small communities changes the dynamics and how people relate to one another where everyone is incestuously interwoven into the fabric of the community. Keeping secrets is really difficult.”
In the film, Christopher Abbott is Elwood, a dead-eyed psychopath who comes to town to do a job. He’s been hired by Lila (Imogen Poots) to kill her cheating husband. He does the hit, callously killing two innocent bystanders in the process.
Waiting for his money, he checks into the motel run by Sam (Jon Bernthal), a former rodeo star now sidelined by injuries. The two men strike up a friendship as Elwood grows edgy and unpredictable waiting for Lila to cough up his fee.
“These are communities where the ramifications of misdeeds are dramatically amplified,” says Dagg. “It often ripples across the entire population.”
Dagg, whose first film, River, won the 2016 Canadian Screen Award for best first feature, says the first actor to sign on for Sweet Virginia was Abbott. Best known for playing Marnie’s ex-boyfriend Charlie on the HBO comedy-drama series Girls, Abbott didn’t immediately seem like a good fit to play a cold-blooded killer.
“Then I watched (the movie) James White with Cynthia Nixon,” Dagg says, picking up the story. “He has incredible range. Both of us had issues with this guy being (as was originally written) a really charismatic, cool cowboy. We were both interested in pushing it into the person who was bullied in high school but could be the next Columbine shooter.”
The character is a viper, a deadly man with no remorse. Imagine No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh and you get the idea.
“I decided and Jamie agreed that Elwood is a character who inherently despises humans,” says Abbott. “It was challenging in making sure to avoid clichés. There are a lot of very good, very credible performances out there of quote-unquote ‘villains’. I found it challenging to respect the lineage of playing villains while trying to do my own thing with it.”
Abbott says he’s been inadvertently researching this role for years.
“I read books on psychology,” he says, “even books like The Psychopath Test. I used something I read in that book for this part. It is part of my job as an actor that, no matter how bad a character is, is to justify or feel sorry for him. That’s the fun of it. How do you have a soft spot for a murderous psychopath?”
Sweet Virginia takes place against a backdrop of duplicity and dread but Abbott says bringing this story of menace to the screen was relatively trouble free.
“Jamie created an atmosphere where we were able to play as actors,” says the actor, “and he really enjoyed watching us, which gave us confidence to go further and do more. It was a nice marriage that way.”
Dagg concurs. “My first film, River, was a challenging film to make. This film was sort of easy. The next one is probably going to be hell! These things are not supposed to be this easy.”
Centred around a motel in a small Alaskan town, “Sweet Virginia” is a story of place and people gripped by greed, frustration and murder.
Christopher Abbott is Elwood, a dead-eyed psychopath who comes to town to do a job. He’s been hired by Lila (Imogen Poots) to kill her cheating husband Mitchell (). He does the hit, callously killing two innocent bystanders in the process. Waiting for his money he checks into the motel run by Sam (Jon Bernthal), a former rodeo star now sidelined by injuries. The two men strike up a friendship as Elwood grows edgy and unpredictable waiting for Lila to cough up his fee.
“Sweet Virginia” is a tense and tawdry neo-noir about people on the edge. Much is left unsaid by characters whose life histories are hinted at but never explained. Sam’s limp and shaking hand suggest trauma, Elwood’s rage is illuminated in a one sided phone to his mother while Lila remains a mystery, a small town cipher. Bernthal and Poots perform with understated grace. Abbott is a coiled spring but with enough moments of humanity to prevent becoming a stereotype.
Director Jamie M. Dagg builds atmosphere all the way through. The tiny town and the twin senses of isolation and desperation bring all the story elements together to a slow boil. There is some action but this is a character study, not a police procedural or even a morality play. It’s part “Double Indemnity,” part “Blood Simple,” taking place in treacherous shadows with very little light.
“Sweet Virginia” takes place against a backdrop of duplicity and dread as Dagg maintains an air of menace that keeps things interesting.
A new Australian drama titled “The Daughter” tackles a variety of topics. Everything from a small town decimated by the closing of a lumber mill to infidelity, the nature of parent’s relationships to their kids, young love, addiction and class divides are explored but despite the busy schedule of events the film is very focussed.
Loosely based on Henrik Ibsen’s 1884 tragedy “The Wild Duck,” the movie is set in a dying Australian logging town. Christian (Paul Schneider), son of the town’s lumber magnate (Geoffrey Rush), hasn’t been home in years. On the occasion of his father’s wedding to a much younger woman (Anna Torv) Christian brings his swirling mass of daddy issues and personal problems home for the first time since his mother committed suicide.
He reconnects with his best chum from university, Oliver (Ewen Leslie) and jovial but unemployed lumber worker, husband to Charlotte (Miranda Otto) and father to teenager Hedvig, played by Odessa Young. Over the course of the wedding weekend some dangerous truths are revealed, family secrets that threaten to blow families apart and destroy an innocent life.
To be any more specific would do a disservice to director Simon Stone’s storytelling. He skilfully brings together a small group of characters, overlapping their lives to bring them to a devastating conclusion. You won’t leave the theatre with a smile on your face but you’ll exit having seen an uncompromising but engaging look at personal dysfunction.
Naturalistic performances from a who’s who of Australian actors, Rush, Leslie, Otto and Sam Neill—who now plays old cranky grandfather parts—draw the viewer in but it is newcomer Young as Hedwig who is at the center of the action. Leslie has the showiest part but Young’s work gives us a reason to care about the personal politics.
“The Daughter” is a gem, an emotionally affecting film that transcends melodrama to cut to the core of how people react and regret in the face of fidelity and betrayal.
