Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the icy charms of “Frozen 2,” Tom Hanks as television icon Mister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” two films from Adam Driver, “Marriage Story” and “The Report” and one of the year’s very best films, “Waves” with CFRA morning show host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including “Frozen 2,” the highly icy sequel to one of Disney’s biggest animated hits, Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” and two films from Adam Driver, “Marriage Story” and “The Report.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Marriage Story” is not a first date movie. It is a three hankie, emotionally fraught movie about appealing but damaged people whose divorce is filled with a sense of loss and a growing shroud of incivility.
Adam Driver is Charlie, a hotshot avant-garde theatre director living and working in Brooklyn, New York with his wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson). She is a former movie star with a list of teen comedies to her credit. They met at a party, instantly fell in love, had son Henry (Azhy Robertson) all was well until it wasn’t. Charlie may have slept with a stage manager but it’s Nicole’s growing dissatisfaction that widen the chasm between them. “I never really came alive for myself,” she says. “I was only feeding his aliveness.”
What begins as a simple conscious uncoupling becomes complicated when Nicole accepts a starring role on a television series based in Los Angeles, taking Henry to live with her. The family, stretched between two coasts and two careers, wears thin and soon the pressures of the split take their toll. “It’s not as simple as not being in love anymore,” says Nicole.
On my way into the press screening for “Marriage Story” a publicist handed me a small package of Kleenex branded with the movie’s logo. “I won’t need these,” I thought. “I’m a professional, here to dispassionately judge this film on its merits. I made it through ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ like a dry-eyed superman and if I can do that, I can do anything.” I’m not too proud to tell you that I was glad I had the Kleenexes. “Marriage Story” is so agonizingly vivid, so without melodrama, that I felt at times as though I was a voyeur, that I shouldn’t be watching some of these emotionally charged scenes. As Charlie and Nicole drift apart and lawyers, like the ruthless Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern in full beast mode), become involved the idea that they might have a chance of staying friends once this is all said and done becomes heartbreakingly remote.
Driver and Johansson convincingly play the bond that made them a couple and as it unravels both reveal the fatal flaws that drove a wedge between them. The two actors, unshackled from the constraints of the blockbusters that pay for their Italian castle retreats, dig deep, wallowing in their character’s self-absorption and anger.
Johansson, in full monologue mode, thrills in a lengthy speech detailing her state of mind. And do not even get me started by Driver’s final scene with his son as he reads a long-forgotten note. (NO SPOILERS HERE) Director Noah Baumbach keeps those scenes—and the entire movie for that matter—uncluttered. Simple and direct, he allows the actors to do the heavy lifting with naturalistic performances and both pack a wallop.
“Marriage Story” may not be a great choice for a first date but the emotional, sincere truth Baumbach and cast wring out of the material is best seen with a companion, or at the very least a package of Kleenex.
Behind every good scandal there is a good journalist. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein gave us Watergate while muckraker Nick Davies of The Guardian uncovered the phone hacking scandal that proved the News of the World had ears and eyes in the cell phones of some very famous and powerful people. Lesser known is Gary Webb, an investigative reporter for the San Jose Mercury News played by Jeremy Renner in the new film “Kill the Messenger.”
When we meet Webb he’s just broken the biggest story of his career. An exposé on the inequity of the justice system’s habit of stripping suspected drug dealers of their homes and vehicles, whether they are proven guilty or not. The article attracts the attention of Coral Baca (Paz Vega), the girlfriend of a drug dealer. She contacts Webb with some the potentially explosive information that the government has drug dealers on their payroll.
Following the clues he travels to Nicaragua to meet drug lords (Andy Garcia) and crooked bankers (Brett Rice) and to Washington to meet DC insiders (Michael Sheen) to piece together the story of CIA involvement in the smuggling of cocaine into the U.S., and how that money was laundered and used arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. His articles won him acclaim, but also started a campaign to discredit him by some very powerful people. “Some stories,” he is warned, “are too true to tell.”
Crusading journalists make good characters. They says cool tings like, “The bad guys are usually more honest than the good guys,” put themselves in peril and refuse to take no for an answer. Renner embodies the swagger necessary to play Webb the journalist and, as things fall a part for him professionally and personally, is suitably hangdog. Why then, is “Kill the Messenger” such an endurance test to sit through?
It starts off well enough, piecing the clues together, building to the aha moment when the complicated clues begin to make sense as a whole, but then loses momentum when the movie becomes more about lionizing Webb than it does following the Nicaragua story. Thrown into the mix is a sad indictment of what passes for courage in the journalism racket, which only serves to move Webb closer to the glow of the heroic spotlight.
Renner and the supporting cast, including Rosemarie DeWitt (who is good but wasted in an under-written “wife” role), Tim Blake Nelson as a lawyer whose favorite word is “allegedly” and Ray Liotta (who has an all-too-brief cameo) perform admirably but are weighed down by the script. Webb would have reported the facts and only the facts and “Kill the Messenger” would be a better movie if it took his example and stuck to the truth without the prosthetizing on journalistic ethics.
Narc is the kind of movie that makes you forget the dark patches on both Jason Patrick and Ray Liotta’s resumes. You remember Patrick in Rush, and forget about Liotta in Operation Dumbo Drop.
The story is simple enough, and almost clichéd. When the trail on a murder investigation of a policeman goes cold, an undercover narcotics officer, Detective Sgt. Nick Tellis (Patrick), is teamed with loose-cannon detective Henry R. Oak (Liotta) to solve the case. It’s old hat – the good cop teamed with a out-of-control cop – we’ve seen it in movies and on television for as long as there have been police dramas, but when it is treated with the kind of conviction and intensity that Liotta and Patrick bring to their roles it seems fresh and compelling. Both play cops who cross the line into unlawful behavior in order to do their jobs, and have both become tainted by their experiences. Narc explores what happens to a good cop when he is forced to break the law.
Visually director Joe Carnahan captures the feel of the mean streets, using a grainy film stock and handheld cameras to underline not only the dirt, but the energy of the street and the sleazy underbelly in which these two men operate.
Narc is a great cop movie, but it has a generic title, and a grainy feel to it that I don’t think audiences will connect with because they want to see something glitzy, something happy, something that is going to make them feel a little better. Hopefully it’s the kind of movie that will build a nice cult following on DVD.
Observe and Report comes hot on the heels of January’s box office champ Paul Blart: Mall Cop. On the surface they have a lot in common. Both center on suburban mall security guards with something to prove. Both star funny chubby guys who first made their mark on television and both feature blonde love interests. But as similar as they may be at first glance, Paul Blart and Observe and Report are as similar as apples and oranges. Imagine comparing The Three Stooges to Woody Allen and you get the idea.
Seth Rogen, in what will likely be his last heavy-weight film role, as he has now slimmed down for his part in The Green Hornet, plays mall security guard, er… make that Forest Ridge Mall “Head of Security” Ronnie Barnhardt. He’s a stickler for the rules, dreaming of the day when he can trade up and turn in his flashlight for a policeman’s gun. When a flasher begins terrorizing the mall Ronnie sees it as a chance to go from zero to hero, show his cop chops, earn a spot at the police academy and, as an added bonus, impress Brandi (Anna Faris), a hot, but bubble-headed make-up counter clerk at the mall. “This disgusting pervert may be the best thing that has ever happened to me,” he says. The only thing in his way is the surly Detective Harrison of the Conway Police (Ray Liotta) a motivated cop who is determined to break the case before Ronnie does.
Observe and Report was written and directed by Jody Hill, a relative newcomer who has quickly become Hollywood’s new King of Crude. In this film and his controversial HBO series Eastbound & Down Hill has established a reputation for envelope pushing. No joke is too offensive, no situation too outrageous.
Bad behavior is his canvas and Observe and Report is his masterpiece, his Mona Lisa.
This is not only probably one of the darkest comedies ever made, but also one of the most foul-mouthed and surprising. Think of Paul Blart: Mall Cop as directed by Sam Peckinpah with the action scenes staged by Martin Scorsese and you’ll have an idea of the tone of the film.
The lovable Seth Rogen of Knocked Up and The Forty Year Old Virgin is gone, replaced by a dead eyed borderline psycho who takes himself too seriously and is messed up enough to fail the police academy’s psyche test. It’s a strange and inspired performance that shows off his range, but isn’t for everyone.
I overheard two women at the screening sighing with relief that they didn’t pay for their own tickets. “I liked him so much better when he was with Kathyrn Heigl,” one moaned, pining for the days before Rogen turned into Norman Bates.
Any movie that bills itself as a comedy and yet gives second billing to Ray Liotta—the intense star of Goodfellas—is going to be dark, but Observe and Report redefines comedy noir, from Rogen and Anna Faris’s horrifying love scene to its violent finale, it is one of a kind. Not for everyone, but with show stopping work from Faris and an unexpected comedic performance from the usually very serious Michael Peña—“Sometimes I drink out of the volcano,” he says—it should please fans of extreme humor.
In other words, if you enjoyed Paul Blart: Mall Cop, then stay away from Observe and Report.
It’s pretty easy to spot the movies that influenced Smokin’ Aces. Take a shaker full of the nihilism of Fight Club, add a dash of Lock Stock and Two Smokin’ Barrels’ crazy visual style and the mayhem of anything by Quentin Tarantino and you get the all-star bloodbath that opens today.
The story is fairly simple, but told in a flashy way. Buddy Israel is a Las Vegas strip magician who, like so many Vegas entertainers before him, gets involved with the mob. His friendship with the goodfellas soon turns to business and Buddy becomes a wannabe wiseguy. Things quickly go south for Buddy and to save himself from jail he becomes an FBI informant. While out on bail he disappears, holing up at a ritzy Reno hotel while his lawyer negotiates a sweet deal for him. While he is in hiding both the mob and the FBI are looking for him. Who’ll find him first?
Director Joe Carnahan brings heaps of style to this crime story, taking pains to introduce each of the characters—played by an all-star cast including Canadian Ryan Reynolds, Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Alicia Keys and Jeremy Piven—all of whom are trying to hunt down Buddy. In fact, the set up with its elaborate daisy chain editing that connects one person to the next is the most entertaining part of the movie. When the action finally gets underway the movie becomes just another shoot ‘em up with elaborately staged (and really loud) gun battles. What starts off as an offbeat crime drama soon takes a turn into familiar territory.
