SYNOPSIS: In “Nuremberg,” a new historical drama starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, and now playing in theatres, a U.S. Army psychiatrist studies high-ranking Nazi officers, including Hermann Göring (Crowe), the notorious former Reichsmarschall and Hitler’s second in command, to determine their competency to stand trial for war crimes.
CAST: Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O’Brien, Colin Hanks, Wrenn Schmidt, Lydia Peckham, Richard E. Grant. Directed by James Vanderbilt.
REVIEW: Based on Jack El-Hai’s non-fiction book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,” “Nuremberg” is a handsomely mounted, old-fashioned drama that aims to comment on timely issues.
Set at the end of World War II the film sees U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) spearheading the world’s first International Military Tribunal. Among those accused of committing atrocities are Hitler’s right hand man Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) and 21 other members of the Nazi high command.
To determine the prisoner’s fitness for trial Army psychologist Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) is brought in to assess the men and their mental states. Entering into a “battle of wits” with the charismatic and intelligent Göring, Kelley attempts to understand the true nature of evil.
“Nuremberg” clarifies its intent in the film’s final moment when a title card reading, “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done,” a quote from English philosopher R.G. Collingwood, appears on the screen. Writer, co-producer, and director by James Vanderbilt (best known as the writer of “Zodiac” and “The Amazing Spider-Man”) makes an urgent plea for today’s audience to never forget how fascism can take hold. In our modern world, where intolerance is on the rise, the lessons of the past echo loudly and demand our attention.
I just wish the film was a more powerful vehicle for the messaging.
Despite scenes of trauma, suicide and a downbeat ending, “Nuremberg” is too restrained to leave a mark on viewers. Crowe and Malek spark in their scenes, creating a cat-and-mouse game in which the power dynamic is ever shifting, and while thier performances have dramatic heft, there’s a melodramatic edge to the storytelling that blunts the impact of the film’s central premise.
“Nuremberg” is packed with big, timely lessons but its stilted presentation doesn’t deliver the emotional impact to accompany its warnings.
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.
“Saltburn,” a dark comedy of manners starring “Priscilla’s” Jacob Elordi and Academy Award nominee Barry Keoghan and now playing in theatres, is a titillating “Talented Mr. Ripley” style tale of class, position and desire that is not afraid to get weird.
Keoghan is Oliver Quick, a shy “scholarship kid” at Oxford University who doesn’t quite fit in with his classmates. His jackets aren’t from Saville Row, he lacks their social graces and most notably, doesn’t come from oodles of cash.
When the handsome, gregarious and monied Felix Catton’s (Elordi) bicycle get s flat tire on the way to a tutorial, Oliver comes to the rescue and the odd couple become fast friends. Ollie isn’t exactly embraced by Felix’s well-heeled inner circle, who find him coarse, but they become tight, hanging out at the pub when they aren’t studying.
At the end of the term Felix asks if Oliver will go home for the summer.
“Honestly, home doesn’t mean the same thing for me as it does for you Felix,” Oliver says. “I don’t think I’ll ever go home again.“
His tale of woe, of growing up as the only child to a drunken father, moves Felix who invites him to spend the summer at Saltburn, his family’s palatial estate.
“Just be yourself,” Felix says. “They’ll love you. It’s relaxed. I promise.”
Except it’s not. It’s the kind of English country home that makes Downton Abbey look like a shack. Priceless art lines the walls, there are butlers and footmen, mandatory jackets at dinner and an oddball collection of aristocratic family members including Felix’s eccentric, self-absorbed father Sir James (Richard E. Grant), casually cruel mother Elspeth (Rosamund Pike) and troubled sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), who tells the newcomer, “You’re just another one of his toys.”
He may be a novelty, out of his depth, but Oliver is drawn to shiny things, the lives of the rich and famous, and will do anything to stay in that privileged world.
“Saltburn” isn’t just a study of the haves and the have nots, it’s a tale of the haves and unchained aspiration. Obsessed with the good life, Oliver will do bad things to get a taste of it.
Keoghan takes risks as the chameleonic Oliver. Whether he is vulnerable, hapless, or a menacing manipulator, the “The Banshees of Inisherin” actor chooses interesting ways to manifest Oliver’s state of mind. There may not be much beneath the surface, other than danger and avarice, but Keoghan, whether he is dancing naked through the grand home or lapping up bath water, keeps the performance and the audience off kilter.
Elordi allows just enough of Felix’s heart of gold to shine through his charming veneer to make the filthy rich character feel a little less dirty and Grant is perfection as the repressed upper-class twit at the head of the family, but it is Pike who steals every scene she’s in. Blessed with the film’s best lines, Elspeth has an off-hand, casual way with a barb that cuts like a knife. When she hears about a friend who has taken her own life, she snorts, “She’d do anything for attention.” These lines are often asides, not central to the action, but Pike makes them memorable.
Unfortunately, director Emerald Fennell, who also wrote the script, doesn’t mine the class satire for answers. She’s content with the black comedy, Oliver’s coldhearted desire and little else. The result is an entertaining film, but a mixed bag. It’s diverting, filled with over-the-top moments and plot twists, but at the end it feels less than the sum of its parts.
A chamber piece set against a backdrop of the literary world, “The Lesson,” now playing in theatres, is a fabulously twisty noir-ish study in betrayal and revenge.
Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack) is an aspiring author, fresh out of university, who lands a cushy job as a live-in tutor for his idol, the fabulously wealthy J.M. Sinclair (Richard E. Grant), the most revered author in the country, who also just happens to be the subject of Liam’s thesis. “I’m sure he’d be flattered,” says Sinclair’s brooding wife, art dealer Hélène (Julie Delpy) to Liam, “but you’re not here for him.”
“Good writers borrow,” says Sinclair, “but great writers steal,” and Sinclair is a great writer.
The reclusive author is recovering from the loss of his older son Felix by suicide two years before, and has brought Liam in to prep his other son, a snot-nosed brat named Bertie (Stephen McMillan), for his Oxford entrance exams. “He has to get in, Liam,” says Hélène.
On arrival, Liam discovers that despite seemingly having it all—think Downton Abbey with fewer servants—the family is lacks one crucial thing, happiness. Kept under the thumb of the egomaniacal Sinclair, who Bertie describes as, “uncaring and cruel,” an air of tension hangs over the house like a shroud.
When Sinclair agrees to read Liam’s work-in-progress novel in exchange for the ambitious, but unpublished, author’s thoughts on his latest book—”The ending, Part III? It feels like a different novel,” says Liam.—it sets off a series of events that unveil the movie’s main themes—inspiration, ethics and vengeance.
The darkly comic “The Lesson” succeeds not because of its pulpy story, which is a bit of down-and-dirty fun, but because of the way the actors inhabit their characters. Grant and Delpy are perfectly cast as a couple who opted for cruelty over love many years ago.
Grant embraces Sinclair’s techy personality and never tries to make him likeable. It’s a bravura performance that drips with superiority, intellect and derision. Sinclair knows his place in the world and is willing to do almost anything to stay there.
Delpy is a slightly more sympathetic character who allows the odd feeling, other than contempt, to bleed through her icy façade. Her misery is evident, she has lost her son and more, but behind there is something more lurking just behind her restrained disguise.
It is McCormack, however, who grounds the flights of fancy with a very real performance fueled by ambition, that prevents “The Lesson” from becoming too arch, too aware of its excesses.
“The Lesson” is a slow burn, a story that unfolds at its own pace with wit, theatrical cruelty and welcome surprises.
On an encore presentation of “Pop Life” on June 13, 2020 we welcome the droid you’ve been looking for, Anthony Daniels. As C-3PO he is the only actor to have appeared in all of the episodic films in the series, as well as many of its spin-offs, including television shows, video games and radio serials. On this twelfth episode of season five of “Pop Life,” he talks about his first stage appearances, the uncomfortable nature of the gold suit that made him famous and how he once felt like a “secret outcast” from the rest of the cast. Then the “Pop Life” panel, Marvel, DC, Lucasfilm and Hasbro artist Ken Lashley, CTV NewsChannel anchor and “Star Wars” super-fan Todd Van Der Heyden and Roger Christian, the Academy Award winning Set Decorator and Production Designer for “Star Wars”–he created the lightsaber and R2D2 and decided to put dice in the film as a nod to Han Solo gambling–discuss why “Star Wars” is still important forty two years after its initial release.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s exciting talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
It has taken forty-two years but the story of the Resistance, begun in “Star Wars: A New Hope” comes to a conclusion in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” With an amped-up story, featuring flying Stormtroopers and much talk of destiny, confronting fear and inner turmoil, the ancient conflict between the Jedi and the Sith promises to deliver big box office, but will it satisfy old school fans who have waited a lifetime for the film’s final showdown?
The events of “Episode VII: The Last Jedi” and the passing of Carrie Fisher presented challenges that helped shape the plot of the new film, but you’ll get no spoilers here. I will say that old footage of Fisher as General Leia Organa from “The Force Awakens” appears alongside new work from Darth Vader’s grandson, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Jedi apprentice Rey (Daisy Ridley), Stormtrooper-turned-Resistance-fighter Finn (John Boyega), Resistance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and the First Order’s General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson).
Add to that new characters like diabolical First Order Allegiant General Pryde (Richard E. Grant), Spice Runners of Kijimi leader Zorii Bliss (Keri Russell) and returning faves Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) and Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker (in what form I will not say) and you have a blended “Brady Bunch-style” family in space. That is, a complicated intergalactic family dynamic in which not everyone sees eye to eye.
Tasked with wrapping the Skywalker Saga up in a pretty bow director J.J. Abrams has made a film that is part fan service—many familiar faces come along for the ride—and part homage to the Original Trilogy. He replaces subtext with action, rehabilitates one character’s tarnished, cranky-old-man reputation (NO SPOILERS HERE) and essentially delivers the movie you expect.
Abrams knows there are no do overs on this one. “Do or do not; there is no try,” comes to mind. It is the wrap to one of the most popular and talked-about film franchises of all time. Expectations are high with the possibility of fan backlash ever present. Questions are answered—Rey’s parentage chief among them—quips are thrown, Chewbacca howls and star ships are blasted to Kingdom Come as “The Rise of Skywalker,” for better and for worse, replaces the nuanced take of Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi” with the more tried and true Star Wars tale of nature vs nurture and good vs evil.
Jam packed with action and plot, “The Rise of Skywalker” gets bogged down with exposition and tying up loose ends. Worse, it often drifts from the thing that made “Star Wars” great in the first place—the characters. They’re all present and accounted for but are often overshadowed by the whiz bang pacing and over-abundance of story.
Having said that, the film’s final third, the payoff to the Saga, hits several emotional high points. It’s the end of the Saga and, therefore (NO SPOILERS HERE JUST THE FACTS) the final appearances of several members of the original cast. Their exits are handled with sensitivity and should generate a sniffle or two from hard core fans.
The core of the movie is the anguished dynamic between Rey and Kylo. The push and pull between their logical vs biological family commitments is the most compelling part of the story. It also provides for several of the film’s most visually interesting scenes, including a climatic lightsaber battle on the wreckage of the Death Star.
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” ticks a lot of boxes for fans but—again, no spoilers but be careful—the mythic battle of good vs evil, of finding balance in the Force, that has fuelled the franchise for forty plus years, was really only going to resolve itself in one way. As such the metaphysical struggle is about the journey and not as much about the actual conclusion.
Richard speaks with “Rise of the Skywalker” star Joonas Suotamo about playing the iconic Wookie character Chewbacca, and what it is like wearing the fur suit for ten hours a day.
Based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” and Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” ballet, Disney’s newest fantasy also adds in large, frothy dollops of “Alice in Wonderland, “ “Narnia” and even “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
The action in “The Nutcracker And The Four Realms” begins like so many other Disney films, with the death of a parent. It’s Christmas and Clara (Mackenzie Foy) is still hurting from the recent loss of her mother. Her present is a beautiful ornamental egg once owned by her late mom. “To my beautiful Clara,” reads the attached card. “Everything you need is inside. Love Mother.”
There is something inside. Trouble is, she doesn’t have the key required to open the egg. A party game at her godfather Drosselmeyer’s (Morgan Freeman) Christmas party leads her to the key but it remains out of reach, snatched up by a tiny mouse who lures Clara into the strange world of three Realms: Land of Snowflakes, Land of Flowers and Land of Sweets. There, with Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), a soldier, and an army of mice she learns secrets about her past and embarks on adventures in search of the key. Who will help her—The Sugar Plum Fairy (Keira Knightley)? The Snow Realm King (Richard E. Grant)? Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren)?—and who will conspire against her? “It won’t be easy,” says Drosselmeyer, “but it was her mother’s dying wish.”
The opulence of the set design, the whimsy of the story, the use of classical music and ballet will draw comparisons to “Fantasia” but this is different. It’s part steampunk Christmas, part power princess tale about a girl who discovers, as her mother wrote, “everything you need is inside.”
Foy capably holds the centre of the film but it is Knightley who has all the fun. She’s a glittery-pink-powder-puff with cotton candy hair and a Betty Boop voice. She’s in full pantomime mode, grabbing the spirit of the piece with both hands. Her spirited performance brings such much-needed oomph to the film.
“The Nutcracker And The Four Realms” has some fun moments—the Mouse King is cool but perhaps on the nightmarish side for very small kids—and a timely message that we are stronger together than divided but often feels like an expensive Christmas card—beautiful to look at but flat.
In “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Melissa McCarthy leaves behind the broad comedic portrayals that made her famous in favour of a character that puts realism ahead of the funny.
Based on a true story, McCarthy plays Lee Israel, a once successful writer with dozens of magazine profiles and even a best-selling biography on her resume. Her seventies and eighties heyday gives way to a change of fortune in the early nineties. After a book on cosmetics magnate Estée Lauder failed to grab the attention of the reading public the bottom falls out of her writing career. “No one is going to pay for Lee Israel right now,” says her agent (Jane Curtain) says. “I suggest you find another way to make a living.”
Broke and desperate, she finds an old letter from vaudeville star Fanny Brice and it changes her life for better and for worse. She sells the letter for big money and launches a second career forging and selling literary correspondence by celebrities from the likes of Noel Coward, Katherine Hepburn and Dorothy Parker. “I’m a better Dorothy Parker than Dorothy Parker,” she says. The letters serve two purposes in Lee’s life. They give her an outlet for her writing and the sales fill her bank account. “I have figured out how to pay the bills without shovelling s**t,” she says. With some help from her shady friend Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant), all goes well, or at least as well as anything in the troubled woman’s life could go, until the FBI start sniffing around.
We seen McCarthy play desperate before but we’ve never seen her quite like this. There are familiar shades in the performance, the quick temper, the lashing out but the difference is that here she’s playing a character, not a caricature. As Israel she adds notes to the character. She is both vulnerable and vicious, sardonic and self-doubting. We know she can do comedy but with this nicely nuanced work we now know she can deliver the dramatic goods.
As the flamboyant Jack, Lee’s only friend and partner in crime, Grant is equal parts smarm and charm. He’s the kind of outrageous character who says things like, “Maybe she didn’t die. Maybe she moved to the suburbs—I always confused the two,” and spends on what little money he has on getting his teeth bleached. He has a faded elegance about him that is both heartbreaking and hilarious.
“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” wraps up just a bit too conveniently, making it the best feel-good movie about loneliness and despondency ever made.
