Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to VOD and streaming services including the Disney+ presentation of “Hamilton,” the most popular musicals of recent years, the psychological drama of “Shirley” and the crime thrillers “American Woman” and “Strange But True.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“American Woman,” the first feature directed by “Mad Men” producer and writer Semi Chellas, is a fictionalized version of real events. A series of title cards set the stage. The year is 1975. “After multiple investigations, the President of the United States has been forced to resign.” “America’s disastrous involvement in the war in Vietnam is finally coming to an end.” “Some radicals still believe a revolution is necessary.”
Amid this time of political turmoil is Jenny Shimada (Hong Chau), a bomb maker who once blew up a draft board office. On the run, she is hiding out in upstate New York, working as a house keeper for a rich, conservative woman (Ellen Burstyn). She comes out of her semi-retirement when a publisher and old colleague-in-the-cause contacts her with a new mission. He wants her to look after three fugitive Symbionese Liberation Army members, Juan (John Gallagher), his wife Yvonne (Lola Kirke), and Pauline (Sarah Gadon), the kidnapped daughter of a newspaper magnate, as they write a book about their experiences. “You can’t just sit around waiting to die or be caught,” she tells them. “You have to start writing. Write the book, make the money. It’s the only way you’ll survive underground.” Jenny’s reward? Enough cash to leave the country.
The basics of the story are borrowed from the well documented kidnapping and radicalization, of American heiress Patty Hearst. Pauline is an obvious surrogate for Hearst while Jenny is a fictionalized version of Wendy Yoshimura, the woman who was with Patty Hearst when she was apprehended.
The names have been changed and some of the details, but this sharply written story isn’t a history lesson. It’s a study of people who have chosen a radical path in life. It showcases Jaun’s ideological rantings but also wonders aloud if Pauline truly converted to the cause or was simply trying to survive. “I don’t want to be an outlaw,” she says. “Outlaws always die at the end of the story.”
Add in themes on toxic masculinity—Juan may be a free thinker but his behavior toward women is anything but enlightened—sexuality, class, gender and race and you have film big on ideas while leaving the action scenes for other movies.
“American Woman” is a movie that values words. Some may find the storytelling a bit too low key for such an explosive subject, but the performances, particularly Chau, give the story layers. Chellas, who wrote the script in addition to directing, uses the main characters, Jenny and Pauline, as conduits to help us understand a complicated and slow-simmer story of survival.
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund talk about the weekend’s big releases, “The Light Between Oceans,” starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander and “The 9th Life of Louis Drax,” with Jamie Dornan and Sarah Gaddon!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at “The Light Between Oceans,” starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander and “The 9th Life of Louis Drax,” with Jamie Dornan and Sarah Gaddon!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
There’s accident-prone and then there’s Louis Drax. After surviving eight near-death experiences, the young boy almost meets his end on his ninth birthday when he tumbles off a cliff. What is his secret to survival? More importantly, why do terrible things keep happening to him?
Louis’s (Aiden Longworth) latest accident has left his family in tatters and him in a coma. As psychologist Dr. Allan Pascal (Jamie Dornan) delves into the strange case, piecing together the disparate aspects and weird coincidences of Louis’s life that brought him to the coma ward, the good doctor also begins a romantic relationship with the boy’s mother Natalie (Sarah Gadon). The details surrounding Louis’s case not only defy medical logic but believability as well. “I think that some people don’t want to wake up until they feel safe,” Pascal says to the comatose boy. Determined to get to the bottom of the medical mystery Pascal and a colleague, Dr. Perez (Oliver Platt), take drastic steps to get inside the boy’s head.
“The 9th Life for Louis Drax” rides the line between reality and fantasy, pitting perception against interpretation. Director Alexandre Aja ambitiously tackles a complicated narrative, switching the point of view between Louis and Pascal perspectives as he balances the story’s three-pronged attack. It’s part psychological drama, part mystery and part police procedural. Add to that a creepy sea monster that visits Louis and you have a film that feels like a novel.
Dornan makes for a good looking, if bland leading man, but Gaddon and Aaron Paul, as Louis’s father, hand in solid, interesting performances. They bring the human touch the story needs to keep the fantasy elements from overpowering the gothic narrative core. The movie flirts with the supernatural but it is more a look at how truth can be interpreted.
“The 9th Life for Louis Drax” is a handsome film that feels like Guillermo Del Toro Lite. Aja’s film isn’t quite as deep or magical as it thinks it is, but it’s a nice, mostly entertaining adaptation of a complex novel.
James Schamus, a producer best known for his Oscar winning work with Ang Lee, makes his directorial debut with “Indgination.” The story of a young man’s coming-of-age isn’t a case of style over substance—it has both in spades—but of character over plot.
Based on Philip Roth’s novel of the same name, “Indignation” is the story of Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), a young working class Jewish man who earns a scholarship to the WASPy Winesburg College in Ohio. It’s 1951 and his enrolment in school keeps him from being drafted to fight in Korea and out from under the thumb of his over protective father.
A studious young man—his roommate says, “He’s a scholar who doesn’t have time for frivolities like the theatre.”—he immerses himself in his classes to the exclusion of almost everything else. The only break in his concentration comes in the form of Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gaddon), a beautiful classmate whose charms, both physically and intellectually, distract him from his work.
On their first and only date something happens (NO SPOILERS HERE) that plunge Marcus into previously uncharted personal territory. Eventually his intensity toward his schooling and Olivia draws the attention of Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts), which threatens his place within the school and provides the film with its best scene.
Like other adaptations of Roth’s work “Indignation” is filled with richly drawn characters. Where it falls down is in the storytelling. Roth’s novel is a personal piece of work loosely based on his own 1950s college experience. It’s a look at life’s decisions and their consequences, intellectual purity and sexual discovery, all themes touched on in the film but without the benefit of Roth’s investigative, haunting prose.
What does shine through are the characters. In a break-out role Lerman holds the center of the movie, doing formidable work in scenes opposite Gaddon and Letts. His scenes with Gaddon brim with sexual attraction touched with longing and sadness but it is with Letts that Lerman does his best work. A mid-movie tour-de-force sees the two showdown in the moralistic Dean’s office, arguing everything from baseball to Bertrand Russell. The verbally jousting is the film’s high point; a lovely bit of acting that could stand on its own as a short film.
“Indignation” is about truth and consequences, unspoken love and inexperience, but mostly its about great acting from a fine cast.
Here’s the highlight reel from the 2016 Toronto Film Critics Association Gala at the Carlu in Toronto. Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard’s CP24” reviews! This week it’s Tom Hardy times two in “Legend” and Sarah Gadon as Princess Elizabeth in “A Royal Night Out.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard “Canada AM” reviews! This week it’s Tom Hardy times two in “Legend,” Sarah Silverman in “I Smile Back” and Sarah Gadon as Princess Elizabeth in “A Royal Night Out.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
