For almost 50 years writer/director Paul Schrader has essayed God’s lonely men; “Taxi Driver’s” Travis Bickle, Julian in “American Gigolo” and “First Reformed’s” Reverend Toller, among others. They are isolated characters, men who live outside regular society, haunted by the lives they’ve led.
In his latest film, “Master Gardener,” now playing in theatres, Schrader adds a new name to his soul-searching rogue’s gallery.
“Gardening is a belief in the future,” says horticulturalist Narvel Roth, played with a quiet intensity by Joel Edgerton, “that change will come in due time.” His words come steeped with meaning. A former neo-Nazi—his repulsive, racist tattoos now hidden under ever-present long-sleeved shirts—he has turned his life around and now works at the stately Gracewood Gardens. The hundred-year-old botanical beauty sits on a property owned for generations by the Haverhill family, and is the pride of mercurial old money maven Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver).
Meticulous and methodical in his duties, Roth cultivates the award-winning garden with a steady hand. It’s a simple, spartan life, ruled by self-discipline and routine.
When he isn’t digging in the dirt, he occasionally visits the big colonial house for a meal, a quick tryst or a consultation with Haverhill. On one such meeting he is told that Haverhill’s biracial grandniece Maya (Quintessa Swindell) will be joining his team. The troubled young woman has fallen in with a bad crowd, and Haverhill thinks the discipline and quietude of working in the garden will straighten her out.
He agrees to show her the ropes, not realizing that her presence will upset the serenity of the garden, his new life and his relationship with Haverhill. “The seeds of love grow like the seeds of hate,” he writes in his journal.
“Master Gardener” observes racism and redemption, wondering aloud if emancipation from the stigma of past deeds is possible.
Roth is a complex character, played like a tightly wound Chauncey Gardiner, whose terrible past presents itself in flashbacks that hint at the maelstrom bubbling beneath his stoic exterior. He is a Schrader architype, a solitary man whose involvement with a protégée could complicate his life, but Edgerton sets him apart from recent Schrader characters with a mix of the serene and physical. The work is both elegant and aloof, straightforward and elliptical, and showcases Edgerton’s charisma and versatility as a leading man, when not covered in a layer of blue make-up.
He is ably supported by Swindell, who brings intelligence and understanding to the role, even if her horror at Roth’s racist past evaporates a little too easily.
Weaver, as a stereotype of every isolated wealthy matron, chews it up, delivering lines like, “I thought you had a green thumb, but it turns out you have a green middle finger,” with gusto.
“Master Gardener” is apparently the wrap to Schrader’s recent Calvanist guilt trilogy. While interesting and as rich in allegory as the previous two films—”First Reformed” and “The Card Counter”—its study of redemption, while hopeful and even-handed, requires too many leaps of logic to fully embrace.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Lois Lee to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the rebooted “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the fourth film in “Ghostbusters” franchise, the inspirational new Will Smith movie “King Richard” and Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Power of the Dog.”
With the release of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the supernatural comedy now playing in theatres, the Reitman family proves they ain’t afraid of no sequels. The fourth film in the franchise sees Jason Reitman, son of the original director Ivan, reinvent the series, this time for a younger audience.
The reboot begins with single mother Callie (Carrie Coon) inheriting a rundown old house from her estranged OG (Original Ghostbuster) father Egon Spengler. Located just outside the tiny town of Summerville, Oklahoma, it’s “worthless aside from the sentimental value,” but Callie is desperate. She’s been evicted from her city apartment and sees the move as a way to start a new life for her two teenage kids, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace).
“We’re completely broke,” Trevor tells a friend. “And the only thing that’s left in our name is this creepy old farmhouse my grandfather left us in the middle of nowhere.”
Summerville is far from New York City, the original epicenter of Ghostbuster’s supernatural activity, “human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria,” but it turns out the sleepy little town is also haunted. Phoebe, who takes after the grandfather she never met, is sensitive to the ghostly goings-on and with the help of her grandad’s old ghost traps, new mentor Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd) and some familiar faces, she will attempt to get to the bottom of the paranormal problem.
Despite the Reitman name front and center, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” doesn’t really feel like a “Ghostbusters” film. There is plenty of fan service and call backs to the original movie but the humor is muted and the anarchy of the first film is replaced by family drama. Modelled after the kid led adventure movies of the 1980s, it feels more like a coming-of-age indie grafted onto a big studio premise.
Reitman populates the film with likable characters. Grace nails the nebbish Phoebe, creating a deadpan wise-beyond-her-years character that blends seamlessly into the “Ghostbusters” world and as her sidekick Podcast, Logan Kim is a scene stealer. The adults, Coon and Rudd, acquit themselves well, and Dan Ackroyd’s first scene is the best role he’s had in years.
But despite the characters the story takes too long to get to the ghostly stuff. Once there, it delivers a proton blast of nostalgia and an epic CGI supernatural showdown, but at twenty minutes longer than the original it feels stretched.
“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” attempts to pay tribute to the franchise while moving it forward in a different direction but despite a couple stand out performances, it is a ghost of the original.
Set back in the days when e-mail was “a new trend that will phase out,” “My Salinger Year,” now on VOD, is a coming-of-age story of an aspiring writer who finds herself enmeshed in the shadow of one of the great, reclusive authors of the twentieth century.
Tired of analyzing other people’s work Joanna (Margaret Qualley) drops out of Berkeley to move to New York City to write. “Isn’t that what aspiring did?” she says. “Live in cheap apartments and write in cafes?” She gets a foot in the door with a job with Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), the old-school literary agent of “Catcher in the Rye” author J. D. Salinger. The reclusive author is alive and well, and still writing but unwilling to actually publish any of his work.
Margaret has lots of rules. No computers, no opened toed shoes and no need to wear stocking in the summer. Above all, no talking to Jerry, as in Jerry Salinger. “Jerry doesn’t want to hear about how much you love ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ she says, “and he doesn’t want to hear about your stories. Just say, Yes Jerry, ‘I’ll tell my boss you called.’”
Jerry also doesn’t want to hear from his readers, even though fans send letters by the truck load. Instead, the letters are read, that’s the bulk of Joanna’s new job, and responded to with a form letter.
Soon though, her secretarial role takes on a different dimension when she finds herself emotionally invested in the letters; the stories from fans about how Salinger’s work affected their lives. “I can’t send them a letter that says, ‘Dear Kid, J.D. Salinger doesn’t care about you.” Instead, she secretly begins personalizing the letters, discovering a new inner voice.
“My Salinger Year,” based on the 2014 memoir of the same name by Joanna Rakoff, is a coming-of-age story about pushing insecurity aside to find a path in life. Far from another “The Devil Wears Prada” knock-off—although Weaver has fun playing Joanna’s cantankerous, computer-hating boss—it’s subtler than that.
It works best when it focusses on Joanna’s time at the literary agency. Less so when she’s washing dishes in the bathtub of her cheap NYC apartment she shares with her Socialist boyfriend Don (Douglas Booth). Joanna’s relationship with Salinger (Tim Post, heard but barely seen) and Margaret are the gateways that define her need to step away from the life she knew; to be extraordinary. That’s the film’s most compelling journey, the rest feels shopworn.
“My Salinger Year” is about momentous changes in Joanna’s life, but it doesn’t feel momentous. Qualley is effective but emphasizes the character’s naiveté in a way that underplays Joanna’s journey. A third act dance number, one that visualizes Joanna’s reaction to reading “Catcher in the Rye,” brings the life the story deserves, but by then it’s too little, too late.
Celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the 1984 timeless classic live with orchestra
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Sony Centre for the Performing Arts
(Toronto, ON – October 29, 2019) Experience Ivan Reitman’s 1984 comedy classic on the big screen while Elmer Bernstein’s score and Ray Parker Jr.’s chart-topping theme “Ghostbusters” are performed with orchestral accompaniment live and in-sync to the film.
Civic Theatres Toronto and Attila Glatz Concert Productions present Ghostbusters Live in Concert at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, Saturday, June 8, 2019. Buy tickets atsonycentre.ca, by phone, or visiting one of the Civic Theatres Toronto box offices.
Peter M. Bernstein, son of the Elmer Bernstein, the Academy Award-winning composer and orchestrator of the original “Ghostbusters” Grammy-nominated score, conducts the Motion Picture Symphony Orchestra.
On Saturday June 8, 2019 Richard Crouse will do a pre-show “Ghostbusters” talk from 6:30-7:00 pm – in the Lower Lobby with “Kim’s Convenience” stars and “Ghostbusters” super fans Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Andrew Phung.
Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis star as eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City after their careers in academia go awry. The film’s co-stars include Sigourney Weaver as the Ghostbusters’ first client turned Gatekeeper, Rick Moranis as an accountant turned Keymaster, and Ernie Hudson as the Ghostbusters’ first recruit.
The original 1984 film was a massive hit grossing nearly $300 million worldwide. A 1989 sequel and a 2016 reboot followed. The song “Ghostbusters” was at #1 for three weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Parker won a 1984 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
Celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the 1984 timeless classic live with orchestra
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Sony Centre for the Performing Arts
(Toronto, ON – October 29, 2019) Experience Ivan Reitman’s 1984 comedy classic on the big screen while Elmer Bernstein’s score and Ray Parker Jr.’s chart-topping theme “Ghostbusters” are performed with orchestral accompaniment live and in-sync to the film.
Civic Theatres Toronto and Attila Glatz Concert Productions present Ghostbusters Live in Concert at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, Saturday, June 8, 2019. Tickets go on sale to the public Wednesday, October 31, 10AM online at sonycentre.ca, by phone, or visiting one of the Civic Theatres Toronto box offices.
Peter M. Bernstein, son of the Elmer Bernstein, the Academy Award-winning composer and orchestrator of the original “Ghostbusters” Grammy-nominated score, conducts the Motion Picture Symphony Orchestra.
On Saturday June 8, 2019 Richard Crouse will do a pre-show “Ghostbusters” talk from 6:30-7:00 pm – in the Lower Lobby.
Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis star as eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City after their careers in academia go awry. The film’s co-stars include Sigourney Weaver as the Ghostbusters’ first client turned Gatekeeper, Rick Moranis as an accountant turned Keymaster, and Ernie Hudson as the Ghostbusters’ first recruit.
The original 1984 film was a massive hit grossing nearly $300 million worldwide. A 1989 sequel and a 2016 reboot followed. The song “Ghostbusters” was at #1 for three weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Parker won a 1984 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
Fans of Adam Sandler’s patented man-child character will be pleased to note he revives it for his newest film “The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected).” But those not enraptured with his childlike alter ego shouldn’t write this movie off. For the most part Sandler’s new one leaves the lowest-common denominator jokes behind in favour of highbrow (ish) humour. In other words, this is more “Punch Drink Love,” less “Billy Madison.”
Dustin Hoffman is Harold Meyerowitz, embittered sculptor, former art professor and walking, talking embodiment of New York neurosis. He’s also father to Danny (Sandler), Matthew (Ben Stiller) and Jean (Elizabeth Marvel). Harold is a crusty old man, self-centered and very aware of his lack of legacy. Newly divorced Danny has moved into the Greenwich Village home Harold shares with his fourth wife, Maureen (Emma Thompson).
The film studies the strained relationships between Harold and his kids but spends much of the movie detailing the half brothers Danny and Matthew. Danny stayed home to raise his daughter, has never had a job and now feels like a failure compared to the younger Matt, a Los Angeles hot shot with his own financial management company.
When Harold takes ill his children have to reassess their feelings for their difficult dad and each other.
“The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected)” doesn’t have the guffaws that Sandler at his best can deliver. Instead it is dusted laughs derived from the situations and characters. At its heart it’s a story of family dysfunction populated by people who never dip into self-pity. Marvel makes the best of her few moments but it is Sandler and Stiller who deliver the goods. Both hit career highs playing toned down versions of their carefully crafted comedic characters. Adding real humanity to Danny and Matthew elevates them from caricature. By not going for the broad strokes they are able to create tender and stinging moments that are some of the best in both their careers.
Hoffman is a hoot, perfectly complimented by Thompson who has some of the film’s best lines. Of the supporting cast Grace Van Patten, Danny’s loving daughter, is a standout.
“The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected)” could have been maudlin but when filtered through director Noah Baumbach’s sensibility is a smart and heartwarming.
Conor O’Malley’s (Lewis MacDougall) needs a friend. A sensitive child with a troubled home life, he’s being forced to deal with adult problems even though he’s only twelve-years-old. He is, as one character says, “too old to be a kid, too young to be a man.”
The young British boy’s troubles are many. His mother (Felicity Jones) has terminal cancer so he’s forced to move in with his strict grandmother (Sigourney Weaver). “If you get hungry there’s spinach in the fridge,” she says on the way out the door. “Don’t touch anything!” If that wasn’t bad enough his father (Toby Kebbell) lives in California and he’s the favourite of local bully Harry (James Melville). “I’m sorry you have to face this,” says dad, “but you have to be brave.”
One night at 12:07 he meets the friend he so desperately needs, a monster yew tree (voiced Liam Neeson) with roots for legs and long branches for arms. “I know everything about you,” he rumbles. “The truth you hide. The truth you dream.” Speaking in parables the giant tree tells Conor three stories to help him cope with the trauma in his life.
“A Monster Calls” is a quiet family drama about growing up and learning to grieve. It’s an intense topic and one that places it just outside of the kid’s entertainment category. An off-kilter tale that packs an emotional wallop in its final third, it defies expectations by allowing the characters to react in real ways. This is not sentimental fluff. Conor is in turmoil, plagued by nightmares of his mother’s grave and, as a result, lashes out in anger. It’s powerful and upsetting to see a young boy struggle with situations that he can barely understand let alone control.
At the heart of the story is Lewis MacDougall as Conor. He’s a child with an adult face that imbues the character with an unactorly authenticity that feels utterly real, even when he is talking to a giant tree.
Neeson’s voice is a thunderous roar that comes on strong but hides an undercurrent of tenderness and compassion.
“A Monster Calls” is a heartbreaking tale with a nightmarish climax that will be too intense for kids who may get wrapped up in the story. For everyone else it’s a fractured fairy tale with real insight and pathos.
