George Miller may be best known as a director of wild action movies, but at the heart of all his films, whether it is the outback opera of his “Mad Max” series, or the gentle inspiration of “Babe: Pig in the City,” or the fantasy of “The Witches of Eastwick,” is masterful storytelling.
His latest movie, “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, celebrates the art of storytelling with a tale about how a well told story can bring people together.
Swinton plays Alithea Binnie, a lonely professor of narratology. “I am a solitary creature by nature,” she says. “I have no children, or siblings, nor parents. I did once have a husband.” Her work has left her wondering about the importance of mythology in the age of technology. “Sooner or later,” she says, “our creation stories are replaced by science.”
Her compartmentalized and orderly life is turned upside down when she buys a memento at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. “Whatever it is,” she says of her purchase, a small decorative glass bottle shaped like a Genie’s lamp, “I’m sure it has an interesting story.”
Make that stories. Within are a multitude of stories. And a Genie.
When Alithea opens the bottle, she unleashes a cloud of iridescent smoke. The Djinn (Elba), as the magical character imprisoned by King Solomon (Nicolas Mouawad) inside the bottle for three thousand years because he “cried out my heart’s desire,” appears. His only path to true freedom comes with granting Alithea’s wishes based on her three deepest yearnings.
Alithea’s study of ancient myths has left her wary of accepting the Djinn’s offer. “I cannot for the life of me, summon up one eligible wish, let alone three,” she says.
Nonetheless, the Djinn regales her with stories from his life, Scheherazade style, in an attempt to lure her into making a wish.
Based on the short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt, and co-written for the screen by Miller, “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” has much of the director’s visual flair, and rock-solid performances from Swinton and Elba, but this fairy tale about the importance of stories and romance doesn’t contain the magic promised by its premise.
There is sentimentalism to burn in the Djinn’s retelling of the great loves of his life and how his “fondness for the conversation with women” has kept him bottled up, literally, for millennia, but this often feels like an academic exercise. His stories reveal an appealing vulnerability in the mysterious creature’s personality, but instead of being swept away by the spectacle of the storytelling into worlds of romance, we’re left waiting for the emotional impact which is delayed and, even then, muted. It’s all allegory with not enough passion.
“Three Thousand Years of Longing” has undeniably cool moments, most likely conjured up in Miller’s fevered imagination. King Solomon’s magical, self-playing stringed instrument is wondrous, and the period details contained in the flashback from the Djinn’s life are beautifully rendered, despite some dodgy CGI. But, unlike the great stories it celebrates, the movie doesn’t have the kind of tension between the leads necessary to create a compelling narrative.
It’s rare to see a “Part II” on an arthouse flick title, but here we are. “The Souvenir Part II,” starring the mother and daughter duo of Tilda Swinton and Honor Swinton Byrne, and now playing in theatres, picks up where 2019’s “The Souvenir’s” coming of age story left off.
In that movie, film student Julie (Byrne) falls into a life-changing relationship with an older, arrogant man named Anthony. His death from a heroin overdose sends her reeling.
The new film sees Julie attempt to process Anthony’s death by making a graduation movie as a “memorial” for her late partner. As the project moves forward, it’s apparent Julie, who didn’t know Anthony was a heroin addict, is struggling to make sense of his loss. From the beginning her idea is met with bewilderment by her professors who don’t like the script and her producing partner (Jaygann Ayeh) who grows frustrated with her choice in actors.
“The Souvenir Part II” is a quiet, meticulous film about how artists mine personal experience to create art, to find a voice. Swinton Byrne’s Julie develop into a filmmaker, an artist and person who creates her own path. It is a lovely, delicate-but-steely, natural performance that digs deep into Julie’s maturity, personal and professional. It’s a pleasure to see Swinton and Swinton Byrne interact as mother and daughter in the film. There’s an authenticity to those scenes that feels like a warm hug.
“The Souvenir Part II” is based, in part, on director Joanna Hogg’s experience, and drips with complex ideas and emotions. As Julie heals herself, the film hauntingly has one eye on her past while the other looks to her future.
The filmmaking is more about mood than straightforward storytelling. It’s as if Hogg had a question from Julie’s film school classmate Patrick (Richard Ayoade) ringing in her head as she made the film. “Did you avoid the temptation to be obvious?” he asks. She did, and the movie is better and more challenging for it.
Richard joins Jay Michaels and guest host Tamara Cherry of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today we talk about Halloween icon Vincent Price’s favourite cocktails, the eerie “Last Night in Soho” and Wes Anderson’s latest, “The French Dispatch.”
“The French Dispatch,” now in theatres, is the most Wes Anderson-y film in the Wes Anderson playbook. If you forced a bot to watch 1000 hours of Anderson’s films and then asked it to write a movie on its own, “The French Dispatch” would be the result.
Broken into three stories, this is the story of three writers and their work for The French Dispatch, an American owned newspaper supplement edited by Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray) from their offices in Ennui-sur-Blasé, France.
On the occasion of Howitzer’s passing the staff assemble to put together a special edition of the paper to honor him. After a quick intro to the paper and the town by Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), the movie introduces its first tale, an outlandish take on the birth of abstract expressionism.
Benicio Del Toro stars as Moses Rosenthaler, a temperamental artist incarcerated for double murder. His muse is Simone (Léa Seydoux), the guard of his cell block. When his work is discovered by art dealer Cadazio (Adrien Brody), who happens to be doing time for financial improprieties, Moses reluctantly becomes a worldwide sensation.
Next is “Revisions to a Manifesto,” Anderson’s take on the French May 1968 student uprising. French Dispatch reporter Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) covers the story of wild-haired Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet), the revolutionary Juliette (Lyna Khoudri) and the manifesto they want to present to the world.
The final story involves food critic Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright). He recounts how a food prepared by brilliant police chef Nescaffier (Stephen Park) foiled the kidnapping of a police commissioner’s son.
Fans of Anderson’s work know what to expect. Perfectly composed shots, Bill Murray and fussy, idiosyncratic situations and dialogue. Aficionados will not be disappointed by “The French Dispatch.” It offers up Anderson’s trademarks in droves. But for me, a longtime Anderson fan, the preciousness of the storytelling verges on parody. There are some beautiful, even poetic moments in what amounts to an examination of the creative life, but the arch style that typifies Anderson’s work is in overdrive here and overwhelms the message.
Trading the barbed satire of “The Death of Stalin” for the socially aware period comedy of Charles Dickens, director Armando Iannucci breathes new life into a classic, often told tale.
“The Personal History of David Copperfield” sees Jairaj Varsani play Copperfield as a youngster born into a life of Victorian comfort. His life takes a turn when his widowed mother Clara (Morfydd Clark) marries the sadistic Mr. Murdstone (Darren Boyd) who beats David for the slightest of transgressions. When things come to a head at home David (now played by Dev Patel) is sent away to board with the down-on-his-luck Mr. Micawber (Peter Capaldi) and family and work as child labor at Murdstone’s bottle factory.
David takes steps to shape his destiny after he isn’t told of his mother’s death until after her funeral. Following an emotional scene at the factory, he sets out to find his wealthy aunt Betsey Trotwood (Tilda Swinton) and her lodger, the kite-flying eccentric Mr. Dick (Hugh Laurie) who believes he is possessed by the spirit of King Charles the First. Aunty pays for David’s tony university education, where he confirms his love of language and begins making the detailed notes on the people he meets that will one day form the backbone of his debut book, “The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery.”
It’s also there that he meets James Steerforth (Aneurin Barnard), a wealthy and witty student and obsequious law clerk Uriah Heep (Ben Whishaw). Both will have a major impact on David’s trajectory from pauper to gentleman and author.
Patel leads a diverse cast, jam packed with oddball characters, that maintains Dickens’s themes while giving the story a contemporary feel. Iannucci has compressed the 600-page book, boiling out the essence of Dickens’s condemnation of exploitation of the weak and comment on wealth and class as a measure of a person’s value. The result is uneven that sometimes feels like a series of vignettes but Iannucci mines a rich comedic vein that smoothes over the story’s fits and starts. Capaldi, Swinton and Laurie deliver broad performances but it is Patel who brings the humanity that balances everything out.
As David, Patel is at the center of the action and grounds some of the story’s more fanciful aspects with a deep humanity.
Iannucci is a Dickens fan and it shows. “The Personal History of David Copperfield” is a sparkling adaptation of the original story that uses wonderful dialogue and physical comedy to paint a heartfelt, serious and timely portrait of social anxiety and inequality.
With his remake of the classic Dario Argento supernatural horror film “Suspiria” director Luca Guadagnino has made a film as glossy and grandiose as the original giallo. Maybe even more so. What he has also done is intellectualize the story to the point where you don’t actually get scared you just think you do.
Set in 1977 Berlin, the film begins with a manic episode. The first of many. Patricia Hingle (Chloe Grace Moretz), on the run from the Tanz Ballet School, is distraught. Making her way to the office of her psychiatrist Dr. Josef Klemperer (Lutz Ebersdorf a.k.a. Tilda Swinton under and inch or two of make-up) she’s in the midst of a breakdown, ranting about witches before disappearing into the city leaving Klemperer with more questions than answers.
Cut to the story of American ballet student Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), Patricia’s replacement at the prestigious dance school. A Mennonite from rural Ohio she arrives for an audition with the school’s formidable head teacher Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton in more recognizable form) despite never having studied or danced professionally. Her raw talent is enough to earn her a berth with at the school and soon she has not only formed a bond with Blanc, but is dancing the lead in a production of the avant-garde piece “Volk.”
Dr. Klemperer and Susie’s roommate Sara (Mia Goth) think something is wonky at the school but can’t figure out what is wrong. Imagine their surprise (SPOILER ALERT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE ORIGINAL FILM!) when it becomes apparent the school is run by a coven of witches intent on human sacrifice.
Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich keep the bones of Argento’s story, fleshing it out with much talk of the terrorist Baader-Mienhof bombings, Susie’s backstory and Klemperer’s search for his long lost wife. Aptly subtitled “Six Acts and an Epilogue Set in a Divided Berlin” the new version is an hour longer than the original and while it is visually stunning it feels padded for length.
Not to say there aren’t memorable moments and ideas. A death-by-voo-doo-dance sequence is queasily beautiful and the film’s climax, a Grand Guignol freak-out, must be seen to be believed. It’s beautifully rendered, all grey skies and red rivers of blood, not nearly as lurid as Argento’s movie—except, perhaps for the exploding head sequence—but it is solemn when it should shock.
From visionary South Korean director Bong Joon Ho comes a film that defies categorization. “Okja” has elements of family entertainment, sci fi fantasy, cultural satire and more all wrapped up in a cautionary tale about genetically modified meat. It’s a big, handsome and entertaining adventure that not so subtly poises questions about the relationship between corporations and where are food comes from.
In its opening minutes the story of a girl and her super-pig feels almost like a Disney movie. 14-year-old Mija (An Seo Hyun) and Okja, a gigantic genetically engineered swine bred to become a food source, live a quiet life in the far-flung mountains of South Korea. They romp and play, bonded by ten years together and the animal’s gentle, protective nature. They are a human-porcine Milo and Otis, inseparable until Mirando Corporation CEO Lucy (Tilda Swinton) recalls Okja is back to the United States.
Created by in an agrichemical laboratory in New Jersey, the adorable Ojka was created to “consume less feed, produce less excretions” and to make people fall in love with an animal they are going to end up eating. “Soon supermarkets will be filled with their flesh and their organs.” Transported to New York, the animal is slated to become the kind face of Lucy’s plan to end world hunger while increasing her company’s bottom line. Working with Mirando but wrestling with the ethics of the situation is celebrity zoologist Dr. Johnny Wilcox (an unhinged Jake Gyllenhaal).
Concerned with appearances Lucy tries to exploit the Mija’s and Okja’s relationship for PR purposes but Mija has other ideas. Working to make sure Okja doesn’t end up on a giant BBQ, Mija comes to the rescue, aided by the Animal Liberation Front, a crafty and idealistic group led by Jay (Paul Dano) and Red (Lily Collins).
“Okja” features strong work from Swinton—in a double role, playing Lucy and her even more cutthroat sister Nancy—and a wild performance from Gyllenhaal but it really is all about the bond between the girl and her super-pig. An Seo Hyun’s moon face conveys her pure and sincere love for Okja but it is the beast itself who brings heart to the movie. A combo of CGI and puppetry Okja is a strange animal but a tender one. He rescues Mija from danger and later, when she returns the favour, the bond between them is palpable.
That relationship smooths the way for the rest of this uneven but entertaining movie. The way “Okja” veers between action and comedy, horror and social commentary could lead to whiplash but it is never less than audacious.
Topher Grace doesn’t need me to put words in his mouth, but in this one instance I’m going to.
I recently sat down with the former That ’70s Show star to talk about his new Netflix movie War Machine. Based on the Michael Hastings New York Times bestseller The Operators, it fictionalizes the real life career implosion of General Stanley McChrystal, Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan. An article in Rolling Stone that reported on the McChrystal’s disappointment with Obama and his policies undid the General’s distinguished career. In the film he is renamed Gen. Glen McMahon and played by Brad Pitt, who also produced the film.
“What I love so much about the film [director and writer David Michôd] made,” said Grace, “and it was in the script but I really felt it when I saw the film, is the emotional journey. That is so hard to get into a war movie. Anyone who is willing to watch it understands it on an emotional level, which is a much more effective way to communicate to the audience than just using facts.”
Here’s where I chime in. “I think that when you have a very specific story it can become universal because of the emotions,” I said. “None of us will find ourselves in that particular situation but all of us, at some time in our lives, will end up in a mess of some kind. It’s relatable.”
“That’s what I meant to say,” said Grace with a laugh. “Can you quote yourself and use that?”
Consider it done.
Grace plays Matt Little, McMahon’s civilian press adviser. He’s young, brash, and according to Grace, not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“What is the definition of an idiot?” he asks. “Is it knowing you don’t know but still going ahead anyway? I don’t think it is, but that’s who he is.
“On the first day I popped my collar up and the military advisor said, ‘They don’t do that in the military.’ The director said, ‘No, no, no! He’s playing an idiot. He would totally have his collar popped up.’ He’s a civilian and he doesn’t even really care about the war going on.”
The thirty-eight-year-old actor says despite the story’s timely nature and the inclusion of a character based on recently disgraced National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, the film isn’t political.
“I want people to check their politics at the door and take the emotional ride of what it would feel like to be in that position.
“The really cool thing is that it is not an American telling the story. David is a great talent out of Australia and no matter what he brings a non-American POV. The fact that it can be that heightened in terms of humour at some points and so real when they are out on the battlefield is really great. He told me he wanted to make a war film before Brad’s company sent him the book but he couldn’t think of a way to do a war film that didn’t glorify war. This does not glorify war.”
It may not be political but Grace says it is timely.
“We made it in Obama’s America,” says the thirty-eight-year-old actor. “It’s crazy releasing it now. It is timelier than when we shot it. I haven’t been on a lot of projects that were like that.”
In an unconscious way Rachel McAdams has been preparing to play Dr. Christine Palmer in Doctor Strange her whole life.
“My mother is a nurse,” says the London, Ontario born actress. “She is a very compassionate kind of nurse and Christine is sort of that way as a doctor. She has excellent bedside manner as opposed to Doctor Strange. I took a page from my mom.
“I’ve been talking to her about it for my whole life. She brought her job home sometimes. I picked it up over the years.”
Doctor Strange, the fourteenth film in the Marvel Universe aims to introduce you to the neurosurgeon, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who goes from saving lives to saving planets. Trauma surgeon Dr. Palmer is his ex-girlfriend but still a constant in his life, and later, when things get mystical, his anchor to the real world.
“It’s a much less typical love trajectory,” she says of their connection. “I think because we had so few scenes to establish our relationship it was a better jumping off point. We had a lot more subterranean life and a much richer history for the characters.”
In the comic books Christine Palmer is a very different person than the one McAdams brings to life on the screen.
“She is an amalgamation of a couple of characters,” she says. “It gave us a lot of creative freedom. We were inventing something. I kind of looked at the comic books more for the flavour of the world and Doctor Strange himself and less so for my character.”
McAdams’s nurse mother may have helped the actress access the emotional side of playing a doctor, but what about the practical stuff, like tying a suture?
“This great neurosurgeon we had on set with us taught us how to sew up a raw turkey breast,” she laughs. “I guess it’s the closest thing to a real live human being, Poor turkey. Then I used oranges, which were easier to carry in my purse. Better smell too. I also had a fake head to practice on. It was kind of like knitting. I would take the suture stuff around, put it on a light stand while we were shooting and practice. I still have sutures on my doorknobs. Haven’t gotten around to cutting them off yet.
“I was really nervous about it because I thought it was going to take forever but it is just one of those thing that one you get the hang of it it’s kind of fun to do.”
The result of all her work is a movie she calls “an ambitious film on the page that I think ticks a lot of those boxes for people are hoping for when they go see a big, blow-out Marvel film. There’s also a quiet deep emotion that runs through it that may catch people off guard.
“I find it hard to get swept away by a film I am in,” she adds, “because I look at it differently, but I actually jumped at one point in my own scene. My friends were laughing. ‘You knew that was coming!’ I know, but I was wrapped up in it.”
