Richard joins CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the family drama “Pieces of a Woman” (Netflix), dark satire “Promising Young Woman” (in theatres) and the documentary “The Dissident” (VOD/Digital).
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with host Anita Sharma to have a look at the new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the intense drama “Pieces of a Woman” (Netflix), dark satire “Promising Young Woman” (in theatres) and the documentary “The Dissident” (VOD/Digital).
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres, VOD and streaming services including the intense drama “Pieces of a Woman” (Netflix), dark satire “Promising Young Woman” (in theatres) and the documentary “The Dissident” (VOD/Digital).
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Pieces of a Woman,” now steaming on Netflix, begins with happy, loving couple Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and Shawn (Shia LaBeouf) on what should be one of the happiest days of their lives. In the scene, shot mostly in long takes, Martha is in labor, minutes away from giving birth to their daughter. With their midwife indisposed a replacement named Eva (Molly Parker), unfamiliar with their case, is sent in her place. By the end of the twenty five-minute pre-credit sequence tragedy has struck, and their lives are forever changed.
Director Kornél Mundruczó sets the bar very high in the opening moments of the film. It is riveting filmmaking, intimately showing Martha and Shawn’s anticipation, pain and anguish in real time. The bulk of the film deals with the aftermath as the couple are driven apart by grief and recrimination and it’s very strong, but cooler in tone than the opening.
It is interesting to note that “Piece of a Woman” was originally conceived as character sketches by Kata Wéber meant for the stage. You can feel the attention to detail that was lavished on each of the characters. They are richly drawn and carefully portrayed by the actors.
A trio of performances tell the story.
Kirby, best known as Princess Anne on “The Crown,” digs deep to create a portrait of a person devastated by the loss of her child; someone whose world stopped turning that day. As she looks for closure, there is an intensity that comes from her rage and sorrow manifesting themselves as heartbreak. It is layered, emotionally-draining, award worthy work.
LaBeouf plays Shawn as an attention hungry husband. A man trying to move on by forcing his attentions on Martha and when that doesn’t work, he looks elsewhere. LaBeouf is a bubbling cauldron of frustration, about to overflow.
As Martha’s mother, an imperious woman hell bent on assigning blame, Ellen Burstyn delivers a tour-de-force monologue about the way mothers raise their daughters that could be a short film all on its own.
“Pieces of a Woman” isn’t an easy watch. The performances are raw, real and uncomfortable that exhaust and exhilarate in equal measure.
Richard speaks to “CTV News at 11:30” anchor Andria Case about television and movies to watch during the pandemic including the reality show “World of Dance,” the family drama “The Rest of Us” with Heather Graham and “Mr. Jones,” a story of journalism in a fraught time.
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 23:54)
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 new Kevin Bacon psychological thriller “You Should Have Left,” the Heather Graham family drama “The Rest of Us,” the “Showgirls” rethink “You Don’t Nomi” and “Mr. Jones,” the true-life story of one journalist’s journey to tell the truth.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Mr. Jones,” a new drama starring James Norton and Vanessa Kirby that comes to VOD this week, is a period piece set in the years leading up to World war II but the themes it explores, fake news and media corruption are just as timely today as they were in the 1930s.
The action in “Mr. Jones” begins in 1933 after idealistic Welsh journalist Gareth Jones (James Norton) used his connections as foreign advisor to prime minister David Lloyd George to score a sit-down with Adolph Hitler. The resulting story, warning of Hitler’s ambitions, costs him his government job, leaving him free to explore his next story, a proposed interview with Joseph Stalin to discuss the truth of the Communist Party’s five-year plans for the development of the national economy of USSR. “The Soviets have built more in five years than our government can manage in a hundred.” He’s determined to find out how the poor country is funding such large scale technical and military achievements. What is being sacrificed in return?
Upon arrival in Moscow Jones is stymied at every turn. With no access to the leader the journalist, although a teetotaler, dips his toe into Moscow’s hedonistic nightlife scene where he meets the decadent Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Walter Duranty (Peter Saarsgard), a man as blind to the truth as Jones is open to it.
His search leads him to train, with a Communist minder, bound for Ukraine. Slipping away, he escapes into Stalino (now Donetsk) to uncover the unimaginable horrors of the Holodomor, a famine that killed at least 7.5 million people between 1932 and 1933. “They are killing us. Millions, gone,” says one townswoman. “Men thought they could come and replace the natural laws.”
What had been portrayed in the press as “the breadbasket of the world”—”Grain is Stalin’s gold,” says Duranty. “The 5-Year Plan has doubled the output.”—is in fact a hellscape of death where bodies are stacked on horse carts, abandoned houses dot the landscape and families eat tree bark and resort to cannibalism to survive.
Upon his capture he makes a deal with the devil to ensure the safety of six engineers arrested by the Russian state. As long as he promises to return to England and “tell the truth about what he saw;” to tell stories about the “happy and proud farmers and the remarkable efficiently of our collective farms,” and ensure the world that any rumors of a famine are just that. Rumors.
Back in England Jones says, “I do have a story but if I tell it six innocent men will die. But if I write the story millions of lives may be saved.”
“Mr. Jones” is an unevenly paced but haunting account of one man’s search for truth. At the center of it is Norton who effectively portrays Jones’ steeliness and his frustration at not being able to do his job but it is his time in Stalino that resonates. The long section, shot in desaturated black and white, with very little dialogue, allows the actor to portray the true horror of his surroundings. For the most part he keeps his revulsion internal, there are no hysterics here, just the soul crushing realization of the savagery of the surroundings.
Director Agnieszka Holland is no stranger to this subject matter or time frame. “Europa Europa” and “In Darkness” are compelling examples of her documentation of the worst events of the 20th century. She brings a similar gravitas to “Mr. Jones” and her unwavering sense of outrage at the atrocities is undiminished. It makes for forceful filmmaking but there are other choices that siphon some of the film’s power.
The opening moments, as Jones warns about Hitler’s threat, feel like something out of Masterpiece Theatre but quickly lead to more captivating material. It’s the inclusion of passages from George Orwell’s 1945 political satire “Animal Farm” that help bog down the film’s final forty minutes. Orwell was influenced by Jones’ reporting but didn’t write the book for a decade after the events portrayed in the film and his inclusion feels wedged in.
Despite some slack pacing “Mr. Jones” is an absorbing history lesson with a timely message for today. It’s a rejection of fake news and those who belittle the life-saving value of journalism.
Richard joins CP24 to have a look at the weekend’s new movies includinG “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” “David Crosby: Remember My Name” and “Tel Aviv on Fire.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” the documentary “David Crosby: Remember My Name” and the political comedy “Tel Aviv on Fire.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
