Busting ghosts in ‘Albert Nobbs,’ ‘Woman in Black’ and ‘W.E.’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 7:40 PM - 0 Comments

Glenn Close (left) and Mia Wasikowska in 'Albert Nobbs'

We have three period films opening this week, all written or co-written by women, directed by men, and all about tormented folks in what we used to call the British Isles. Two of them, Albert Nobbs and The Woman in Black, are both adapted from stories that originated in 1982; both take place in dour climes of the Victorian era; and both feature Janet McTeer in supporting roles. What all those coincidences mean, I have no idea.  W.E.,  as in Wallis Simpson, is unlike anything else. It shuttles between the 1930s and the present—but for all intents and purposes it’s set in the thoroughly post-modern mind of Madonna, its self-possessed writer-director. All three films, meanwhile, feature bold attempts at transformation: Glenn Close playing a man, Daniel Radcliffe not playing Harry Potter, and Madonna playing at being an auteur.

Glenn Close has a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her uncanny performance in the title role of Albert Nobbs, as a woman who disguises herself as a man to work as a hotel butler in 19th-centry Dublin. For Close, Nobbs has been brewing as a passion project ever since she starred in a 1982 stage version of the story. And her command of the role is so complete it’s creepy. Close is mesmerizing as Nobbs, a character who is so fastidiously repressed he/she is like a ghostly apparition on screen, even more haunting than the supernatural spectre that stalks Daniel Ratcliffe in The Woman in Black. The role is not about cross-dressing so much as annihilating identity. Nobbs is like an asexual alien; a visitor from the same austere planet that brought us Edward Scissorhands and any number of characters played by Tilda Swinton. She’s not the only cross-dresser in the movie. Janet McTeer portrays a robust lesbian who masquerades as a married man, an example that inspires Nobbs to embark on a deluded courtship, hoping to marry a capricious young maid (Mia Wasikowska) and invest her life savings into a mom-and-pop tobacco shop. Continue…

Men and beasts in ‘The Grey’ and ‘Tyrranosaur’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, January 27, 2012 at 2:35 PM - 0 Comments

Liam Neeson in 'The Grey'

There’s a fine line between man and beast. That’s the gist of two very different survival dramas about savagery and the human condition, both opening this weekend. In The Grey, a harrowing but preposterous thriller, Liam Neeson stars as the alpha male among a group of plane crash survivors who are stalked by ferocious man-eating wolves. In Tyrranosaur, an exceptionally grim kitchen-sink drama from Britain, Peter Mullan stars as a mean drunk who beats his dog to death in the opening minutes; things go downhill from there.

These movies belong to different genres, but both are what you could call ordeal dramas. Although I would hesitate to recommend either, each has its merits.

The Grey was shot in the snowy wilds of Smithers, B.C., so as a landscape survival saga it offers some rugged wintry vistas (just what we need in January). And as a visceral Survivorman who is doing a lot of his stunts and stuck in the cold without a decent pair of gloves, Neeson is a compelling physical presence, surviving both the elements and a relentlessly dumb script.

Continue…

‘Monsieur Lazhar’ is Oscar-worthy

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, January 27, 2012 at 12:01 AM - 0 Comments

Mohamed Fellag stars in 'Monsieur Lazhar'

With impeccable timing Philippe Falardeau‘s Monsieur Lazhar is being released just three days after its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film was announced. It’s not favoured to win. Even Falardeau would be surprised to beat Iran’s hugely acclaimed A Separation, which is also nominated for Best Original Screenplay.  But Monsieur Lazhar, which racked up a string of honours (including the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association) is eminently Oscar-worthy. This is a small but perfect gem of filmmaking.

It bears a certain resemblance to last year’s Canadian Oscar nominee, Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies: it hails from the same producers, it’s based on a Quebec stage play, and has an immigrant theme. But as Falardeau himself has pointed out, it’s a less ambitious picture on a smaller canvas. While Villeneuve’s locations ranged from the Montreal to the Middle East, most of the action in Monsieur Lazhar is confined to a classroom. It’s reminiscent in some ways of Laurent Cantet’s Entre les murs (The Class), which won the Palme d’Or  in Cannes in 2008. But Cantet’s film was about the culture shock in a French classroom between immigrant teenagers and the formal Frenchman teaching them. Falardeau’s movie offers a different spin: an Algerian refugee wrapping his head around a classroom of Quebec kids. Continue…

Oscar anoints ‘Hugo,’ ‘The Artist’—and ‘Monsieur Lazhar’

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 3:17 PM - 0 Comments

Silence is golden, and this year silence may lead to Oscar gold. The Academy Awards nominations were announced today, at an early morning press conference in Los Angeles hosted by actress Jennifer Lawrence. The two pictures that topped the list of  nominees announced both pay loving homage to the vanished art of silent film. Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, which leads the pack with 11 nominations, is a 3D children’s fable wrapped around a tribute to French silent film pioneer Georges Méliès. Just behind it with 10 nominations is The Artist, the year’s breakout phenomenon, a French black-and-white silent film set in Hollywood at the advent of talkies. Riding a tide of critical acclaim, and already winning a key best picture award from the Producers Guild of America, it remains the favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars, which take place Feb. 26.

It’s a good year for Canada, as Monsieur Lazhar, a gem by Quebec writer-director Philippe Falardeau, secured a nomination for best foreign-language film—though even Falardeau admits he’ll have an uphill battle beating Iran’s widely-acclaimed A Separation, which won the Golden Globe and has also received an Oscar nod for best screenplay. Falardeau will also be competing with a Canadian co-production in the foreign-language category—In Darkness, a gripping Holocaust drama by Polish veteran Agnieszka Holland, set in the sewers of Lvov, Poland.  Canada, meanwhile, has two of the five animated short film nominees—Patrick Doyon’s Sunday and Wild Life by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby. These are the NFB’s 71st and 72nd Oscar nominations, and you can view them on the NFB’s website.

The Canadian nominee who seems most likely to bring home gold is Christopher Plummer, nominated for his supporting role in Beginners as a gay man dying of cancer who finally comes out of the closet. Plummer is up against a wildly eclectic field—a theatrical Kenneth Branagh (My Week With Marilyn), a deadpan Jonah Hill (Moneyball), a stolid Nick Nolte (Warrior) and a silent Max Von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close). I’d  love to see someone try to cast them all in the same movie. Continue…

Sundance mourns indie film champ Bingham Ray

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, January 23, 2012 at 7:25 PM - 0 Comments

Bingham Ray attends the Talent Lab at TIFF2011 (Photo by Jason Matos/Getty Images)

Bingham Ray, one of the most beloved champions of American independent cinema has died. Ray, co-founder of October Films and lately executive-director of the San Francisco Film Society, suffered a stroke Friday while attending the Sundance Film Festival. He died today in hospital surrounded by family. He was 57.

While Harvey Weinstein is the only indie mogul to become famous, we’ve seen less celebrated U.S. distribution executives driven by a passion for the art, men like Tom Bernard and Michael Barker of Sony Classics. Bingham Ray was one of them.  I met him when I was researching my history of the Toronto International Film Festival, Brave Films Wild Nights: 25 Years of Festival Fever (2000). He was a generous interview, a joy to talk to, and bracingly candid. Here’s a passage from the book about a legendary bidding war between Bingham and Harvey Weinstein for Robert Duvall’s The Apostle at the 1997 edition of TIFF:

“. . . By midnight Miramax and October were slugging it out. Harvey Weinstein was in New York, bargaining by phone—he had watched The Apostle at a simultaneous private screening that night. Bingham Ray, October’s buyer, had left the Toronto premiere after forty-five minutes to make his bid. He was desperate to get the film. Octdober had just been bought by Universal that summer and was itching to take on Miramax. ‘We were dealing with the studio’s money, the house money,’ Ray explains, ‘and we wanted to stir it up to send a signal. There are all kinds of reasons to buy movies. The right reasons are because you love them and there’s an audience for them and you can build long-lasting relationships with the people who made them. Then there’s just trying to get on the map in a big, sexy way. October wasn’t bought by Universal to be a nice high-end art-house company. They wanted a vehicle to really compete with Miramax. I think that’s folly. Harvey had become a serious mogul. At October we were just getting our feet wet.’  Continue…

Quebec and Croneberg lead Genies

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 1:45 PM - 0 Comments

Evelyn Brochu in 'Café de Flore,' which received 13 Genie nominations

Café de Flore leads the field competing in the 32nd annual Genie Awards with a total of 13 nominations, including best picture and director. The film marks a virtuosic return to form for C.R.A.Z.Y director Jean-Marc Vallée after his rather subdued work-for-hire, The Young Victoria. By vaulting ahead of the pack in the Genie nominations, which were announced today, Vallée wins some vindications after being repeatedly upstaged  by Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar—which won TIFF’s $30,000 award for best Canadian feature, the Toronto Film Critics Association’s $15,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award—and was picked as Canada’s official submission slot at the Oscars for best foreign-language film. Monsieur Lazhar ranked third among the Genie nominations, scoring in eight categories, behind David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, which received 11 nominations.

The big shock among the nominees was that Take This Waltz, the star-studded second feature from writer-director Sarah Polley received just two nominations—best actress for Michelle Williams and best make-up. That’s extraordinary given the depth of talent in the cast (Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby, Sarah Silverman) and the fact that Polley’s sensational feature debut, Away From Her, won seven Genies and received two Oscar nominations. Continue…

Is Ricky turning into the Globes’ Billy Crystal?

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, January 16, 2012 at 12:07 PM - 0 Comments

There’s a fine line between mean-spirited and warm ‘n’ fuzzy. Ricky Gervais swung from one extreme to the other in a twinkling last night, morphing from the hostile host who would never get invited back to the man who looks poised to become the Golden Globes’ Billy Crystal. And the Globes themselves—always the ‘fun’ party compared to the quasi religious ritual of the Academy Awards—even seems to have usurped some of Oscar’s dignity and gravitas. Where were the drunken gaffes? The sloppy acceptance speeches. Aside from Meryl Streep forgetting her reading glasses and stumbling through a speech before being played off by the band, everything went like clockwork. And was Gervais even drinking that beer on the podium?

Gervais, of course, had promised he wasn’t going to soften his act to appease critics, but there was a definite spoonful of sugar surrounding the satirical barbs this year.  He actually said some nice things about people. And it helped that he arrived at 69th annual Golden Globes riding a huge wave of hype. The audience was primed, the stars were ready to be roasted, and that made all the difference. Even Gervais seemed surprised by the tone of goodwill in the room, as he noted midway through the show, “It’s going well, isn’t it? You’re so much better than last year’s audience. They had a right stick up their ass.” Continue…

A Dangerous Method in Cronenberg’s madness

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, January 13, 2012 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

Michael Fassbender (left) as Jung and Viggo Mortensen as Freud

Any film by David Cronenberg is an event. One that usually takes you by surprise When I saw A Dangerous Method amid a welter of pre-screenings for TIFF, I was shocked. . . shocked that I wasn’t shocked by a Cronenberg film. From the opening frames, a classic period sequence of a -carriage hurtling down a country road, I felt we on a strangely un-alien planet for this filmmaker. Then as the narrative unfolded with the elegant cadence of a Viennese waltz, I realized we were in a genre, but not one that Cronenberg had tried before: the period biopic. Though “biopic” seems not quite right; it’smore like a bi-biopic, a portrait of the galvanic relationship between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen).

The film triangulates the birth of psychoanalysis via their intersection with a fierce Russian named Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a volatile patient of Jung’s who who seduces both of them as she herself graduates from paranoid case study to headstrong psychoanalyst.  The film is based on a play, which is based on a book—The Talking Cure by screenwriter  Christopher Hampton (best known for another dangerous title, Dangerous Liasons). And much of the script is  lifted directly from Speilrein’s writings, which lends the dialogue an unusually literate, essayish intelligence. This is disconcerting from a filmmaker who has specialized in serving up flesh, with sashimi acuity, as a metaphor for the unconscious—rather than engaging in intellectual discourse about the id, the ego, and the cold war between death and sex in the human psyche. Continue…

Toronto critics love ‘Monsieur Lazhar’

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 11:33 PM - 0 Comments

Andrea Martin and David Cronenberg at the TFCA Awards. Photo by George Pimentel/TFCA

I must be the last journalist in town to blog last night’s 15th anniversary awards gala of the Toronto Film Critics Association. That’s because I’m TFCA prez, and thousands of small details have forced me to neglect the blogosphere and the tweet box for the last few weeks. We ramped up the TFCA Awards a notch this year, moving our champagne gala to the august art-deco Round Room of The Carlu. For the movie biz, it’s still an unusually intimate evening, with about 230 folks attending—the cream of Toronto’s film community. We consider it our annual truce between the critics and the industry. The presenter of our flagship prize, the $15,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award, fell sick at the last minute. But Andrea Martin—Emmy-winning SCTV legend and Tony-winning Broadway star—stepped in like the trooper she is to present the Rogers Award. It went to Quebec director Philippe Falardeau for Monsieur Lazhar (also Canada’s official Oscar entry in the foreign-language film category), edging out the other two finalists, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Café de Flore, and David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. Continue…

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 2.0

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 12:01 AM - 0 Comments

There was good reason to be skeptical about a Hollywood remake of  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. There was nothing wrong with the first movie, except that it was in Swedish and came with subtitles. (Strange paradox: while millions of  readers are capable of plowing through novelist Steig Larsson’s turgid prose in English translation, not so many are willing to read a few subtitles). Also, it was hard to imagine another actress improving on Noomi Rapace’s ferocious performance as Larsson’s cyber-punk heroine, Lisbeth Salander. But if anyone was qualified to take another crack at Larsson’s franchise, it would be director David Fincher, who has showed his mastery of the ritual murder genre in both Se7en and Zodiac.

Well, Fincher has succeeded admirably. His Girl With the Dragon Tattoo improves on both the book and the first movie. Right from the opening credits, we realize that this Tattoo will be a more luxurious, enjoyable ride. The über-cool black-and-grey title sequence, with bodies flowing like liquid mercury, could serve as the opening of a Bond movie. Of course, the current 007, Daniel Craig, stars as the Man Without the Dragon Tattoo—investigative journalist and Larsson alter-ego Mikael Blomkvist—but Craig is in strictly civilian mode here. Although his pyramid torso doesn’t quite match the book’s disheveled image of the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Blomkvist, Craig gives a modest, almost diminutive performance, leaving ample room for Salander to cut a swath through the story.

Rooney Mara rises to the insane challenge of the title role and nails it. She doesn’t take anything away from Noomi Rapace, who was sensational. But while Rapace cleaved to the Super Goth template set by the novel, Mara manages to make Lisbeth more human, and more believable, yet no less ruthless.That deep fault line of vulnerability—scarred over by a litany of childhood abuse—is always dimly visible, as a glint of desperation behind her bravado. Also, the love affair between Lisbeth and Blomkvist is also given a little more heat. In the book, she’s not permitted a shred of romantic feeling. In the film, as our feral avenger beds a man old enough to be her father, there are stirrings of emotional complexity.

Forgive me if I don’t labour through a byzantine plot summary. Even if you haven’t read the books, you probably have some familiarity with the story by now. But for those unafraid of spoilers, here’s the gist: Blomqvist is convicted of libel, set up by the tycoon he targeted. He’s then hired by industrial patriarch Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to investigate the 40-year-old disappearance of his niece, presumed murdered by a family member. Leaving behind his editor/girlfriend (Robin Wright), Blomqvist buries himself in research on a cold and remote island off the Swedish coast. Eventually he joins forces with Salander, who outstrips him with her computer-hacking skills, and slides naked into his bed. She, meanwhile, has been raped by her state guardian, and wreaked vengeance, blackmailing him in ink and blood.

For much of the story, Salander and Blomkvist drive separate narratives, and the film skates between them with great finesse. The movie is a flat-out masterpiece of editing. Also it’s not easy to make dry research compelling, but Fincher shoots, cuts and collates text and photographs and web images with the dexterity of a card shark; I’ve never seen a more virtuosic dance of stills in a movie. There’s a long history of solving mysteries by photo editing, and in watching Dragon Tattoo I was taken back to the seductive power of images in its early prototype: Antonioni’s Blow-Up.

Screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Moneyball) does a superb job of upgrading, and streamlining, Larsson’s narrative without losing essential ingredients. If anything, the story seems to have more substance and depth than on the page, or in the previous film. Even though the running time clocks in at 2 hours and 32 minutes, the movie flies by. The Hollywood budget brings a lustre to the filmmaking that the Swedish movie could not afford—from Lisbeth’s motorcycle rides through the night to the glass hilltop mansion occupied by the Venger dynasty’s  CEO (Stellan Skarsgård).  It’s not as if Fincher has softened or sold out the story for a mass audience. Although the violence is slightly less lurid, and the romance more fully-fleshed—both welcome tweaks—it’s still a tough R-rated thriller.

Tattoo‘s blockbuster pulp origins likely won’t allow the film to achieve the pedigree of, say, Fincher’s previous movie, The Social Network. Although his movie is better than the book, it will be difficult for it to be seen as anything but a subsidiary of the Larsson franchise. Hopefully, however, the box office will allow this new franchise to play itself out, and Fincher won’t lose interest. After all, the only good film in the Swedish trilogy was the first one, directed by Niels Arden Oplev. He didn’t direct the second and third installments, and they played like cheesy TV movies. Lisbeth Salander deserves better—and Rooney Mara has got her back.

The art of cruelty in ‘Young Adult’ and ‘Carnage’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 3:15 PM - 0 Comments

Charlize Theron in 'Young Adult'

This is a week of movies messing with our expectations. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol defies the odds, breathing fresh life into a flagging franchise. Conversely,  Young Adult, the fourth feature from Jason Reitman—the Canadian director who could do no wrong—turns out to be a surprising disappointment. Reitman has had a charmed career. His first three movies— Juno, Thank You For Smoking and Up in the Air were all critically acclaimed hits. Each had a dark edge of satire, and potentially unlikeable characters managed to win our affection with appearing to make an effort. With Up In the Air, Reitman graduated from glib, and ventured into more mature territory, opening a chink in George Clooney’s emotional armour that Alexander Payne would blow wide open in The Descendants. For Young Adult, Reitman has re-teamed with Juno‘s Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody to create a movie that is as perversely self-destructive as its heroine.

Charlize Theron gives a raw, outrageous, multi-faceted performance as Mavis, a burnt-out writer of young adult novels who decides to win back her old boyfriend, Buddy (Patrick Wilson)—although he’s newly married with a baby. Carrying her miniature poodle in a pink shoulder bag, she waltzes into her the small Minnesota town she once called home, expecting Buddy to fall at her feet after a couple of drinks. Needless to say, things don’t turn out as planned. Continue…

Mission: Impossible—Rebooting Cruise, Le Carré and the Cold War

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 12:14 PM - 0 Comments

Paula Patton and Tom Cruise in 'Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol

I came to Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol expecting the worst. Five years have passed since the previous installment, which was so lame it looked like Tom Cruise’s days as super spy Ethan Hunt were numbered. But what a surprise!  Ghost Protocol, the fourth movie in the series, kicks the franchise back to life with a defibrillator thump of adrenaline and a sharp sense of style. There’s a great line in the movie—”Failure for a terrorist is just a rehearsal for success”—which may also apply to producers of  blockbusters. Here they took a gamble that paid off, by handing the reins to Brad Bird, who has made animated hits like Ratatouille and The Incredibles but has not made a live action feature until now. You’d never know it. The action scenes pop and sizzle, with a vertiginous sense of perspective that seems inherited from his animated work. Architecture plays a leading role—from Cruise rappelling off a 123-storey skyscraper in Dubai to dropping through the spiral core of automated parking garage that looks like a car-and-concrete version of the Guggenheim. High tech shades of Vertigo.

Cruise, who handles a lot of his own stunt-work, looks ageless, toned and torqued. He has a strange body, especially when he sprints, his arms jack-knifing to cartoon-like heights. Tom is always the Man Who Tries Too Hard. In this well-oiled machine of a movie he’s one well-oiled machine of a man. He’s so immaculate you can’t help but wonder if Tom Cruise is, in fact, an alien. Or simply a Scientologist. Fortunately, he is surrounded by actual human beings, including two terrific character actors.  His fellow operatives are a haunted analyst (The Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner), a very funny rookie communications whiz (Shaun of the Dead‘s Simon Pegg), and a no-nonsense babe (Paula Patton). Continue…

Golden Globes shine on ‘The Artist,’ Gosling and Clooney

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 12:02 PM - 0 Comments

Ryan Gosling (in a scene from 'The Ides of March') will compete with 'Ides' director George Clooney, nominated for 'The Descendants'

The Golden Globes nominations were unveiled this morning, and The Artist—France’s silent black-and-white valentine to retro Hollywood—continues to charm its way down the long road to the Oscars by topping the Globes with six nominations. The Descendants and The Help are tied for second place with four nominations apiece. Both George Clooney and Canada’s Ryan Gosling are golden. Clooney snagged three nominations, as best dramatic actor for Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, plus best director and screenplay for The Ides of March.  Gosling was nominated in the comic acting category for Crazy, Stupid Love, and in the dramatic acting category for  Ides, which has him going head to head against with Clooney. Unlike the Oscars, the Globes break down the best picture and acting categories into dramas and comedies-or-musicals, which allows the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) to better spread the wealth. But the rationale is often wonky. The Descendants, a quirky mix of comedy and drama, is classified as drama, presumably because someone dies; My Life With Marilyn was considered a comedy-or-musical, but though it’s got a couple of tunes, it’s not a musical, and despite some laughs, it’s much less of a comedy than The Descendants. Go figure.

The Globes gave a boost both to The Ides of March and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which have been ignored by most of the critics’ awards. Tattoo‘s cyberpunk heroine, Rooney Mara, hacked her way into a heavyweight actress slate,  competing with Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady), Viola Davis (The Help), Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs).

The most notable snub was ignoring Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, which won the Palme D’Or in Cannes and has been honoured by several critics’ groups, including the Toronto Film Critics Association. However, its star, Brad Pitt, was nominated for Moneyball in the dramatic acting category, along with Clooney, Gosling, Michael Fassbender (Shame) and Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar). Honouring DiCaprio instead of Take Shelter‘s Michael Shannon underscores the HFPA’s tacky pedigree as a gang of junket whores who never saw a superstar they didn’t like. (If you think that’s too harsh, Ricky Gervais has said much worse things about the HFPA, yet they’ve hired him back to host the Globes, which adds a curious S&M kink to the junket whore role.) Continue…

Toronto critics name ‘Tree of Life’ Best Picture

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 12:01 AM - 0 Comments

Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain in 'The Tree of Life'

Breaking news from the Toronto Film Critics Association. (Full disclosure: I’m TFCA president, so if  much of what follows may appear to plagiarize the official press release, that’s because I can write this stuff only so many times.)

Two cosmic dramas about stubborn American patriarchs emerged as the biggest winners of the 2011 TFCA Awards. The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick’s transcendental epic about boyhood and the end of innocence in 1950s Texas won Best Picture, while Malick was named Best Director. Also honoured with two TFCA awards was Take Shelter: Michael Shannon won Best Actor for his portrayal of a father plagued by apocalyptic visions, and Jessica Chastain was named Best Supporting Actress for her role as his conflicted spouse. (Chastain was also a runner-up in the Supporting Actress category for The Tree of Life.)

By championing The Tree of Life, the TFCA diverged from the New York and Boston critics groups, which both chose The Artist, and from the L.A. critics, who picked The Descendants—two films that ranked as runners- up among the TFCA’s three Best Picture nominees.

Michelle Williams was voted Best Actress for her seductive, in-the-moment portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn. Canada’s Christopher Plummer won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Beginners as an elderly man who comes out of the closet after learning he has terminal cancer. And Best Screenplay went to Moneyball, the story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, story by Stan Chervin, based on the non-fiction book by Michael Lewis. Continue…

Avoid ‘New Year’s Eve’—it’s no guilty pleasure

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 1:33 PM - 0 Comments

Katherine Heigl and Jon Bon Jovi in 'New Year's Eve'

It’s a classic choice. You’re looking for an easy-going, no-brainer date movie. Everyone is raving about The Artist, including me. But it’s silent and black-and-white, and New Year’s Eve is beckoning with all those stars and shiny colours. You wonder if, just maybe, it could be a guilty pleasure. Stop!! Back away from the multiplex!! Don’t let the all-star cast fool you. The glitzy lure of New Year’s Eve, not unlike the night itself, is a trap. This regrettable confection is directed and produced by Garry Marshall, who also gave us Valentine’s Day, and the formula remains the same: movie as celebrity mix tape. Recruit as many stars as possible, throw them together in a gaudy holiday punch bowl of sentimental shlock, and wait for the box office to get high. But watching this movie was like going on a bender and mixing too many multi-coloured drinks. Usually I don’t mind watching bad movies. It’s my job, after all, and even the worst movies tend to offer some some bonbons of pleasure, guilty or not. But NYE, which takes place in NYC, is exceptionally toxic. Waiting for that ball to drop at Times Square felt like an effing eternity.

The script plays like the Hollywood casting version of a computer dating program. Continue…

‘The Artist’: the year’s most unlikely crowd-pleaser

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 11:59 PM - 0 Comments

Bérénice Bejo in 'The Artist'

This time of year I get a lot of people asking me to recommend movies. Whenever I urge them to see The Artist, the reaction is predictable. Something along the lines of, “Yeah, yeah, I know it’s supposed to be great, but I’m more in the mood for a movie-movie. Something that won’t be a chore.” And it’s really hard to convince someone that a silent, black-and-white film is not some cinephile specialty item but a ‘movie-movie’—a broadly entertaining romp that takes no effort whatsoever to watch. In fact, the reason I always recommend The Artist as my default pick is that it’s a safe choice no matter who’s asking—the year’s most unlikely crowd-pleaser.

In Cannes, where watching films in competition can be an endurance test, The Artist received the most jubilant response. It was like recess. In fact, the main knock it received from high-pedigree critics is that is was too broadly entertaining. Since then, after charming audiences at TIFF, the film has had remarkable staying power. It is emerging as one of 2011′s most unassailable Oscar candidates. And it also reflects a curious trend. Along with Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s uncharacteristic foray into 3D family fare, it has exhumed silent film from the art-house vault and given it a new populist pedigree. The Artist is, ironically, not an art film.

In trying to convey its  appeal, I’ve found it useful to say it’s the kind of film Woody Allen would like to have made. But it’s much better than Woody’s Midnight in Paris. The nostalgic reverie it inspires is more original; though it doesn’t advertise its intellect, it’s smarter. And  it actually is a French movie, one that has no need for subtitles. Continue…

‘Surviving Progress’—the eco essay as eye candy

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 5:36 PM - 0 Comments

Author Margaret Atwood in 'Surviving Progress'

Turning ideas into seductive, irresistible cinema isn’t easy, especially if they’re the kind of ideas that are good for you.  An effective propagandist like Michael Moore, who pulls in a big audience, does it by swinging for the fences of melodrama and farce. And the more sober agit-prop artists often have trouble breaking out of the festival circuit. But a fresh genre of populist persuasion has emerged in recent years that’s met with remarkable success: the dynamic docu-essay . Some notable examples include The Corporation, an likely hit that  diagnosed capitalism’s basic organism as a psychopath; The Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s power-point polemic, which put global warming on the map; and Inside Job, a forensic inquiry into Wall Street’s 2008 financial meltdown. The popularity of these films (the last two won Oscars) underscores a genuine appetite for global analysis that the fragmented vision of the news media fails to provide. Also, advances in digital cinematography, graphics and editing have sexed up the docu-essay to the point that ideas can be presented as virtual eye candy. The latest example is Surviving Progress, a Canadian documentary about the increasing weight of the human footprint of the planet. It’s a high-level lesson that is enlightening, engrossing and beautiful to look at.

Written and directed by Canadians Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks—and inspired by Ronald Wright’s best-seller, A Short History of Progress— the film confronts the issue humanity driving itself into ecological debt. Literally digging holes in the planet. The way we treat the the Earth’s natural capital becomes synonymous with the way Wall Street treats wealth.  If The Inconvenient Truth and Inside Job had a brainy love child, it might look like Surviving Progress. Continue…

Taking the joy out of sex in ‘Shame’

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, December 1, 2011 at 11:59 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan in 'Shame'

By the end of the Toronto International Film Festival, Shame was no longer just a movie. It was The Most Talked About Movie At TIFF. Its star, Michael Fassbender, had been named best actor at the Venice Film Festival. That buzz, and the film’s stark portrayal of sex addiction, put it on the top of everyone’s must-see list. Not to mention that it’s the second feature from British art-star-turned-auteur Steve McQueen, who made such an incendiary debut in 2008 with Hunger (also starring Fassbender, in a stunt-like tour de force as hunger-striking IRA martyr Bobby Sands).

When I first saw Shame, at TIFF, I found much about it amazing and admirable, but I was left cold. Despite all the carnal eye candy and sleek Manhattan visuals, the film’s descent into a hell of loveless sex seemed desperately bleak. What’s worse, I was disappointed by my disappointment, as if it were a personal failing akin to that of the film’s protagonist. For fans of Shame, that would just be proof that the film was doing its job. Art, after all, is meant to disturb. “You say Fassbender’s character is shallow and soulless? Well, of course he is! Welcome to the real world!”  Yet something still felt not right with the film that I couldn’t put my finger on. When I came out of it, my first thought was that I wouldn’t have to see it again, or want to. But as time went on I felt so conflicted about it that eventually, I did. Now I finally have an opinion or two. Continue…

Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’ is quietly enchanting. Imagine that.

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 12:33 AM - 0 Comments

Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz in Martin Scorsese's 'Hugo'

I was braced for the worst. The notion of Martin Scorsese making a 3D spectacle of family entertainment sounded like a bad joke, as if Mr. Mean Streets had finally thrown in the towel. The messy trailer did not help. But when I saw Hugo, something happened that reminds me why, after all these years, I’m still thrilled by movies. I was surprised. Really surprised. Adapted from The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the bestselling children’s book by New York writer and illustrator Brian Selznick, Hugo is Scorsese’s first 3D movie, and it could serve as a primer for his Hollywood colleagues. Although it has moments where it might threaten to turn into a whiz-bang action movie—some brief chase scenes and a shattering dream sequence—the pace is on the whole remarkably slow and subdued. With 3D, that’s a good thing. The Dream Factory may have developed 3D technology to feed the war machine of action blockbusters, but throw in that extra plane of movement and too often the eyeballs feel they’re dodging shrapnel. In Hugo, Scorsese uses 3D to build an immersive display case that opens a portal to worlds within worlds: (a) a sad childhood (b) a picaresque Montparnasse train station in 1931 Paris, and (c) the magic of silent cinema’s own childhood in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Hugo, who’s played by  Asa Butterfield (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas), is an orphaned urchin who lives as a secret stowaway behind the walls of the Montparnasse station, maintaining the clocks and stealing food. Inheriting the mechanical acumen of his late father, he can fix all kinds of gadgets. But his passion project is to build a clockwork automaton, a tin man who seems to be his closest companion. Hugo lives on the edge, playing cat-and-mouse with the strict Station Inspector, a war veteran with a mechanical leg played by Sacha Baron Cohen. What winds up the narrative is Hugo’s fractious relationship with Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley), a curmudgeon who runs a toy shop in the station. George is vault of intrigue just waiting to be unlocked. Continue…

Virtuosity and passion in ‘Café de Flore’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 12:07 PM - 0 Comments

Evelyne Brochu in 'Café de Flore'

Of all the films I saw at TIFF in September none had a more electrifying impact on me than Café de Flore. The film’s ending, which I could not begin to divulge, hit me like a hammer to the chest. I walked out of the cinema physically transformed, still feeling goosebumps. As a critic, I’m wary of succumbing to that kind of extreme response during a festival. It’s like getting sucker-punched—the last time I was knocked for such a loop was at a TIFF screening of Black Swan, and I’ve been struggling to defend that film ever since. And while I “fell” for Café de Flore, I also felt I’d been drawn into something wild and outlandish, a metaphysical leap of faith. But when a movie hits you with a such a visceral punch, you have to go with your gut. I haven’t seen a more powerful Canadian film all year.

Café de Flore comes from Quebec writer-director Jean-Marc Vallée. After The Young Victoria (2009), his restrained fling with British royalty, Vallée re-embraces the French language, the musical euphoria, and the cinematic virtuosity that made C.R.A.Z.Y (2005) such an intoxicating triumph. It’s a daredevil drama of shattered love that dances a tightrope between two far-flung and seemingly unrelated storylines: a single mother (Vanessa Paradis) struggles to raise a Down Syndrome boy in 1969 Paris; a celebrated DJ (Kevin Parent) in present-day Montreal navigates a painful divorce while sharing custody of two resentful daughters. (For my interview with Paradis, a French chanteuse who has two children with Johnny Depp, go to: Vanessa Paradis on motherhood, Johnny Depp and Café de Flore). Continue…

Vanessa Paradis on motherhood, Johnny Depp and ‘Café de Flore’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

Vanessa Paradis (centre) with Marin Gerrier and Alice Dubois

In Café de Flore, a virtuosic new film from Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallée, French pop singer Vanessa Paradis gives a fierce, powerful performance as the obsessively devoted single mother of a Down Syndrome boy. Paradis has two children of her own with Johnny Depp (Lily-Rose Melody Depp, 12, John Christopher “Jack” Depp III, 9). I interviewed her in September at the Toronto International Film festival.

Q. How did you end up in this movie? Continue…

Taking George Clooney sideways in ‘The Descendants’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8:32 AM - 0 Comments

(from left) Shailene Woodley, George Clooney, Amara Miller, and Nick Krause in 'The Descendants'

George Clooney is his generation’s Cary Grant. The smoothest man alive. Whether he’s leading a heist in Oceans 11 or playing a slick presidential candidate in The Ides of March,  he has built his career on a debonair image of manly prowess, dry wit and impeccable charm. Which is not enough for an actor of note. So it’s interesting to see Clooney struggle to subvert his image. What’s curious is that Hollywood’s most eligible, and durable, bachelor remains as unattached onscreen as in life: unlike, say, Ryan Gosling, he hardly ever ends up cast as a romantic lead. This guy’s screen kisses can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. His emotions have also remained largely off limits—until Up In the Air director Jason Reitman finally pried open a crack in his armour and located some vulnerability. Now with The Descendants, Clooney goes further, and finally takes a plunge into the emotional deep end. It’s the first film in seven years from Sideways writer-director Alexander Payne, who casts George sharply against type as an awkward, ineffectual father blundering around Hawaii looking for his balls. (And no, it’s not a golf movie.) The result is one of the year’s most original and affecting films, a bittersweet comic drama that steers clear of Hollywood formula and comes at us sideways, surprising us at every turn. Continue…

Consummating ‘Twilight’—the honeymoon is over, but not fast enough

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8:21 AM - 0 Comments

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1'

Much faster than the Harry Potter series, the Twilight franchise is grinding to a close. Stephenie Meyer wrote just four books in her series, and her final tome, like the climactic Potter book, has been split into two movies—better to suck more blood from the box office. This weekend brings us The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One. Or, to put it more simply, the Beginning of the End. But Stephenie Meyer is no J.K. Rowling, and the narrative in this penultimate movie is so diluted it’s anemic. More like Breaking Down than Breaking Dawn.  (If you’re a Twilight fan, you may want to stop reading right now. You already know what happens, and you’re going  to see this baby no matter what I, or anyone else, has to say. For the rest of you, who may simply be twi-curious, bear with me.)

In Breaking Dawn: Part 1, the tortured love affair is consummated. The ancient Byronic vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson)  finally weds Bella (Kristen Stewart), his 18-year old human sweetheart. This Twilight panders to the junior chick-flick fan base so abjectly it makes the last Sex and the City movie  look like Mean Streets. That’s clear from the first few seconds of the film: upon receiving the wedding invitation, Edward’s romantic rival, Jacob (Taylor Lautner),  draws a collective scream from the audience by ripping off his shirt in rage and flashing his now notorious abs. Edward and Bella have a picture-perfect wedding-in-white, a staged by the Cullen family outside their mountaintop home,  then fly down to Rio for the picture-perfect honeymoon. Edward spirits his bride by speedboat to a beachfront villa off the Brazilian coast, where the newlyweds luxuriate in the simple pleasures of paradise: chess on the terrace, moonlit skinny dipping, and vampire-powered plunges down a giant waterfall. The wedding and the honeymoon both seem endless. The scenes are dragged out as sheer Harlequin fantasy, padded with a wall-to-wall soundtrack of piano shmaltz. I suppose there’s an ironic subtext. Who knows? Mix in the real-life romance of Pattinson and Stewart, who appear to be on the verge of engagement (just like their characters, who are forever on the verge of something), and it all gets very meta.

Continue…

Kevin Spacey occupies Wall Street in ‘Margin Call’

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 11:59 PM - 0 Comments

Kevin Spacey in 'Margin Call'

Kevin Spacey has built much of his career on playing Machiavellian monsters. Glengarry Glen Ross, Swimming With Sharks, The Usual Suspects,  Casino Jack, Horrible Bosses . . . his resume is a veritable rogues gallery. So in Margin Call, it’s refreshing to see Spacey play against type as a high-powered Wall Street honco who is not an asshole. As Sam Rogers, the captain of brokerage firm that hits a Titanic iceberg in the 2008 recession, he’s an old-school businessman with a conscience, who’s forced to engineer a fire sale for his sinking firm.

Margin Call is a chilly, potent chamber piece that unfolds like a sci-fi disaster movie. It begins with a brutal downsizing at the firm that throws a 19-year veteran (Stanley Tucci) onto the street. As he’s frog-marched out of the building by security, he slips a pocket computer drive to a bright entry-level analyst (Star Trek‘s Zachary Quinto), telling him there’s some unfinished business on it that might scare him. The whiz kid works late, finding the missing piece of the puzzle, and what he sees is catastrophic—the financial equivalent of discovering an alien life form that’s about to destroy the universe as we know it. It’s the middle of the night. One by one, his superiors come in to gaze in disbelief at the mysterious and catastrophic projections on the computer screen. And up the corporate ladder we go—past Spacey’s troubled character, past the firm’s cynical head trader (Paul Bettany), past its Chief Risk Officer (a brittle Demi Moore), past its ruthless chief executive (Simon Baker)—until finally we meet the Wizard of Oz, the wily CEO played by Jeremy Irons.

As we scale the corporate stratosphere,  each executive gazes at the data and is thunderstruck by the Thing that’s going to make all hell break loose, without us really understanding what the Thing is. Finally Irons’ character, serving as the viewer’s surrogate, asks for an explanation: “Just speak to me in plain English,” he says. “Speak to me as you would a young child. Or a golden retriever.” Irons devours his role as the blithe corporate vampire with droll relish—it’s a marvel of bespoke casting.

Margin Call unfolds as a claustrophobic thriller, set almost entirely within the walls of a Manhattan office tower after hours. It’s not unlike a submarine movie, where time stops after the vessel has hit bottom and the crew is sweats bullets as they try to figure out how to they’re going to get out alive. A first feature sharply written and directed by J.C. Chandor, the movie a  strikes an agile balance between gritty realism and stylish drama. It has the literate, self-contained elegance of a stage play, with the visual panache propulsive energy of a genre film.

Recently we’ve seen a couple of studio pictures, In Time and Tower Heist, that broadly vilify the One Per Cent, and would serve as wrothy crowd-pleasers projected on a canvas sheet in an Occupy Wall Street park. Margin Call is the smart one that may get called to the margins of the Oscar race.

Follow Brian D. Johnson on Twitter: @briandjohnson