Three More TIFF Films and Three Other Recent Releases
This
is multiplex fare that didn’t really merit the fillip of festival
exposure. Nonetheless, based on a true
story, it is aggressively directed by European Yann Demange and benefits from
good performances. The “Rick” in
question (played by Ritchie Merritt) is the teenage son of shady gun-dealing
dad Richard Sr. (Matthew McConaughey) when he is recruited as a drug-busting informant
by several FBI agents. The grim scene is
the industrial wasteland of 1980s Detroit in which Rick’s own sister Dawn (Bel
Powley) is a junkie. Rick gets used, in over his head, trapped and thrown to
the wolves. In 1987 at age 17 he
received an absurdly long 30-year prison sentence for selling cocaine. (The
real Rick was paroled in 2017 and the movie ends with a voice recording from
him.) It’s all rather sleazy and another
sad lesson of the casualties from the failed “war on drugs”. B+
Helming
this captivating true story is Texas-based David Lowery who previously brought
the masterful A Ghost Story to the
2017 Sundance festival. Sundance founder
Robert Redford stars as Forrest Tucker, a compulsive bank robber and
jailbreaker who leads a geriatric “Over the Hill Gang” (Tom Waits and Danny
Glover play his partners in crime.) on a series of bank jobs. Tucker may have a
gun but he is a gentlemanly irrepressible charmer who wins the heart of
horse-loving widow Jewel (Sissy Spacek) even while being doggedly pursued by
Detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck from A
Ghost Story). Elizabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale) has a cameo as
Tucker’s long-estranged daughter.
Although Redford, now 82, has said this will be his last acting role, he
proves once again his consummate skills on screen. Consider also the case of another
octogenarian, 88-year old Clint Eastwood, still going strong with a new feature
as actor-director The Mule scheduled
for a December release (and also starring Bradley Copper of A Star is Born). A
Sharkwater Extinction (Canada)
In
2006’s Sharkwater, Canadian filmmaker
and ecological activist Rob Stewart drew attention to the mass slaughter of
different shark species for their fins.
Although many countries have banned the practice of “finning” a
lucrative illicit trade continues with hundreds of millions of sharks being
killed. Material from hunted sharks can
also be found in other consumer products.
Stunning underwater cinematography captures Stewart’s interactions with
these ancient and wondrously evolved creatures. He seeks to share his marvel at and
appreciation for their role as apex predators that are nothing like the fearsome
monsters of popular imagination. Using
some of the footage Stewart had already shot, his team carried on following his
tragic death in a January 2017 dive off the Florida keys. The result is a
fitting epitaph to his legacy and a warning about the ongoing human-caused
threats to the natural world—the more of which we extinguish, the more we diminish
our own future. (Filmmaker and diver
Robert Osborne’s documentary on the troubling aspects of Stewart’s death, The Third Dive: The Death of Rob Stewart,
can be streamed online in Canada at CBC Docs POV: https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/episodes/the-third-dive-the-death-of-rob-stewart.) A
[*Note:
The screening I attended was preceded by a trailer for Wonders of the Sea 3D, co-directed by Jacques Cousteau’s son
Jean-Michel, and narrated by Arnold Schwarzenegger. More information at: http://www.wondersofthesea3d.com/.]
Lizzie (U.S.)
Craig
William Macneill directs this chilling morality tale that premiered at the 2018
Sundance film festival. It’s based on an actual gruesome double murder by
hatchet in 1892 Massachusetts. Chloé Sevigny
plays Lizzie, the stifled, epileptic and embittered daughter of a wealthy
father and stepmother when an Irish maid Bridget (called “Maggie”) played by
Kristen Stewart comes into the household. Lizzie has a shy spinster sister and a
conniving uncle interested in the family fortune. There are dark undercurrents in the
suggestion of the patriarch taking sexual liberties with the maid, and
forbidden desires in a lesbian liaison between her and Lizzie who’s threatened
with being sent away and denied her inheritance. Did shared desperation provoke the scandalous
killings? Lizzie was charged but
acquitted. The all-male jury could not
believe a lady of high society could be a murderess. Bridget moved far away and the two women
never saw each other again, taking their secrets to the grave. Sevigny and Stewart excel in their roles as
unhappy women driven to flashes of passion, straining against the crushing weight
of their respective repressive and dour societal stations. B+
The Happy Prince (UK/Belgium/Italy/Germany)
Also
premiering at Sundance, British actor Rupert Everett stars as Oscar Wilde in
this historical drama at the end of the 19th century that focuses on
the last years of the famous playwright, author and celebrated wit. They were spent in ignominy and exile after
suffering two years imprisonment “at hard labour” for the crime of “gross
indecency”. Wilde had a wife Constance
(Emily Watson) and two young sons whom he never saw again. His weakness was for homosexual liaisons with
boys and young men. His undoing was a
notorious affair with “Bosie”, Lord Alfred Douglas (Colin Morgan), the wastrel
son of the Marquess of Queensbury. Everett is openly gay but in this late
Victorian era it was the illicit love that dare not speak its name. While sympathetic to Wilde’s plight, the film
is an unsparing depiction of those penurious yet dissolute final years in
France and Italy under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth. Wilde had a loyal
ally in Reggie Turner (Colin Firth) but he also played off his feuding lovers,
the fickle Bosie and steady Robbie Ross (Edwin Thomas) whose ashes were later
interred with him. Wilde died at age 46 in wretched circumstances in Paris and
it was Ross who arranged for a priest Fr. Dunn (Tom Wilkinson) to effect a
deathbed conversion. A small comfort
perhaps. The movie’s title come from a
children’s story Wilde recalled reading to his sons. But this is anything but a happy story. B+
The
Wife (UK/Sweden/U.S.)
In
this melodrama, based on the Meg Wolizer novel and helmed by Swedish director
Björn Runge, Glenn Close is masterful in the role of Joan Castleman, the
long-suffering “wife” of the title. She’s
been married for four decades to Joe Castelman (Jonathan Pryce) who was her
college English professor, now a renowned author, when they get word he is to
receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Joan was a student of brilliant promise but has sublimated her talent in
the service of making his career while also excusing his philandering
ways. The real writing power behind his
public literary success, she’s stayed in the background until reaching a
breaking point while they are in Stockholm to accept the award. News of the
birth of a grandchild provides a brief moment of shared joy. But accompanying them is their brooding
resentful adult son David (Max Irons), an aspiring writer in his own right who
knows the truth. Adding to the combustible mix is Nathaniel Bone (Christian
Slater) who goes after Joan to pry juicy material for a hack biography of the
great man. She rebuffs him with dignified
reserve. In private she lays it on the
line with Joe—“time’s up” for the lionized centre of attention; “time’s up” for
the patronizing thanks to the silent helpmate in the shadows. He gets the
medal. For overdue honesty she takes the prize. B+
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