When you think about movie princesses a few names come immediately to mind: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora and Belle. This fab four have come to define what being a movie princess is all about. Or at least they used to.
Once upon a time a movie princess was a damsel in distress, swathed in pink and jewels, waiting for Prince Charming to come to the rescue.
Lately, however, the movies have given us a different kind of princess, one who is more into grrrl-power than girly-girl. This weekend Disney helps redefine their traditional princess in their 56th animated feature film, Moana,
The thirteenth official Disney princess is inspired by Polynesian mythology. Sixteen-year-old Moana (voiced by newcomer Auli’i Cravalho), daughter of a Samoan island chief, has a deep spiritual connection with the sea—the name means ‘ocean’ in Maori—and a severe case of wanderlust. Unfortunately for her overprotective father has just one rule for his family and subjects: No one goes beyond the reef. “It’s the one rule that keeps us safe,” he says.
When the island’s crops fail and fish stocks begin to deplete the high-spirited princess sets off on a quest to lift the veil of darkness enveloping her home. An ancient folktale tells of demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) and his theft of the heart of Te Fiti, a carved stone that holds the essence of life. If she can find Maui and make him return the stone heart, perhaps she can save her people.
“Moana” is an action-adventure with the emphasis on the adventure. “There’s more beyond the reef,” she says, imagining a world that for her only exists in folk tales. That spirit is infused in every beautifully crowd-pleasing frame.
The story and adventure is relatively uncomplicated, but photo realistic animation and new Broadway style songs by “Hamilton’s” Lin-Manuel Miranda should maintain interest for young and old. After a slow-ish start, which sets up the story, things get lively and fun when Moana’s journey begins and she teams with Maui. At this point the characters get more interesting and the story less earnest.
One show-stopping number, “Shiny,” a glam rock freak-out performed by Jemaine Clement (who channels Tim Curry), rivals anything from recent Disney for sheer entertainment value. “I was a drab little crab,” he sings, adding, “I will sparkle like a wealthy woman’s neck!” Add to that some marauding coconut pirates and Lava Monsters, and you have a joyful addition to the Disney catalogue.
Best of all, you have a new style princess, one who looks to the future while paying homage to the past.
“Manchester by the Sea” is one of the year’s best films. If you want to know why, read on. If not, go buy a ticket now. You won’t be disappointed.
Casey Affleck, in what is sure to be an Oscar nominated performance, is Lee Chandler, a Boston janitor with the hollow-eyed look of a man whose life has been touched by tragedy. As a maintenance man in an apartment block he spends the day with odd jobs, unplugging toilets and doing illegal electrical work. At night he picks bar fights. When his brother older Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies suddenly of a heart attack, Lee must return home to Manchester, Massachusetts and settle the estate. Haunted by ghosts of his past, Lee’s hometown brings back difficult memories. His pregnant ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams) appears to have stated her life anew and the tragedy that scarred him reverberates through the place and its people. When he finds out Joe named him guardian of Patrick (Lucas Hedges), a headstrong teen with a way with a joke and the local girls, the life he has tried so desperately to numb becomes complicated further.
“Manchester by the Sea” is many things. As a finely acted look at grief and the aftermath of heartbreak, it has few peers among this year’s crop of films. But it’s also very a funny odd couple/buddy flick that isn’t afraid to flip flop between drama and comedy. This is writer/director Kenneth Lonergan’s tempest in a teapot, a smallish film that roils with big emotional moments.
Affleck is the core of the film. He’s in virtually every frame and while understated he bristles with feeling. It is a tremendous performance that never fails into morbidity as he skilfully keeps he character alive, both physically and metaphysically. Every day is a struggle for Lee and he deals with his trauma the only way he knows how, with blistering honesty and by drinking and fighting to feel something. There is emotional truth in every mumbled line and come Oscar season expect to hear a lot about this performance.
Affleck shares several scenes with Michelle Williams, but one in particular stands out. For most of the film we only see her in flashbacks, when she was married to Lee. Cut to present day and a chance encounter on the street. In a master class of acting the two rehash and come to grips with the trauma that tore them apart. It heartbreak laid bare and it is a stunning scene.
Also strong and crucial to the film’s dynamic is Lucas Hedges as Joe’s son, Lee’s nephew. He’s a chip off the Chandler block, raw, rough and honest to a fault (except when it comes to the girls he dates). It’s a remarkably mature performance that never loses sight that Patrick is an inexperienced minor with much to learn.
I fear I’ve made “Manchester by the Sea” by the sea sound like an exercise in Sturm und Drang but it’s not. It deals with very real, very difficult human situations but does so with honesty and a great deal of unexpected humour and wisdom.
“Rules Don’t Apply” star and director Warren Beatty wants you to know that his latest film is not a biopic of Howard Hughes. The legendary Hollywood figure—Beatty not Hughes, although the term could ply to either—has long wanted to make a movie about the reclusive billionaire but this isn’t it. Instead it is a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of 1950s Tinsel Town in which Hughes is not the star, just the most interesting character.
Lily Collins plays Marla Mabrey, a Southern Baptist girl with dreams of being a Hollywood star. A contract with Hughes’ RKO Pictures got her halfway there, now she needs to meet Hughes (Beatty) and get a part. Until then Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), a personal chauffeur assigned by RKO escorts her around town to make sure she stays out of trouble. “If you don’t drive them, you can’t keep your eye on them.”
Romance soon blooms, leaving the two in a perilous spot as both their contract stipulate that they won’t become involved with members of the extended Hughes corporate family.
Meanwhile Hughes remains an elusive, shadowy figure in Marla’s life. The eccentric businessman is juggling dozens of starlets, who he has stashed all over town, some bankers with $400 million in ready cash and a hostile takeover by his business partners. Hughes’s antics and obsessions with everything from the Spruce Goose to Baskin-Robbins’ banana-nut ice cream, keep the young lovers separated but will the oddball’s behaviour change their lives?
“Rules Don’t Apply” isn’t a biopic—the movie telegraphs this with an opening quote from Hughes: “Never check an interesting fact”—or a farce or, strictly a romantic comedy. For better and for worse it is its own thing, a nostalgic Warren Beatty film that basks in the glow of old Hollywood courtesy of DP Caleb Deschanel and terrific costume and set design. As a look back to what Los Angeles was like when Beatty first hit town it’s an engaging slice of ephemera. Unfortunately, the story and the characters are slightly less engaging.
Collins and Ehrenreich are charismatic, interesting actors who make the most of the moments offered them. Trouble is, the film too often shifts focus. Is it the story of Marla’s ambition, of Frank’s potential get rich quick scheme, or Hughes’s foibles? It’s all that and feels cluttered, as though not all the moving parts are necessary to keep the movie’s engine in gear. It never quite works up the head of steam it needs to commit fully to its farce DNA, but when it works it works very well.
In front of the camera Beatty shines as Hughes, reminding us why he became a movie star in the first place. Confident and bold this is a much different Hughes than we saw in “The Aviator.” Beatty’s take on the character is a broad, often comedic, occasionally tragic look at a man trying to stop both his personal and professional life from unravelling.
Behind the camera Beatty gives us moments to savour. When Marla’s mom (Annette Bening) announces they must leave Hollywood, her daughter hugs her and sweetly says, “I’ll help you pack.” It’s a sly bit of character work, simply staged that tells us that Marla has the strength to cut her mother loose in pursuit of her dream.
“Rules Don’t Apply” is a handsome movie that lives up to its name. The strict rules of romantic comedy, drama and biography don’t apply here. It’s a wistful confection, sometimes frothy, sometimes idiosyncratic, that feels like it might have sprung from the era it portrays.
Few sports teams have fans as enthusiastic as those who enjoy, nay, worship Glasgow’s Celtic Football Club. “Celtic Soul,” a new documentary from director Michael McNamara, showcases two soccer supporters as they travel two continents and three countries to make it to see a match in paradise a.k.a. Celtic Park.
“Goon” star Jay Baruchel and sports broadcaster Eoin O’Callaghan began the journey as twitter friends. After two years of chatting 140 characters at a time the pair became friends when O’Callaghan came to Montreal to visit the actor. That turned into the first leg of a journey that would take them from Quebec’s Bell Centre, home ice of the Canadiens, to Dublin’s Croke Park, one of Europe’s largest sports stadiums where they try hurling, a forerunner to hockey.
They will go on to travel across country to Cairnryan, Scotland making their way to Glasgow, home town of the Celtic FC, but first they stop off at Westport, County Mayo to trace Baruchel’s Irish roots.
“Celtic Soul” is, in its soul, a buddy movie. Like all good sports movies it isn’t really about the sport, it’s about a more universal truth. It’s about the where the sport came from, what it means to its fans and why it is part of the fabric of people’s lives. Baruchel and O’Callaghan are welcoming hosts whose infectious enthusiasm gives the documentary the giddy feel of a really good home travel movie. Natural and unaffected, they invite the viewer in, whether they’re a footy fan or not.
Richard is mentioned in the Toronto Star article “Warren Beatty remains precise and in control about all things, especially sex” by Peter Howell. Read the whole thing HERE!
Welcome to the House of Crouse. It’s a magical day around here. Not only do the cast of the Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them drop by–including Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne–then we have a Warren Beatty sighting. As fans know Beatty sightings are as rare(and precious)as Bismuth Crystals. He and Rules Don’t Apply star Lily Collins swing by to talk about the movie and the film’s unusual production. Abracadabra! C’mon in and sit a spell… we’re pulling rabbits out of hats today!
Richard and CP24 anchor George Lagogianes have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the coming-of-age story “Edge of Seventeen” and Miles Teller as real life boxer Vinny Paz in “Bleed for This.”
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the coming-of-age story “Edge of Seventeen,” Miles Teller as real life boxer Vinny Paz in “Bleed for This” and “Nocturnal Animals” with Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal.
To call director Paul Verhoeven provocative is like suggesting the Atlantic Ocean merely contains some water. He’s the man who gave us Saved by the Bell sweetheart Elizabeth Berkley licking a stripper’s pole in Showgirls and the splatterfest of Starship Troopers. A cursory glance at any of his films suggests his Taste-O-Meter is permanently set at ‘garish’ but his movies beg—actually they sit up and demand—for more than a cursory look.
His new movie, Elle, based on French-Armenian writer Philippe Djian’s award-winning 2012 novel Oh…, is a complex and corrosive psychological thriller about a woman seeking revenge on the man who raped her.
“Sometimes you are in a Hitchcock thriller,” says star Isabelle Huppert of the film. “Sometimes you are in a psychological study. Sometimes you are in a comedy and at the end of the day you are in none of those; you are in a Paul Verhoeven film.”
Verhoeven’s originally planned to relocate the story from France to the United States but ran into roadblocks.
“He makes no secret of that,” Huppert laughs. “I like that. He was completely clear. He didn’t want me. He wanted an American movie star. He didn’t get her so finally he came to get me.”
The Paris, France-born actress was a natural choice to play Michelle. She is a complicated character. As the daughter of a notorious serial killer she has developed a hard shell. She’s blunt to the point of rude with everyone from her future daughter-in-law and ex-husband to her mother and son, who she refers to as “a big lout with nothing special about him.” She’s having an affair with her best friend’s husband and even deliberately runs into her ex’s car then blames the damage on someone else.
“I read the novel first and thought it could potentially be a great film because it is very visual and the character is very interesting,” she says. “Then eventually the writer Philippe Djian said he always had me in mind while he was writing the novel. No wonder I immediately felt connected to the role.”
Elle is a deeply polarizing movie—in Cannes it was equally lauded and condemned—that treads some very delicate territory. Not that this is a delicate film. The assault is first heard, then seen in increasingly graphic detail as the running time climbs to the closing credits. The movie has taken some heat because it’s a male director making a film about a female reaction to assault. Huppert rejects the criticism.
“He told me very little and let me take the role wherever I wanted,” she says of Verhoeven. “That might be so that at the end you don’t have to measure the extent of the [male gaze]. The role is not a man’s fantasy. I don’t think so. The way she is halfway between a victim and the usual James Bondish avenger. She is really in an in between space which I think is, essentially, very, very, feminine. It is the exploration of something in between which makes the character very interesting, That doesn’t make the character like it was the product of a man’s fantasy. Plus as an actress, all the way through, I felt completely protected by him. I never felt the smallest sense of danger or being manipulated.”
