Screening Room: Book Club: The Next Chapter, BlackBerry, Hypnotic, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, The Mother & More
Tag Archives: Screen Wolf
CrackBerry to WhackBerry
BlackBerry
by George Wolf
So, a voice on the line says, “You have a collect call from ‘What the f%& is happening’!”
That’s not really the caller’s name.
He’s actually Jim Balsillie (a terrific Glenn Howerton), co-CEO of BlackBerry Limited, and he’s having yet another temper tantrum. The pairing of Balsillie’s bare-knuckled business sense with the tech genius of other CEO Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel, perfectly awkward) made the company an early leader in the cell phone game, but things have started to unravel. Fast.
It’s a wild and often unhinged rise and fall, told with gleeful abandon by BlackBerry director and and co-writer Matt Johnson, who also co-stars as Doug Fregin, Lazaridis’s original business partner.
While operating a Canadian tech supply company called Research in Motion in 1996, Lazaridis and Fregin hatched the idea of utilizing North America’s unused bandwidth for a cellphone with built-in capability for email and messaging.
Balsillie, a Harvard-educated d-bag with self promotion tunnel vision, knew what the geeks had, and gave them his business street smarts in exchange for a big piece of the pie.
Johnson (Operation Avalanche) draws the battle lines early, framing the unfocused nerds with jittery, The Office-style camerawork amid chaotic workplaces while the calculating, take-no-prisoners suits live within crisp lines, confident movement and unforgiving architecture.
The colliding of worlds is engaging enough, but the delightfully sharp humor and first-rate ensemble (also including Michael Ironside) turn these based on true events into a rollicking, can’t-look-away slice of history.
There’s so much here that resonates – friendship, ambition, cutthroat capitalism and just feeling like an outcast. And at the root is the push and pull of commerce (Balsillie: “Are you familiar with the saying, ‘perfect is the enemy of good?”) vs. science (Lazaridis: “Well, ‘good enough’ is the enemy of humanity.”)
BlackBerry is a fast, funny and often thrilling ride, one that ends up worthy of both time spent and time capsule.
The Future Is Now
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
by George Wolf
For seven years after his initial diagnosis at the age of 29, Michael J. Fox was committed to hiding the signs of Parkinson’s disease.
He’s not at all interested in hiding anymore, and the inviting nature of his candor is a major reason why Apple TV’s Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie connects on such a warmly human level.
That really shouldn’t be a surprise. Since he rocketed to sitcom fame with Family Ties in the 1980s, Fox has remained a relentlessly likable guy. Short of stature but long on charm and comic timing, Fox hit superstardom with 85’s Back to the Future, then navigated the hits and misses to remain a staple of the big and small screen for decades.
Director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman) anchors the film via his Q&A session with Fox, bringing life to the life story with a mix of subtle recreations and nimble editing.
As Fox reflects on his path to the Big Time, editor Michael Harte weaves in carefully selected scenes from Fox’s TV, movie and talk show work that illustrate the anecdotes with entertaining precision. It’s all a slick counterpoint to the reality of Fox’s health, which is acknowledged from the film’s opening minutes, when Fox tells of waking up with a trembling pinky and a “message from the future.”
His present now includes frequent physical therapy sessions, as well as numerous falls and injuries, but he accepts it with grace and self-effacing humor (which includes a priceless bit from an appearance on Curb Your Enthusiasm).
Fox also recounts his love story with wife Tracy Pollan, and the slices of his current home life with Tracy and their children make it easier to understand Fox’s eternally grateful attitude about how his life has turned out.
Fox has no use for pity. And he makes sure that your time spent with A Michael J. Fox Movie will only be inspiring and uplifting.
Screening Room: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Love Again, What’s Love Got to Do with It and More
Merely Players
The Innocent
by George Wolf
With The Innocent (L’innocent), director/co-writer/co-star Louis Garrel takes Shakespeare’s declaration that “all the world’s a stage” to some clever and literal ends.
Or, he mines madcap laughs from a man trying to catch his mother’s new husband in a lie.
Or, he builds tension from a “sure thing” heist sure to go wrong.
Or maybe he’s just trying to comment on the needless games we sometimes play for love.
Really, the film’s biggest hurdle is keeping the whiplash at bay as it juggles all of these tones for just over 90 minutes. And for the most part its balancing act is successful, crafting a breezy and amusing take at all the untrue stories we tell.
Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg) teaches drama to prison inmates (as Garrel’s own mother did for many years), and falls in love with the incarcerated Michel (Roschdy Zem). They marry, which doesn’t thrill Sylvie’s adult son Abel (Garrel, who you may remember as Theo from The Dreamers), and once Michel is released, Abel sets out to prove to his mother that Michel is still up to no good.
Meanwhile, Abel and Clémence (Noémie Merlant, so good in Tár and Portrait of a Lady on Fire) stand delicately on the last rung of the friend zone, each seemingly waiting for the other to jump off.
Garrel blurs the line between acting and lying (to others and ourselves) with a slyly comical hand, amid pauses to remind us how crucial sincerity is to successful relationships.
Okay, that’s enough, now back to this zany caviar robbery!
American audiences may find The Innocent to be more of an acquired taste than those in Garrel’s native France, but anyone who dives in shouldn’t bail too quickly. Give this splendid cast time to pull all the threads together, and they’ll build a stage big enough for comedy, drama, romance and heart.
Come and Get Your Love
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
by Hope Madden and George Wolf
Even if James Gunn had forgotten that his Guardians of the Galaxy formula was plenty familiar, the way Dungeons and Dragons just repackaged it would serve as a winning reminder.
So for the finale of the Guardians trilogy, writer/director Gunn smartly adds some unexpected layers to the good-natured humor and superhero action.
How unexpected? Well, if you had existential tumult and Return of the Jedi homages on your bingo card, congratulations to you. But if you figured Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) as the catalyst, think again.
Gunn wants us to know that this whole story has been Rocket’s all along.
Peter is indeed still hurting from losing Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to memory loss, but it’s a threat to the life of Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper) that gets him back with Drax (Dave Bautista), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Groot (voice of Vin Diesel) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) – with yes, help from Gamora – for one last ride.
The mission? Stop the “High Evolutionary” (Chukwudi Iwuji) on his quest to program evolution until perfection is achieved. The themes are heady, with both echoes of the past and callouts to the current “burn it all down” crowd, but Gunn still finds plenty of room for goofy laughs, warm camaraderie, and real heart.
Plus, mean Gamora is so much more fun than righteous Gamora. Drax and Mantis continue to be a joyous mismatch of besties and Gillen’s deadpan delivery is maybe more funny in this episode than any other.
Gunn’s MCU sendoff retains his trademark mischievous humor and fondness for raucous violence. The action sequences here match anything Gunn has done previously, while Rocket’s origin story packs Volume 3 with an unexpected emotional wallop.
When Gunn joined the MCU for 2014’s first GoG episode, he made his silly mastery of the blockbuster known. With ruffian charm, Rocket and the gang deliver deeper, more believably touching chemistry now than they did then. Volume 3 is a fitting, emotional, madcap swan song.
Fright Club: Best Ghosts in Horror Movies
Ghosts! Maybe the first ever scary idea in all of history, the first thing to haunt our dreams. To give us the word haunt. Ghosts have been a staple of horror for as long as there was such a thing, so it was with great difficulty that we narrowed down our five favorite ghosts in horror movies.
We welcome director George Popov back to the podcast to run down the whole list. Keep up to date on his Sideworld documentary series and grab the cool merch we talk about by visiting sideworld.co.uk and following them on Twitter @Sideworld._UK, Facebook @SideworldUK and Instagram @sideworld_uk.
5. Santi in Devil’s Backbone (2001)
The Devil’s Backbone unravels a spectral mystery during Spain’s civil war. The son of a fallen comrade finds himself in an isolated orphanage that has its own troubles to deal with, now that the war is coming to a close and the facility’s staff sympathized with the wrong side. That leaves few resources to help him with a bully, a sadistic handyman, or the ghost of a little boy he keeps seeing.
Backbone is a slow burn as interested in atmosphere and character development as it is in the tragedy of a generation of war orphans. This is ripe ground for a haunted tale, and writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s achievement is both contextually beautiful – war, ghost stories, religion and communism being equally incomprehensible to a pack of lonely boys – and elegantly filmed.
Plus the ghost looks awesome. Del Toro would go on to create some of cinema’s more memorable creatures, and much of that genius was predicted in the singular image of a drowned boy, bloody water droplets floating about him, his insides as vivid as his out.
Touching, political, brutal, savvy, and deeply spooky, Backbone separates del Toro from the pack of horror filmmakers and predicts his own potential as a director of substance.
4. Jennett Humfrye in The Woman in Black (2012)
Director James Watkins was fresh off his underseen, wickedly frightening Eden Lake. Screenwriter Jane Goldman (working from Susan Hill’s novel) had recently written the films Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class, both of which are awesome. And star Daniel Radcliffe had done something or other that people remembered…
I’d have been worried that Radcliffe chose another supernatural adventure as his first big, post-Hogwarts adventure were it not for the filmmaking team putting the flick together. Goldman’s witty intelligence and Watkins’s sense of what scares us coalesce beautifully in this eerie little nightmare.
A remake of a beloved if rarely shown BBC film, the big screen version is a spooky blast of a ghost story. It makes savvy use of old haunted house tropes, updating them quite successfully, and its patient pace and slow reveal leads to more of a wallop than you usually find in such a gothic tale. Glimpses, movements, shadows—all are filmed to keep your eyes darting around the screen, your neck craned for a better look. It’s classic haunted house direction and misdirection laced with more modern scares.
3. Toshio in Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)
Yuya Ozeki was 5 years old when his melancholy, cherubic little face first appeared in Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge. He’d reprise his role as Toshio in Shimizu’s Japanese sequel as well as his English language remake of the original.
Ozeki’s presence onscreen is the perfect combination of adorable and terrifying. He sticks around this one hours, makes a mess, runs his little feet all over the place, sometimes meows.
The real gut punch of The Grudge series is that the ghosts are inescapable. You are doomed from the moment you set foot in Toshio and Kakayo’s home. It’s a way that the film perverts expectations of the gothic tale, and that corruption of something elegant is no more perfectly encapsulated than in the guide of little Toshio.
2. The Staff in The Others (2001)
Writer/director Alejandro Amenábar casts a spell that recalls The Innocents in his 2001 ghost story The Others. It’s 1945 on a small isle off Britain, and the brittle mistress of the house (Nicole Kidman) wakes screaming. She has reason to be weary. Her husband has still not returned from the war, her servants have up and vanished, and her two children, Anna and Nicholas, have a deathly photosensitivity: sunlight or bright light could kill them.
The new staff – Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes) and Lydia (Elaine Cassidy) – is here to help. Amenábar uses these three beautiful performances as a way to talk to Kidman’s harried mum as well as the audience. Flanagan, in particular, is brilliant.
What unspools is a beautifully constructed film using slow reveal techniques to upend traditional ghost story tropes, unveiling the mystery in a unique and moving way.
1. Delbert Grady in The Shining (1980)
Have we talked about this movie before? As is true with The Others, The Shining offers a smorgasbord of ghosts to choose from: Lloyd the bartender, the little Grady sisters, the old lady in the bathtub, the guy in the bear suit. But we settled on Grady because he may come across like the help, but don’t let that fool you. Grady’s the one in charge.
In one of the greatest single scenes in a horror film – and one that contains no murder at all – Delbert quietly clarifies the power structure at work for Mr. Torrence.
Stanley Kubrick’s camera is, per usual, meticulous in creating an atmosphere that mirrors this shift in power. Jack Nicholson’s transformation from smug to obedient is glorious. But it’s longtime character actor Philip Stone who nails the terrifying nuance that amounts to the most pivotal moment in Kubrick’s masterpiece.
Screening Room: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Sisu, Big George Foreman, Peter Pan & Wendy, Showing Up and More
Grown Up Girl and Boy Land
Joyland
by George Wolf
The feature debut from director and co-writer Saim Sadiq unveils an assured and often masterful technician, one able to convey a deep affection for the lives of his meaningful characters.
Joyland is a smart and deeply human drama, a treat for both the eye and the heart.
Haider (Ali Junejo) is the youngest son in a traditional Pakistani family. After a long period of unemployment, he finally lands a job. But while this seems like good news, it signals a seismic shift in his multi-generational family dynamic at home, starting with the family’s decision for Haider’s wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) to give up the salon job she loves so she may stay home and assist with keeping house and children.
Haider will be joining the backup dancers in a Bollywood-style show led by the strong-willed Biba (Alina Khan), a trans woman. The pay is good, but Haider will have to tell his conservative father (Salmaan Peerzada) that he’ll be managing the theatre, not dancing in it, and avoid any mention of the star of the show.
But Haider’s biggest secret is his infatuation with the magnetic Biba, and the relationship that is budding between them.
Sadiq’s camera moves slowly and confidently, filling frames that are frequently static with mesmerizing dances of color, shadow, and light. Just what he does with a decorative light fixture’s effect on the room where Haider and Biba grow closer is a thrilling wonder of shot choreography.
Similarly, Sadiq’s script (co-written with Maggie Briggs) often speaks loudly through the silence of things left unsaid. Haider isn’t the only one here keeping secrets, and the film begins to ache with the longing for lives that seem hopelessly out of reach.
And yet somehow, the gripping conclusion arrives without any of the melodrama you might expect. And when it does, Joyland leaves a mark that also signals the arrival of its visionary and insightful filmmaker.
Did Nazi That Coming
Sisu
by Hope Madden and George Wolf
Is there anything in all the world more satisfying than watching Nazis die? Perhaps not.
Jalmari Helander, the genius behind 2010’s exceptional holiday horror Rare Exports, squeezes a lovechild from Leone and Peckinpah by way of Tarantino (natch). The result, Sisu, a kind of WWII-era Scandinavian John Wick.
That sounds borrowed, but it doesn’t feel borrowed. It feels stylized but never derivative.
Rare Exports star Jorma Tommila plays Aatami Korpi. Korpi used to be a soldier. He left that – and his reputation as a “one man death squad” – behind, instead roaming Lapland with his dog and his horse in search of peace and gold.
After finding one, the other becomes even more elusive.
The Nazis, their loss imminent, are leaving scorched earth behind as they move across Lapland. Their paths cross Korpi’s. It doesn’t go well for the Nazis.
Helander’s confident vision meshes majestically with the cinematography of Kjell Lagerroos, capturing the lonesome beauty of Lapland in one minute, the next minute bursting with the frenetic energy and viscera of action. The stunt choreography and editing in the dizzying array of carnage-laden set pieces are breathtaking. Knives, guns, fisticuffs, tank fire, regular fire, land mines, a hanging, airplanes – a seemingly endless string of magnificently crafted violent action keeps the pace breathless.
Speaking of breath, there’s an underwater sequence that’s a real gem. And a great deal of Sisu’s success is in the novelty of its action. We’ve seen about 11 hours of John Wick by now. It’s hard to do something new.
But Helander manages. Composers Juri Seppä and Tuomas Wäinölä also assist in lifting the heights of this spectacle, and it becomes as beautiful a celebration of bloodletting as we’ve seen for some time.
And though a final confrontation between Korpi and the ruthless SS Commander tracking him (Aksel Hennie) is never in doubt, it takes on a greater significance thanks to Helander’s clearly-drawn stakes. The Nazi is looking to buy his redemption, while Korpi sees the chance to finally escape his past.
Vengeance? Oh, that’s here, too, for both Korpi and some POWs who smugly warn their German captors of what is coming. They say the Finnish word for what the wandering stranger is does not translate, but that he is no ordinary traveler.
And the film is no ordinary travelogue. Clocking in at just 91 minutes, Sisu is perfectly lean, relentlessly mean, and consistently satisfying at every blood-soaked turn.
