With two big wins at the Golden Globes, 1917 is now the one to beat at the Academy Awards, where the nominations are to be announced Monday. It won Best Film (drama) and Best Director and leads my reviews today.
It’s a strong line up (mostly).
1917: 4 ½ stars
Just Mercy: 3 ½
Underwater: 1 ½
The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão: 4
The Whale and the Raven: 3 ½
And the Birds Rained Down: 3 ½
Like a Boss: --
Weathering with You: --
1917: Simply one of the best war movies ever made. It’s tense, action-filled and heroic but entirely on a personal level, thanks in part to a technique that some have called a conceit but actually pulls you along relentlessly and puts you right into the action. Two British soldiers in World War One have to make their way through the trenches, across bombed-out no man’s land and through shattered towns and farms to warn a brigade commander to call off an attack because the Germans have an ambush planned. It’s a potential suicide mission and we’re with them as they avoid booby traps and a dive-bombing plane, survive a collapsing tunnel, jump into a swollen river and make their way past human bodies and rats.
The film presents all this in what looks like one continuous sequence, no edits apparently (though not really). It took months of rehearsal, a new small camera, expert cinematography by a master, Roger Deakins, and precise direction by Sam Mendes to achieve that. It’s not a gimmick. It’s immersive. You really do feel what it must have been like to go through war perils like these. Mendes is telling real stories he heard from his grandfather and he’s showing them from the viewpoint of two regular blokes. George MacKay plays a corporal already sick of war and Dean-Charles Chapman (known from “Game of Thrones”) is the still-eager younger one. Officers, played by big names like Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Colin Firth, and Benedict Cumberbatch, are merely cameos. The focus is squarely on the heroic contributions of ordinary soldiers. It’s not only a thrill ride; it’s an act of respect. (Scotiabank, Park, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 4 ½ out of 5
JUST MERCY: There are people (I was talking to one just the other day) who are tired of all these films we’ve been getting from the U.S. about legal injustices to blacks. I say while the problem goes on, the films should too. This one is a true story and quotes a startling statistic: one of every nine prisoners who die by capital punishment, have been wrongly convicted. Many of those are black and that’s a leftover from slavery. The film is not subtle in making points like that by dramatizing a case in Alabama back in 1987.
Jamie Foxx plays a man on death row for the murder an 18-year-old girl. Problem is: he wasn’t anywhere nearby the day of the killing and the “eye-witness” couldn’t be right in identifying him. But try to get the authorities to re-think the speedy conviction. Michael B. Jordan plays the lawyer who tries, Bryan Stevenson, who came from up north as an intern to work with The Southern Prisoners Defense Committee. This is just one of over 100 cases he’s worked on; it was even featured on 60 Minutes. The film has exactly what you’d expect—abusive cops, no-sympathy sheriffs, angry citizens—but a few surprises too. The points it makes are obvious but so are the facts. “You’re guilty from the moment you’re born,” Foxx says in one of his scenes. Fine acting by the two leads, and Brie Larson and Tim Blake Nelson in support, and strong direction by Destin Daniel Cretton elevate this film. It’s about a crusading lawyer, but more about exposing the issues. (International Village and suburban theatres) 3 ½ out of 5
UNDERWATER: It’s something of a mystery. How could a story with so much promise become a movie this boring? I think it’s because the director, William Eubank, and his writers aren’t bothering to speak to us.They’re so wrapped up in putting in visions of technology that they don’t make it mean much to us, and in fact leave us at sea and uninvolved the whole way. There are also a couple of environmental comments in some vague hope of making this film mean something. It doesn’t though, since they’re unexplored.
Kirsten Stewart is the star, seriously out of the depths she’s found in her recent films, as a science officer in a deep ocean drilling facility. (“We shouldn’t be down here,” says another character). There’s a leak in the ceiling, clunks and bangs hitting from the outside and a hallway collapse. Kirsten, plus a worker pulled out from under some concrete chunks (T.J. Miller), a tough captain (Vincent Cassel) and others put on giant suits like spacemen wear to walk the ocean floor to a giant drill. How that will save them we’re not told, but it hardly matters because a giant creature that looks like a cross between an octopus and a squid with very sharp teeth shows up. The film turns into a survival epic (though there’s not much surviving going on). It’s all murky rather than exciting, and surprisingly short of suspense. 20th Century Fox made it three years ago and let it sit. Disney, which bought the company, is clearing out the overmatter. (International Village and suburban theatres) 1 ½ out of 5
THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF EURÍDICE GUSMÃO: Be prepared for one of the most wrenching emotional endings you’ll ever see in a movie. It’s a melodrama but a high-toned one with an immensely moving story and real observations about the status of women. Observations, not lectures or preaching. You pick up what you want as you watch this story about two sisters in Brazil. They’re very close, but different in nature. Guida, the free spirit, has hot sex with a sailor she meets in a club and runs away with him to Greece. When she realizes he’s “a scumbag” and comes home pregnant, her father disowns her and won’t tell her sister about her return. Or pass along her letters.
Eurídice meanwhile dreams of going to Europe to study piano but gets married instead. A wedding night sex scene feels anything but consensual. The two sisters’ lives are clearly delineated and shown with a feminist slant that includes the restraints they live with, like decorum, tradition, patriarchy and even laws of real estate ownership. (Interesting that a man, Karim Aïnouz, directed the film.) Surprisingly they don’t run into each other, although they almost do in one scene. Instead we get a twist and a years-later climactic scene you might need a hanky to help you with. Carol Duarte and Julia Stockler are wonderful playing the sisters. The film was lauded for innovation with the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes this year. (VanCity Theatre) 4 out of 5
THE WHALE AND THE RAVEN: Here’s one to keep in mind as you read about pipeline protests and tanker traffic. They’re looming out of sight as we watch our beautiful British Columbia coast up there on the big screen, so majestic, inspiring and threatened. On the hydrophone we hear the sound of whales communicating (and individually identifiable) and then hear the sound of a tanker ship still far away but already a nuisance. Researcher Herman Meuter, who came here from Germany in 1992, says he can hear them from around the corner: a small indication of the danger they pose to whales.
“I could wrap my life around whales,” he adds. Occasionally they surface and “blow” just out there in the bay which another researcher, Janie Wray, describes as “one big bowl of whale food”. At the nearby Gitga’at First Nation we hear stories about them (and the other clan, the ravens) that have been told forever. One is illustrated with animation. These days the stories are about stopping energy projects that bring more tanker traffic. The Enbridge Pipeline was successfully fought off but LNG, “the largest private investment in Canadian history” is coming. I like this characterization heard in the film: “People with no connection to the land making decisions about land that doesn’t belong to them”. This lovely film, by Mirjam Leuze, a cultural anthropologist from Germany, promotes a deep respect instead. (VanCity Theatre) 3 ½ out of 5
AND THE BIRDS RAINED DOWN: Five years after her fine film Gabrielle, Quebec director Louise Archambault brings another crowd-pleaser about love at the edges. This time it’s right off the grid and late in life. Three old men live like hermits in a forest; one dies and the others are visited by outsiders. There’s an old woman with touches of dementia and a craving for “the countryside” and a young one looking for a man who survived a forest fire years before. She wants to get his story for a research project for a museum. Part of the film is a quest to find these people who don’t want to be found.
The rest is about getting along with them. One, a former tavern entertainer (Rémy Girard) resents intruders and sings Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits songs. A second (Gilbert Sicotte) is gruff but a bit more welcoming. He warms up to 76-year old Gertrude, played by Andrée Lachapelle,finds she’s a soul mate and a grateful sex-partner. It’s never too late, is a major theme of this film. It’s also an answer to the bigger question: how can you live without interaction with other people? Not well and not for long, it seems. It’s a novel way to ponder those things but it works, even though the script strains at times to set it up. Gertrude’s nephew brings the two women to the woodsy camp which he supplies with groceries in trade for marijuana the men grow when they’re not skinny dipping ijn the lake. Some other plot lines are left too skimpy and a forest fire said to be coming near is hardly felt at all. What does work though is more than engaging. (VanCity) 3 ½ out of 5
Also now playing ...
LIKE A BOSS: Best friends run a business together but can they stay friends? That’s the theme of this comedy starring Rose Byrne and Tiffany Haddish. One is practical; the other likes their cosmetics company for the money it brings her. They’re in debt though and when Salma Hayek’s viperish businesswoman offers to buy them out, disagreement surfaces, and with Salma’s help, blooms into a big battle. Has potential. I haven’t seen it but an acquaintance who has calls it “bland” while many reviews say it starts strong and long before the end runs out of steam.
And coming ...
WEATHERING WITH YOU: A new work of Japanese animation by Makoto Shinkai will be in some area theatres this coming Wed and Thurs as part of the Cineplex Events Anime series. Shinkai's last film Your Name was a huge hit and consequently some of these upcoming shows are already sold out. Young love is the central theme and climate change is involved, although there are hints it may include some denial. Wed's shows are subtitled; Thursday's are dubbed into English. You'll have to do some research to find out what's available by going to the websites (with "showtimes") of the following theatres: Park & Tilford, Riverport, Langley, Coquitlam and Park Royal.