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MOVIES: with a family in crisis, under a totalitarian government
Also trends in modern love affairs and a history and celebration of Blue Rodeo
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Reviews
Entertainment
January 31st 2025
If youâre thinking of boycotting the US because of the threatened tariffs, this is a good time for it in the movies. The highest profile new American film today is a dud. A couple from Canada might be alternatives and I lead with a superb film from Brazil. Itâs winning awards.
I'M STILL HERE: While we watch and worry about the rise of authoritarian leaders, even dictators, these days, here's a case in point to ponder. It's from Brazil where a military dictatorship took over in 1964 and stayed in power for over 20 years. Its repression is shown in a novel way, not through politics, not so much with the military, but almost entirely through the effect it had on one family.Â
Courtesy of Sony Pictures ClassicsRubens Paiva was a left-leaning politician, ousted and then taken away for questioning. He never returned. His wife, Eunice, couldn't get answers from anybody about why or where he was. She had five children to care for and explain to as best she could. She spent years searching for answers and basically had to remake her life. She went to university, became a lawyer and a key campaigner to get information made public (and incidentally for Indigenous rights versus "the land grabbers" as she puts it). Her son Marcelo wrote the book the film is based on.Â
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One of the key scenes has her enter the prison where her husband had been taken. A guard has no answers and simply asks if he had had contact with Communists, over in Chile for instance. At home, the tensions are high. She wasn't disheartened though and that tenacity comes through in the impressive performance by Fernanda Torres. She won a Golden Globe for it and is nominated for an Oscar. In scenes set some 40 years later, her own mother, Fernanda Montenegro, plays the character. The film is sharply directed by Walter Salles and is up for two other very big Oscars: Best Picture and Best International Film. Well deserved. (In select theaters) 4 Âœ out of 5Â
YOUâRE CORDIALLY INVITED features two popular stars, Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell and is made by a good director, Nicholas Stoller (best known for Forgetting Sarah Marshall). So why is it only streaming and not in theaters? The answer is apparent soon after you start watching. Itâs not very good. Itâs tired, wastes a promising situation with witless comedy and an uninteresting script that feels like itâs been done before.Â
The situation: two families want to hold a wedding at the same time. The quaint country venue they favor can only accommodate one at a time but because of a pen thatâs run out of ink and a clerk who falls dead, both are booked in. Yeah, somebody had to reach hard to imagine that.Â
Courtesy of PrimeÂFerrell is marrying off his daughter. Heâs uneasy about it. Witherspoon plays a reality TV producer and is therefore perfectly at ease helping her sister get married. The rehearsal dinners go well, although a groom as DJ at one makes jokes about business, guns and racism. The wedding ceremony is the problem. Both want theirs on the dock down by the lake and exactly at sunset (for the photos). Will stretches the first ceremony out; Reese calls it sabotage. Clouds are gathering. Yes. Rain starts and worse: the dock collapses and everybody falls in the water. One group plots revenge and more cheap hubbub prevails. Worst of all and completely unnecessary: Will wrestles a live alligator in his bed. Itâs not even metaphorical. That would involve some thinking. Not needed here. (Prime video) 2 out of 5 Â
BLUE RODEO: Iâve got one of the bandâs CDs in my car and listen to it now and then. So Iâm a good target for this documentary, to watch and learn more about them. The film delivers well. We get music and the history. Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor friends since highschool, start the band in Toronto, grow an audience down there on Queen Street, get a record contract even though their roots-music rock sound isnât in, and become what the publicists called âbeloved.âÂ
An archive photo courtesy of Blue Ice DocsAdd âenduring.â Forty years, many albums and multiple Juno awards later, the film, directed by Dale Heslip, has Cuddy and Keelor recall it all and even bring them and the rest of the band into what looks like an old church to play and reminisce. Outsiders do too: Erica Ehm praises how they connect to the audience. Sarah McLachlan says theyâre âjust solid good guysâ and their first producer, Terry Brown says their appeal is the singing blend of Cuddyâs âsweetnessâ and Keelorâs âearthiness.â They come across like that in their real life too. They struggled with constant touring, recorded separately for a while, argued apparently, but got back together like brothers. âWe push each other,â one says. The film is a keen celebration of friendship. (In Theaters: Toronto starting Sunday and multiple Cineplex venues next day) 4 out of 5 Â
COMPANION: Hereâs a thoughtful, satirical and highly involving film about our modern world. Too bad I canât tell you what its story hinges on. Youâre better to find out yourself. Suffice it to say that it deals with power relationships, certainly between men and women and between people and technology. And itâs full of surprises and twists along the way. Thatâs signaled by a startling opening voiceover that says: âThereâve been two moments in my life when I was happiest. The first was the day I met Josh. And the second was the day I killed him.âÂ
Courtesy of Warner BrothersShe is Iris who, at the start, meets Josh in a grocery store. We find out later that itâs not a simple as that. Both the meeting and the relationship that develops are complex, unexpected and pre-planned. He, played by Jack Quaid, is a controlling type. She, played endearingly by Sophie Thatcher, has to learn to stop being submissive and argue back. Sounds like a common story but itâs far from that. Itâs a sharp statement about a number of things in our society: menâs privileged assumptions, womenâs role alongside them, the devices people invent. Oops. I let out a hint there. Better check that out yourself as the story advances to be a heist movie of sorts (a plot to steal a safe full of cash from a Russian oligarch living in the US for some reason and played by Rupert Friend) while at the same time playing as both a science fiction and an easy to take horror movie. Still holding back plot points to say that. (In theaters) 3 Âœ out of 5  Â
PAYING FOR IT: Itâs a true story and clearly means a lot to the two main people in it so itâs hard to be negative. But I didnât find this all that interesting. Itâs billed as a think piece about modern relationships. Maybe. I just didnât find universal import in this story of a love affair that goes stale. Sheâs a TV host and lively; heâs a cartoonist and not at all outgoing. But when she gets another boyfriend and is heard argueing loudly with him, the cartoonist, living downstairs, swears off love affairs and pays prostitutes to service him. A publicity note says he âdiscovers a new kind of intimacy.â I donât see it; itâs not lasting; itâs business.
Courtesy of Hawkeye PicturesThe story around it is interesting though. The cartoonist wrote his story in a graphic novel and his ex-girlfriend directed the film based on it. Sheâs Sook-Yin Lee who for some time was a VJ on Muchmusic and her stand-in, Sonny, played by Emily LĂȘ, is a VJ on something called Maxmusic. The cartoonist, Chester Brown, is played by Dan Beirne and one of the women he buys sex from is played by Andrea Werhun, who wrote a book about the time she was sex worker. Very meta. Well acted and presented but signifying what? Besides its defence of and support for sex workers. (Theaters: Toronto now, seven other cities including Vancouver, Winnipeg and Ottawa in February) 3 out of 5Â
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January 31st 2025
 The List Jessica Simpson's split from Eric Johnson after years of marriage was a surprise, and now Simpson is seemingly taking some inspiration from Taylor Swift. %23split)
