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The slate is full again but here's an extra-pointer. The great HBO series Succession winds up its 3rd season on Sunday. Last week's episode was the best in a while, maybe because series creator Jesse Armstrong did the writing again. That's a good sign for the recently announced 4th season.
Its realistic take on the media business and one rich family has been a big hit and CRAVE is streaming all the episodes. Want more? Check out some similarly authentic films below, among the purely entertaining ones.
West Side Story: 4 stars
Don't Look Up: 2½
The Forever Prisoner: 4
Writing With Fire: 4½
Drive My Car: 4
The Boathouse: 3½
The Unforgivable: 3
The Hating Game: 2½
WEST SIDE STORY: I still don't see why it had to be remade. The original 1961 version is so close to perfect and won 10 Academy Awards to prove it. But Steven Spielberg has done a good job reviving it, updating and making it more inclusive. All the Puerto Ricans are actually played by Latinos. Sometimes they speak Spanish without subtitles. The two street gangs are not just fighting for turf, they're under pressure: their neighbourhood is being demolished in a rush of urban renewal. The story sits solidly in what was going on in New York in the 1950s, and it's vibrant on screen. Not as emotionally involving as I wanted, but colourful and energetic.
Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler are the new Tony and Maria. They're a sweet couple, not all that passionate in this version. She's fiery at times; he's a bit bland (but so was Richard Beymer in the original). Their characters are filled out, though. He's just out of jail for almost killing someone in a fight. “I'm scared of what I was,” he says. So when Riff (Mike Faist) tries to lure him back into gang life, he resists. Maria tended to her sick father for five years and now has to learn to be more than dutiful. That includes defying her controlling brother Bernardo (David Alvarez) and his girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose), whose glowing performance may be best here. She centres that dance number America with all its irony and social commentary intact, but staged outside on the street this time, like a community statement.
There are many changes like that, big and small. Some to the songs and choreography, some to the characters. For instance, Rita Moreno, who won one of those Oscars back then, is back in a new role. She's running Doc's drugstore, essentially filling in for him in the story. Fans of the musical will notice those details. For most of us, grittier fight scenes and stronger social statements power this newer take on the Romeo and Juliet story. (International Village, 5th Avenue, Marine Gateway and many suburban theatres.) 4 out of 5
DON'T LOOK UP: The very busy Adam McKay strikes again. From Anchorman to The Big Short and Succession (just winding up a third season on HBO and CRAVE), we've seen him develop as a trenchant social critic with a high entertainment sensibility. Here he rounds up a powerhouse cast and takes a wry look at the refusal of media, government and people to listen to the warnings. Climate change? Maybe, but here it's an approaching asteroid that a grad student (Jennifer Lawrence) and an astronomer (Leonardo DiCaprio) discovered will bring an "extinction-level event" when it hits the Earth and try to tell people about it.
That includes the U.S. president (Meryl Streep), who is dismissive; a TV talk show where the hosts (Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry) are more into chuckling about trivia; and a cellphone capitalist (Mark Rylance) who sees an opportunity. Also in the large cast: the ubiquitous Timothee Chalamet and the superstar singer Ariana Grande. Almost nobody listens because DiCaprio mumbles scientific jargon and Lawrence gets overexcited. She needs media training is the main reaction. The targets are easy and the dark satire doesn't always work, but what the film says, particularly about some news media, is relevant. (Rio, Landmark Theatres in New West and Surrey, plus Victoria, Kelowna and other locations in B.C. On Netflix Dec. 24.) 2½ out of 5
THE FOREVER PRISONER: Here's a new one from Alex Gibney, maybe the toughest documentary filmmaker working these days. His last one was about the pharmaceutical company that helped start the opioid crisis. Here he takes up the case of Abu Zubaydah, the first man the United States captured after the 9/11 twin towers attack and has been held in Guantanamo detention ever since, almost 20 years.
He hasn't been charged with anything or allowed to state his case. He's a Palestinian who liked what Bin Laden had to say, but wasn't accepted to join his gang. The U.S. says he was part of the attack, knew about other plots and refused to talk. They kept trying though, with harsher and harsher methods and eventually a major policy change. Torture like waterboarding and sleep deprivation was allowed and reinterpreted. It's not torture and sometimes necessary.
The film details how that came about, often by interviewing key people, including the psychologist who developed these techniques of “enhanced interrogation.” Also, an author who wrote about them but whose book was heavily redacted by the CIA. Gibney sued to get an uncut version. He also studied drawings made by the prisoner to get his story, and explains how the FBI got results interrogating him but the CIA didn't when they took over. Very fascinating stuff. (On CRAVE, but you have to search for it.) 4 out of 5
WRITING WITH FIRE: Some months ago, a documentary from Afghanistan showed us a news service run entirely by women. That was before the Taliban came back, and I've no idea what happened to them. Here's a similar film from India with just as many impediments in the way of journalists. They're all Dalits, from the “untouchable” class that's even below the five-level caste system there. We see them in action, largely through the work of three editors or reporters. One poses blunt questions, another argues with a politician in a national election, a third states the philosophy that journalism and democracy need each other.
The agency, now 15 years old and recently expanded into the digital age with a YouTube Channel, covers hard stories. Rapes. Deaths at illegal Mafia-run mines. Domestic violence. Government promises that don't come true (toilets for all, for instance). We see the reporters stand up to the men responsible, who seem to be under the impression they're just ineffectual, would-be journalists. Not so. The YouTube numbers keep rising; 151 million views at last mention. And there's an editors' mission statement of “trying to change society.” Inspiring. Fans of Canada's National Observer, especially, are very likely to be interested. (Vancity Theatre. After a short run, there's one more screening: Sunday evening. Maybe it'll come back.) 4½ out of 5
DRIVE MY CAR: Welcome back this mesmerizing and moving film from Japan. It was here at the film festival, has been heavily praised at many others (three awards at Cannes) and is sure to be a contender at the Academy Awards. It's long but doesn't feel like three hours because it is so engrossing. And cleverly constructed.
A theatre director and sometimes actor (Nishijima Hidetoshi) accepts a job to stage the Chekhov play Uncle Vanya for a regional festival (in Hiroshima). He goes because he's still grieving the loss of his wife, a writer for television who often told him the plot lines she was working on. For legal reasons, the festival won't let him drive his own car and assigns a young woman (Tôko Miura) to be his chauffeur. Bit by bit, they tell each other their own stories. But there's more. We see the play take shape during auditions, table reads and rehearsals. And we feel it connect to his own life through a cassette tape he listens to in his car and to which he speaks Vanya's lines. Chekhov “drags out the real you,” he says. A young actor and TV star with a scandal in his history (Masaki Okada) is also affected. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's film is intelligent and artful about storytelling and knowing yourself. (Vancity Theatre.) 4 out of 5
THE BOATHOUSE: Creeping dread and suspicion is what this Canadian film delivers, and very well at that. The water in the lake is roiling to set the mood. The sky is dark, and lights seem to come on in the boathouse at night. The mood is set, and we're effectively drawn into a mystery that confronts a nanny (Michaela Kurimsky) who comes to a summer cottage in northern Ontario to watch over two children. One, a teen boy, is said to have been “a handful” ever since his mother suddenly “took off” about six months earlier.
What made her leave is the question here. Was it the boy, as his sister claims? Was the dad at fault? He (Alan Van Sprang) is a controlling type. And why do two people think they recognize the nanny when she's never been there before. And why was this nanny chosen when she had a history with the woman? She studied music with her. The suspicions build with a nice edgy feel and lead to a logical but twisted outcome. Director Hannah Cheesman and screenwriter Elizabeth Stewart did well with this one. (Vancity Theatre now, VIFF Connect in a week. Part of the Impact Series) 3½ out of 5
THE UNFORGIVABLE: This is unusually potent for a Netflix original, but then, it does have the strong presence of star and co-producer Sandra Bullock and an acclaimed and award-winning series from England of which it is a remake. The original writer, Sally Wainwright, is also one of the producers, so you can believe the transition. I'm impressed that the director is Nora Fingscheidt from Germany. Two years ago, she sent us a terrific film called The System Crasher. This new one is set in Seattle but was filmed in Burnaby.
Bullock plays a woman who's just out of jail after 20 years for murdering a cop. That history will forever hang over her and hobble whatever she tries to do. First get a job. Only in a fish plant, smelly and yucky. Then try to find her younger sister who she took care of when they lived alone in a farmhouse when their parents died. When the sheriff came to evict them in a foreclosure, he was shot, she went to jail and sis was adopted.
Now a lawyer (Vincent D'Onofrio) accepts her plea and agrees to help her find the girl. His wife (Viola Davis) doesn't like that and a friend at the fish plant (Jon Bernthal) does, until he learns more about her. It's a tangled story, largely about reputations that stick and the travails of working with bureaucracy. And then a surprise. It's all too rushed but quite absorbing. (Netflix.) 3 out of 5
THE HATING GAME: Here's a romantic comedy that millennials might enjoy. It has a bite about office life and a working girls' story before settling into the breezy romp you expect. Maybe need. At the centre, there's a competition for a promotion at a publishing house with two distinct sides. An artful publisher merged with one that favours pulp, romance and sports fiction and the two personalities haven't blended yet.
Similarly, two employees (Lucy Hale and Austin Stowell) sitting opposite each other and very different go for the same job. They often draw complaints about their noisy arguing. He's controlling. She's mild but judgmental. The executive from the crasser side of the merger calls her “a nitwit in a push-up bra.” Can she and her rival possibly get together, as the genre requires? A quick kiss in an elevator isn't enough, but there's the philosophy she expounds in her narration: that love and hate feel the same in the sensations they bring on. It's from a popular novel by Sally Thorne, which is high on Oprah's list of romance novels. The film has snappy dialogue, charm and is easy to take. (Available now “on all VOD and Digital providers,” says the distributor.) 2½ out of 5
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