Steve Pond's Blog, page 30

‘The Lost Bus’ Review: Paul Greengrass Turns Up the Heat in Visceral Wildfire Story

It turns out that Kathryn Bigelow isn’t the only director who has surfaced at this year’s fall festivals to prove just how adept they are at muscular, adrenalized filmmaking. Three days after Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite” premiered at the Venice Film Festival and reasserted her mastery of taut and urgent storytelling, Paul Greengrass came to the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday for the world premiere of “The Lost Bus,” a headlong piece of terrifying real-life action from the director of “United 93,” “Captain Phillips” and three Jason Bourne movies.

The film, which is set amid the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California history, is the latest entry in a trend that began with Greengrass’ first film, 1989’s “Resurrected,” and continued through “Bloody Sunday,” “United 93,” “Green Zone,” “Captain Phillips” and “22 July,” all based on true stories and most driven by virtuoso action sequences.

Greengrass is far from a one-trick pony — “22 July” was remarkably gripping and provocative even though much of it took place in a courtroom — but the best moments of “The Lost Bus” are for the most part the ones that take advantage of his skill at staging large-scale action. In this case, that action is a bus trip through a literal hell on earth, as a scruffy school bus driver teams up with a grade-school teacher to shepherd a group of children through the blazing inferno that consumed the town of Paradise, California in November, 2018.

That way into the story came from Lizzie Johnson’s nonfiction book “Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire,” which Jamie Lee Curtis and Jason Blum brought to Greengrass with the idea that the personal story of those two people and the bus would be the way into an examination of the conflagration.

There’s plenty of backstory before driver Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) and teacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) set off, most of it involving Kevin’s strained relationship with his sullen and angry teenage son Shaun (played by McConaughey’s real-life son, Levi), and his mixed feelings about returning to Paradise, the town where he grew up, in the aftermath of a divorce and the death of his father.

But it’s clear from the moment the film opens with the camera swooping over electric power lines snaking through the forested mountains of Northern California that the heart of “The Lost Bus” is in movement and momentum. From the start, Pal Ulvik Rokseth’s camera is restless; it flies overhead, nudges up against the windows of the bus that Kevin is driving and occasionally dips inside the bus, but there’s an energy that surrounds activity as mundane as dropping off the kids or gassing up the bus.

The driver, it seems is down on his luck and unable to communicate with the son who blames him for the move to this small town so that Kevin can look after his frail mother, who has been a widow since the death of her husband four months earlier. McConaughey looks bedraggled from the start, but he’s got an ailing dog named Elvis and he plays Chris Stapleton’s “Broken Halos” on his radio, so we know at heart he’s a good guy.

There’s some nuance to the way this history is laid out (and also some way-too-obvious foreshadowing, as when son yells, “I f—ing hate you, I wish you were dead”) — but we’re essentially waiting for the camera to return to those power lines, which will spark and break in the high winds and start a series of small fires early one morning.

That’s when the propulsion that has long been a Greengrass trademark kicks in: The scattered fires begin to rage within the first half hour of the movie, and from there it’s just a matter of how long the director can keep the audience immersed in this deadly blaze, with a busload of little children there to remind us just how high the stakes are.

There are times when the fiery landscape is staggering and times when it screams CG, but few directors can rev up a movie and keep it at a fever pitch the way Greengrass can. Everything is in motion: cars, buses, people running and especially the flames; it’s as visceral and breathless as a Bourne movie — if nowhere near as fun, because it really happened and because, as the fire chief says at a news conference, it keeps happening: “Every year the fires get bigger, and there are more of them. We’re being damn fools.”

(Anybody who’d come to Toronto from Los Angeles would no doubt think back to this January and agree.)

The film follows two stories at once: Kevin and Mary taking the children through an increasingly impassable hellscape, and also the efforts of the fire department to do something, anything, to contain the blaze — or, failing, at that, to rescue the people who are trapped.

But the main story is the bus with McConaghey and Ferrera, who spend most of their time smothered in smoke and darkness but still manage to find some touching notes in their characters, at least in the few moments to catch your breath when the frenetic pace slows down and James Newton Howard’s bold music trails off.

The Camp Fire has already been the subject of a number of worthy documentaries, including two named “Fire in Paradise” (one on Netflix and one on Frontline) along with Ron Howard’s “Rebuilding Paradise” and Lucy Walker’s “Bring Your Own Brigade.” But while “The Lost Bus” doesn’t feel as timely as those earlier nonfiction films, it finds a new way into the story and gives a master filmmaker a sobering way to showcase his formidable skills.

Apple Original Films will release “The Lost Bus” in theaters on Sept. 19 and on Apple TV+ on Oct. 3.

The post ‘The Lost Bus’ Review: Paul Greengrass Turns Up the Heat in Visceral Wildfire Story appeared first on TheWrap.

‘The Man in My Basement’ Review: Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins Play Mind Games in a Scattered Horror Film

If there is one thing that should be a rule in movies and in life, it’s this: if a deceptively friendly Willem Dafoe comes knocking at your door with a creepy smile to offer you a suspiciously large amount of cash to rent your basement, say no, lock the doors, throw away his card, and never speak to him again.

Unfortunately for Corey Hawkins‘ troubled Charles in Nadia Latif’s “The Man in My Basement,” he does not heed all the alarm bells going off in his head and proceeds to let Dafoe’s mystery man in. The reasons for this poor decision soon reveal themselves as having to do with more practical motivations — namely that Charles is broke and needs the money. It then shifts into something more existentially fraught: Racism, history, morality, and the meaning of life itself.

It’s a promising setup with some dark thrills to be had. Hawkins and Dafoe go at it just as the film tries to sink its teeth into deeper ideas. Unfortunately, this pseudo-horror film very quickly runs out of steam, and out of any deeper meaning. 

From the moment we meet Charles, as he drinks with his friends and starts stirring things up when one of them tries to show him tough love by encouraging him to get his life together, Hawkins is able to authentically capture the many competing emotions that are pushing him to the edge. He’s grieving a recent loss while also dealing with the repercussions of his own actions that have alienated him from most of the people around him. But the film soon reveals it is as tortured as Charles, twisting itself into knots and losing sight of any genuine tension by throwing everything it possibly can at the wall. 

Based on the novel of the same name by Walter Mosley, who also co-wrote the screenplay, there’s so much going on in “The Man in My Basement.” On screen, cycling through the same sequence of nightmare scare after nightmare scare, one realizes how little weight these sequences. Each empty bump in the night lands with a dull thud. Even a terrifying dog that becomes crucial to the film has a bark that’s worse than its bite. 

The film is not without some potentially interesting provocations, though there are just as many empty sequences built around shock for the sake of it. From a bizarre masturbation scene to a whole lot of Dafoe and fecal matter (these are thankfully separate), the film has plenty that may make you squirm — or squint at what’s hiding in the darkness. But you would be better served by going straight to the source — the novel itself — instead of a scattered interpretation. 

Read all of our Toronto Film Festival coverage here.

The post ‘The Man in My Basement’ Review: Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins Play Mind Games in a Scattered Horror Film appeared first on TheWrap.

Bill Maher Says ‘The Knives Are Out’ for RFK Jr. and ‘I’m With the Knives’

Bill Maher has tried in recent months to say nice things about anti-vaccines conspiracy theorist and secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but on Friday’s “Real Time,” he revealed those days are over.

“The knives are out for Bobby Kennedy, and I gotta say, I’m with the knives,” Maher said.

That comment came at the end of his monologue, during which he discussed a lot of recent Donald Trump-related news, which led him to joke that the president has so thoroughly wrecked things that the CDC has been renamed to just the thing the D stands for.

First though, he brought up Friday’s new jobs report, which was not good.

“There’s a new jobs report. Only 22,000 jobs. 22,000? Diddy hired more than that for a party,” Maher joked.

After the report, Maher continued, “everyone was worried about their job, especially the guy who wrote the Report.”

This was of course a reference to last month, when Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after after the organization issued a disappointing jobs report. Trump falsely claimed that the report was “rigged,” and he’s nominated a loyalist for the job who, it was reported Friday, has a history of bigoted social media posts.

But back to Maher, who briefly brought up the ICE raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia, and then moved on to Trump’s attempt to illegally change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

“We are at war with a lot of people. We are. We’re at war with so many people. We’re changing the name of the Department of Defense at the Department of War… It was originally called the Department of War under George Washington, yeah. And then at some point we changed to the Department of Defense, so it doesn’t look like we’re looking for one. Trump going back to the Department of War. He said it sends a message that we are ‘fierce warriors.’ And then he went back to his Twitter spat with Rosie O’Donnell,” Maher joked.

Then Maher brought up the military attack on Venezuelan citizens Trump claims were drug smugglers (likely a violation of international and American law).

“They said it was involved in the drug trade. Okay? There are countries in the region that are involved in the drug trade. I’m in Mexico, obviously Colombia. I seem to remember people calling cocaine Peruvian marching powder. Okay, so. But Venezuela, not one of them. But Venezuela is our only true rival in the Miss Universe contest,” Maher joked. “We’ve won it eight times. They’ve won it seven times. This is something I think the President is very interested in. This is why he hates Venezuela so much they stole our pageant secrets, like, like, just, how do you make a 19 year old look like she’s 40?”

Then Maher brought up the meeting between several global despots during the week, as well as China’s huge military parade. “Trump tweeted out, it looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China. What do you mean? We white man,” Maher joked. “I love when he forgets he’s the president and just reacts to everything on the world stage like, oh, look what happened.”

“So to recap, China had the scariest military parade ever. And America is changing our stationary, the Department of Defense is now the Department of War. Oh, also the Justice Department will now be the Bureau of revenge. The State Department is now just Marco Rubio [at] AOL, and the Centers for Disease Control is now just disease. Oh, yeah, but the knives are out for Bobby Kennedy, and I gotta say, I’m with the knives,” Maher continued. Then he took a brief look at Kennedy’s congressional appearance this week, before starting the show proper.

The post Bill Maher Says ‘The Knives Are Out’ for RFK Jr. and ‘I’m With the Knives’ appeared first on TheWrap.

‘The Man in My Basement’ Director Nadia Latif on How Pandemic Delays Became a ‘Blessing’ for the Film

Veteran theatre director Nadia Latif, who makes her feature directorial debut with the adaptation of 2004 Walter Mosley novel “The Man in my Basement,” tells TheWrap that production delays due to the pandemic and the double strikes actually improved the final film.

“We were stopped by the pandemic. We were stopped by the strikes,” Latif said. “But actually that in itself was, I think, a blessing, because we got to just spend more time with the material, with music, with art, with films, with books.”

In “The Man in My Basement,” Nadia Latif’s adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel, when a mysterious man (Willem Dafoe) approaches Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) to rent his basement for a generous sum, Blakey is drawn into a chilling reality involving his own family’s hidden history.

The extra preparation time allowed Latif to send research materials to her cast. Dafoe praised the approach as crucial for understanding his character’s perspective.

“All the stuff that you sent me in that period when I knew I was going to do it was beautiful,” Dafoe said. “It was like an education for me to approximate what my character’s point of view might be, which is not from my experience. I’m not sure I would have known how to get the proper point of view.”

For Hawkins, the extended prep helped him connect with the character’s stillness and internal struggles. “His stillness was really challenging to me,” Hawkins added. “She definitely gave me the confidence to go forth and be uncomfortable. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

By the time production finally commences, Dafoe and Hawkins were ready to go.

“When we turned up, I felt like you guys all knew those characters really well,” Latif. “You were just like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been sitting with this for a minute.'”

The post ‘The Man in My Basement’ Director Nadia Latif on How Pandemic Delays Became a ‘Blessing’ for the Film appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Steve’ Review: Cillian Murphy’s Netflix Drama Is a Difficult Watch With Strong Performances

When we first meet the title character in Tim Mielants’ chaotic drama “Steve,” he’s sitting down for a recorded interview about Stanton Wood, the private reform school for teenage boys where he serves as head teacher. With a heavy sigh, Steve (Cillian Murphy), who has devoted his life, blood, sweat and tears to the academy, lets the audience know exactly how he feels at this very moment.

“Steve” had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it received a warm reception from festivalgoers who might have expected a film that resembles “Dangerous Minds” or “Dead Poets Society.” What they got instead was a lesson in humility at a school that isn’t lucky enough to have inspirational figures like Michelle Pfeiffer or Robin Williams converting delinquent students into civil members of society. Instead, they have a secret alcoholic and possible drug addict dealing with the weight of a reform school on his shoulders while attempting to forget his past mistakes on the way to a potential better future as an educator.

Murphy plays Steve with vigor and determination, though there’s an underlying issue at hand that isn’t clear from the outset. As head teacher, Steve is the boss of an all-boys school dedicated to the rehabilitation of Britain’s rebellious youth. On one particularly frantic Thursday, Stanton Wood is invaded by a film crew looking to make a documentary about the school — and expose it to UK taxpayers who might wish their money was spent elsewhere.

Along with his Deputy, Amanda (a markedly subdued Tracey Ullman), Steve runs the school and everyone who resides there full-time. The dormitories are stacked with uncleaned rooms, the classrooms are in total disarray, and the large student body seems to have the run of a school in desperate need of a mental health renovation.

At the center of the action is Shy (Jay Lycurgo), a teenager who spends his mornings getting stoned and dancing in a field before the school day begins. Shy is cut off from his family, bullied by his classmates, and must now deal with a filmmaking team hellbent on revealing all of the cracks within Stanton Wood’s walls.

When asked the pivotal question posed to all the students in the documentary within the film, “Describe yourself in three words,” Shy’s answer is the unfortunate, “Depressed, angry, and bored.”

The young actors who make up the campus community at Stanton Wood create a disorderly and violent environment in “Steve,” a film that isn’t exactly sure what its message is. A reinterpretation of the novel “Shy” by Max Porter, Mielants’ movie takes place over the course of one day and night at Stanton Wood. But while the film’s perspective is Steve’s, it would benefit the audience more to stick to Shy’s viewpoint instead.

Shy and Steve are handling their own internal battles separately, Shy by signifying to the outside world his suicidal ambitions, and Steve resorting to the bottle between classes. Both are preoccupied with their next course of action, yet if they communicated their troubles frequently and openly to those around them who care, they might find solace in each other’s company. This school needs a good kick in the ass, but Steve, while well-intentioned, is clearly not the man for the job anymore.

Similarly, “Steve” is a powerful film with emotional performances from Murphy and Lycurgo, specifically, but it never rises to its own ambitions. Tim Mielants’ direction, though chaotic and messy by design, spirals out of control with sweeping camera movements and extended oners that don’t seem to serve the story.

An impending permanent school closure wreaks havoc on the hearts and minds of Steve, Amanda, and the rest of Stanton Woods’ teachers. The young actors who play the antagonizing students make for a great ensemble, bringing levity to a dire situation, all caught on film for the documentarians visiting their school to put on record. But “Steve,” despite its principled ideas and the disarray they cause, never reaches the potential for inspiration, nor does it try to be that kind of film.

Instead, the audience at TIFF was surprised to learn that some lectures don’t come with a meaningful lesson in the end. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, they come with outstanding performances from lead actors amidst a loud, discombobulated premise, unsure of its point of view. Flawed, yes, but ever so powerful by the time the credits roll.

The film will be streamed globally on Netflix starting October 3.

The post ‘Steve’ Review: Cillian Murphy’s Netflix Drama Is a Difficult Watch With Strong Performances appeared first on TheWrap.

John Early Says He Wrote ‘Maddie’s Secret’ in a Fury Almost Out of Necessity: ‘The Blindness Was Deliberate’

John Early’s directorial debut “Maddie’s Secret” stars the comedian as the titular character in his own John Waters-esque dramatic comedy.

Early plays innocent dreamer and food influencer Maddie, and he told TheWrap his portrayal of the wide-eyed ingenue was not a commentary on trans-visibility instead a grounded comedy in which he happens to play a woman.

“To me, the joke was never that I was playing a woman. The joke was playing an ingenue,” Early told TheWrap at the Toronto Internal Film Festival Friday. “I understand that there might be some sensitivity around that, but that’s part of the risk of this movie.”

“There’s a lot of sensitive subject matter in this movie, and it’s almost by design,” he added. “Because of that, it puts a gun to my head as a performer and a director to take it seriously.”

Maddie’s love for food is also a curse as the influencer secretly struggles with an eating disorder while navigating the challenges of growing online fame and her chaotic personal life.

“Maddie’s Secret” premiered at TIFF this week, and Early said he appreciated the audiences embrace of the tonal shifts in the film.

“They didn’t feel, or at least it seemed they didn’t feel, betrayed by some of the turns, the tonal shifts in the movie,” Early said.

The comedian and actor shot the film in February. His cast lauded the first-time director for his quick and efficient work, but several said they never had any doubts.

“I remember John emailing me or calling, trying to be like, ‘I think it’s really going to be good,’ trying to convince me in a way,” Vanessa Bayer said, laughing off the fact that Early assumed she wouldn’t approve. “I would trust John so implicitly, and I just think he’s so brilliant.”

Kate Berlant applauded Early’s process, saying it seemed as if the film came together almost “magically.”

“We’re making it, and it was aggressively fast in a way that I think really served the process because there wasn’t time, and there probably shouldn’t be time to, really rip it apart and obsess,” Berlant said.

The director-star added that for years he had been waiting for someone else to grant him an opportunity such as this one, and eventually he realized he had to make it himself.

The film took inspiration from Waters’ relationship with Divine, Harris Glenn Milstead. Early said he wanted to “be Divine,” the character actress and drag queen, and he finally took matters into his own hands. The comedian noted though that with this project he did not overanalyze the film and instead worked quickly to bring it to life.

“I wrote this in a fury, and I think the blindness was deliberate,” Early said. “If I had slowed down, I may have become self-conscious and stopped and been scared of it.”

The post John Early Says He Wrote ‘Maddie’s Secret’ in a Fury Almost Out of Necessity: ‘The Blindness Was Deliberate’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Mike Johnson Ridiculed for Claiming Trump Was an FBI Informant Against Jeffrey Epstein: ‘South Park Is Gonna Have a Field Day’

The internet did not let House Speaker Mike Johnson off the hook Friday after he claimed President Donald Trump was an FBI informant in the case against Jeffrey Epstein.

“It’s been misrepresented,” Johnson claimed. “He is not saying what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil and he believes that himself.”

“He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down,” the speaker added.

Watch the exchange here:

Yeah this is real. Mike Johnson said Trump was an FBI informant in the Epstein case.

[image or embed]

— Nick (derogatory) (@slothropsmap.bsky.social) September 5, 2025 at 2:40 PM

Several social media users subtweeted videos of Johnson’s Friday remarks calling it “bullsh-t.” Another user said he was getting dizzy from the amount of spin the Republican party has attempted to put on Trump’s association with the convicted sex offender and child molester.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Trump’s name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files that have yet to be released from his Department of Justice. Speaker Johnson even urged Republican representatives to vote against a petition to release the Epstein files, siding with the president.

One social media user wrote in an X post that “South Park,” the animated series that has spoofed the president persistently since its return in July, will have a field day with this claim.

For more social reactions, keep reading:

South Park is gonna have a field day in a couple weeks

— Anthony Sandford (@AnthonySandford) September 5, 2025

But how can you be an informant if it’s all a hoax?
They’re starting to may me dizzy pic.twitter.com/qYjsFveG2y

— PJ (@cincy_pj) September 5, 2025

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! That’s their fucking spin? Trump was an FBI informant against Epstein? Okay, shit-for-brains, I’ll play. He was an informant in exchange for what? To not be prosecuted for pedophilia himself?Didn’t really think that one through, did you assholes?

— DCLascelle (@dclascelle.bsky.social) September 5, 2025 at 3:28 PM

How they felt coming up with that one pic.twitter.com/YOXRRYy91E

— alexjm (@alexjmingolla) September 5, 2025

This is such bullshit lmaooo

— Tobi Qadri (@TobiQadri) September 5, 2025

The post Mike Johnson Ridiculed for Claiming Trump Was an FBI Informant Against Jeffrey Epstein: ‘South Park Is Gonna Have a Field Day’ appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Charlie Harper’ Filmmakers on Setting Romantic Drama During Obama Era: ‘Such a Different Time’

First-time filmmakers Mac Eldridge and Tom Dean, who are making their feature directorial debut at TIFF with the non-linear romantic film “Charlie Harper,” are betting that audiences are ready for a nostalgic return to the optimism of 2008.

“Charlie Harper” centers on the complicated relationship between Charlie (Nick Robinson) and Harper (Emilia Jones) and unfolds in a non-linear way, illustrating the shifts in how they relate to one another over time. The romantic drama, which spans 15 years, is set during Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory and according to co-director and writer Dean, most won’t remember that era.

“It was such a different time compared to what we’re in now, that I think a big chunk of the audience that’ll see this movie won’t remember that era, and then we get to tell them a little bit about it through the stories that we get to tell,” Dean tells TheWrap.

“There’s a little throwaway line when Harper gets her job and they’re all partying at a bar, and one of the characters just casually throws out this line of ‘history doesn’t happen anymore,'” Eldridge added. “It was the sentiment of the post-Cold War 1990s, the end of history era that that generation was a little bit convinced they were kind of on this frictionless track toward a utopia.”

In her review of the film, TheWrap’s Elizabeth Weistzman wrote: “’So what’s the whole story?’ someone asks early in ‘Charlie Harper,’ a gently appealing romance from debut directors Mac Eldridge and Tom Dean. If the answer they come up with isn’t exactly unexpected, the path they take in getting there does feel fully sincere.”

The film’s non-linear structure is also a nod to Christopher Nolan. “We talked about Christopher Nolan’s ‘Following’ a lot, and the way that that plays with time,” Eldridge said.

The post ‘Charlie Harper’ Filmmakers on Setting Romantic Drama During Obama Era: ‘Such a Different Time’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Barbie Ferreira Says ‘Mile End Kicks’ Director Chandler Levack Was Her ‘Canadian Compass’

Barbie Ferreira never had to put on an accent before “Mile End Kicks.”

The “Euphoria” actor stars in the autobiographical rom com from writer/director Chandler Levack. In the film, Ferreira plays a version of Levack herself, who worked as a music critic before she was ever premiering films at Toronto International Film Festival. Unlike Ferreira, who grew up in New York and New Jersey, Levack is a Canadian born and raised.

“I was so excited,” Ferreira told TheWrap. “It was my first time really playing someone that was just not culturally, at all, a part of me. Also, the fact that I was playing Grace in Montreal was really interesting, because I’m also not familiar in Montreal, so I got to bring a sort of wide-eyed joy and curiosity to Montreal that was very authentic. But I loved it.”

“I loved observing the Canadians,” Ferreira joked.

Ferreira and Levack were joined by “Mile End Kicks” cast members Stanley Simons, Devon Bostick and Juliette Gariépy to speak with TheWrap’s Joe McGovern at TIFF 50 on Friday. The festival marks a sort of homecoming for the Toronto-born filmmaker Levack on several fronts: like “Mile End Kicks,” both her first narrative short film (“We Forgot to Break Up”) and her feature debut (“I Like Movies”) premiered at TIFF in 2017 and 2022 respectively.

“Mile End Kicks” is based on Levack’s own life, with Ferreira starring as the writer/director’s stand-in (here named Grace Pine). The film follows Grace as she moves to Montreal in the hopes of writing a book on the iconic Alanis Morissette album “Jagged Little Pill” — only to become the publicist of an indie band with romantic ties to two of its members.

“I wrote the script the first draft in 2015 so I’ve been working on this one for a decade,” Levack said. “I was a music critic in my early 20s and moved to Montreal in the summer of 2011, and it was such an exciting time to be there. The music scene was kind of at this pivotal cresting moment with these underground concerts with like Grimes and Mac DeMarco and Tops and Sean Nicholas Savage, and so I think that just felt like such a cinematic memory. I kind of wanted to recreate it.”

And recreate it she did. The film has drawn comparisons to “Almost Famous,” another autobiographical story of a young music journalist becoming embedded in the world they admire. Like with that early-2000s Cameron Crowe feature, Ferreira had the benefit of learning about her character from the source — the film’s writer/director.

“I was literally shadowing her. She was my Canadian compass,” Ferreira said. “It was really cool to have a collaboration where you get to have a point of reference of where the character really should be. Of course, we fictionalized it and whatnot, but it was just really cool to have that.”

The post Barbie Ferreira Says ‘Mile End Kicks’ Director Chandler Levack Was Her ‘Canadian Compass’ appeared first on TheWrap.

‘The Choral’ Review: Ralph Fiennes Can’t Save Overly Sincere, Stuffy WWI Drama

It’s almost impossible not to be won over by an actor like the great Ralph Fiennes. Just recently, he’s shown that he can bring gentle gravitas to a film about cardinals fighting over the future of their church just as he does a post-apocalyptic zombie movie that ends up becoming a moving meditation on death itself. He can be wearied yet witty, both melancholic and mischievous, all with a critical change in tone or expression drawing you in. Unfortunately, the meandering historical drama “The Choral” manages to do the impossible and almost entirely squander all of his talents as an actor. Despite gesturing towards big questions surrounding life, death and music, it’s a stiff, oddly lifeless film where even its beautiful singing manages to fall flat. 

This is not the fault of Fiennes. Indeed, there are moments where you can almost forgive the lackluster film surrounding him when he gets a moment to take center stage. The trouble is that the longer “The Choral” attempts to hold a note without him, the more you realize how hollow a work this is. It’s a film that’s about World War I, a choir attempting to carry on despite it all and the looming specter of death that will consume an entire generation. The film is oddly nervous about being too serious, undercutting itself with one-note humor that buries its most promising emotional through lines.

Directed by Nicholas Hytner (“The Madness of King George”) with little depth to any of the visuals from a shallow script by his previous collaborator Alan Bennett, it ostensibly centers on the British choir director Dr. Guthrie (Fiennes) who is brought on to assemble a team for a production of Edward Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius.” The challenge is that many of those who were previously involved have been called to serve, leaving the choir without the voices necessary to perform. Thus, Guthrie, who is often viewed with scrutiny by some in the community as he spent time pursuing music in Germany, brings in those who might otherwise be overlooked.

The entire cast surrounding Fiennes is also underserved. We get brief slivers of information about each new character’s respective backstory, only for the film to flit onto the next thing, never once letting us sit with anything for too long.   

One could perhaps understand this if Guthrie were to become the focal point and ultimately require greater time in the narrative, though even he gets lost in the maudlin machinations of the film. We get some insight into how he is fearful about losing someone close to him and, seemingly at one point, may have indeed had his worst fears realized. Except the film never sees this through or seems interested in sitting with this potential grief for more than a few scattered moments. The film moves on with so little thought or care given back to what seems like a critical element, that it almost feels as though something has been removed that was supposed to be there.

By the time it all draws to a halting close, all the ways that “The Choral” strained to be an inspiring, inoffensively feel-good dramedy of sorts prove to be its undoing. What should be a moving portrait of community coming together through music as the horrors of the world loom just out of frame is painted with such a broad brush that you never feel any of the impact. Despite all the darkness that lingers, the film is neat to the point of being insubstantial and without anything meaningful to grab hold of. It keeps its audience at such a perpetual distance that, when it attempts to draw you in close for a final shot that feels close to confronting something more, it’s too late for both the movie and the characters to leave a mark before both are whisked away.  

“The Choral” opens in theaters this Christmas.

Read all of our Toronto Film Festival coverage here.

The post ‘The Choral’ Review: Ralph Fiennes Can’t Save Overly Sincere, Stuffy WWI Drama appeared first on TheWrap.