By Anne Brodie
The Martin Scorsese-produced doc Beatles ’64 is a wonderful holiday treat for music lovers and historians. Of course, he did it with a little help from his friends Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, the surviving members of the most influential rock band ever. John Lennon was assassinated in 1980 and George Harrison died of cancer in 2001. The Beatles recorded and toured from 1960 and began a slow breakup in 1970 that became official in 1974. In a short decade the foursome blasted forth to become the first ever global rock stars, unprecedented and still unmatched. Their effect was enormous, changing culture in the UK and then North America. Scorsese focuses on The Beatles introduction to American audiences in 1964 and the landmark Ed Sullivan Show grabbing 73M viewers. The fans awaited the Fab Four at the airports to greet the “mop tops” with frenzied screams and adoration at every stop. Fascinating interviews with fans who waited at the airports,with tour PR and logisticians, and those who felt changed. One woman said that fans screamed “because the love came out of a non-verbal place” citing primitive eroticism. Interviews with Smokey Robinson, Ronnie Spector and photographer Harry Benson and David Lynch offer their insights. One man says “Music stops the bleeding. My father never recovered from (the recent) JFK assassination but we kids did… (because of the Beatles). Wow. Pure joy. Streams on Disney Debut today.
Character actor phenom Dale Dickey does her finest work yet in an electrifying performance as Ann, a woman fighting for her life and her granddaughter’s. The G is a twisted biblical fable that opens on someone’s mouth, gasping for air, buried under desert sand as two men keep shoveling. Horrifying. Meanwhile, her “granddaughter” Emma (Romane Dennis) is looking for her knowing she’s in danger. The two are committed to retrieving trust funds stolen from them by a guardian who is well-protected by his hired assassins. It’s ok says Ann – “I am ruthless. You have to be”. In the course of their hellish journey, Ann shoots a man in the crotch, and another in the head, and stabs a man repeatedly in the stomach while Emma is forced to her parent’s house where mystery men shoot her father in the face. She’s also subject to death threats and witnesses her male friend brutally dispatched. They are in desperate, evil territory, neck deep in violence, deceit, and fear, but they are alive and “ruthless”. And Emma’s a fast learner. As awful as this story is, it spotlights male dominance, misogyny, and violence that nearly ruins two women. But they stand up for themselves, become their own best defense and mete out justice, or try to. It bears repeating that Dickey, a masterful artist, is superb, an ageing warrior protecting her loved one at any cost with one of the most expressive faces onscreen these days…wow. The G is deeply shocking and inspiring and do not miss Dickey’s performance! In theatres Nov 29.
Prime Video’s fun new series, The Sticky, inspired by the real-life Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist is a complete, looney joy lead by the incomparable Margo Martindale as Ruth Landry, the main conspirator. In 2011 and 2012, a handful of maple syrup farmers stole around 3,000 tonnes of syrup from their Association storage facility in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Quebec. The syrup is strategically stored against bad crops and valued, back then, at $18.7 million. The heavily Fargo-esque series set in the snow blasted rural community and Jamie Lee Curtis who executive produced, supported by a mostly Canadian cast that brings the dastardly deed to its full comic glory. Ruth has a dying husband she cares for, she’s an exec with the local maple syrup association and is a respected community member. When she learns there is only one security guard and no CCTV at the facility, she teams up with Boston mobster Mike (Chris Diamantopoulos) who keeps falling over, and Remy the security guard (Guillaume Cyr) whose friend was found dead submerged in a syrup barrel. Remy does meditation and yoga while driving – not the brightest but both with strong motives. Ruth’s desperate for money to keep her husband at home and sticking it to the local town leader/thug who’s been ruining the farmers in his zeal to accumulate land. Done in a wonderfully acerbic comic style, funny situations emerge like trying to open the storage unit door, and the ways Curtis’ crippled mob boss verbally decimates the team and swings her cane around proclaiming “Canada is fun!”. Lightning quick episodes are tremendous fun and there are only six but within, gem after gem of writing, directing, performance and whimsy, beguilingly weird, cornpone with a very big tongue in cheek. A must see.
What fun! The genre-mixing anthology Inside No. 9 is a hoot – satirical, dark and disturbing and yet hilarious, sinister, and oh so human. Each episode of the series takes us inside a series of No. 9 addresses where most peculiar things take place, events and things bearing the cursed number. Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s award-winner is now available, all nine seasons on Prime Video. Ep 1 S9 takes us inside subway car, No. 9, where a group of strangers in inconvenienced by a power outage, sitting in the dark together as tensions reach a boiling point. Auxiliary lights come on, but do little to tamp down ill will of the trapped. The homeless, a drag queen, a conservative couple, a lone man dealing with intense anger issues, waiting to boil over. No. 9 Mulberry Close shows us a neighbourhood in full paranoid anxiety and we see various confrontations, all in silence as our POV is a home security camera. Fascinating! And Eddie Marsan a disturbed, delusional piano tuner who is called to a cursed mansion to work on an instrument being used by a composer to create his Ninth Symphony. Marsan sees himself as something grand, things happens and he must dig a grave. The series piece de resistance, the show’s final episode, pits the creators against once another! And now that Season 9 is completed, Pemberton and Shearsmith say bye bye. Britbox.
Colman Domingo’s character’s supreme self assurance and cool demeanour are challenged in Netflix’ gripping new series The Madness. He’s CNN commentator Muncie Daniels and he has enemies, as famous, opinionated people often do. And he’s a man of colour with significant power to persuade his audience, which may have caused resentment in unenlightened viewers. He knows his stuff, as a former politicaian he has dirt on those in power. However, he’s lost his work mojo and his values and seeks to restart himself by writing the next great American novel. He takes to his lake house in The Poconos – starring Ontario cottage county – where he hopes for peace and quiet, nature’s healing balm so he can reclaim his true self. But its not to be. The power goes off, the man next is decapitated, then another is murdered next door; and it so happens that he was a well-known white supremacist. Daniels is immediately under suspicion and flees. His life is changed forever, that power gone, and smug self satisfaction, gone, and he’s desperate, a fugitive, and an innocent man. He realises he can’t stay with his wife and son, or his grown daughter as they would be at risk. He’s all over the news, as he runs – where? A mysterious figure called Brother 14 leader of a group of racist anarchists Profane Discord and his gun commune has him in his sights. He locates the dead man’s wife who is trying to “leave all that behind” and together they work out a strategy. If only it were so simple. The case, with its global implications is electrifying, an adventure that reflects today’s culture divisions in a hair-raising, fable-esque eight parter. Hang on tight! Also stars Deon Cole, Hamish Allan-Headley, Ennis Esmer, Allison Wright, Bradley Whitford and Stephen McKinley Henderson.