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ON THE ROCKS: 4 STARS

Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray have only worked together twice, but On the Rocks, in select Theatres now and on Apple TV+ on October 23, makes you wish they would become exclusive. She gets him in all his scampish glory, allowing the septuagenarian to revel in playing a smooth talking, lovable old scamp who drinks Cutty over ice and teaches his young grandkids to bluff at poker. Murray is the Michelangelo of mischief, a clown prince with heart and soul and Coppola knows how to mine it.

Set in pre-pandemic New York City, the story centers on Laura (Rashida Jones), an author and mom who discovers that shes not as happily married as she thought. Her high-tech businessman husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) is aloof, never home and when she finds a strange make-up case in his luggage, he makes a lame excuse straight out of Cheaters 101.

Her father Felix (Bill Murray), a loquacious, jet setting art dealer knows about infidelity. Hes a scoundrel who knows, for instance, that The Plaza is the best place to have an affair because it has exits on three different streets for a fast extra-marital escape. Hes not shocked Dean might be having an affair, hes just surprised hes doing it at the Soho House, a building he considers dclass.

Over a birthday dinner at the ritzy 21 Club, at the table where Bogart proposed to Bacall, Felix suggests they investigate on their own, using his knowledge of the cheating mind to catch Dean in the act. In a cherry red sportscar they set out on their missionThis is wartime, he says.but the relationship they expose isnt the one they expected.

On the Rocks isnt a rom com or a screwball comedy or an adventure film. Its a Sofia Coppola film, a movie that teleports the viewer into a heightened world of privilege while still mining a deep emotional core. And its laugh out loud funny, for a time anyway.

It is light, plot wise, but exists to showcase the chemistry between Murray and Jones. Their relationship is the real love story in the film, as fractured and dysfunctional as it may be. They look at the world through very different eyes but are bound by blood.

During the caper portion they have an almost Nick and Nora vibe, exchanging sharp, smart and funny repartee. Later when the action turns introspective, they get real, exposing their feelings in a raw, real and regretful way.

Murray is loose, droll and deadpan. Hes a walking, talking anachronism who says things like, Women. You cant live with them. You cant live without them. That doesnt mean you have to live with them, and yet there is a bittersweet quality to the work that adds unspoken layers. It is a very particular performance and one unique to his style.

Jones plays off Murray with a different kind of performance. Shes warm, vulnerable and naturalistic, even when they are mid-escapade. The trick here is to not let Murray steal the show, and she ably manages to share the spotlight.

On the Rocks also features nice supporting work from Wayans who dials down his comedy instincts to play it straight and Jenny Slate as an over-sharer Laura bumps into now and again. Both bring much to the proceedings but the main attraction here are the leads. Coppola knows that and while the ending may be a bit pat, the endearing characters are the draw, not the story.

The Trial of the Chicago 7, now playing in theatres, sees Aaron Sorkin return to the courtroom twenty eight years after he put the words You cant handle the truth, into Jack Nicholsons mouth. This time around hes re-enacting one of the most famous trials of the 1960s, using transcripts from the actual proceedings as a basis for the script. There is no one moment as powerful of Nicholsons truth declaration, but there is no denying the timeliness of the films fifty-two-year-old story.

Heres the basic story for anyone too young to know the difference between Yippies and Yuppies.

The trial, which was originally the Chicago Eight until Black Panther leader Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) had his case severed from the others, saw 60s counterculture icons Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) of the Youth International Party (the aforementioned Yippies), and assorted radicals David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), John Froines (Daniel Flaherty), and Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins) charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot stemming from their actions at the anti-Vietnam War protests in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Behind the prosecution desk is the young and meticulous Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) acting as assistant to the truculent chief prosecutor Tom Foran (J. C. MacKenzie). On the defense is lawyer William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), a boldfaced name in civil rights litigation. On the bench is Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), a conservative judge who once presided over an obscenity case against Lenny Bruce.

Those are the players and to a person they deliver solid performances, making the most of Sorkins snappy, rapid-fire dialogue. Of the ensemble cast Baron Cohen stands out, handing in a straight dramatic role; theres no Mankini in sight. Hes too old by half to play the character who once famously urged kids to, Never trust anyone over thirty, but maintains the edge that make his comedic characters so memorable.

Sorkin, who also directs, has made a period piece that reverberates for today. A bridge that spans the five decades from the actual events, its a bit of history that comments on contemporary hot-button topics like protest, civil rights, and police brutality. The sight of Seale, the lone Black defendant, bound and gagged at the judges order, is a potent reminder of racial injustice in the penal system. Re-enactments of police brutality during the riots and the consequent discussion of who is to blame for the violence, the protesters or the bill club swinging cops could be ripped from todays headlines.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 isnt perfect. Gordon-Levitts character is a cypher, a prosecutor who breaks with his colleagues at a crucial moment and Hoffman is played as a pantomime villain, but as a reminder of how history is repeated, it is a compelling watch.

The Glorias, now on VOD/Digital, is an ambitious retelling of the life of a trailblazer. Women's-rights icon Gloria Steinem has led such a multi-faceted life it takes four people to play her over the course of the film.

Based on Steinem's 2015 memoir My Life on the Road, the story is told on a broken timeline that uses a bus metaphor to shift through the various aspects of Steinems life.

From life as a child (played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong) with a transient salesman father whose optimistic motto is, You dont know what will happen tomorrow. It could be wonderful, and former journalist mother Ruth (Enid Graham) to rebellious teen (Lulu Wilson) to magna cum laude graduate and journalist () who went undercover (Alicia Vikander) at Playboy Club to adult activist Gloria (Julianne Moore), the film offers a detailed if somewhat fragmented look at a remarkable life.

To tell the tale director Julie Taymor uses a variety of vibrant colour palettes, newsreel footage, animation, some theatrical techniquesadult Steinem gives advice to her younger self on the aforementioned busand biographical notes. Larger than life characters like social activist Bella Abzug (Bette Midler), businessperson and co-founder of Ms. Magazine Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Janelle Mone) and Lorraine Toussaint as lawyer, feminist, activist Flo Kennedy are brought to vivid life, helping to establish a sense of time and place for a story that hop scotches through time.

The Glorias isnt a standard biopic, but it also isnt as radical as its subject. Its an artfully arranged greatest hits package of a remarkable and influential life that dilutes its impact by trying to cover eighty of Steinems years. Nonetheless, the four performances fit so neatly together to form a whole that we see Steinem's growth as she evolves into the person who made history.

2067 is a rarity. Its an ambitious sci-fi drama, complete with quantum time machines and messages from the future, that portrays a possible end-of-the-world dilemma. Weve seen that before but we havent seen a big Hollywood-style genre pic like this with Australian accents.

Aussie director Seth Larney, who worked in various capacities on everything from The Matrix Reloaded and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith to X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Lego Movie, aims for the stars with 2067, now playing on Apple TV, Bell, Cineplex, Cogeco, Eastlink, Google Play, Microsoft XBOX, Rogers, Shaw and Telus.

Set in the year 2067 in a world ravaged by climate change, where oxygen is a precious resource and its synthetic alternative is making people ill. If humanity doesnt find a cure life on earth will end. With all present-day remedies exhausted Chronicorp, the worlds leading supplier of manmade oxygen, builds a time machine to search the future for descendants who may be able to point the way to survival.

Its a long shot but a message from 400 years in the future gives everyone hope. It says, succinctly, Send Ethan Whyte. Whyte (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a tunnel rat, an underground worker with a bad attitude and an ailing wife. Shot into the future with no idea of what awaits, he becomes humanitys last hope.

2067 is humanist sci fi. The grim picture it paints of a world destroyed by climate change is evocative but the focus isnt on the quantum time doodads or rocketing through time, its about the characters and how these unfortunate situations affects them.

Kodi Smit-McPhee brings the attitude of a young man thrown into a situation he cant comprehend, effectively portraying the resilience and determination needed to put together the disparate pieces of the plots puzzle.

The audience will need to share some of this resolve. Director Larneys story is a bit of a spider web. Tangential connections are established between Whyte and the other characters, but the plot points that could make this story compelling are often telegraphed so far in advance the audience knows where the story is going before the characters have caught up. It is a straight line approach that doesnt trust the viewer to stay with the movies twists and turns.

And to that an undeniably distracting melodramatic score and 2067 becomes an ambitious but underwhelming sci fi survival story.

We have seen movies about assassins and weve seen movies about mind control but Possessor Uncut, the new film by Brandon Cronenberg (yes, hes Davids son and seems to share some of his obsessions) now playing at select theatres and drive ins, mixes and matches the two in an unsettling, surreal hybrid of sci-fi and horror.

Anyone with trypanophobiafear of needlesmay want to cover their eyes during the films opening minutes as a young woman (Gabrielle Graham) impales herself with a long needle, right through the cranium. The needle is attached to a box with a dial. A twist of the dial and soon she is gruesomely stabbing a man in the neck, in public.

Turns out, its not really her brandishing the knife but a mercenary named Tasya (Andrea Riseborough), a mind control assassin who possesses peoples minds via brain-implant technology and forces them to do her bidding. Her handler, Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh), helps her find her way back to her own identity after sublimating herself in someone elses brain.

Tasyas latest gig involves parasitically getting into the mind of former cocaine dealer Colin (Christopher Abbott), a trainwreck of a man whose girlfriend Avas (Tuppence Middleton) father (Sean Bean) is John Parse, a high-powered executive. A rival wants Parse dead and Colin is the perfect patsy to do the deed.

From the films savage opening minutes through the sex and gore splattered landscape of the middle section to the climax Possessor is like a nightmare. Surreal visuals of Tasya and Colin as one hideous being or a severed hand unfurling its fingers are direct from night terrors, but Cronenberg takes pains to ensure that, unlike nightmares that are disconnected scenes that play in our heads, his psychodrama has depth and meaning. His highly developed visual senseand a bloody colour palette that would make Dario Argento enviousis eye-catching and consistently interesting but it is the films ideas that linger like the unsettled feeling after you wake from a nightmare.

The movies exploration of how technology and humanity intersect is an increasingly timely question. Possessor takes that crossroads to a narrative extreme but Tasya and Colins technological melding is a terrifying vision of a future that feels like it might be right around the corner.

Cronenberg's sophomore movie, after 2012s Antiviral, is disturbing and ambitious with an icy, cerebral veneer that will linger in your mind for a long time afterward.

Save Yourselves!, opening in theatres across Canada this weekend, is a whole new genre of movie. A mix of romance and aliens, it is, as far as I can recall, the first apocalyptic rom-com.

Young Brooklynites Su and Jack (Glows Sunita Mani and John Reynolds of Stranger Things) are at a crossroads in their lives. Their jobs are unfulfilling and when they bump into an old friend who now runs a company that makes sustainable 3-D printed surfboards out of algae, they realize their lives arent contributing to society at large.

To get their heads together and figure out a path forward they go off the grid, disconnect from their devices and spend a week hibernating at a cabin in the mountains. The lack of technology doesnt bother Jack, but Su has a harder time cutting the iPhone and laptop cord. When she sneaks a listen to a strange voicemail from her mother, she doesnt register that something really weird is happening in the world outside of their idyllic getaway.

When an alien creature, imagine one of Star Treks Tribbles, or as jack says, a tiny, furry footstool, shows up on the property, they must fight for their lives. Trouble is, as Su says, We dont have any skills.

What they do have, however, is each other.

Save Yourselves! is a slight but enjoyable rom-com with a quirky premise but some real chemistry between the characters. Su and Jack are what may kindly be called cidiots, people who think anything north of 125th Street is Upstate New York. Unprepared for any crisis outside of a Starbucks pumpkin spice shortage, they are forced to adapt and engage with their new surroundings.

Its here the movie works best.

Mani and Reynolds bring the funny during the crisis but the humour is always grounded in some sort of situation that recalls the issues in their relationship that pushed them to visit the cabin in the first place. Director/writers Eleanor Wilson and Alex H. Fischer have crafted a story about two hapless folks trying to improve their lives without a clue of how to do it. It has humour and heart and despite a lull in the middle, Save Yourselves! is goofy good fun.

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Movie reviews: 'On the Rocks' is laugh out loud funny, for a time anyway - CTV News