ALL MY LIFE: 3 STARS

All My Life

If “All My Life,” a new tearjerker starring Jessica Rothe and now playing in theatres, wasn’t based on the real-life story of a Toronto couple, it would be the kind of story Nicholas Sparks would write.

Jennifer (Rothe) and Solomon (Harry Shum Jr.) are a cute couple who meet-cute in a bar and seem destined to live a cute happily ever after. They like the same kind of cheesy 80s rock, they laugh and giggle while jumping into water fountains and say things like, “I didn’t know how much I could actually love before I met you,” to one another. 

But keep in mind, this isn’t a rom-com. It’s a romantic drama à la Sparks, so I’ll stop using the word cute now. 

There’s nothing cute (whoops) about Sol’s diagnoses of terminal liver cancer. Their plans for a December wedding on hold, their friends raise money and give them the day of their dreams as Sol’s health worsens.

“All My Life” is a three or four hanky movie where everything you think will happen, happens.

But what it lacks in innovation, it makes up for with a certain kind of comfortable predictability. You’ve heard the dialogue before—"You make me feel Like I can do anything. Like we can do anything.”—and the group of BFFs are the usual kind of misfits who could have wandered in from any number of other teen dramas. but when the movie focuses on the leads, Rothe and Shum Jr., it becomes less about cliches and more about the heart of the story.

The pair share a number of scenes that drive home the direness of the situation. Strongest is a heartfelt discussion about their future plans that closes with, “I am not your widow, I am your bride,” a message of true love that makes up for the manipulation of the earlier scenes. 

“All My Life” is sugary enough to give you a cavity, but in its better moments it is a reminder to embrace life and roll with the punches, no matter what happens. 

CROCK OF GOLD: A FEW ROUNDS WITH SHANE MACGOWAN: 3 ½ STARS

Shane MacGowan

A portrait either in self-destruction or the indomitable spirit of someone whose demeanour suggests a hangover come to life, “Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan,” now on iTunes, is a vivid look at the life of the man best known as the lead singer of The Pogues.

“He just doesn’t enjoy life without a drink.”

Most music bios follow a standard rags-to-riches format, but director Julien Temple applies his trademark visual and narrative density to MacGowan’s story, creating a movie that is as much a cultural history as it is a biopic. 

Temple spends half the movie detailing MacGowan’s youth, from his birth on Christmas Day, 1957, to his early childhood in County Tipperary, Ireland. Illustrated with stock footage of rural life and re-enactments, it paints a rosy picture of a hard scrabble life, where hard work and even harder drinking are the norm. Life on the farm, with a Guinness in his hand at the age of six, gave MacGowan a deeply rooted sense of Irish pride, a sentiment that fuelled his greatest successes. 

Less romantic is the move to England as a youngster. Poverty, drinking, drugs, anti-Irish racism and punk rock led to MacGowan’s first taste of fame, a blow to the head at a 1976 Clash concert that earned him notoriety as the jug-eared face of London punk. 

Cut to 1982.

Several failed bands and thousands of pints later, he formed The Pogues and married the spirit of punk with traditional Irish music. Feisty and furious songs about Irish nationalism, history, and experiences made MacGowan and the band wildly successful, but a tune the singer calls “Our ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” was their undoing.

The release of “Fairytale of New York” set them on a never-ending tour with only a handful of days off in the coming year, leading to MacGowan’s descent into a walking, talking cautionary tale after a psychotic break while performing in New Zealand. 

The story continues, covering his post-Pogues time with bands like The Popes, but it is the portrait of MacGowan as a poet who grabs songs out of the ether—“That’s why they’re called airs,” he explains—and a nationalist whose Irish identity energized his work that lingers.

“I always felt guilty that I didn't lay down my life for Ireland,” he says before adding, that at least “he participated in the revolution as a musician.” 

Ultimately, culture and politics aside, “Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan” is a story of a man with a seemingly unquenchable thirst for drink and drugs. Recent footage shows the ravages of a life lived hard as he mumbles his way through recent interviews with the kind of befuddled intensity that can only be found at the bottom of a bottle. His angels, a way with words and melody, robbed from him, he bemoans his inability to write new songs even as he washes down those words with a swig of wine or whiskey.

It’s hard to believe him when he slurs, “I have no self-destructive impulses whatsoever,” but it completes the portrait of a complicated artist whose best work stemmed from his worst behaviour. 

BLACK BEAR: 4 STARS

Black Bear

“Black Bear,” now in select theatres and on VOD, is a psychological drama that draws you in with a false sense of familiarity before a mid-movie turn that turns expectations upside down.

Set in a remote B&B on a beautiful lake in Upstate New York run by semi-pro musician Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and his pregnant, former dancer wife Blair (Sarah Gadon), are the Bickersons by way of “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” No comment from either of them goes unanswered by a barb or withering look.

“It’s not that I can’t stand that you have thoughts about the world,” Blair says to Gabe in one heated exchange. “It’s that I can’t stand the thoughts about the world you have.” 

Into this insular situation comes Allison (Aubrey Plaza), an actress-turned-filmmaker who booked a weekend away hoping to find inspiration in nature for her next movie.

"I’m waiting for something meaningful to happen to me," she says. Instead, she becomes entwined in the personal lives of her hosts. Secrets are shared, recriminations fly and hostilities arise.

The talky first half, with a long, drunken discussion about traditional gender roles, leads into Part Two: The Bear by the Boat House, a surreal jump to the filming of the movie-within-the-movie.

Without giving anything of substance away, Gabe is now the film’s egomaniacal director while Blair is now Allison’s co-star in a tortured indie film that seems to be taking its cues from the real-life retreat. Themes of the creative process, temptation and the pain of toxic relationships introduced in the first half are further reflected in part two. 

“Black Bear” is an audacious movie that defies categorization. It’s playing in select theatres, wherever theatres are open, but I suspect it will mostly be seen on VOD. That’s a shame because the layered story is not something you can digest casually while thumbing through Twitter or eating a sandwich. The personal dynamics on display are filled with conflict and every line is a trigger that sets the next into motion. 

The performances bring the difficult material to life. Abbott and Gadon are very good, but it is Plaza whose work leaves a mark. She brings a furious intensity to Allison that will blow the hair back on anyone only familiar with her work as the darkly disinterested April Ludgate on the sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” It’s a complex and challenging performance that is bracingly and simultaneously real and surreal.

“Black Bear” will confound viewers looking for easy answers and a neatly tied up bow at the end. Like the creative process it portrays, it is unknowable in its entirety, a deliberate cypher meant to engage both your head and your heart.