profile

Seventh Row

The Courier, Mouthpiece, and more to watch this weekend

Published about 2 years ago • 7 min read

Hello Reader,

This is the free version of our weekly newsletter. The premium version has 10+ excellent recommendations, on top of these, of what to watch at festivals, virtual cinemas, VOD, and via streaming. We also spotlight several virtual film festivals worth catching worldwide, featuring films we love that have yet to secure distribution (so this may be your only chance to see them!).

​

In our premium newsletter for members this week, we recommend more virtual film festival screenings, plus additional VOD, virtual cinema, and streaming recommendations. If you become a member now, shoot us an email, and we'll be happy to send you these recommendations, too!

​

Note that membership also gives you access to our archive of podcasts, a discount on ebooks/merch/events, access to our exclusive online community, and more!

​

​​​To receive the premium newsletter and other member benefits, become a Film Adventurer member:

​

It's your last weekend to catch TM worldwide, and a chance to catch The Last of the Right Whales in the US.

In honour of our Benedict Cumberbatch podcast that dropped this week, celebrate his best performance of 2021 — not the one he was Oscar-nominated for — by watching The Courier. If you're a Mubi subscriber in most parts of the world, you can stream a Patricia Rozema double bill of I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and Mouthpiece. Finally, catch up with Kazik Radwanski's stunner Anne at 13,000 ft.

Have a friend whom you think would like our newsletter? Feel free to forward this to them and let them know they can sign up for the free version here​

The Courier

Prime Canada/US/AU/UK/NZ

The latest film from On Chesil Beach director Dominic Cooke is a thoroughly entertaining spy thriller and character drama starring a never better Benedict Cumberbatch. IMHO, this is the 2021 release performance he should have been Oscar-nominated for.

​

Here's an excerpt from my intro to my interview with director Dominic Cooke:

The Courier is ostensibly a period spy drama based on real events, but it’s also more interested in relationships and societal constrictions than plot, starting out funny and getting quite dark by the end. This tendency to not be pinned down is perhaps unsurprising from the director behind the National Theatre’s tremendous revival of Sondheim’s Follies, itself a tricky if great play.
Set in the early 1960s, The Courier is based on the true story of British businessman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) who suddenly found himself working as a Cold War spy helping to put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. When Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) made contact with the CIA about becoming a Russian source, they needed an amateur like Greville to do the leg work of getting his information, so as not to arouse suspicion. The film follows them through the thrill of the initial intelligence exchange, the deepening friendship that forms, and the aftermath of discovery. Just as On Chesil Beach explored the constrictive sexual mores of the time, The Courier is also about the restrictive societies that define both Greville’s and Oleg’s existence.

​Read the full interview..

Listen to the podcast on Benedict Cumberbatch's best, worst, and poshest performances

Benedict Cumberbatch is nominated for an Oscar this year for his work in The Power of the Dog, but that's just one of several excellent performances he gave in 2021, which also included starring roles in The Electrical Life of Louis Wain and The Courier.

Having recently discussed how extremely posh he was on our Bonus Episode "Who is the poshest actor in Britain?", this week on the podcast, we took stock of Cumberbatch's best, worst, and poshest performances.

​

Love him, hate him, forget he's there half the time, begrudgingly acknowledge that sometimes he's fantastic: Cumberbatch is certainly a polarising actor. We discuss the times he's wowed us (e.g., in The Courier and Starter for 10), the times we forget he was in it (e.g. 1917), and the times we couldn't stand him (e.g. his Hamlet). We try to figure out what makes him good and when he's at his worst.

​


As a member, you already have access to the full episode in your Premium Seventh Row Podcast feed. This is the latest Bonus episode, #26.

To listen to the episode, look for Bonus 26: Benedict Cumberbatch's best, worst, and poshest performances in your Premium Seventh Row Podcast feed.

Set up your Premium Podcast Feed to listen to the entire podcast archive

To listen to the full podcast archive, access your Premium Podcast feed ("Premium Seventh Row podcast") from whatever podcatcher you prefer.

To set this up, log into your account here.​

Follow the instructions to set up your podcast feed. It will look like this:

As a member, you also have access to all of our past bonus episodes and all of our episodes that are more than six months old.


Mouthpiece and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing

Mubi US/Canada/UK/Ireland/NZ/AU/much of Western Europe, Africa, Latin America, Middle East

​Find out of it's streaming in your country here.​

Do a double bill of two of Patricia Rozema's portraits of the artist unabashedly set in Toronto! I've Heard the Mermaids singing is a classic that was impossible to find online for years, and has just been restored in 4K! And Mouthpiece was our #3 film of the 2010s (right after Oslo, August 31st and Certain Women).

Mouthpiece, Best films of the decade
​

Here's an excerpt from the intro to my interview with Patricia Rozema and the film's two leads/co-writers/co-creators:

The best movie of the year, Mouthpiece, is Canadian, set in Toronto, and written and directed by women and about women. Director Patricia Rozema (Mansfield Park, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing) — in collaboration with Toronto theatremakers-actors-writers Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava — has effortlessly adapted a piece of physical theatre into a naturalistic film that gets up close and intimate with the characters. The film’s innovative conceit is that the main character, thirty-something Torontonian Cassandra, is simultaneously played by two actors, Nostbakken and Sadava. This dual performance, where the actors sometimes mirror each other and sometimes diverge or even conflict, allows them to represent two sides of a complex woman who is constantly in conflict with herself. It’s a meditation on the things we think and the things we do, and how they can be contradictions, how every moment is charged with multiple emotions.
Set over the course of a couple of days in the dead of winter, Cassandra grieves the unexpected death of her mother (Toronto theatre treasure Maev Beaty), as she tries to write the eulogy. It’s made even more difficult for her because her last interaction with her mother was a nasty fight, and their relationship was always tense: Cassandra both worshiped her mother and was frustrated by her because she was unable to see her own worth and meet her own potential. As Cassandra grieves, she also goes through an existential feminist crisis, realising that so many of her choices have been a reaction to or rebellion against her mother; it goes so deep she doesn’t even know where the rebellion ends and she begins

To read the full interview, get the ebook The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook

​

​

Discover the best Canadian films of 2018 and 2019 through conversations with the filmmakers, guided by the Seventh Roweditors in our inaugural biannual book, The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook.

In the last decade, Canadian Cinema has blossomed from a cinema of a few select internationally known auteurs, like David Cronenberg and Denys Arcand, into one of the most exciting national cinemas. Quebec has produced auteurs that have gone on to successful English-language careers in the US, from Jean-Marc Vallée to Denis Villeneuve, while anglophone filmmakers have carved out a niche of culturally specific, unapologetically Canadian films that still resonate with a broader audience.

The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook is the inaugural biannual ebook spotlighting the best in Canadian Cinema through interviews with the filmmakers and Seventh Row commentary to contextualize the films. This book is the go to resource for discovering great Canadian Cinema that may have otherwise passed under-the-radar, including the filmmakers that are sure to be big names in the future. You won’t find in-depth interviews with all of this talent anywhere else. Filmmakers take you behind the scenes into how they conceive of and make their films, from a technical perspective, and we make sure it’s an accessible read with no background knowledge about filmmaking.

Check out our masterclass with Patricia Rozema (focusing on Mouthpiece)

​

Anne at 13,000 ft.

Mubi US/UK/Ireland,Italy/France/Germany/India/Chile and more, Rent (premium) on TIFF Digital Canada​

Two+ years after its premiere at TIFF, where it won an honourable mention for the Platform Competition, Anne at 13,000 ft is now streaming in the US!

​

Here's an excerpt from Orla's intro to her interview with director Kazik Radwanski:

In Anne at 13,000 ft, Anne (Deragh Campbell) suffers from an unspecified mental illness (likely along the lines of bipolar disorder), and she’s reassimilating into everyday Toronto life after being institutionalised. Work, responsibilities, and socialising can be quite overwhelming for Anne. The choppiness of the cutting and the speed at which we whirl through the eponymous Anne’s life is fitting for such an unstable character.
Director Kazik Radwanski shoots most of the film in handheld closeup, so we’re trapped in painfully close proximity to Anne as she enters uncomfortable situation after uncomfortable situation. Sometimes, we watch Anne putting others on edge, like the intense speech she gives at her best friend’s wedding reception, or her forwardness with a potential boyfriend (Matt Johnson). Sometimes, we watch others making Anne nervous, like several of the men she encounters in the film. Often, it’s less easy to place blame on either side of the clashes this volatile young woman has with those around her: is it her instability, or their insensitivity, or both? It’s this uncertainty that makes Anne at 13,000 ft so anxiety-inducing.

​Read the full interview here.​

Happy watching!

Best,

Alex Heeney, Editor-in-Chief

PS Have a friend whom you think would like our newsletter? Feel free to forward this to them and let them know they can sign up here.​

​

Follow us to stay updated!

​

Don't want to receive our weekly digest of recommended films? You can unsubscribe to just these emails so you'll still receive relevant updates from us at Seventh Row.

​Click here to unsubscribe from the weekly digest of recommendations. ​

Or to unsubscribe from all emails, hit the unsubscribe button below.

Seventh Row

Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.

Read more from Seventh Row

Hello Reader, Attention Filmmakers! Between now and May 15, I'm offering three lucky filmmakers a FREE consultation to develop a plan to get butts in seats for your film. Read on for details! (Not a filmmaker? Click here to opt out of emails for filmmakers.) You've agonized over what to make a movie about, plus where and how to shoot it. You've put your blood, sweat, and tears into getting the best equipment and crew. You're going to spend hours and hours and hours editing it into the perfect...

about 14 hours ago • 2 min read

Hello Reader, This week, watch one of the best documentaries of the year by the filmmaker who inspired Seventh Row's thinking on creative nonfiction, Penny Lane: Confessions of a Good Samaritan. Virtual tickets are available WORLDWIDE until Monday at noon. The film is still seeking distribution, so this may be your only chance to see it for some time (or at all). Still of Penny Lane's desktop from Confessions of a Good Samaritan About Penny Lane Penny Lane has been a huge influence on how we...

16 days ago • 2 min read

Hello Reader, You are receiving this as a paying subscriber to The Globetrotting Watchlist (which includes Members), a monthly newsletter that helps you expand your cinematic horizons through streaming recommendations for the best socially progressive under-the-radar films worldwide. Your support helps us pay our expenses to keep Seventh Row, a non-profit, ad-free and online. What's Inside the Globetrotting Newsletter Two of the world's biggest and best documentary film festivals — HotDocs in...

26 days ago • 4 min read
Share this post