Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Is your headspace being dominated by thoughts of politics and elections? If so, you need some distractions! I’ve got just the thing for a hot day like today. This week, I’m looking at two new summer movies — an historical drama and a disaster-thriller — both about strong women. There’s a widow who risks the wrath of grapes, and a meteorologist who throws caution to the wind.

Twisters

Dir: Lee Isaac Chung (Review: Minari)

Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a meteorologist. Not the weatherman who writes numbers on a green screen on your local TV news; she’s the real thing, with an important job at a government bureau in New York City. So what is she doing in Oklahoma? The state is facing an unusual number of major tornadoes all at once. She was invited down there by Javi (Anthony Ramos), an old classmate and study-buddy who worked with her on her experiment involving using polymers to stop tornadoes. But the experiment went wrong, killing the rest of their team, thus taking away any desire she once had to chase tornadoes. And yet here she is back in Oklahoma. She’s lending a hand to Javi’s corporate sponsors, who supply shiny white SUVs in exchange for some crucial tornado info. 

But she faces severe competition. The place is swarming with adventure seekers, journalists and  tourists. Tyler (Glenn Powell) is a cowboy huckster — a self-described “Tornado Wrangler” — who sells T-shirts and coffee mugs with his own grinning face on them. He’s a “chaser”, someone who seeks out tornadoes and gets as close to them as he can without being sucked away. His gimmick is to shoot fireworks up into tornadoes as they pass by. Looks great on YouTube… He drives a souped-up red jeep, and speeds ahead of Javi’s white vans. But Kate is in a league all her own. She can look at a dandelion and predict, with amazing accuracy, which way the next tornado is coming.  And Tyler starts to take note. Who should Kate side with — serious Javi, or aw-shucks Tyler? And will any of them survive the big storm on the horizon?

Twisters is a thriller  disaster movie about… well, tornadoes and the people who chase them. That’s most of the movie. It’s kind of a sequel to the movie Twister (1996) but shares none of the same characters, actors, or plot lines, except that they’re both about tornado chasers. There’s definite electricity between Kate and Tyler —  Glenn Powell is brimming with charisma, and the appealing Englishwoman Daisy Edgar-Jones plays a credible American (though not much off an Oklahoman) — but those sparks never catch fire. If you’re expecting love, lust or sex, you chose the wrong movie. There’s not even a single kiss here. What you do get is amazing special effects: collapsing water towers, exploding oil refineries, roofs torn off buildings, streetcars running off their tracks…and lots sandlots of people holding onto something solid to avoid being swept away.  I don’t know about you, but I really like disaster movies. Who needs a plot when you get to watch the world collapse?

Widow Clicquot

Dir: Thomas Napper

It’s the early 1800s in Napoleonic France. Madame Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot (Haley Bennet) is a wealthy aristocrat from Champagne. In her early twenties she is married off to the equally rich François Clicquot (Tom Sturridge) who inherited vast vineyards. Although she dislikes him at first — he is somewhere between eccentric and crazy — she grows to love his childlike, playful exuberance. The guy has tousled hair and wears diaphanous pirate shirts, while Madame dresses in breezy white blouses. Soon he has her singing to grape vines, too. When she’s not  in the vineyards, she’s in her laboratory studying wine sediment in beakers and test tubes.  But  eventually his eccentricity turns erratic, sometimes  slipping into accidental violence. Madame sends their daughter off to the Abbee, but by their 6th year together, he is dead.

Now she’s a widow, and heir to the estate, but the trustees have never heard of a woman vintner. They offer her a fair settlement and tell her to take the money and run. Never!, cries widow Clicquot. These vines, this terroir it’s Francois’ soul! And she feels personally attached to it, too. But everything goes wrong. They buy cheap glass bottles which explode. And selling wine across borders is a no-no during the Napoleonic wars. She turns to Louis (Sam Riley) a wine salesman, for help. She needs to get her latest concoction — a dry pink wine with tiny bubbles — to the market. It’s the only thing that can save her grapes and the chateau she lives in. But will her new type of wine ever catch on?

Widow Clicquot is a historical drama filled with the expected stories: passionately swooning lovers, double-crossing colleagues, floppy hair and costumes and verdant green valleys. It’s also about a rich woman who dares to fights the system. Not all that much happens in this movie which makes it drag in the middle. Tom Sturridge is ridiculous as the flakey husband, Haley Bennet is better though still stiff, as Madame, and Sam Riley as the travelling salesman is the best of those three. I was dreading a total corporate kiss-ass for the famous champagne maker, but it wasn’t that way at all. It’s based on a book that portrays her as a determined woman, despite her flaws, so two points for that. It’s not a spoiler that she is the famous Veuve Clicquot who basically invented modern champagne. And I liked the historical aspects.

Widow Clicquot is not a great movie, but lubricate yourself with enough flutes of Veuve and you won’t really care.

Widow Clicquot and Twisters both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.