As a general rule it’s not the dark we’re afraid of, it’s the goblins and ghosts that may be lurking on the dark that terrify us. A new film from producer and horror meister James Wan takes advantage of our fears, unveiling the creepy crawlies that may or may not be shrouded in darkness.
Based on Swedish director David F. Sandberg’s acclaimed short film of the same name, the movie stars Teresa Palmer as Rebecca, a young woman who left home at a young age, disturbed by visions and her mother Sophie’s (Maria Bello) behaviour. Years later Rebecca returns home after a phone call from her half-brother Martin’s (Gabriel Bateman) school. Seems he’s been having a hard time staying awake in class and Rebecca fears the same spirit that plagued the family for years is tormenting him. “Every time I turn off the lights,” he says, “there’s this woman waiting in the shadows.”
The bloodthirsty supernatural form is Sophie’s childhood friend (Alicia Vela-Bailey) who had a skin condition that made her allergic to the light. “A long time ago I had a friend named Diana,” says Sophie, “and something really bad happened to her.” Sophie sees her as “a good friend” but Rebecca fears she is actually a malevolent spirit only visible in the dark. When the lights come on, she disappears. “Everyone is afraid of the dark,” says Rebecca, “and that’s what she feeds on.”
With her sanity and safety at risk, Rebecca must discover, once and for all, why Diana does bad things when the lights go out. “Each one of us is being haunted by this thing,” says Rebecca.
The light averse wraith is a cool, fresh idea for a movie bugaboo. The story, however, feels stretched to fill the 8eighty-one-minute running time. There are some good jump scares early on and a few low-fi but high wattage shocks in the final twenty minutes—Beware the flickering light!—but the lead up feels padded.
As it is “Lights Out” is a nicely performed ray of genre with a few story problems that will leave some audience members in the dark.
Idris Elba is a busy man. He’s released seven movies this year and has several more on tap for 2017. He’s on track to join Dwayne Johnson, Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio as one of the world’s highest earning actors after turns in the mega-grossing The Jungle Book, Finding Dory and Zootopia.
If you don’t know the name you haven’t been paying attention. Rev up Netflix and check out his work on TV shows like The Wire or Luther and movies like RocknRolla or Beasts of No Nation and become a fan. You should know he was once voted one of People magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People in the World and more than one twitter friend of mine refers to him as a “pretend boyfriend.”
Not only busy but good looking as well! I was pleased to be granted a fifteen-minute phone interview to discuss his debut in the Star Trek franchise as Krall, a hostile alien who causes trouble for Kirk, Spock and company in Star Trek Beyond.
I don’t usually write questions but I thought I might ask him if he watched Star Trek as a child. Would he consider himself a Trekker? Did he have a favourite Star Trek character growing up? Did he wonder what Star Trek fans would think of the predatory new character? Are there parallels between the film—and his character—and our world today? Has he considered what being part of the legacy of the show means?
If there was time at the end I might even follow up on the rumours and ask if he even wants to play James Bond.
Then the first call came in. “Idris is running behind.” Cool. This happens all the time on press days. Then another call and another and another. My phone hasn’t gotten this kind of workout since a Nigerian Prince called over and over to solicit my assistance in moving his fortune to North America. Each time a publicist announced another delay with the assurance the interview would still happen. As the time wore on the actual length of my interview began to tumble downhill from fifteen minutes down to seven.
In all two hours passed from my scheduled start time until my phone rang for real.
“Hi Richard, I’ll connect you with Idris,” said the perky voice on the other end of the line.
Silence.
A minute passed before Elba’s familiar husky London accent filled my ear. Hallelujah! Better late than never. We talk over one another. “Hello… HELLO… Can you hear me?” It’s a bad cell phone connection. It sounds as if we’re talking through two tin cans connected by strings but I’ll take it.
I ask him about his childhood memories of Star Trek.
“It was a show me, my mum and my dad watched together,” he says. “They both liked it. It was a show that really took your imagination places. That’s my early memory of it. It was a really imaginative show that showed space travel in a way that was different, you know?”
It took him 23 seconds to speak the 50 words that told me his parents liked Star Trek. I mention this because as soon as he stopped talking and I started asking the next question I heard a strange beep beep sound followed by… nothing. The great void. No more husky voice. And like that, poof. He’s gone.
“Are you still there? I think we just lost him,” the eavesdropping publicist said. “Let me get him back for you. Just one second.”
I had visions of the actor walking around Fifth Avenue desperately yelling into his phone, “Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?” but in my heart I knew that wasn’t happening.
Minutes later she’s back. “I’m so sorry. We lost him. I know you only had a couple of minutes to speak with him…” actually it was twenty three seconds… “Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with him.”
My interview with Idris was over. Still born. Terminated before it even really began.
Was I mad? Not really. Frustrated? Yes. Not only had I wasted the afternoon waiting for Idris but now I didn’t have a story to file.
My friends on social media didn’t exactly see it my way. “What do you expect?” wrote one person. “He is the hottest man alive.” Another chose to look on the bright side. “That’s 45 seconds more Idris than the rest of us.” (I hadn’t yet timed the actual quote when hit facebook to vent.)
In the end it’s not a big deal. I’m choosing to look at the bright side. I didn’t get to chat with him but I do have a contender for the Guinness Book of World Records for Shortest (And Least Satisfying) Interview Ever.
Alfred Hitchcock made three of his greatest films with Grace Kelly and tried to lure her back to the big screen long after she retired. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have a seemingly unbreakable cinematic bond and the world of movies would be far less interesting if Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski had never met. John Ford and John Wayne inspired one another to do their best work and Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s shared eccentricities gave us unforgettable nights at the multiplex.
Muses inspire their directors to aspire to new heights, to push the limits of their creativity.
Add another to the list: Melissa McCarthy.
Over the course of four films — including this weekend’s Ghostbusters — she has upped director Paul Feig’s game and in turn he gave her the roles that broke her out of the TV sidekick treadmill and turned her into a big screen star. “It’s not even like we go, ‘We’ve got to do the next movie together,’” Feig says.
“It’s just that suddenly the next movie will pop up and I’m like, ‘You know who would be great for this?’ So it’s funny that people think we have an agenda to keep doing this.”
Agenda or not, their creative chemistry is undeniable.
Feig describes McCarthy’s audition for the first film they made together, Bridesmaids, as a “religious moment.” She was less sure.
“The whole ride home from the audition,” she says, “I was thinking, ‘I got too weird. Should I turn the car around and do that cheesy actor thing of I can do it better! Give me another shot!’”
The director cast her in the scene-stealing role of Megan — imagine a feral, female Guy Fieri — and it was her flashpoint.
Her wonderfully weird performance, complete with sexual hijinks and an explosive bout of diarrhea —“It’s coming out of me like lava!” — stole the show out from under other, better-known stars like Kristen Wiig — and earned her an Oscar nomination.
Next up for the dynamic duo was The Heat, an odd couple, buddy cop movie set in Boston co-starring Sandra Bullock.
McCarthy plays a tough-talking street cop who forms an unlikely alliance with the uptight Sandra Bullock to bring down a murderous drug dealer.
The role riffed on McCarthy’s signature character, the aggressive but damaged comedic persona. “I’ve played a lot of characters who are very vocal, very aggressive,” she told me in 2014.
“For the women I’ve played there is a reason why they are so ballsy and it is nice when you see the crack in the veneer and you realize, ‘It’s part of their insecurity. They stay loud so nobody yells at them.’”
Feig knows when to let McCarthy off the leash — there are some wild slapstick scenes here — but he also knows when to pull her back and let the script do the work.
This week McCarthy headlines Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot alongside Bridesmaids co-star Kristen Wiig.
Will that be their final collaboration? Don’t count on it.
Feig is reportedly writing a Spy sequel as we speak.
“She’s so good,” he says, “and we just really have the same sense of humour.”
Director Paul Fieg and Company are not the Ruiners of Your Childhood. Your youthful “Ghostbusters” memories are alive and well, in your head, in your DVD drawer or digital download file folder. Ghostbros, upset their 1984 favourite is being rebooted with an all female cast, flooded the internet with low-to-no star reviews. As it turns out, the time they spent trying to torpedo a movie they had not yet seen, might have been better spent making room on their basement shelves for the new “Ghostbusters” figurines. Feig hasn’t desecrated a classic, he has added a new chapter, creating a light and fluffy concoction that moves the franchise into the future while paying homage to the past.
When we first meet Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) she’s a professor at Columbia trying to hide her past as a paranormal investigator. When a ghost-hunting book she co-wrote with Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) comes to light she is let go. Like Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler before her, she leaves academia and becomes a professional New York City ghostbuster alongside Abby, proton pack engineer Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) and former subway worker Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones).
After making a name for themselves they uncover a major plot hatched by hotel janitor Rowan North (Neil Casey). Upset his genius has been ignored by the world, he plans on unleashing an army of undead to come back and “pester the world” in an event he calls the Fourth Cataclysm. He has created a vortex that will allow whatever it is on that plane to come crashing down on this plane and flood New York City with ghosts. By the climax the movie dissolves into regular summertime C.G.I. tomfoolery as the Ghostbusters battle spirits in Times Square.
There is a sense of déjà vu hanging heavy over “Ghostbusters.” The new film doesn’t continue the original story, it reboots it, taking us back to the origins of the group. In other words, it’s a lot like the 1984 movie. From class four semi-anchored entities and proton streams to cameos from Slimer, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Annie “Ghostbusters, whaddaya want?” Potts plus a glimpse of a Harold Ramis statue, the movie feels familiar but has been freshened up.
The cast doesn’t try to imitate Murray, Aykroyd, Ramis and Hudson. The new characters are just that, new creations plunked down into an existing world.
McCarthy and Wiig, reteamed for the first time since “Bridesmaids,” are solid and Jones is a formidable presence but most interesting is McKinnon as engineering nerd Holtzmann. She is unapologetically weird, as strange as her unruly asymmetrical haircut and a glorious addition to the “Ghostbusters” family.
Also welcome is Chris Hemsworth as the dippy receptionist who doesn’t have glass in his eyeglasses and says things like, “An aquarium is a submarine for fish.” He’s a walking non sequitur and very funny.
Like the old Abbott and Costello horror comedies, “Ghostbusters” doesn’t have any real scares but it will make you laugh. The script, co-written by Feig and “Parks and Recreation” writer Katie Dippold, is funny, if not exactly in a slap the knee kind of way, then in a slow boil constant giggle respect. Is it an out-of-this-world hit like Feig’s “Bridesmaids” or “Spy”? No. It occasionally suffers from a weird rhythm where scenes end suddenly and at least one of the cameos feels wedged in, but the overall effect is one of a respectful resurrection of a beloved franchise.
Best of all, it is self-aware. Reading on-line comments Erin comes across one that reads, “Ain’t no bitches going to hunt no ghosts.” Later Abby says, “Don’t read what crazy people write in the middle of the night online.” Are you listening Ghostbros?
It’s hard to know whether “Captain Fantastic,” a new drama starring Viggo Mortensen as a task master father raising a brood of philosopher kings in a forested paradise right out of Plato’s Republic, is a condemnation of the American Dream or parody of hippie ideals or both. By the time the unconventional family celebrates Noam Chomsky Day instead of Christmas it’s hard to know whether to giggle at the absurdity of the situation or cry at the earnestness of the film’s intent.
Mortensen is Ben, father of six, husband of Leslie (Trin Miller). They have made their home deep in the forest of the Pacific Northwest. As Leslie lies dying in a faraway hospital, Ben puts his kids through a boot camp of rigorous physical and intellectual training. They rock climb, participate in coming of age rituals, learn about quantum entanglement and at night sit around a campfire eating the days kill and reading books like “The Brothers Karamazov.”
They are a tight unit untouched by the outside world. Home schooled and trained the kids each speak six languages and are all, even the youngest ones, self sufficient, but is Ben helping or hurting the kids? Does his unwillingness to bend in his extreme opinions make him a caring father or a fascist who has not prepared his kids to be out in the world?
The answer to that question comes, sort of, when he makes an announcement. “Last night mommy killed herself. She finally did it. Your mother is dead and nothing is going to change.” A cross-country trip to Leslie’s funeral, a place where Ben is not welcome, makes him confront his ideas on parenting.
The most fantastic thing about “Captain Fantastic” is Mortensen’s performance. As Ben he is a plain spoken, rough-hewn man so convinced of his correctness he is willing to risk the lives of his children. Underneath the bluster, however, is a man who cares deeply about his family and his late wife. He’s a man of extremes—both in beliefs and actions—but his love and his grief are heartfelt, even if they are run through Ben’s unforgiving filter. Mortensen makes an unlikeable character likeable and that goes a long way to making the film enjoyable.
Otherwise the journey to Leslie’s final resting place is an occasionally bumpy ride. The feral kids speak Esperanto, pontificate on the US Constitution and sit, gobsmacked, at the sight of their first videogame and it is in these moments that parody seems to nudge its way into the storytelling. The hippie heaven Ben builds for his kids is less a nirvana than a cage to protect them from what he sees as the evils of the world. He teaches them to survive in the wild, but it seems unlikely any of them could survive a solo subway ride.
“Captain Fantastic” loses more steam in a rushed final act, but luckily Mortensen is there to keep it interesting.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that “Equals,” the new film starring Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult, was a zombie movie. Characters roam around aimlessly, mumble dialogue and stare at one another as though they’d like to take a bite out of one another.
But it’s not a zombie flick, it’s a high-concept sci-fi love against-all-odds story set in a utopian society where emotions don’t exist. IE, it’s 101 minutes of whispered words and blank stares.
“Equals” is takes place in a place where human emotions have been eradicated. It has resulted in a peaceful, if somewhat dull world. Like small town Ontario, everyone dresses the same and is unfailingly polite. The only disease they have been unable to remedy is S.O.S., a virus that eats away at their icy demeanours and restores their pleasure centers. In other words, it allows people to feel again. Illustrator Silas (Hoult) is infected with feelings, developing romantic thoughts for co-worker Nia (Stewart). She is also sick but undiagnosed. They begin an affair but when a cure is found their new-found feelings and romance are threatened.
Director Drake Doremus has set up an almost impossible situation for himself and his actors. Flat and unaffected, “Equals” is icy in the extreme. The only heat on display comes from several hand-holding sessions which, I suppose, are meant to melt the screen but honestly, there are Amish love stories with more sexual tension.
What could have been an exploration of the very core of what makes us human, a kind of star-crossed sci fi “Romeo and Juliet,” is instead a plodding look at two people experiencing late puberty.
It’s a shame, but perhaps not a surprise, that a movie that aims to sap the emotion out of most of its characters, is a bit of a slog.
Newfoundland director Stephen Dunn’s feature debut is an odd movie. “Closet Monster” pays tribute to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and features a talking hamster spirit animal voiced by Isabella Rossellini. It’s also a beautifully made, eclectic film that breathes new life into the coming-of-age-and-out-of-the-closet genre.
Oscar (played as a youngster by Jack Fulton) is a child of a broken home who witnessed a grim act of gay bashing which left a young man paralyzed from the waist down.
Years later memories of the violent attack and his father’s (Aaron Abrams) homophobia—when he asks his father why the boy was beaten, the old man says, “Because he’s gay.”—have left Oscar (now played by Connor Jessup) feeling repressed, as though being gay was something that should never be talked about, let alone acknowledged. An imaginative kid, he has aspirations of leaving Newfoundland, moving to New York and becoming a makeup artist for horror and fantasy movies.
As a teen when Oscar develops a crush on hardware store co-worker Wilder (Aliocha Schneider) he finds himself still scarred from the trauma of his youth. His conditioned response is to filter his newfound feelings through a blend of aggressive fantasy flashbacks. His friends, Gemma (Sofia Banzhof) and Buffy (a hamster voiced by Rossellini) help ground him as he searches to find himself.
Perhaps because the story is loosely autobiographical Dunn is able to take what may have been a gimmicky story—talking hamsters! Gory make-up fever dreams!—and ground it, if not exactly in reality, then in a world that feels heightened but authentic. He’s aided by a great, naturalistic performance from Jessup who manages to keep the character earthbound and relatable even when the story takes off on existential flights of fancy.
“Closet Monster” confronts its issues head on, whether it is death—“Your parents replaced me,” says Buffy, “like, four times.”—grappling with sexuality or homophobia and does so with style and guts.
“The Dark Stranger” is one of the rare horror movies that would probably work better if the horror elements were extracted, leaving just the underlying family drama to speak for itself.
Leah Garrison (Katie Findlay) is a comic book illustrator grappling with the suicide of her artist mother. Recovering from a nervous breakdown, Leah has hallucinations and cuts herself as punishment for what she believes was her part in her mother’s death. Old wounds are reopened when art lover Randall Toth (Stephen McHattie) asks Leah’s father (Enrico Colantoni) if he can present the late mom’s paintings in an exhibition showcasing artists who battled depression. Leah hates Toth and doesn’t want her mother’s work displayed in the show. Enter the Dark Stranger, a character from Leah’s recent work. The gaunt stranger might be a metaphor for her troubled state of mind or a physical manifestation of her demons or both. Either way the stranger is a destructive force on everyone around the young artist and just happens to look like Toth.
“The Dark Stranger” is an accomplished film for first time director and writer Chris Trebilcock. I’m just not sure it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. As a horror film with supernatural overtones it leaves a mildly eerie aftertaste. But as a look at mental illness and the life changing effects of depression it packs a wallop. Real true scares are few and far between and the final moments of the movie are a bit too on the money but very solid performances from Findlay, Colantoni and the legendary McHattie keep things moving forward in an interesting way.
I have a brother but he’s not my bro, at least by the contemporary definition. My sibling and I are biologically brothers but neither of us fall into what the NPR Codeswitch blog described as the four rudimentary characteristics of “bro-iness”— jockish, dudely, stoner-ish and preppy.
There are as many ways to define bros and brahs as there are bros and brahs at your local frat house. Oxford Dictionary writer Katherine Connor Martin sums it up simply as “a conventional guy’s guy who spends a lot of time partying with other young men like himself.” The urban dictionary isn’t quite as elegant, describing bros as ”obnoxious partying males who are often seen at college parties… [standing] around holding a red plastic cup waiting for something exciting to happen so they can scream something that demonstrates how much they enjoy partying”
This weekend Zac Efron and Adam DeVine play brothers who are also bros in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Based on the real-life exploits of Mike and Dave Stangle, the guys get out-broed at their sister’s Hawaiian wedding by broettes Tatiana and Alice (Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick).
In real life Mike, Dave, Tatiana and Alice are the kind of people it might be fun to hang out with before ten o’clock at night, before the tequila shots and samplings from the mystery medicine cabinet have taken effect. After that, all bets are off. Luckily in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, like so many bro movies before it, the screen separates us and we can sit back and observe them like cultural anthropologists, as if we’re studying animals in a zoo.
Hollywood has long had a bromance with bros. Lately in movies like Neighbors and Dirty Grandpa Efron has made a career of playing dim witted frat boys but to find the proto bros you have to go back to 1940. Starting with Road to Singapore Bob Hope and Bing Crosby cocktailed and adlibbed their way through seven Road movies playing two slightly skeezy men with boatloads of bravado and an unbreakable bond—at least until love interest Dorothy Lamour showed up.
National Lampoon’s Animal House was the next landmark of bro-cinema. From toga parties to food fights and doing The Worm on the dance floor, it’s a politically incorrect classic that celebrates the best and worst of bro culture.
A 1996 movie gave us the bro with a million catchphrases like “Vegas, baby,” “wingman,” “beautiful babies” and “you’re so money.” As Trent in Swingers Vince Vaughn gave a voice and brocabulary to a generation of bros. Jon Favreau wrote the script but many of the sayings came directly from the lips of his best friends and co-stars Vaughn and Ron Livingston.
No look at bro-cinema would be complete without a nod toward Will Ferrell. The comedian has broed out on screen many times but Old School’s Frank the Tank, a character who unravels after his wife leaves him, is King Bro. When he’s not doing beer bong hits (“Once it hits your lips, it’s so good!”) or streaking he lets his freak flag fly as one of the most over-the-top bros ever seen on screen.
Dean Wormer’s classic scolding from Animal House, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son,” doesn’t seem to apply, at least at the movies.
