Here’s what my crystal ball predicts for 2018 at the movies.
More Nicolas Cage films you won’t go see: The “Nouveau Shamanic” actor has no fewer than three films scheduled.
More men in tights: Look for spandex-clad superheroes in Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity Wars, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Aquaman to name just a few. There’s even some super duper animation coming in the form of The Incredibles 2.
More movies directed by women: The Kindergarten Teacher from Sara Colangelo, Jane Fonda in Five Acts by documentarian Susan Lacy and Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post are just three of the 16 female-led films screening at Sundance this year.
More of the Netflix logo: The streaming service will release more movies than almost all of the other major studios combined. Investing heavily in the theatrical productions, they will release upwards of 80 movies in 2018 at the cost of a whopping $8 billion.
A year of reckoning for Johnny Depp: With three films set for release and several others in production audiences will make it known whether or not they still care about the quirky movie king.
A new catchphrase: “Hugs not drugs,” from the movie Deadpool 2 will become 2018’s “Sorry not sorry!”
Of course, then there are the movies themselves.
Depending on your point of view, Fifty Shades Freed will either make you want to gag or want to wear a gag.
Fifteen years after Angelina Jolie hung up her Lara Croft combat boots, Tomb Raider returns with Alicia Vikander in the character’s trademarked tank top and ponytail. That’s great news for fans of the Swedish actress, less so for fans of new, original ideas.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a remake of a remake, comes to screens courtesy of Illumination Entertainment, the masterminds behind the Despicable Me movies. Does that mean the Whos of Whoville will be played by the jellybean-shaped Minions?
We’ll have to wait for breakout director Jordan Peele to step behind the camera again, but in 2018 he’s producing the Spike Lee-helmed Black Klansman and lending his voice to the puppet thriller Abruptio.
Ex Machina director Alex Garland returns to the big screen with the genre-twisting science/fantasy/action/horror film Annihilation based on a book by Jeff Vandermeer. The author is impressed by Garland’s work. “It was so tense our bodies felt sore and beat up afterwards,” he said. Sounds good to me.
Bradley Cooper will write, direct and star in the fourth remake of A Star is Born. Lady Gaga, who will be credited by her given name, Stefani Germanotta, sits in for Barbra Streisand, who sat in for Judy Garland who took over from the character’s originator, Janet Gaynor.
Don’t mind subtitles? Check out Loveless, a film from Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev. Russia’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is the tale of a divorcing couple whose son disappears during one of their knock-down-drag-out arguments.
Want to take the kids to the flicks? Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 is an animated movie that is the first feature to include all four of Disney’s major brands, Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. Look for cameos from princesses Cinderella and Moana as well as C-3PO, Yoda and Iron Man.
CHIPs: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that writer-director-star Dax Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation from the classic TV show but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.
The Circle: While it is a pleasure to see Bill Paxton in his last big screen performance, “The Circle” often feels like an Exposition-A-Thon, a message in search of a story.
The Fate of the Furious: Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly. “The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mash-up of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Vin Diesel and Company that more is not always more.
Fifty Shades Darker: Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword? “Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.
The Mountain Between Us: Mountain survival movies usually end up with someone eating someone else to stay alive. “The Mountain Between Us” features the usual mountain survival tropes—there’s a plane crash, a showdown with a cougar and broken bones—but luckily for fans of stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet cannibalism is not on the menu. Days pass and then weeks pass and soon they begin their trek to safety. “Where are we going?” she asks. “We’re alive,” he says. “That’s where were going.” There will be no spoilers here but I will say the crash and story of survival changes them in ways that couldn’t imagine… but ways the audience will see coming 100 miles away. It’s all a bit silly—three weeks in and unwashed they still are a fetching couple—but at least there’s no cannibalism and no, they don’t eat the dog.
The Mummy: As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.
The Shack: Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.
The Snowman: We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better. Mix a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Movies like the high gloss crime thriller “La Femme Nikita,” the assassin mentor flick “Léon: The Professional” and outré sci fi opera “The Fifth Element” have come to define director Luc Besson’s outrageous style. Kinetic blasts of energy, his films are turbo charged fantasies that make eyeballs dance even if they don’t always engage the brain. His latest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” not only has one of the longest titles of the year but is also one of the most over-the-top, retina-frying movies of the year. Your eyes will beg for mercy.
Wonder Wheel: At the beginning of the film Mickey (Justin Timberlake) warns us that what we are about to see will be filtered through his playwright’s point of view. Keeping that promise, writer, director Woody Allen uses every amount of artifice at his disposal—including cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s admittedly sumptuous photography—to create a film that is not only unreal but also unpleasant. “Oh God,” Ginny (Kate Winslet) cries out at one point. “Spare me the bad drama.” Amen to that.
THE UGLY
Song to Song: I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits. I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true. In “Song to Song” there’s a quick shot of a tattoo that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies. I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
EXTRA! EXTRRA! MOST COUNFOUNDING
mother!: Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Aronofsky’s story of uninvited guests disrupting the serene lives of a poet and his wife refuses to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?
Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the stranger’s sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.
“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.
Baby Driver: Although it contains more music than most tuneful of movies “Baby Driver,” the new film from director Edgar Wright, isn’t a musical in the “West Side Story,” “Sound of Music” sense. Wallpapered with 35 rock ‘n roll songs on the soundtrack it’s a hard driving heist flick that can best be called an action musical.
The Big Sick: Even when “The Big Sick” is making jokes about terrorism and the “X-Files” it is all heart, a crowd-pleaser that still feels personal and intimate.
Call Me By Your Name: This is a movie of small details that speak to larger truths. Director Luca Guadagnino keeps the story simple relying on the minutiae to add depth and beauty to the story. The idyllic countryside, the quaint town, the music of the Psychedelic Furs and the languid pace of a long Italian summer combine to create the sensual backdrop against which the romance between the two blossoms. Guadagnino’s camera captures it all, avoiding the pitfalls of melodrama to present a story that is pure emotion. It feels real and raw, haunted by the ghosts of loves gone by.
Darkest Hour: This is a historical drama with all the trappings of “Masterpiece Theatre.” You can expect photography, costumes and period details are sumptuous. What you may not expect is the light-hearted tone of much of the goings on. While this isn’t “Carry On Churchill,” it has a lighter touch that might be expected. Gary Oldman, not an actor known for his comedic flourishes, embraces the sly humour. When Churchill becomes Prime Minister his wife, Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) makes an impassioned speech about the importance of the work he is about to take on. He raises a glass and, cutting through the emotion of the moment, says, “Here’s to not buggering it up!” It shows a side of Churchill not often revealed in wartime biopics.
The Disaster Artist: The key to pulling off “The Disaster Artist” is not recreating “The Room” beat for beat, although they do that, it’s actually about treating Wiseau as a person and not an object of fun. He’s an outrageous character and Franco commits to it 100%. From the marble-mouthed speech pattern that’s part Valley Girl and part Beaker from The Muppets to the wild clothes and stringy hair, he’s equal parts creepy and lovable but underneath his bravado are real human frailties. Depending on your point of view he’s either delusional or aspirational but in Franco’s hands he’s never also never less than memorable. It’s a broad, strange performance but it may also be one of the actor’s best.
Dunkirk: This is an intense movie but it is not an overly emotional one. The cumulative effect of the vivid images and sounds will stir the soul but despite great performances the movie doesn’t necessarily make you feel for one character or another. Instead its strength is in how it displays the overwhelming sense of scope of the Dunkirk mission. With 400,000 men on the ground with more in the air and at sea, the sheer scope of the operation overpowers individuality, turning the focus on the collective. Director Christopher Nolan’s sweeping camera takes it all in, epic and intimate moments alike.
The Florida Project: This is, hands down, one of the best films of the year. Low-budget and naturalistic, it packs more punch than any superhero. Director Sean Baker defies expectations. He’s made a film about kids for adults that finds joy in rocky places. What could have been a bleak experience or an earnest message movie is brought to vivid life by characters that feel real. It’s a story about poverty that neither celebrates or condemns its characters. Mooney’s exploits are entertaining and yet an air of jeopardy hangs heavy over every minute of the movie. Baker knows that Halley and Moonie’s well being hangs by a thread but he also understands they exist in the real world and never allows their story to fall into cliché.
Get Out: This is the weirdest and most original mainstream psychodrama to come along since “The Babadook.” The basic premise harkens back to the Sidney Poitier’s classic “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” In that film parents, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, have their attitudes challenged when their daughter introduces them to her African American fiancé. The uncomfortable situation of meeting in-laws for the first time is universal. It’s the added layers of paranoia and skewered white liberalism that propels the main character’s (Daniel Kaluuya) situation into full-fledged horror. In this setting he is the other, the stranger and as his anxiety grows the social commentary regarding attitudes about race in America grows sharper and more focussed.
Lady Bird: Greta Gerwig’s skilful handling of the story of Lady Bird’s busy senior year works not just because it’s unvarnished and honest in its look at becoming an adult but also, in a large degree, to Saoirse Ronan’s performance. I have long called her ‘Lil Meryl. She’s an actor of unusual depth, a young person (born in 1994) with an old soul. Lady Bird is almost crushed by the weight of uncertainty that greets her with every turn—will her parents divorce, will there be money for school, will Kyle be the boy of her dreams, will she ever make enough cash to repay her parents for her upbringing?—but Ronan keeps her nimble, sidestepping teen ennui with a complicated mix of snappy one liners, hard earned wisdom and a well of emotion. It’s tremendous, Academy Award worthy work.
The Post: Steven Spielberg film is a fist-pump-in-the-air look at the integrity and importance of a free press. It’s a little heavy-handed but these are heavy-handed times. Director Spielberg and stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are entertainers first and foremost, and they do entertain here, but they also shine a light on a historical era whose reverberations are being felt today stronger than ever.
The Shape of Water: A dreamy slice of pure cinema. Director Guillermo del Toro uses the stark Cold War as a canvas to draw warm and vivid portraits of his characters. It’s a beautiful creature feature ripe with romance, thrills and, above all, empathy for everyone. This is the kind of movie that reminds us of why we fell in love with movies in the first place.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: The story of a mother’s unconventional war with the world is simple enough, it’s the complexity of the characters that elevates the it to the level of great art.
Wonder Woman: Equal parts Amazon sword and sandal epic, mad scientist flick, war movie and rom com, it’s a crowd pleaser that places the popular character front and centre. As played by Gal Gadot, Diana is charismatic and kick ass, a superhero who is both truly super and heroic. Like Superman she is firmly on the side of good, not a tortured soul à la Batman. Naïve to the ways of the world, she runs headfirst into trouble. Whether she’s throwing a German tank across a battlefield, defying gravity to leap to the top of a bell tower, tolerating Trevor’s occasional mansplaining or deflecting bullets with her indestructible Bracelets of Submission, she proves in scene after scene to be both a formidable warrior and a genuine, profoundly empathic character.
Jurassic Park transformed the movie-going experience for an entire generation and became the highest-grossing film of all time in 1993, winning three Academy Awards®. Now audiences can experience this ground-breaking film as never before as it is projected in HD with a full symphony orchestra performing Williams’ magnificent score live!
Join us before the show on Thursday, December 28, for a conversation with Toronto Film Critic and TV Host Richard Crouse and Conductor Evan Mitchell. Together, they will share a closer look at the impact that Jurassic Park had and continues to have on pop culture. They will also explore John Williams’ memorable score and share a behind-the-scenes look of how the orchestra performs live and in sync with the film. Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Behind The Curtain pre-show talk is open to all ticket-holders attending the Thursday performance.
If “Molly’s Game” wasn’t a true story it would be unbelievable.
Jessica Chastain plays Molly Bloom, a one-time Olympic class skier sidelined by injury. Leaving the slopes behind she found her way into the world of high stakes poker but not as a player, as a purveyor. In Los Angeles and then again in New York she cultivated a guest list of rich and powerful men of movie stars, Russian mobsters and Wall Street hedge funders. They bet, lost (and sometimes won) millions of dollars, catered to by drink slinging models and Bloom’s huge line of credit. With the game come wealth, drug addiction and ultimately, an FBI arrest for a variety of charges. Money seized, drug addiction kicked, all the Poker Queen has left is her integrity and a supportive criminal defense lawyer in the form of Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba).
Written by ninety-words-a-minute screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (who also directed), coats the unlikely tale of a dedicated athlete who uses the dedication an skill she developed in her sport to create a new life for herself with an elegant sheen. The dialogue is top notch, the performances very good but it’s all surface. The psychology—her father (Kevin Costner) is a pontificating psychologist—doesn’t provide the kind of depth we need to truly care about Molly, before or after her downfall. She’s all ambition and little else. Chastain breathes life into her, rattling off Sorkin’s impressive dialogue, ripe with pop culture references, mythology and bon mots, but it’s the performance that illuminates the character for the audience, not the script.
Sorkin doesn’t exactly deal “Molly’s Game” a bad hand but he does bog down the story with clever asides and details instead of moving the plot forward. Aside from Bloom, his characters are all sharp-tongued creations whose personalities are become increasingly interchangeable as the same Sorkin-esque style of witty dialogue spills from all their lips.
In many ways “Molly’s Game” overplays its hand. It’s neither a searing indictment of high-stakes illegal gambling nor a psychological study of its main character. Instead it’s a pair of deuces when it should have been a full house.
“All the Money in the World,” a new true crime drama from director Ridley Scott, unwittingly became a talking point in the #MeToo conversation when disgraced star Kevin Spacey was disappeared from the film, replaced by Christopher Plummer. The ripped-from-the-headlines tale of ageing oil tycoon J. Paul Getty’s refusal to pay any ransom after his grandson’s kidnapping made headlines itself for the eleventh hour recasting. Question is, was the all the trouble worth it?
Set in 1975, the film begins with a pulse racing sequence that sees sixteen-year-old John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer, no relation to his co-star) plucked from the streets of Rome and thrown into a van by the Communist Red Brigade kidnapping gang lead by Cinquanta (Romain Duris). The family patriarch, tetchy tightwad J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), denies the Calabrian mob’s demand for a $17 million ransom, in part because he suspects his grandson may have had a role in planning his own abduction and, more importantly, because he feels he’ll become an ATM machine (although they didn’t exist yet) for every kidnapper brave enough to scoop up one of his 14 grandkids. “My Gramps wasn’t just the richest man in the world,” explains Getty III, “he was the richest man in the history of the world.”
Months later the stakes are raised all round when Getty III’s severed ear shows up in the mail. As former CIA agent Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg) investigates—“Bring him back as quickly and inexpensively as you can,” he is told.—the young Getty’s mother, Gail Harris (Michelle Williams) appeals to Getty senior’s better nature.
Based on the book “Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty” by John Pearson, “All the Money in the World” is a handsomely made, if not terribly deep, thriller. Scott can stage an action scene and build tension but the real star here is Plummer. As “the old one with the money” he hands in the second example this year after “the Man Who Invented Christmas” as to why he was perhaps born to play Ebenezer Scrooge. The sensational aspect of the casting aside, he hands in a performance that is one part doddering grandpa, one part cold-blooded shark. When he says, “There’s very little in life worth paying full price for,” in reference to his grandson it sounds like something your grandfather might have said. When he refuses to pay the ransom until he realizes it could be a tax deduction, it sends a chill down the spine.
Wahlberg doesn’t fare as well. He may be the film’s biggest star but he’s miscast as the calculating ex-CIA agent. Williams is better, all compassion and determination.
By the end credits it’s obvious that “All the Money in the World” isn’t simply a real life crime story but a timely gaze into the lives of the super rich. “We look like you,” says Getty III, “but we are not like you.”
Director Guillermo del Toro sings the praises of Jessica Chastain, saying she brings authenticity to everything she does and is “interested in being chameleonic.”
Indeed. Earlier this year the two-time Oscar nominated actor played World War II Warsaw human rights activist Antonina Zabinski in The Zookeeper’s Wife. Soon we’ll see her as 1890s era portrait painter Catherine Weldon, as screen legend Ingrid Bergman and as a mysterious alien with shape-shifting abilities in X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
This weekend in Molly’s Game, she is Molly Bloom, an Olympic-class skier who also ran the world’s most exclusive high-stakes poker game.
She is the very definition of versatile, a performer who is hard to pin down.
“I feel like the bigger risks I take, the more I learn,” she says. “I know I learn more from my failures than successes.”
From big films like Interstellar and The Martian, to small ones like A Most Violent Year and Miss Julie she is always distinctive and always interesting.
For instance contrast her work in two recent films, Miss Sloan and Crimson Peak.
In Miss Sloane she plays Elizabeth Sloane, a sleep-deprived D.C. lobbyist “at the forefront of a business with a terrible reputation.”
She’ll represent anyone, it seems, except the gun lobby, who offer her a lucrative contract, only to be laughed at and rejected. Soon after she leaves her firm—one of the biggest in the country—to join a small, scrappy group who aim to whip up support for a bill that will demand background checks for all gun owners.
Zippy dialogue flies off the screen probably easier than it would actually fly off the tongue, giving voice to colourful characters who say mostly interesting things.
“When this town guts you like a trout and chokes you with the entrails don’t come snivelling to me,” snarls Sloane.
It’s a catchy line and Chastain spits it out with conviction and often transcends the rat-a-tat dialogue by bringing some actual humanity to a character largely made up of bon mots and a bad attitude. It’s a struggle for Chastain to grow Elizabeth Sloane as a character but in her rare quiet moments, when she isn’t mouthing Jonathan Perera’s carefully crafted words, she finds warmth and vulnerability in a person described as the “personification of an ice cube.”
In Crimson Peak she is Lucille Sharpe who, along with her brother Thomas (Tom Hiddleston), is British gentry in America to raise money to perfect and build a machine to mine the rich red clay that lies under Crimson Peak, their family estate.
The movie is love letter to both V.C. Andrews and Edgar Allen Poe. Madness and murder are front and center, coupled with Chastain’s arch performance that embodies the Hammer Horror style of wild-eye-acting. To play Lucille she worked with a dialect coach to perfect her English accent, learned to play piano and, most unsettlingly, never blinks. “Lucille not blinking is her trying to say, ‘Look at me, I’m normal. Everything is fine.’ And there’s effort in that,” she said.
As the scoundrel of the piece the versatile actress is a commanding presence, one who drips with evil.
“My God, she creates one of the truly scary villains I have seen, so dark,” says Guillermo del Toro. “Jessica took this to 11. She went full Spinal Tap here.”
If Wolverine had been around in the 1840s P.T. Barnum would have made him a star. As “The Greatest Showman” tells us, the inventor of the modern circus sought out “unique persons and curiosities” to build a show that lasted for 143 years. After nine movies as the cigar-smoking X-Man Hugh Jackman now dons the ringmaster’s trademarked top hat to tell the tale of an American institution.
We first meet the future impresario as the young son of an impoverished tailor. When he makes the daughter of one of his father’s rich patrons laugh, it is love at first sight. Cut to a song or two and many years later, Barnum (now played by Jackman) is grown up with a head full of dreams, a houseful of children and a happy marriage to his childhood sweetheart Charity (Michelle Williams). What he doesn’t have is a viable career.
Fired from a job as an accountant, he packs up his desk, taking his ledger, pens and a packet of worthless deeds to sunken ships. Using those certificates he secures a $10,000 loan to start his first business, The Barnum Museum, complete with wax sculptures, stuffed animals and a thief-turned-magician named O’Malley. “People are fascinated by the exotic and the macabre,” he says.
He has trouble selling tickets until his daughters make a suggestion. “You need something sensational,” they say, “like a mermaid or unicorn. Something alive, not stuffed.” He doesn’t round up any mermaids or unicorns but does assemble a bearded lady (Keala Settle), trapeze artists (Zendaya and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), tattooed men, Dog-faced boys, Irish giants (Radu Spinghel) and Siamese twins.
Critic James Gordon Bennett (Paul Sparks), denounces the show as exploitation. “It’s a circus,” he raves. “The word you used to describe my show has a nice ring to it,” says Barnum and the concept of the contemporary circus was born.
Money poured in but respect did not. “My father was treated like dirt,” says the so-called “purveyor of the obscene and indecent.” “I was treated like dirt. My daughters won’t be treated like dirt.” In an attempt to court a more upscale crowd he brings on socialite and actor Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron). Carlyle, when he isn’t pining for acrobat Anne Wheeler (Zendaya), sets up shows for Queen Victoria and introduces Barnum to opera singer Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson). Dubbed the Swedish Nightingale, she is the biggest singing star in Europe, and Barnum almost goes bankrupt trying to make her a sensation in America.
It isn’t until he rediscovers his roots—and the virtues of performing under a tent—that he makes a lasting impression.
“The Greatest Showman” is a period piece but pulsates with the rhythms of contemporary music. Songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who took home as Oscar last year for their work on “La La Land,” provide a timeless score that rings with the brassiness of present-day Broadway. It feels slightly strange, although no more strange than people suddenly bursting into song while traipsing down the street. The songs are catchy and the loose-limbed contemporary choreography would likely have caused riots in 1845.
As the flamboyant huckster who craves legitimacy Jackman returns to his musical theatre roots, handing in a performance that wouldn’t be out of place on the Broadway stage. The flimsy-ish story doesn’t give him much opportunity to really dig deep into what made Barnum tick. The genial actor, however, in a bigger-than-life performance, brings the rags to riches tale if not to vivid life, at last to tuneful life.
More interesting is the film’s subtext. It’s an American success story writ large but beyond that are comments on equality and bigorty. Despite advertising his menagerie of performers as a freak show we’re told Barnum saw his circus as a celebration of humanity in all its forms. The movie favours uplift and inspiration over deep insight, but its harmonious pop psychology will make your feet tap.
The message of tolerance is central to the plot, reinforced by the Carlyle, Wheeler romance. The upper crust actor and the African American acrobat are drawn to one another despite societal the norms of the day. When his father scolds him, reminding him to remember his place he snaps back, “If this is my place I don’t want it.” As Barnum reaches for the gold, turning his back on his family and ‘freaks,’ Carlyle walks away from his privilege, following his heart.
With that in mind it’s a shame that the move doesn’t give its marginal characters more of a voice. The Bearded Lady, the Dog Faced Boy and others are more or less treated on film as Barnum treated them in life, as set dressing and not much more.
“The Greatest Showman” seems to have taken its lead from its subject and delivered a movie in which every number is a showstopper. It’s a rollercoaster of story and music that occasionally moves too fast but delivers enough thrills along the way to be worth the price of admission. Maybe that’s enough. As Barnum himself said, “The noblest art is that of making others happy.”
“Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle” has only the most tangential connection to the critically ravaged but popular Robin Williams movie which had only a fleeting connection to the 1981 story by Chris Van Allsburg. The basic premise of a game that springs to life survives, but that’s about it. The new film trades on the goodwill of the other projects and could just as easily have been called “Java 1.2: Welcome To The Jungle” or any other title that might conjure up nostalgia for the 1990s.
The premise is basic. Nerdy gamer Spencer Gilpin (Alex Wolff), mean girl Bethany Walker (Madison Iseman), jock Anthony “Fridge” Johnson (Ser’Darius Blain) and Martha Kaply (Morgan Turner) are assigned to detention. Stuck in a storage room, they discover a dusty old Jumanji gaming console. Hooking it up, the game sputters to life. “A game for those who seek to find,” it says, “a way to leave their lives behind.” As each click on an avatar they are suddenly swept away into the world of the game, plopped down in the Jumanji jungle and in the middle of an escapade.
They also look different. Their teenage selves are gone, replaced by heroic videogame characters. Spencer is now Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), a buff hero, fearless with no vulnerabilities. Martha is warrior Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan) while Fridge is zoologist Moose Finbar (Kevin Hart). The biggest change is reserved for Bethany who is now cryptographer Professor Sheldon Oberon (Jack Black).
Adjusting to their new bodies presents challenges. “I don’t have my Claritin!” Spencer complains. “I look like a garden gnome,” whines Bethany. But soon a bigger problem presents itself. How do they get back? Enter game guide Nigel (Rhys Darby) who gives them the rules—to leave game they must return a jewel, stolen by the evil explorer John Van Pelt (Bobby Cannavale), to the eye of the giant Jaguar statue located deep in the jungle. To do so they must complete different game levels. As they survive each level the danger increases on the next but each challenge also teaches them something about themselves that will apply to their regular lives if they are successful and make it home.
Robin Williams claimed the word “jumanji” is a Zulu word meaning “many effects.” It’s a definition director Jake Kasdan seems to have taken too literally. The family-friendly action is boosted by fake looking CGI effects that are almost entirely without charm.
Luckily the cast has charm to burn. When the CGI isn’t clogging up the screen the actors do a decent job of selling the story. Much of the movie’s humour comes from the actors playing against type. The muscle-bound Johnson as a scaredy-cat and Hart’s slapstick swing for the fences every time but it is Black, as a coquettish teenage girl, who has the best lines. When Bethany learns about going to the bathroom while standing up he/she squeals, “This is so much easier! You have a handle!” Later as the game intensifies he/she says, “I feel like since I lost my phone my other senses have heightened.”
You don’t have to work too hard to find the laughs here, but they are courtesy of the cast’s delivery and charisma not the flimsy script. When they aren’t cracking wise the script—credited to no less than five writers—has characters spend too much time talking about what they’re going to do just before they do it.
When they aren’t droning on about the game to one another or the audience they are engaged in some light pop psychology. “We’ve always only had one life to live,” Moose opines as Bravestone’s videogame power bars deplete, “it depends on how you live it.” It’s as deep as a lunch tray
There’s also much talk of empowerment. In the land of Jumanji the smart ones are gifted with physical progress while the damn bulbs are bumped up intellectually. The mean girl learns selflessness while the brainiac, who had no one use for Phys Ed class, learns the benefit of dance fighting as exercise. By the time the end credits roll everyone are better off than when the movie started… except maybe the audience who deserve more than a handful of laughs and warmed over 90s nostalgia.
