It’s no secret that Nicolas Cage’s taste in movie roles has changed from the days when he starred in A-list films like Raising Arizona, Moonstruck and Leaving Las Vegas. The 54-year-old actor appears to flip a coin when deciding what to make these days. Sometimes he gets lucky — The Croods has a sequel on the way and Joe made some box office bank — while other times he ends up in films like Outcast, a period piece whose outlandish story careens through Europe and Asia like a drunken soldier on shore leave.
It’s trendy to write Cage off as an actor throwing his talent away, more concerned with cash than art. YouTube brims with videos like Crazy Cage Moments and Cage Rage. Between them they’ve racked up millions of views, which is certainly more people — give or take several zeroes — that saw his recent bizarro-world revenge film Mandy or direct-to-oblivion domestic thriller Inconceivable. And yet, no matter how low rent some of his recent output is, he’s usually compelling.
The vids are an eye-opening compendium of Cage’s trademarked brand of extreme acting — a method of over-emoting perfected in the more than 80 movies he’s made since his debut (under his real name Nicolas Coppola) in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Citing The Incredible Hulk star Bill Bixby as a major influence, he has always been, for better and for worse, one of our most completely fearless actors.
This weekend’s Mom and Dad promises an extra helping of full-throttle Cage. He calls it his favourite movie in a decade, while Glen Kenny, writing in the New York Times said, “In this morbid satire about parents trying to kill their kids, Mr. Cage has plenty of opportunity to go full him.” Cage, who forever will be best known for hits like Adaptation, National Treasure and Leaving Las Vegas, has made many other movies that are worth a second look.
One writer called Cage’s work in 1989’s Vampire’s Kiss “a grand stab at all-out, no-holds-barred comic acting or one of the worst dramatic performances in a film this year,” but decades later the movie has earned cult status because of Cage’s edgy work. The story of a man who may — or may not — be turning into a vampire is best remembered as the film in which Cage ate a live cockroach, but also features one of his most unhinged performances.
A few years later, somewhere between Honeymoon in Vegas and Guarding Tess, came Red Rock West, a genre-busting movie — Ebert said it “exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy” — that unfairly barely made it to theatres. Cage hands in some of his best work as a broke but honest drifter, but only took the role after Kris Kristofferson turned it down.
Existing at the intersection of Vampire’s Kiss and Red Rock West is Wild at Heart, a film that perfectly showcases Cage’s manic energy. As Sailor, a lover boy on the run from hit men hired by his girlfriend’s mother, he’s a one-of-a-kind, an Elvis wannabe with a snakeskin jacket and an attitude. It’s a bravura performance. Like the jacket, which he says “represents a symbol of my individuality,” Wild at Heart is a symbol of his artistic individuality.
“I was totally burned out at the end of Republic of Doyle,” says Allan Hawco. “When we finished six seasons every cool idea I ever had, every cool line I ever had, every cool plot idea, everything, I’d used it. My charm was gone. I was happy to have something to fill up the well again.”
That something was St. John’s writer Lisa Moore’s crime novel Caught. A finalist for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the book is a period piece, set in 1978, that follows drug smuggler David Slaney’s prison escape and attempt at creating a new life. Described as loyal, paranoid, driven and resilient, Slaney is a charismatic and complex character with a plan for one more heist and to rekindle a romance with the woman he loves.
“I read the thing in three hours,” says Hawco on the line from his home in Newfoundland. “I was just completely taken by it. By the characters, the innocence of it, the injustice of what the characters were put through. I could see it all in front of me as to how it would go as an adaptation for television.
“I called Lisa shortly afterwards because everyone was having a hard time getting the rights to this book. A lot of people wanted it, which is often the case with a great novel. Lisa and I know one another. We live in the same city not far from one another. So I called her and said, ‘Please, I want to do this. I want to make this into a television series.’ It’s a small town. She knew our track record as a company here. I had faith that she would feel confident I would do right by her story.”
Though “rich in character and situation,” Hawco says bringing the story to the small screen — the first of the five hour-long episodes, co-starring Paul Gross, airs on CBC television February 26 — required some changes.
“It wasn’t going to work for me unless I could find a way in authentically as a writer first,” he says. “In the novel there is a beautiful innocence to their discovery of the world and their openness to what fate may bring. That works really well in the novel because you can internalize it. You can identify with it and go with it. I couldn’t see a way to paint that picture for the screen. For me the stakes had to be different and in order for them to be different Slaney had to be older. This had to be a last opportunity for him. That became the spine of the entire adaptation.”
The lead role was tailored for Hawco, who is 40.
“In the book there is a beautiful innocence to him that is still very much at the core of who I eventually created, but their ages are 10 years apart. My David Slaney in the adaptation is 35, in the book it is his 25th birthday. As much moisturizer as I can put on my face, there’s no playing 25 again. Nor do I want to.”
How do you make a character like Slaney, who dabbles on the wrong side of the law, likeable enough to carry a television series?
“Luckily I never think that way,” he laughs, “or I might not get out of bed!”
“Game Night” is a new thriller comedy with Jason Bateman that is more comedy than actual thriller.
Bateman and Rachel McAdams are Max and Annie, two competitive people who meet at a trivia night, bond over obscure “Teletubbies” facts, fall in love and get married. They’re so into games they even play Just Dance at the wedding reception.
Cut to a couple of years later. They are comfortably tucked away in the suburbs and hosting weekly game nights with friends, the dimwitted Ryan (Billy Magnussen) and long time couple Kevin and Sarah (Lamorne Morris and Hamilton, Ontario-born Kylie Bunbury). They used to invite neighbours Debbie and Gary (Jesse Plemons), but since Debbie moved out they take great pains to ensure that Gary, a creepy cop, doesn’t find out about their get-togethers.
On a personal level they’re trying to have a baby, but it isn’t going well. Their doctor (Camille Chen) thinks stress is making it impossible for them to conceive. The source? Max’s brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler), a good looking, venture capitalist who loves to flaunt his wealth. “He’s like the Mark Wahlberg to Max’s Donnie,” says Ryan.
When Brooks rolls into town, driving Max’s dream car, a vintage Stingray, he throws a special game night at his new, rented mansion. With no Risk, Scrabble or Monopoly in sight, the regular gamers gather for a murder mystery party. The winner gets the Stingray. “This will be a game night to remember,” Brooks says.
When the murder mystery turns into a real kidnapping the game players are sucked into a world of intrigue as they have to solve the “game.“ Seems there’s more to Brooks than meets the eye. “I can’t believe your brother has been lying to us this whole time,” guffaws Ryan. “He’s even cooler than I thought.”
This isn’t a Hitchcock movie. There’s no real mystery in “Game Night,” just some twists and turns and engaging performances from a cast game to have fun. It’s more about spending time with the characters on their wild night out.
Much of the humour comes from the casual back-and-forth between Bateman and McAdams. They interact like an old married couple, not people in a bad situation. Bateman is a natural at this kind of deadpan comedy and McAdams, who generally features in dramas, keeps pace. Their chemistry is one of the reasons this slight comedy works as well as it does.
Magnussen, who plays a likable dim bulb, and Morris and Bunbury who work their way through a mystery of their own making aid the above-the-title stars. The biggest surprise and certainly the film’s oddest performance belongs to Plemons. Best known for his work on “Breaking Bad” and “Fargo,” he mixes deadpan delivery with a thousand-yard-stare that is as unnerving as it is funny.
“Game Night” isn’t slap your knee funny but it is an amiable enough comedy that makes up in charm what it lacks in procedural thrills.
Based on David Levithan’s New York Times bestseller “Every Day,” the new teenage romance starring Angourie Rice, asks what would it be like to really get inside the head of the person you love?
Rice plays Rhiannon, a 16-year old high school student dating a popular jock named Justin (Justice Smith). He’s a bit oblivious, the kind of guy who thinks a great date involves hanging around his bedroom, eating McDonalds and playing “Legend of Zelda.” One morning, feeling playful, Rhi suggests they skip class and spend the day together. “Is that something we do?“ he asks, before hightailing out of school and into an afternoon of romantic adventure. It is, Rhiannon says, the greatest day of her life.
Unfortunately, the next day, Justin doesn’t remember any of it. He has a vague memory of the fun, like he’s seeing it through a mist, but soon he’s back up to his old tricks, reverting back to the guy he was before their magical date. What’s going on? It seems Justin was simply “inhabited” for twenty-four hours by A, a wandering spirit who invades random bodies, always of the same age and only for 24 hours. It’s “Quantum Leap with a big helping of teenage ennui.
As Rhiannon slowly comes to grips with what’s going on she meets A’s newest incarnation, a teenage girl. “Where is A?” she asks. “He’s here, he’s not here, here.”
Confused yet? It gets foggier when Rhiannon and A, the amorphous spirit, become romantically involved. “Not everyone’s body aligns with their mind,” A says. “I am asking you to give me a chance.” The love is real, regardless of the meat suit the spirit has jumped into. When A lands in the form of Alexander (Owen Teague), a strapping young man, it seems the perfect blend of metaphysical and physical. Enter the melodramatic teen dilemma: How can you love someone whose life is not their own?
“Every Day” takes the long way around to drive home the point that making a spiritual connection with someone is just as important as clicking physically. After a deadly first thirty minutes that could have been from any generic indie teen drama the story picks up once Rhiannon rebounds from Justin to the spirit world but it never fully engages. Director Michael Sucsy embraces the supernatural afterschool special feel of the material, adding in a few playful touches—A spends some time in Rhiannon, modestly being careful not to look down while she’s in the shower—but he also muddies the already murky waters with a subplot about Rhiannon’s troubled father (Michael Cram) and harried mother (an underused Maria Bello). Their story provides more relationship advice—cultivate the ability to except the change in others—but adds little to the overall story.
“Every Day” feels like it skirts around the interesting stuff—the exploration of what it means to be rootless, cut free of gender and family—in favour of playing up the teen dream “instalove” aspects of the tale.
It is a safe bet that you’ve never seen a movie quite like “Mom and Dad.” Starring Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair as parents trying to murder their children it is dark yet goofy. It’s trashy with no redeeming qualities and that’s what makes it great… or at least a fun night out at the movies.
Cage and Blair are Brent and Kendall Ryan, the slightly bored suburban parents of Carly (Anne Winters) and Josh (Zackary Arthur). He longs for his wild years, she is a devoted mom, but concerned about aging. When a mysterious plague—or is it mass hysteria?—hits town, turning parents against their kids, Brent and Kendall spend twenty-four-hours trying to trap and kill their kids. Finally they can act on all the resentments they’ve been harbouring against their kids for forcing them to grow up and leave their youth behind.
“Mom and Dad” is the very definition of a midnight movie. Cage, a master at playing heightened reality, has rarely been, well, Cagier and the sight of Blair sizing up tools to kill her daughter—should she use a meat hammer or long kitchen knife—is delightful in the most disturbing of ways.
Director Brian Taylor brings the same wild anarchic spirit he brought to movies like “Crank” and “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.” In a quick 85 minutes he provides set-up, quick character studies and enough twisted action to keep eyeballs dancing and then, as though he ran out of film and couldn’t finish the film, it ends. Cuts to black just as it feels like the story is going to head into even wilder territory. I doubt it’s a cliffhanger to trigger a sequel (the story doesn’t have very far to go) so the suddenness of it comes as a shock—almost as much of a shock as parents trying to gas their own offspring.
I suppose “Mom and Dad” may have a secret agenda, a hidden subtext about filicide and the toxic relationships that push people to do the unthinkable, but if it is there, it is hidden under layers of raucously un-PC humour.
For those who complain that the recent spate of superhero movies aren’t about anything other than bombast and reaching into your wallet, I give you Black Panther. Directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Chadwick Boseman in the title role, it’s a movie that delivers wham-bam action but serves it up with compelling sides of mythology and social awareness.
“Part of my frustration that led me to write,” says playwright of the Tony Award-winning play Eclipsed and Black Panther star Danai Gurira, “was that I didn’t see stories that allowed truths to be told about the continent and about our potential and our power and our dimensionality and our perspective and our personality and our languages. What was really exciting to me was to see all of that embodied in what Wakanda and the Black Panther narrative bring with the African perspective. It is completely unprecedented.”
The film starts with a quick origin story, detailing the introduction of vibranium to the small (fictional) African nation of Wakanda. This mysterious metal is a wonder. Near indestructible, it can absorb kinetic energy and has imbued a Wakandan flower called the Heart-Shaped Herb with a supercharge that gives superpowers when ingested.
Cut to modern day. After his father’s death T’Challa (Boseman) is crowned king but just as he is ordained a rare Wakandan artifact made of vibranium is lifted from a London museum by two very bad men, Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) and Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan).
To retrieve the precious metal, T’Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther, along with spy Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) and warrior Okoye (Gurira), travel to Korea where the artefact is about to be sold to CIA agent Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman).
A wild battle leads to a power struggle that may not only compromise the throne of Wakanda but also threaten the safety of the world.
“I loved the idea of being able to enact a nation that was never colonized,” says Gurira, who also plays the katana-wielding Michonne on The Walking Dead. “I grew up in post-colonial Africa. There is a lot of work that goes into reclaiming who you are, how you define your place in the world and what your power potential truly is when you have been colonized.
“One thing that colonized people don’t have is that part of their history that tells them who they would have been had they never been colonized. The beauty of Wakanda is that is shows us something. It’s a celebration. So many things are pulled from actual stories and narratives. The costumes, the language are actually African. It is a celebration of a place that often gets distorted or misrepresented or presented as something deficient, which we all know, Africa is so not.”
Black Panther takes place in a couple of time frames (NO SPOILERS HERE!) but at its heart it is a timely story about social responsibility — a wealthy nation state must confront its role in the world — that pulsates with smart commentary about race and revolution. It takes a well-known comic book character, the first Black standalone superhero in the Marvel Universe, and delivers a movie ripe with subtext. Black Panther is not only capable of fighting the bad guys but is also a vessel for the film’s study of legacy and identity.
For those who complain that the recent spate of superhero movies aren’t about anything other than bombast and reaching into your wallet, I give you “Black Panther.” Directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Chadwick Boseman in the title role, it’s a movie that delivers wham-bam action but serves it up with compelling sides of mythology and social awareness.
The film starts with a quick origin story, detailing the introduction of vibranium to the small (fictional) African nation of Wakanda. This mysterious metal is a wonder. Near indestructible, it can absorb kinetic energy and has imbued a Wakandan flower called the Heart-Shaped Herb with a supercharge that gives superpowers when ingested.
Cut to modern day. After his father’s death T’Challa (Boseman) is crowned King but just as he is ordained a rare Wakandan artefact made of vibranium is lifted from a London museum by two very bad men, Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) and Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan).
To retrieve the precious metal T’Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther, along with spy Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) and warrior Okoye (Danai Gurira), travel to Korea where the artefact is about to be sold to CIA agent Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman).
A wild battle ensues to a power struggle that may not only compromise the throne of Wakanda but also threaten the safety of the world.
“Black Panther” takes place in a couple of time frames—NO SPOILERS HERE!—but at its heart it is a timely story about social responsibility—a wealthy nation state confronting its role in the world—that pulsates with smart commentary about race and revolution.
“The world is going to start over,” Killmonger declares, “and this time we are on top!” It’s the kind of thing movie bad guys have been saying for years but this time around the villain is so multi-layered and interesting it packs an extra punch. Jordan isn’t just evil—although he is pretty bad; covered in scars for every person he’s ever killed—he’s a villain with a purpose. His motivations are personal—AGAIN: NO SPOILERS HERE!—but when he suggests arming the, “two billion people who look like me all over the world,” with vibranium he’s not just speaking as a revolutionary but as someone hungry for representation and recognition. It’s a powerful message and Jordan brings it home in a performance that is both intense and very emotional.
Letitia Wright plays T’Challa’s sixteen-year old sister Shuri and steals most every scene she appears in. Imagine James Bond’s Q with a snappier wit and more brains than Tony Stark. She has some of the movie’s best lines and is destined to become a featured player in future instalments.
Boseman has made a career of playing iconic characters on screen. As sports legend Jackie Robinson in “42” or James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, in “Get on Up,” or Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice in “Marshall,”: he has breathed new life into characters we thought we already knew. Here he takes a well-known comic book character, the first black standalone superhero in the Marvel Universe, and delivers a performance ripe with subtext. His Black Panther is not only capable of fighting the bad guys but is also a vessel for the film’s study of the importance of legacy and identity.
“Black Panther” pushes the Marvel Universe past the typical Avengers style bombast fests like “Age of Ultron.” This is a breath of fresh air, a warm breeze along the lines of “Ant-Man” or “Doctor Strange,” films that transcend the superhero genre, pushing the form into new, unexplored territory. It may be a tad too long and slightly uneven in it’s first hour but with its strong female characters—who work together rather than as opponents—an Afrocentric story and social commentary it feels like the perfect movie for right now.
The stop-motion geniuses at Aardman Animation are the kings of the underdog. They’ve given us stories of chickens rebelling against farm owners, a sheep who takes charge and leads the flock to safety and hapless adventurer Wallace. In their latest, “Early Man,” there’s a Bronze Age twist to the small fry tale.
A prologue informs us that humans survived the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs. (Remember, this is all humour, not history.) What good could come out of that life-changing catastrophe? The invention of football. Using stones for goalposts, the prehistoric humans starting kicking the meteorite around to create the game that would become the world’s most popular sport.
Cut to a few ages later, near Manchester, around lunchtime. A Stone Age clan, including a spunky caveman named Dug (voice of Eddie Redmayne) and his sidekick Hognob (Nick Park), find themselves rocked by a new era. Bronze Age villain Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston with an exaggerated French accent) has plans to invade Dug and Co.’s comfortable life, seizing their land to turn it into a mine. “The age of stone is over!” he says. “Long live the age of bronze!” It’s up to Dug and his people to protect the interest of the tribe against the more sophisticated enemy, but how? By challenging Nooth’s best football team, Real Bronzio, to a match, that’s how.
“Early Man” is a romp about football, survival and teamwork. It also features some of the best (read worst) Premier League puns. “They’re playing well, early man… United,” usually delivered by characters speak English and crack wise like British music hall comedians. It’s silly stuff, part Flintstones, part kiddie “Quest for Fire,” and while it does contain quite a few laughs it doesn’t have the same anarchic spirit of earlier Aardman films. It’s entertaining, good-natured and I think kids will like it—especially the T-Rex sized duck who is both a menace and a help to the Brutes—but it feels like middleweight Aardman.
The thing that separates us isn’t politics, or religion. No, the thing that divides us is our willingness to share our stories from the most secret room in your house—the bathroom. A new documentary, “Poop Talk,” presents a cast of luminaries including Adam Carolla, Rob Corddry, Nikki Glaser, Aisha Tyler, Eric Stonestreet, Dr. Drew Pinsky and Oscar nominee Kumail Nanjiani to talk about the most basic human function.
Director Aaron N. Feldman has made a movie for the kind of people who find Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo the funniest part of the festival season. Embarrassing stories about getting caught short, blaming accidents on the dog and cultural differences, abound. Nothing is off limits. Constipation, something called “hot bagging” and what it’s like to be a celebrity and have to go in public are all discussed. It’s unapologetically gross, often off-putting but occasionally insightful.
“They say you can judge a society by how it treats its prisoners,” says Corolla, “but what it s**ts into is probably a better way to do it.”
Pete Holmes, star of HBOs “Crashing,” says he enjoys privacy—the stall door all the way down to the floor—but adds that, “what makes it better and what is true progress is our ability to talk and even joke about it. That’s what I want. Give me the God-given right to say, ‘Whoa, do not go in there.”
“Poop Talk’s” subject may be universal but it is probably best suited for those who regard the poop emoji as high art.
