Imagine learning that the plane crash that claimed your family wasn’t an accident but a covered-up terrorist attack. You would be angry and perhaps hungry for revenge but few would go to the lengths as “The Rhythm Section’s” Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively) in her search for justice. “I’ll find the people who did this,” she says. “I’ll kill every last one of them.”
Like so many people touched by unimaginable tragedy Patrick turns to drugs and alcohol to blunt the simmering wellspring of emotion that always seems ready to bubble over. In the three years since her family perished in a plane crash she has been pushed to the edge, despondent, leading a life of survivor guilt—she was supposed to be on the plane—and rage. “I have nothing left,” she says.
When a journalist tells her the crash was actually a case of terrorism and not mechanical failure or an act of God she springs into action, morphing from down ‘n out to knock ‘em out; part La Femme Nikita, part Lisbeth Salander. “I’ve been dying for three years,” she says to one of her victims. “For you it will only be a few minutes.”
Revenge dramas should be snappy. They should bring the viewer into the story, give them a reason to care about the vengeance but most of all they should be satisfying. Each act of retribution should give our dark sides an electrifying jolt. Unfortunately, “The Rhythm Section” misses each and everyone of these beats. The boilerplate script combined with slack pacing and predictable twists and turns are prettied up with an indie movie sheen but there’s not much here beyond some hand held theatrics and exotic locations.
Lively throws vanity out the window, making the most of an underwritten character. Unlike many other movies in this genre, she isn’t an instant super-spy. She’s jittery, struggling with the job of revenge, which, if we cared about what was happening on screen, might have been a nice twist on the usual insta-spy genre.
For all its style “The Rhythm Section” feels like the victim of a ruthless paring down. The story is truncated without enough information to get invested in the characters. A glimpse or two of Stephanie’s life before the plane crash—the o-so-brief flashbacks don’t count—would have deepened our connection to her and her pain so later, when the going gets rough, we would still be paying attention.
For generations parents have used the German folk tale “Hansel and Gretel” as a way to lull kids to sleep. The story of two kids ditched by their father and step-mother in the forest has always had a scary edge to it but “Gretel and Hansel,” a new, dark reimagining starring “It: Chapter Two’s” Sophia Lillis, would likely leave kids with serious abandonment issues if watched before bed.
Set in the distant past, when we first meet the title characters—sixteen-year-old Gretel (Lillis) and younger brother Hensel (Samuel Leakey)—a lack of money and their mother’s madness see them sent off into a grim fairy tale to fend for themselves. To the ominous sounds of soundtrack by French pop/rock musician Robin “Rob” Coudert, the duo make their way, scrounging for food, desperate for shelter. They meet The Huntsman (Charles Babalola) who warns them against talking to wolves—“They are charming and handsome but dangerous!”—but doesn’t see fit to caution them against eating the hallucinogenic mushrooms the two starving kids find under a tree. One mind expanding trip later they come across a house. Peering into the window they see a dining table laden with food. Invited in by the elderly Holda (Alice Krige) to eat and rest, they make a deal to trade chores for rent. Holda agrees, but soon Gretel has nightmares. “Are they the result of too much rich food,” she wonders, “or are they a warning?” It seems there is more to Holda than Gretel and Hansel first thought. “We are made from the same matter,” Holda says to Gretel. “The same filth.”
The story is certainly based on the Brothers Grimm story of a cannibal witch but screenwriter Rob Hayes enhances the story with “Star Wars” allusions—Will Gretel embrace her Dark Side?—and does things with entrails that even the Brothers Grimm on their grimmest day wouldn’t dare include in one of their stories. The result is a movie heavy on atmosphere and unease but light on actual scares. Shadowy characters appear and disappear, providing some creepy visuals and the occasional jump scare but moments that make the hair stand up on the back of your neck are absent.
Instead, director Osgood Perkins (son of “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins) stresses the intense human side of the horror, the loss of a parent, abandonment and the decisions Gretel must make to ensure her brother’s safety during her coming-of-age. It’s sense of fear is primal, rooted in complicated teen feelings of someone forced to grow up too quickly.
“Gretel & Hansel” is witchier than any other version of the story and has some genuinely creepy moments but comes just shy of making a lasting impression.
Richard, science correspondent Dan Riskin, and parent blogger Samantha Kemp-Jackson get Behind the Headlines with host Beverly Thomson. Today they discuss the reaction to the coronavirus and the effectiveness of Home Security Kits.
On the September 19, 2020 episode of “Pop Life” Richard speaks to singer, songwriter, actor Josh Groban who opens up about all the projects he is working on and how he manages it all. Then the “Pop Life” the panel, sports psychologist Dana Sinclair, comedian Jus Reign and aerospace engineer Natalie Panek, share their take on what it means to be successful and how that differs depending on your industry.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
Anyone who thinks the Guy Ritchie of old has disappeared, crushed under the weight of the huge box office grosses of the family-friendly “Aladdin,” need look no further than the blood splattered pint mug of “The Gentlemen’s” opening scene for proof to the contrary.
Highly stylized crime comedies like “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” made Ritchie the king of fast-paced, politically-incorrect stories of life on the streets. The big budget movies, his Sherlock Holmes series and “Aladdin,” among others, made more money but lacked the visceral thrills of his early work. His new film, “The Gentlemen,” starring Matthew McConaughey, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant, feels like a hybrid of the two phases of his career. A spiritual cousin to “Lock, Stock” and ”Snatch,” it brings Ritchie back to London’s underworld, a place populated by Saville Row suit-wearing tough guys, ruthless tabloid editors and henchmen who speak like down-on-their-heels Oxford drop outs.
Matthew McConaughey is Mickey Pearson, an American who built a weed empire in his adopted home country of England. Intelligent and ruthless—qualities matched only by his wife Rosalind (Dockery)—he’s now middle-aged and looking to cash out. His offers to sell the business to billionaire drug lord Matthew Berger (a very mannered Jeremy Strong) for $400 million attracts unwanted attention from Dry Eye (Golding), the ruthless youngest nephew of an aging crime lord.
There’s more, but this is a pretzel of a story, twisted and tied in knots.
“The Gentlemen” is not a sequel or a reboot but it feels like one. The hyper-masculine story telling style, inventive use of swear words and spider-web plotting, while audacious, will be very familiar to Ritchie-philes. It’s “Snatch 2.0” with the same kind of big name cast who seem to be having fun mouthing Ritchie’s profanity laden dialogue but no amount of fast cutting and fast talking can replace real energy. As rock ‘n rolling as the filmmaking is, the story acts as an anchor, bogging things down as it gets more and more convoluted.
It’s too bad because Ritchie takes pains to create the very specific world his characters inhabit, and it is a colourful place but it seems that he never met a plot twist he didn’t love. As the plot thickens, and it does thicken almost to the point of impenetrability, the movie begins to feel overstuffed. To help the audience along Ritchie binds everything together with a silly framing device involving Fletcher (Grant), a private eye/blackmailer who unfurls the complicated story to Pearson’s right-hand-man Raymond (Charlie Hunnam). It’s time consuming and adds little to the picture except for Hugh Grant’s exaggerated accent as he delivers flowery lines like, “Our antagonist explodes on the scene, like a millennial firework.”
“The Gentlemen” feels like an exercise in nostalgia, back to era of Ritchie’s frenetic jump cuts and outdated attitudes about race disguised as quippy dialogue.
“The Last Full Measure” is the story of two men who are driven by a sense of duty to people they never met.
Based on a true story of bravery during one of the “bloodiest days” of the Vietnam War, the movie begins thirty-two years later when Pentagon staffer Scott Huffman (Sebastien Stan) takes a meeting with Master Sergeant Thomas Tully, Air Force Rescue, retired (William Hurt). Tully wants Huffman’s help to posthumously upgrade U.S. Air Force Pararescuemen William H. Pitsenbarger’s (Jeremy Irvine) Air Force Cross medal to a Medal of Honor, America’s highest and most prestigious personal military decoration. Huffman, an ambitious Department of Defence lawyer, thinks it is a waste of time but is ordered to, “take a few days and collect some war stories,” by his boss Carlton Stanton (Bradley Whitford).
His research connects him with survivors of the battle, U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division soldiers Takoda (Samuel L. Jackson), Burr (Peter Fonda) and Mott (Ed Harris), men whose lives were saved by Pitsenbarger. At first he regards their stories as an exercise in “post traumatic exorcism” but soon comes to realize that Pitsenbarger made what Abraham Lincoln called “gave the last full measure of devotion” to help men he didn’t know. By bravely inserting himself into the middle of an ambush he saved over sixty soldiers, losing his life in the process and yet was not awarded the military’s highest honor. With the support of Pitsenbarger’s parents (Christopher Plummer & Diane Ladd), Huffman risks his professional life to go ona journey of self-discovery and uncover a conspiracy that extends to the highest reaches of power at the Pentagon.
Told in flashbacks to the fateful day on the battlefield, “The Last Full Measure” is part detective story, part examination of what it means to be a soldier. Huffman’s interviews reveal men troubled by the events of a life time ago, riddled with PTSD, unable to sleep or function in regular society. Tully, in particular is wracked by survivor’s guilt, the feeling that he didn’t do enough while Pitsenbarger gave his all. These scenes aren’t subtle but what they lack in finesse they make up for in sheer thought-provoking power.
The film’s strength may be as a conversation starter regarding the psychological price soldiers pay when they return from war. But as well-intentioned as the film’s messages of respect for the sacrifices of the fallen are, “The Last Full Measure” succumbs to melodrama at almost every turn. Clichéd, tough guy dialogue and characters that feel more like a collection of tics than actual fully rounded people, detract from the film’s serious message.
Based on a 1927 science fiction/horror story by H. P. Lovecraft, “Color Out of Space” is a strange film starring everyone’s favorite purveyor of strange performances, Nicolas “Dad’s been acting weird” Cage.
Cage is Nathan Gardner, a former artist living on his late father’s remote farm near the fictional town of Arkham, one of Lovecraft’s favorite settings. His family, Wiccan practitioner Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), weed aficionado Benny and youngster Jack (Brendan Meyer and Julian Hilliard) and mother Theresa (Joely Richardson), leads a quiet if unconventional life until late one night when a meteorite crash lands on their front lawn. Unsure of what it is, Nathan calls the police. “I’m sorry about the smell,” he says. “Can you smell it? It’s like somebody lit a dog on fire.”
The smell will turn out to be the least of his problems.
The meteorite disappears over time but the effects of the crash landing linger. The Gardeners and their animals—they raise alpacas—begin acting strangely. Mom cuts her own fingers off as psychedelic hallucinations shroud the family’s thoughts. Hydrologist Ward (Elliot Knight), in the area surveying for a future dam project, thinks the water is poisoned but the real answer is a little more out there, as in outer space alien brain, out there.
Directed by Richard Stanley, who hasn’t made a feature since infamously being fired from 1996’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” “Color Out of Space” is a trippy, darkly humorous descent into madness. Lovecraft has proven tricky to adapt to the screen but Stanley does a good job here, building a sense of unease with a clever mix of CGI and practical special effects that build upon the natural disorienting nature of the story. Add to that body horror and cosmic terror, each heightened by the committed—read unhinged—performances from the leads and you have a movie that keeps the viewer as off-kilter as the characters they are watching.
“Color Out of Space” is a little uneven, cramming too many ideas into the mix, but the mix of two gonzo artists like Cage and Stanley offers up a movie that amps up the cinematic anxiety in unpredictable ways.
Another franchise, another eccentric genius. Robert Downey Jr. laves Tony Stark behind to return to the big screen in a reboot of a remake of a classic story of a man who could talk to animals.
When we first meet Dr. John Dolittle (Downey) he’s at the Howard Hughes recluse stage of his life. The passing of his wife has left him despondent, unable to enjoy the company of humans so he lives in seclusion with only a menagerie of animals for company.
To pass the time he plays chess with a timid gorilla named Chee-Chee (voice of Rami Malek) and in conversation with the various animals who crowd his home, including his trusted macaw advisor Polynesia (voice of Emma Thompson) and Jip (voice of Tom Holland), a bespectacled dog.
“I don’t care about anyone, anywhere, anymore,” the doctor says.
Of course, that’s not true. When animal lover Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett) shows up at Dolittle’s gate with an injured squirrel (voice of Craig Robinson)—“I’m too beautiful to die,” the squirrel says.—on the same day the doctor is summoned to Buckingham Palace to see the ailing Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley), he is brought back into the human world. Her Majesty is gravely ill and if she dies the treasury will take the animal sanctuary Dr. Dolittle calls home. Worse, all his animals will be thrown out into the world during hunting season.
To save the Queen‘s life he must embark on a journey to find the Eden Tree and its magical, healing fruit. It’s trip fraught with danger and is the same journey that cost his beloved wife her life. Add to that some palace intrigue, an island of misfits and thieves, turbo boosting whales, a vengeful squirrel and even a dragon and you have a new chapter in the life of the man who can talk to animals.
Kids will likely find “Dolittle’s” chatty animals amusing but this isn’t simply a movie about wise cracking beasts. At its beating heart it is a movie about pain, but, as one character says, not the kind of hurt inflicted by a bullet or a knife. It’s about the agony of losing someone. Dolittle’s heart is broken by the death of his wife, and that ache is the engine that propels the entire movie. So, while the young’uns may giggle at the animals but the movie’s underlying downer vibe and generic approach suggests that Dolittle’s wife isn’t the only lifeless part of this movie.
Downey plays the character with a sense of bemused confusion, topped with a mealy-mouthed Billy Connolly impression that changes from scene to scene. It’s a pantomime performance that makes the best of his finely tuned comic timing but feels sloppy and needlessly mannered.
“Dolittle” contains some good pop psychology for children about working together—”Teamwork makes the dream work!”—and facing their fears but overall a movie featuring talking animals shouldn’t be this banal.
