Just ahead of the release of “The Batman,” Richard asked the experts to choose their favourite Batmobile in the Toronto Star!
“As a wealthy undercover crimefighter, Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman, has his choice of inventive ways to get around Gotham City. There’s the Batplane, Batcopter and its cousin, the Whirly-Bat. The LEGO Batman even had a Segway to save wear and tear on his battle-weary legs and knees.
“As cool as all those vehicles are, they pale in comparison to the Dark Knight’s main ride, the Batmobile.
“Unlike the tricked-out cars the crimefighter has driven in movies and on TV, the first Batmobile – seen in the May 1939 issue of Detective Comics No. 27 – was a no-frills red coupe. Dubbed the Batmobile in 1941, the design has evolved over the years, but always reflected Batman’s personality.
“Bob Greenberger, writer and editor of more than 100 books and anthologies – many within the DC and Marvel comic universes – said Batman’s car must be a “role model vehicle for a role model hero…” Read the whole thing HERE!
Is there a band who enjoys rock stardom more than Foo Fighters? They fill stadiums, record disco songs and death metal tunes. Leader Dave Grohl does drum-offs with teenaged musicians on YouTube and they trolled a Westboro Baptist Church protest with a loud ‘n lengthy version of the Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing” from the back of a flatbed truck.
Foo Fighters let the good times roll into theatres this week with the release of “Studio 666,” a rock ‘n roll horror comedy now playing in theatres.
Following in the footsteps of their ancestors—KISS and the Monkees—they play themselves in a big screen schlock fest with some guts, glory and great tunes.
The movie begins with a flashback to 1993 and a horrific murder scene in an Encino mansion. The band Dream Widow has been recording an album there, but are interrupted by a nasty guy swinging a hammer. The dull thwacks of the hammer hitting the final victim are even captured on tape.
Cut to present day. Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett and Rami Jaffee of Foo Fighters owe a new record to their label. “It’s our tenth album,” Dave says, “we can’t do the same old ****. We have to break the mold on this one.”
The label boss (Jeff Garland) knows how to make that happen. He suggests an old, abandoned mansion in Encino (see above). The place is rundown, and even the flirty neighbor (Whitney Cummings) gives off a strange vibe. “It definitely has a weird energy,” Dave says. “Do you guys get an overwhelming sense of death and doom?”
They do, but Dave hears something no one else does. “The sound of this house is the sound of album ten,” he says. “No songs yet, but we’ve got the sound.”
Reluctantly, the band moves in but despite Dave’s enthusiasm, the songs don’t flow. All he can come up with are retreads of his old tunes or plagiarized versions of other people’s songs, which leads to a Lionel Ritchie cameo that makes you wonder why he doesn’t do more comedy.
The writer’s block breaks one night after Dave is tormented by a dream—or is it?—of strange creatures who lure him into the mansion’s basement, where he finds a dusty old reel to reel machine, loaded up with hard driving songs left behind by Dream Widow.
Dave emerges with some killer riffs and a plan to record a devilish epic that could be a double or even triple album. “It’s going to be like “2112” times 2112,” he says.
Question is, what exactly has possessed Dave to record this song and what, exactly, will the band have to sacrifice to finish the album?
“Studio 666” is a satire on the whole “Devil made me do it” heavy metal lore with old school splatter effects, spurting blood and headbanging, literally and figuratively.
It’s unlikely we’ll be seeing any of the Foo Fighters on next year’s Best Actor list, but that isn’t the point here. This is a loving tribute to the kinds of movies Blockbuster kept on a shelf near the back of the store. Devil possession movies with low fi effects and some fun thrills and chills. Add to that some pretty good in-jokes, some funny/gross killings and you have a Faustian tale about selling one’s soul for rock ‘n roll.
“Studio 666” feels a bit long, but Foo Fighters, as usual, bring the good times, by poking fun at themselves and the devil movie genre.
The story of French army soldiers Cyrano de Bergerac and Christian and the beautiful Roxanne is probably the history’s most case of catfishing. Written as a play in 1897 by Edmond Rostand, the love story of “Cyrano” has been reimagined as a musical by director Joe Wright.
When we first meet Roxanne (Haley Bennett), she is prepping for a date with Duke De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn). She’s not enthusiastic; she’s holding out for real love, but the family is broke, and as her nanny says, “Children need love. Adults need money.”
What she doesn’t know is that her lifelong friend, King’s Guard swordsman Cyrano (Peter Dinklage), a little person with a larger-than-life personality, has been in love with her since the first time he laid eyes on her. “Even her imperfections are perfect,” he says to his best friend Le Bret (Bashir Salahuddin).
He has never told her—“My fate is to love her from afar,” he says—and may not get the chance to once she gets an eyeful of King’s Guard recruit Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr) and falls instantly in love.
Trouble is, Christian has no idea how to speak to her. For that, he turns to the brilliant and eloquent Cyrano to be his voice. Cyrano provides the words of love for Christian to woo Roxanne. He pens letters, provides lists of conversational witticisms and even literally provides Christian’s voice in the story’s famous balcony scene. Roxanne is utterly smitten with Christian, thinking he has the body of a warrior and the soul of a poet. “Every day I think can’t love him more,” she says, “then another letter arrives and my heart expands to love him more.”
It’s a bizarre love triangle, one that seems destined to leave Cyrano heartsick and alone.
“Cyrano” is an adaptation of the original Rostand play and the Off-Broadway musical by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National, with lyrics by Matt Berninger and Carin Besser. Director Wright dovetails the two expertly, creating a film that pays tribute to its 124-year-old roots and the modern adaptation.
The bones of the story are intact but the presentation feels fresh. Wright is a stylist, creating the 17th century setting in a swirl of camera movement, interesting settings and sumptuous costumes. His trademarked baroque style has been dialed back from the (admitted beautiful) excesses of “Anna Karenina” and “Pan,” but his visions are as memorable as ever. One sequence, where Cyrano dispatches ten adversaries, is a startling bit of uncut camera choreography that will make your eyeballs dance.
The director weaves the music into the dialogue sequences seamlessly, avoiding the abrupt song-and-dance reality-breakers of so many musicals. The actors don’t suddenly start high-stepping either. It’s a more naturalistic approach that focusses attention, for better and for worse, on the emotion of the songs. As much as I liked many of the tunes, the lyrical quality varies, from the eloquent to the elementary.
Dinklage stretches his wings here as the romantic lead, the comedian and warrior. Cyrano is an outsider with a big heart who has resigned himself to being a background player in love. It’s a wonderful performance, made all the more poignant in the film’s closing minutes (NO SPOILERS HERE!).
“Cyrano” is a deeply romantic movie, a musical and a testament to the importance of real human connections, rendered in high style but always with a real, beating heart.
Adapted from a 2017 novel by Catherine Hernandez, which captured the author’s experiences of running a home daycare, “Scarborough,” now playing in theatres, is a raw yet inspirational look at life in the diverse, low-income community in east Toronto that gives the movie its name.
The film, directed by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson, focusses on the marginalized kids at a neighborhood literacy center like Bing (Liam Diaz), a bright, chipper Filipino boy whose single mom works at a nail salon. His bestie, Sylvie (Mekiya Fox), looks out for him, but must also cope with unstable housing and a troubled brother. A third student, Laura (Anna Claire Beitel), struggles as she learns to read while addiction and racism hobbles her home life.
The centre is a safe space, a place for these kids to grow and learn. Outside the walls of the literacy centre the film explores themes of addiction, autism, child abuse and systemic negligence.
Shot in a documentary style, this coming-of-age story has a natural feel. Part of it comes from the use of first-time actors in the lead roles.
The stories and characters that fuel “Scarborough” are complex and while the handling of some of the big moments feels unwieldly by times, the film makes up for those lapses with an ambitious focus that includes many powerful moments.
A scene in which a mother is told her son is autistic and may never be able to live on his own amplifies the helplessness that can be felt by marginalized people as they try an navigate the health care system. It’s a potent sequence, nicely directed to share the character’s overwhelming sense of vulnerability. In moments like this, the movie shines.
It all sounds depressing, like an exercise in misery, but the movie is infused with hope. Hope for the kids, hope for the future. And, (NO SPOILERS HERE) Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” may never be used as effectively in any other movie as it is here.
Much of that uplift comes from social worker Ms. Hina (Aliya Kanani), a warm figure of encouragement who genuinely feels for the children she looks after, often at the expense of her own well-being. Her empathetic character gives the film its beating heart.
“Big Gold Brick,” a new absurdist comedy starring Andy Garcia and Oscar Isaac, is the kind of movie you don’t see much anymore, a Midnight Madness flick.
“I don’t remember much about the night I met Floyd,” Samuel Liston (Emory Cohen) wrote about the night that changed his life. On the night in question, in a meet-not-so-cute, the broke despondent Samuel, drunkenly wanders into the path of Floyd’s car and is struck and almost killed.
As he recovers, Floyd, an eccentric father of two, waits bedside at the hospital. Samuel is in bad shape but lucid. “He will recover,” his doctor says, “but I should tell you there will be some hurdles in the near term. Mood swings. Agitation. Confusion. Truth be told, he may never be that Samuel again.”
Samuel is still bedridden when Floyd makes a request. “Would you consider writing my biography?” The young writer declines. He prefers to write short stories, poems, the occasional essay but Floyd is persuasive. I challenge you to at least try, for once, something different. When opportunity knocks on your door, you should answer. Even if she is wearing a goofy hat.”
He offers a place to stay with his family, a salary with no time limit or restrictions. “All you have to do is heal up and write, at your own pace.”
Samuel, having no other options, agrees to the deal. “I have this funny feeling,” says Floyd, “this was meant to be.”
He meets the family, troubled daughter Lily (Lucy Hale), creepy kid son Edward (Leonidas Castrounis) and Floyd’s much younger wife, Jacqueline (Megan Fox). Thus begins a long, strange journey, colored by his subject’s extravagant life and his own hallucinations. “We all live multi-colored lives,” says Floyd, “and have a range of experiences.”
“Big Gold Brick” is an off-kilter movie, like real life but twisted by 180 degrees.
“Big Gold Brick” is an odd movie, like real life but twisted by 180 degrees to form a ready-made cult style movie. Told in flashbacks from Samuel’s point of view, the story feels episodic in the retelling of the writer’s life with Floyd.
There is a lot in play, from Floyd’s implausible backstory, to a haunted house angle and even the possibility that Samuel has some sort of magical powers. The pieces aren’t a snug fit and often feel unintelligibly strange for the sake of being strange but there is something refreshing in seeing new filmmaker Brian Petsos swing for the fences, even if he falls short.
Richard is a guest judge, along with comedian Fiona O’Brien, on the new Twitter game show “Brittlestar’s Really Great Show.” On this episode guests, art historian Dr. Allison MacDuffee and Pepe Valencia, provide a story of an experience they’ve had in advance of the show. Brittlestar retells the story but changes one element, and the panelists have to guess what it is. It’s harder than it sounds!
Movies based on videogames are either entertaining or eye-rolling. An interactive videogame that works at home on your PlayStation may not offer the same dopamine rush when translated to the one-way interactivity of the big screen. For every “Detective Pikachu” that hits the mark there’s a dozen “BloodRaynes” or “Mortal Kombat: Annihilations.”
“Uncharted,” a prequel to the wildly successful PlayStation series starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, and now playing in theatres, is the latest entry in the videogame sweepstakes.
Holland plays Nathan Drake, who, unlike Spider-Man, the actor’s other cinematic alter-ego, uses his sticky fingers to steal stuff, not scale the outside of tall buildings. Either way, both characters are adventurers who live outside the margins. In Drake’s case, it comes naturally. He’s a direct descendant of 16th century pirate Sir Francis Drake.
By day Nathan is a bartender in New York, by night he’s a thief. Day and night, he hopes to reunite with his long-lost treasure-hunting brother Sam who he hasn’t seen since he was ten years old. Big brother hit the road, with a promise to return, leaving behind memories and some cryptic clues to the location of $5 billion worth of Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s lost gold. “The gold isn’t gone,” he said, “it’s lost and if it is lost, it can be found.”
When fast-talking slickster Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) asks Nathan to help track down the lost treasure, he agrees, hoping to find the gold and information on his missing brother. “There’s only one rule,” says Sully of their dangerous mission. “Don’t get caught.”
The pair, along with fortune hunter Chloe (Sophia Ali), travel the world in search of two crosses that serve as a key to the mystery, all the while trying to stay one or two steps ahead of ruthless rich guy Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who has a personal connection to the gold, and his team of mercenaries.
“Uncharted” mixes and matches the adventure elements of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Tomb Raider” and “National Treasure” into a generic action movie that loses its way early on. Not even the combined charisma of its stars, Holland and Wahlberg, can put it back on track.
Both play thinly sketched versions of characters we’ve seen before and better. When he’s on-screen Wahlberg plays a riff on his trademarked sarcastic smart alecky character but this is a Where’s Waldo style role for him. He disappears for long sections as Holland takes center stage.
Holland plays Nathan as a cocky young man with a special set of skills. Sound familiar? It’s like watching Peter Parker do parkour without the webs but with an unnatural gift for figuring out puzzles that have confounded others for centuries. He’s fun on screen but he’s not doing anything here that feels new.
Together they banter in playful dialogue that often has the all the charm of an in-gown toenail.
Then there are the action scenes. The movie opens with a frenetic fight scene, heavy on the CGI, that sees Nathan flying through the air, battling bad guys. It’s high-flying action, but don’t worry if you are five minutes late getting to the cinema, the scene is repeated later in the movie. The large-scale action scenes are loud, frenzied but often feel like leftovers from Pierce Brosnan era 007. They fill the screen, but the movie’s flippant, light tone ensures there is very little jeopardy involved for any of the main characters.
“Uncharted” does have a pretty good villain, and no, it’s not Banderas who does little other than speak in a low whisper. Tati Gabrielle as the ruthless killer and schemer Braddock brings some spark to her scenes, but not enough to kickstart this inert action flick.
“The Cursed,” a new werewolf movie now in theatres, shoots for the moon by throwing the traditional rules of lycanthropy mythology out the window to create a fresh and timely take on an old genre. But does it bite off more than it can chew?
The film opens in the trenches of World War I during the Battle of the Somme. A French soldier is killed with a silver bullet before the action jumps back in time thirty-five years to the ancient province of Gévaudan in southern France and the true beginning of the story.
Coldhearted land baron (is there any other kind?) Seamus Laurent (Alistair Petrie) is unafraid to spill gallons of blood to protect his property, wife (Kelly Reilly) and children. When a Romani clan lay a claim to his land, Laurent retaliates, attacking, burning and mutilating every one of them. “Do you think you can ride into my country,” Laurent sneers as his hired killers laugh and take photographs with the dead, “take my land and do whatever you like?”
As the last victim is being buried alive, she utters a curse, damning Laurent’s estate and entire family.
As the curse echoes in his ears, everything changes. Laurent’s family is soon affected and his carefully constructed life begins to crumble.
Son Edward (Max Mackintosh) suffers for the sins of his father. His weird dreams of creepy scarecrows and a set of strange metal teeth lead him back to the scene of the Romani massacre. When Timmy Adams (Tommy Rodger), the son of one of the other area land barons, finds the metal teeth buried in on the killing field, before you can say, “Werewolves of London,” he puts them in his mouth and bites Edward, piercing his neck. “We will all pay for the sins of our elders,” says Timmy. “We’re all going to die.”
Timmy scurries off into the woods while Edward is tended to at home. When Edward disappears from his bed, a search party is convened but the boy isn’t found. Meanwhile, a bloodthirsty beast, whose bite either kills or transforms its quarry into a werewolf, terrorizes the area.
John McBride (Boyd Holbrook), a visiting pathologist with a personal link to the case, understands what’s going on and knows that the only “cure” for the werewolf outbreak is a silver bullet.
“The Cursed” has a title that sounds as though it should be attached to exploitation fare, bloody with a side of gross. While there are bloody and gross moments sprinkled throughout, the bulk of the running time is quiet and austere, shot in the low light, greyish tones of so much 19th century horror on film. Director Sean Ellis builds to the scares, constructing a sense of dread and suspense that pays off during the attack scenes.
More interesting is Ellis’s reinterpretation of the werewolf legend. The curse and the silver bullet survived from established mythology but he throws the rest away to create a new look and feel for his creatures. These beasts don’t represent the duality of the werewolves of yore, the mix of animal and spiritual. They don’t wait for the full moon to turn. Nor do they look like the customary Lon Chaney Jr. monster. Instead, as one scene memorably details, the victims are enveloped in a werewolf casing.
No spoilers here, but the creatures are primal killing machines, not the tortured souls of other werewolf movies who are trapped by, but fight against, their nature.
“The Cursed” is a fresh take on the werewolf legend but simultaneously feels like a throwback to the Hammer Horror films of old where charismatic Van Helsing types battled creatures and corsets and tailcoats were still in fashion. A mix of elevated and primal scares, of brains and schlock, it contains enough suspense and memorable visuals to make it worthwhile.
In his first film in five years Channing Tatum trades in the g-strings and dance moves of “Magic Mike” for a dog leash and self-awareness. “Dog,” now playing in theatres, is a pet project of a sort for Tatum, who not only stars but also makes his directorial debut in a movie about the power of the dog to change a life.
Tatum plays Jackson Briggs, a former U.S. Army Ranger sidelined by a traumatic brain injury and PTSD. Cut adrift of the military, in civilian life he is lost, separated from the only world he truly feels part of. He wants back in, but his medical status won’t allow a return to service.
When his best Ranger friend dies in Arizona, Briggs is offered a way back into the military. “You want to get back in the game?” asks Ranger Jones (Luke Forbes). “Prove it. Sergeant Rodriguez was a legend. Family funeral is Sunday outside of Nogales. They want his dog at the funeral. You do this, and you’re back in the game.”
The dog is Lulu, a Belgian Malinois military working dog, who vicious nature worked well in the field, less so back on base. “One minute she’s good,” says Briggs, “the next minute she’s sending three guys to the ER.”
Despite Lulu’s temper, Briggs agrees to drive her down the Pacific Coast from Joint Base Lewis–McChord in Washington to the funeral in Arizona. The unlikely pair head out on an eventful road trip, one that may lead to redemption for both.
“Dog” is a low-key man and his dog movie that quietly examines the after effects of trauma and the healing power of companionship and respect. As the miles tick by, Briggs comes to understand the shared bond between man and dog. Both are figuring out life outside the war zones that were their homes for many years, and both are forever marked by the experience. As their relationship deepens, it’s clear the key to their recovery is mutual TLC.
The movie takes some strange detours along the way—like a long sequence where Briggs pretends to be blind to get a fancy hotel suite or an odd encounter with a cannabis farmer who believes Briggs is an assassin—but the beating heart of the movie is the relationship between man and dog.
Tatum brings his likeable self to a character who isn’t always likeable. The film places Briggs is comedic and dramatic situations, which gives the movie an uneven tone—there are some “ruff” spots—but Tatum levels the field, providing continuity between the film’s goofy and gallant moments. Most importantly, he shares great chemistry with Lulu, who is actually played by three different canine actors. Tatum and co-director Reid Carolin make sure to include lots of close-ups of the Lulu’s soulful eyes, and in those scenes Tatum’s warmth shines through.
“Dog” is not a movie that teaches a lot of new tricks to the dog or to the audience but it does end on an emotional note with a welcome, if well-worn message, of the healing power of companionship.
