Despite citing everything from “Apocalypse Now” and “Blade Runner” to “District 9” and “Paper Moon” as influences for his new sci fi epic “The Creator,” director Gareth Edwards has made a strikingly original film that doesn’t feel derivative.
Set in 2065, a decade long war between humans and artificial intelligence continues unabated.
“Ten years ago today, the artificial intelligence, created to protect us, detonated a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles. For as long as AI is a threat, we will never stop hunting them. This is a fight for our very existence.”
When the architect of AI, The Creator, builds an unstoppable weapon that could control all technology, recently widowed special forces agent Joshua (John David Washington) and his team are brought in to find and retrieve the weapon.
“Our mission is to find the weapon designated Alpha O,” says Colonel Howell (Allison Janney). “You are authorized to kill on sight.”
Behind enemy lines on occupied AI territory, they discover the deadly weapon is actually an AI in the form of a small child named Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).
“We are close to winning the war,” says General Williams. “Execute her, or we go extinct.”
There is a lot happening in “The Creator.” It is an ambitious allegory for oppressed minorities and American imperialism, but above all it is soulful sci fi.
Visually, director Edwards looks to “District 9” and “Apocalypse Now” for inspiration to create a unique looking slice of speculative fiction. Shot in Thailand, the film takes advantage of that country’s other-worldly, old-world locations, juxtaposed against the high-tech AI robots and sleek, futuristic aircraft and weapons. The mix of old and new, of nature and technology, make for a grand backdrop to a story that thrives on intimate moments.
Big action scenes do light up the screen, but Edwards appears to value emotional fireworks more than spectacle.
At its heart, “The Creator” is a love story. Joshua, still hurting from the disappearance of his wife (Gemma Chan), is driven by heartache. The discovery of Alphie, played with heartrending innocence by Voyles, shifts the story to a father-daughter dynamic, à la “Paper Moon,” but maintains the film’s emotional core as the young robot looks at humanity filtered through AI eyes.
“The Creator” builds a dystopian world that feels unique, and it is certainly nice to have a new sci fi tale not based on existing IP, even if it feels like a pastiche. But for all the admirable ambition and emotion, Edwards occasionally runs off in all directions all at once, leaving nuance and subtlety behind.
As the “PAW Patrol” franchise enters its 66th year—that’s in dog years—it shows no signs of slowing down. A new film, “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie,” based on the canine first responder characters from the wildly successful Canadian kid’s show, now playing in theatres, is a big story about a small pup.
Featuring an all-star voice cast, the begins with a meteor crash in Adventure City. “It’s giving off some kind of energy,” says Ryder (Finn Lee-Epp), the leader of the PAW Patrol. The mysterious meteor imbues the PAW Patrol pups with superpowers, like super strength, elasticity, super speed and the ability to manifest fireballs. “Great, now the clumsy pup shoots fireballs out of his paws.”
For seven-year-old cockapoo Skye (Mckenna Grace), the smallest member of the newly dubbed Mighty Pups, the new powers finally levels the playing field, giving her the chance to make up in super strength what she has always lacked in confidence and size.
When Humdinger (Ron Pardo), the ex-mayor of Adventure City, and his Kitten Catastrophe Crew escapes from prison and teams with meteor expert and supervillain Victoria “Vee” Vance (Taraji P. Henson) to steal the superpowers, the Mighty Pups must fight back to save their city and possibly the world.
“When you go up against one of us, you go up against all of us,” Ryder tells Vance.
“PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” is bigger and louder than 2021’s “PAW Patrol” or the television show. Returning director Cal Brunker pumps up the action, creating a sort of Marvel movie for the preschool set. Colourful action scenes will grab kid’s attention, but the spirit of cooperation, and messages of over-coming obstacles and never judging a book by its cover, that lie at the heart of the “PAW Patrol” franchise are never far away.
Voice work from Kim Kardashian, Chris Rock, Lil Rel Howery, Kristen Bell and James Marsden is solid, but Henson is having all the fun here. Her villain—don’t call her a “mad scientist”—is a blast, funny and fearless, she steals every scene she’s in.
“PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” maintains what made the TV show so appealing for kids, but also has enough gags aimed at parents to round out the experience for the whole family.
In the world of franchises when a character dies, they’re not really dead until people stop buying tickets to see the movies. Such is the case with “Saw X,” the latest instalment of the nineteen-year-old torture horror franchise.
Serial killer John “Jigsaw” Kramer, played by Tobin Bell, is the main antagonist of the “Saw” flicks. He’s the mastermind behind the ingenious traps, like the elaborate Laser Collar, the aptly named Knife Chair or the self-explanatory Shotgun Carousel, designed to inflict maximum physical and psychological trauma on his victims.
He is a bad man who communicates the bad news to his quarries through the creepy Billy the Puppet, a nightmarish ventriloquist’s dummy with garish red swirls on his cheeks.
Or I should say was a bad man. They killed the character off in “Saw III,” but in the “Saw” Universe, death isn’t enough to keep a good sadistic serial killer down, so he appears via flashback in subsequent instalments, and was the inspiration for a new killer in 2021’s “Spiral.”
Now through the magic of prequels, he’s back in the flesh, picking up the story where the 2004’s “Saw” left off.
The new film begins with Kramer, riddled with cancer, decamping to Mexico in the hopes of a miracle cure. The procedure is risky and experimental but, “The results have been stunning,” says Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund).
When it turns out the whole thing is a scam, designed to provide hope, but no actual medical benefit to patients, Kramer gets even in his own, terrible way.
“You all pretended to cure me,” he says, “but what I have planned for each of you is very real.”
The “Saw” movies pretend to have a moral, a manifesto driven by Kramer’s twisted sense of finding atonement through pain via deadly games of “Truth or Consequences.” That high minded philosophy is given lip service in “Saw X,” but takes a backseat to the graphic kills.
Put it this way: “Saw X” is less about the moral code and more about using a person’s intestines as a rope or sucking someone’s eyeballs right out of their sockets.
After a drawn out first hour of set up, the ick factor is notched up, making this the juiciest and goriest “Saw” film to date. Trouble is, it’s stomach-turning with very few scares. It’s unpleasant by design, but the dopamine hit you’re looking for, the rush of feeling scared in a theatre where you are safe, is replaced by a queasy feeling.
Each test is timed, and there are countdown clocks galore, ticking away to the end of the games, but there isn’t much tension, just an uneasy sensation that something terrible is coming.
It might be different if there was some kind of inventive symbolism in the games, a sense that there is something happening to stimulate the brain, not just the gag reflex.
For a movie that is all about games—Kramer refers to each of his tests as “games”—the R-rated “Saw X” is all gory games but very little fun.
The musical dramedy “Flora and Son,” now streaming on Apple TV+, is a tribute to the power of music as an emotional salve, and hits all the right chords with a breakout performance from Eve Hewson as a single mom trying to connect with her rebellious son.
Hewson is the title character, a party girl and parttime nanny, raising her rebellious 14-year-old son Max (Orén Kinlan) in a tiny Dublin apartment. Their relationship is so fraught, she wonders aloud what it would be like if he wasn’t around.
After forgetting his birthday, she plucks an abandoned acoustic guitar from a dumpster, has it repaired and gifts it to him. “Don’t want to play,” he says dismissively. “Since when am I a guitarist?”
Instead of returning the guitar to the dumpster, Flora decides to take on-line lessons and learn the instrument. She comes across Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a charming 1970s singer-songwriter throwback, who teaches from his sun dappled studio in Los Angeles.
“What are you hoping to get out of this?” he asks.
“I thought this guitar might make my son think I’m cool,” she replies.
As Flora studies the guitar, Max is in the small flat’s other room creating rap beats on his laptop.
“How did you make that?” Flora asks. “That sounded epic.”
They’re coming from different corners of the room—she’s Joni Mitchell to Max’s Dr. Dre—but music just might be their middle ground.
“Flora and Son” is a small movie with a big performance that provides its beating heart. As Flora, Hewson is tender and terrible, delightful and disagreeable. She’s made mistakes, and has a hard shell, but in Hewson’s capable hands, her innate goodness shines through. It is, simply put, a star-making performance, chock full of soul.
Gordon-Levitt, Kinlan and Jack Reynor, as Flora’s ex, complete the picture with strong performances, each representing a piece of the puzzle that is Flora’s life.
At its core, “Flora and Son” is a love story, but it’s not a rom com. This is about the love of family, music and self and is a rousing crowd-pleaser that breathes the same air as director John Carney’s other films, “Sing Street” and “Once.”
Benicio del Toro casts his line for red herrings and more in “Reptile,” a new crime drama now streaming on Netflix.
Set against the backdrop of a sleepy New England town, the action in “Reptile” begins after realtor Summer (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) is discovered murdered in the bedroom of one of her Scarborough, Maine show homes, with such force a knife was left embedded in her clavicle.
Found by her boyfriend, real estate bigwig Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), it is a gruesome scene described as “a nightmare” by grizzled Detective Tom Nichols (del Toro), the seasoned cop assigned to the case.
Nichols, a recent transplant from Philadelphia after an investigation into his former partner’s corruption, initially appears to be more interested in renovating the new house he owns with wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) as he is with the murder, but he soon puts together a list of the usual suspects.
“Am I a suspect?” Will asks.
“Everyone is a suspect,” Nichols replies.
Also raising suspicions are Summer’s almost ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman) and Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), an eccentric man who holds a grudge against the Grady family.
Along the way Nichols goes down a rabbit hole, bedeviled by jealousy, police skullduggery and enough red herrings—fake deaths, etc—to feed an army.
“Reptile” has style to burn. Director Grant Singer, best known for making music videos for The Weeknd, Sam Smith and many others, in his big screen debut, creates a bleak backdrop for the action to unfold against. Trouble is, the story is laid on just as thick as the atmosphere.
Despite some good performances from Eric Bogosian, Michael Pitt and Ato Essandoh, and a heroically quirky turn from del Toro, “Reptile” plays like a derivative pastiche of the standard good cop in a bad situation genre. The myriad plot devices, that borrow from “Law & Order” and “Cop Land” and everything in between, threaten to crush the whole thing under their weight.
“Reptile’s” main strength is del Toro. He shares great chemistry with Silverstone, his co-star in 1997’s “Excess Baggage,” but it is his combination of tenaciousness and eccentricity that are the movie’s most original components.
On the Saturday September 23, 2023 episode of the Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet Bill Welychka. Fans of Much Music and MuchMoreMusic will remember Bill as the longest serving VJ on those channels, including a long stint as the host of the channel’s country music series Outlaws & Heroes. These days Bill is still working in broadcast television, and has recently written a book about the lessons he learned from hanging out with many of the music industry’s biggest stars. The book is called “A Happy Has-Been (Exciting Times and Lessons Learned by One of Canada’s Foremost Entertainment Journalists.)” Today we talk about the book, Much Music, and his battles with depression.
Then, we’ll get to know Canadian singer/songwriter, Astrid Young. She is the younger sister of Neil Young, with whom she toured and recorded for many years, and an accomplished musician whose discography dates back to 1984 and boasts over forty releases, including four solo albums and a multitude of credits as a side-musician and background singer. Through the years, Astrid has played stages large and small, from the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Hollywood to Paradiso in Amsterdam, Brazil’s Rock in Rio, and everywhere in between. Today we talk about the rerelease of her album ‘One Night At Giant Rock’ and some new songs, including “Lay Me Down (Borrowed Tune),” which I can’t stop listening to.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
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In the world of The Expendables it’s not enough to simply kill the enemy. In their boomtastic alternate reality every kill must be overkill and accompanied by a quip to punctuate the death.
“Expend4bles,” the all-star shoot ‘em up now playing in theatres, delivers quips and kills galore, but to paraphrase Tony Jaa’s character Decha, “The more people you kill, the less joy you have.”
In the new film, CIA agent Max Drummer (Andy García) rounds up the team of elite mercenaries—wizened warriors Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), sniper Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), demolitions expert Toll Road (Randy Couture) and new recruits Easy Day (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), and Galan (Jacob Scipio)—to prevent terrorist Suarto Rahmat (Iko Uwais) from stealing nuclear bomb detonators from Muammar Gaddafi’s former old chemical weapons plant in Libya.
When things go sideways, Christmas becomes the expendable Expendable, kicked out of the group and replaced by his mercenary girlfriend Gina (Megan Fox) and her deadly colleague Lash (Levy Tran). As the new band of soldiers set off to curtail a conflict that could ignite World War III, Christmas does his part to bring peace on earth.
This 103-minute ode to murder, mayhem and manliness doesn’t waste any time getting to the money shot. The first blast of action in “Expend4bles” lights up the screen roughly one minute in, followed by lots of talky bits that come between the boomy bits.
The talky bits are mostly lines of dialogue that sound lifted from the “Action Movies for Dummies” guidebook—generic stuff like “This is gonna be fun,” as the bullets start to fly—with the odd nod to something deeper, like a settling of accounts for one’s past. When we first meet Decha, for instance, he’s a former warrior, a reformed man of violence. But his peaceful ways don’t last long, because in “The Expendables” if you’re not a killer, you’re just filler.
If you’ve seen the other movies in the franchise, you already know what to expect; lots of R-rated violence, some dodgy CGI and a body count that would make John Wick blush. But this instalment feels different, less an homage to the days when Stallone and Schwarzenegger (who sat out this chapter) were blockbuster action stars and more a collection of familiar faces cut loose in a Jason “man-on-a-mission” Statham video game. It’s the Statham Show, which dissipates the camaraderie that gave the first movies a cohesive vibe.
By the time the end credits roll the thrill is gone. Despite its all-star cast, action sequences and kill ratio, “Expend4bles” proves Decha’s, “The more people you kill, the less joy you have” philosophy correct. On their fourth time out, the Expendables seems more expendable than ever.
The 4K restoration of the four-decade old concert movie “Stop Making Sense” is such an exercise in joyful exuberance it’s like time travelling back to the actual 1983 show.
Directed by Jonathan Demme, and shot over the course of three nights at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre at the culmination of the band’s “Speaking in Tongues” tour, the film begins on a bare stage as the camera follows David Byrne’s scuffed-up sneakers to center stage. Placing a portable tape player at his feet, he says, “Hi, I got a tape I wanna play,” and launches into the jittery “Psycho Killer,” accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and boombox beats.
Next comes bassist Tina Weymouth for a beautiful, stripped-down version of “Heaven,” the band’s pokerfaced view of paradise, a “place where nothing ever happens.”
As the track list expands, so does the show. Piece by piece, member by member, equipment and musicians populate the stage, until the full band, Byrne, Weymouth, Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz, Steve Scales, Lynn Mabry, Ednah Holt, Alex Weir and Bernie Worrell are in place, and playing as if making music was going to be declared illegal the next day.
From the exhilarating art-funk of “Burning Down the House” and “Life During Wartime” to the melancholic beauty of “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” and the gospel tinged “Once in a Lifetime,” the band deliver one banger after another, fronted by Byrne’s athletic and arty dance moves. It’s a document of a band working at the top of their game, capturing the love of music and performance in a way few other concert films have.
And it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.
The restoration is top notch, with a sharp image derived from the original 35-millimeter negatives, showcasing cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth’s inventive camera and lighting work, and crisp remixed digital sound that fills the air.
The picture and sound are improvements on the original, but the thing that hasn’t changed, the element that makes the movie special, is the performance. From Byrne’s iconic “Big Suit” to Weymouth’s crab-walk dance, it is, as Ed Sullivan would’ve said, a really big show, but it manages to feel intimate, even when blown up to IMAX supersize. The nonverbal communication between the players and the obvious love of the music, are highlighted, and add much to the overall experience.
“Stop Making Sense” tells a loose narrative, from the opening number with a solo Byrne, to the “formation” of the band and their subsequent collaboration. By the time they sing “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” it is clear this group of outsiders has found a place where they belong. Not a documentary, or an exercise in nostalgia, “Stop Making Sense” is a celebration, of music and of belonging. Watch it again for the first time.
Despite the title, “Dumb Money,” a new ripped-from-the-headlines dramedy starring Paul Dano, now playing in theatres, is a smart take on how an on-line investment blogger led the French Revolution of Wall Street.
Dano is Keith Gill. By day he’s a financial trader, at night he’s Roaring Kitty, host of a quirky on-line show broadcast from his Brockton, Massachusetts basement. Wearing tie-dyed cat t-shirts, topped with a red headband, he offers up stock advice for a tiny audience, who respond with torrents of abuse. In early 2021 he makes waves when he goes all in, sinking his life’s savings, into an unorthodox hunch.
“Yo! What up everybody,” he says on the show. “Roaring Kitty here. I’m going to pick a stock and talk about why I think it is interesting, and that stock is GameStop.”
Wall Street hedge funders had been short selling the video game retailer’s stock, hoping to profit if the stock fails, but Gill thinks the stock is undervalued, that there is life left in the company. His passion for the GameStop slowly wins over his handful of viewers, who snap up the cheap stock. As more and more people buy, the stock rises, and soon rockets to upwards of $500 a share.
The ”retail traders,” the students and restaurant workers who take Roaring Kitty’s advice, get rich while the billionaire hedge funders, in particular Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) of Melvin Capital, begin to lose money, to the tune of $1 billion a day.
Roaring Kitty becomes an internet sensation, an underdog David against Wall Street’s Goliath.
“A lot of people feel the system is broken,” he says. “The whole idea of the stock market is if you’re smart, and maybe with a little luck, you can make your fortune. Certainly not anymore. There’s no hope for the little guy. But maybe now there is.”
As the stock soars, the mainstream media takes notice, as does the White House and Congress.
“You got the rich dudes pissing their pants,” says Keith’s brother Kevin (Pete Davidson). “They’re coming after you.”
Once you get past the dense financial jargon about short selling, etc, “Dumb Money” is a fist-in-the-air crowd pleaser. It’s a very specific story, based on true events, but there is a Frank Capra-esque quality to the account of outsiders giving the middle finger to power, and, for the most part, winning.
Dano is nicely cast as Gill, an outside who, as an agent of chaos, briefly fought against a rigged system and emerged victorious. In addition to bearing a remarkable resemblance to the real Gill, Dano brings forth the resolute nature of the character, a man who valued the power of the class movement he started more than the dollars that accumulated in his portfolio.
Stealing scenes is Davidson as Keith’s wild card younger brother Kevin. He is as brash as Keith is reserved, as impulsive as his brother is methodical, and provides a blast of energy every time he’s one screen.
“Dumb Money” doesn’t get too bogged down by the financial verbiage, although it may be worth a trip to the “short sell” Wikipedia page before buying a ticket. It’s a rousing, high energy story of leveling the playing field that captures the spirit of the time.
