I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the thriller “Relay,” the neo-noir “Honey Don’t” and the rock doc “DEVO” on Netflix.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the thriller “Relay,” the survival thriller “Eden” and the neo-noir “Honey Don’t.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I review the hardboiled PI movie “Honey Don’t” and do a toast to the private investigators of old.
Click HERE to listen to Shane and me talk about an expensive pair of shark eyes and how Chappell Roan gave Saskatchewan tourism a big boost!
For the Booze & Reviews look at “Honey Don’t” and some cocktails fit for a character who says she drinks heavily–“It’s a point of pride.”–click HERE!
I join John Moore, host of NewsTalk 1010’s “Moore in the Morning” to talk about “skibidi” and other new words recently added to the Cambridge Dictionary, a movie role for Kevin O’Leary, the POO! exhibit at the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, North East England, a headless robot and a Justin Bieber look-a-like and a $10,000 bar bill.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Honey Don’t,” a new crime drama from director Ethan Coen, Margaret Qualley is a sultry, small town private investigator whose probe into a woman’s death leads to a religious cult. “You’re fascinating,” Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans) tells her. “And you haven’t even seen the riddle tattooed on my ass,” Honey replies.
CAST: Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day, Billy Eichner, and Chris Evans. Directed by Ethan Coen.
REVIEW: “Honey Don’t,” part two of director Ethan Coen and co-writer Tricia Cooke’s “lesbian B-movie trilogy,” following 2024s “Drive-Away Dolls,” is a hard-boiled private investigator story; a neo-noir set in sunny California.
Sleek yet aimless, “Honey Don’t” displays an obvious love for its pulpy style but doesn’t show any affection for its story. Co-writers Coen and Cooke craft a series of red herring situations rather than a compelling narrative.
The movie begins with a car crash that takes the life of a woman. The only problem she had, says one of her friends, is “taking curves too fast.” As queer private detective Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) investigates the case, she also becomes involved with the local cop shop’s no-nonsense Property Room Officer M.G. (Aubrey Plaza), goes head-to-head with a cult leader played by Chris Evans and searches for her missing niece Corinne (Talia Ryder).
Not that any of that adds up to much. The plot U-turns mostly serve a showcase for Qualley’s old-school movie star glamour and way with snappy dialogue. As the title character she’s an anachronism, an echo of the PIs of the past. She uses a Rolodex and doesn’t have a cell phone. “I carry around a bag of quarters for the pay phone,” she explains. Qualley has a knack for the character’s hard-boiled cadence, delivering Honey’s terse comebacks with deadpan flair.
As over-sexed cult leader Reverend Drew Devlin, Chris Evans hands in the most flamboyantly unwholesome role of his career. Whether he’s sleeping with his parishioners or shooting them or delivering a sermon based on a macaroni allegory, there isn’t a hint of Captain America anywhere to be seen.
Qualley and Evans do all the heavy lifting here. The filmmaking is playful, but the wandering story and disregard for any character not played by Qualley makes the title “Honey Don’t” seem less like a name and more like a warning.
SYNOPSIS: In “Relay,” a new thriller now playing in theatres, Riz Ahmed plays Ash, a “bribe broker” who arranges payments between corrupt corporations and whistleblowers. Mysterious and meticulous, his carefully crafted set of rules go out the window when he falls for a client, former bio-tech company employee Sarah Grant (Lily James). With a high-tech investigation team on her trail, her life is in danger unless Ash can make a deal.
CAST: Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington, Willa Fitzgerald, Matthew Maher, Victor Garber. Directed by David Mackenzie.
REVIEW: A thriller that runs headlong into its suspenseful plot, only to stumble and fall in its last half hour, “Relay” does not stick the landing.
It begins with promise. The idea of a champion for whistleblowers is an intriguing one and as we learn the ins-and-outs of how the secretive Ash runs his business, the movie earns our attention. For instance, Ash, who lives in a shadow world, faceless and nameless, communicates with his clients via the Tri-State Relay Service, which uses an operator who converts text to voice and vice versa. It’s usually reserved for the Deaf community, but, because no records are kept of the transitions Ash uses it as a tamper-proof means of exchange.
It also allows for a running joke in a rather dry movie, as the relay operators sign off every call, no matter how contentious, with “Thanks you for using the Tri-State Relay Service. Have a wonderful day.”
There’s all the stuff of classic conspiracy thrillers; pseudonyms—like Archie Leach, which was Cary Grant’s real name—secret, fortified storage lockers and tense exchanges of information.
That’s all well and good, and director David Mckenzie even stages several twitchy scenes that amp up the suspense. When a set piece in Times Square that should have been a simple exchange of information erupts into chaos, Mckenzie visually captures the chaotic, dangerous nature of Ash’s business.
Later, a concert hall sequence put me in the mind of Brian DePalma, but soon afterwards the carefully constructed cat-and-mouse game falls victim to a plot upheaval—calling it a twist is too mild a term—that is as silly as it is predictable.
It’s a shame that the same film that allows Ahmed the chance to do such layered, interesting work with minimal dialogue chooses to put such a pedestrian cap on a story that began with so much promise.
SYNOPSIS: Ron Howard’s “Eden” is a star-studded—Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney, Jude Law and Daniel Brühl— story of backstabbing, ego and survival set against the unforgiving landscape of a deserted Galápagos Island. Based on a true story, it’s a heart of darkness tale done on an operatic level.
CAST: Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney, Daniel Brühl, Felix Kammerer, Toby Wallace and Richard Roxburgh. Directed by Ron Howard.
REVIEW: Based on a true story, “Eden” is an ambitious psychological thriller from director Ron Howard about a utopia that echoes the savagery and societal collapse of “Lord of the Flies.”
The film begins in the early 1930s with Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his wife Dora Strauch (Vanessa Kirby) leaving the chaos of post-World War I Germany behind in favor of the solitude of Floreana Island in the Galápagos. Ironically, the misanthropic Ritter spends his days writing a philosophical manifesto about the betterment of humanity.
His dispatches to Europe attract the attention of the open-hearted Heinz and Margaret Wittmer (Daniel Brühl and Sydney Sweeney) who, much to Ritter’s annoyance, arrive with the hope of creating a community on the remote island.
Ritter’s solitude is further interrupted when the flamboyant Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas), and her two lovers land on the island with the idea of opening a luxury hotel on the beach.
A tale of survival, jealousy, betrayal, and violence, “Eden” is about the collapse of idealism. Director Ron Howard and screenwriter Noah Pink explore human nature through a jaundiced lens. The film takes its time escalating the power struggles that eventually erupt into violence, building tension as it does so, but a lack of energy in the film’s first half, as jealousy, deception, and betrayal blossom, makes our introduction to the story a bit of a slog.
Despite Jude Law’s full-frontal nudity and grotesque infected tooth, things liven up considerably when the larger-than-life Baroness and entourage show up. It’s a reset for the staid storytelling of the first half. Not only do her hedonistic ways alienate the island’s occupants, but she actively attempts to pit the Friederichs against the Wittmers. Her actions are the match to the powder keg, leading to the film’s more sordid aspects. The Baroness’s luridly glamorous presence adds some much-needed zip and Ana de Armas steals every scene she appears in with a deadly mix of charm and menace.
There is much to recommend in “Eden.” Gorgeous cinematography by Mathias Herndl and a tense score from Hans Zimmer go a long way to sell the story, but slack storytelling mars what could have been a fascinating trip to Floreana Island and the human condition.
I join CBC Radio Noon Quebec with guest host Matt D’Amours to talk about the summer bloickbuster season.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I appear on “CTV News at 11:30” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the best shows and movies to watch this weekend, including the Crave historical drama “Outlander: Blood of My Blood,” the return of “Wednesday” on Netflix and the Netflix animated film for kids “Fixed.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 15:06)
