Sometimes watching a truly bad action movie can be fun. You get to sit back, turn off the brain for ninety minutes as good guys assault bad guys for your entertainment. Then there are movies like “The 2nd,” now on VOD, that not only assaults your intelligence along with the bad guys, sucking away 93 minutes of your valuable downtime.
A cut-rate “Die Hard,” “The 2nd” sees Ryan Phillippe as Vic Davis, a Delta Force commando, whose son Sean (Jack Griffo) is dating Erin Walton (Lexi Simonsen), a Supreme Court judge’s daughter. When Vic swings by their nearly deserted college during Christmas break to pick up Sean for some much need father and son time, he walks into a Russian plot to kidnap Erin.
The baddies, led by a gun-happy domestic terrorist named Driver (Casper Van Dien), want to swing the judge’s vote on the Second Amendment, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms. Vic, armed only with his Green Beret training and his wits, must fight to save not only Sean and Erin, but the integrity of the Second Amendment.
That the baddies are unaware that a Supreme Court judge cannot reverse a constitutional amendment is the most minor of this movie’s problems. Where to start? Perhaps with the porn movie production values? How about the cut-and-pasted dialogue like, “Believe it or not, we’re the good guys!”? I will “The 2nd” points for having one character bellow, “I ate man in gulag!” but that one fleeting moment of over-the-top dialogue simply highlighted what’s wrong with the whole movie.
“The 2nd” is just not fun. B-movie action flicks should be spirited and outrageous. There should be exaggerated villains and conflicted heroes who know how to throw down when the going gets tough. A few clichés? That’s cool if there is some actual excitement or action instead of a serving of warmed-over leftovers from other, better movies.
“Make Up,” an unsettling new English psychological thriller now playing in theatres, won’t make you sit bolt upright in your chair, but it may have you looking around furtively, wondering who, if anyone, is lurking behind you.
Set in a desolate strip of land in South West England, “Make Up” takes place in a Cornish holiday park in the off season. The empty caravans are tended to by caretaker Shirley (Lisa Palfrey), an odd woman with a rasp in her throat, and her crew of workers, including Tom (Joseph Quinn). When Tom’s girlfriend, 18-year-old Ruth (Molly Windsor), makes the fourteen hour trip to the park from her home in Derry, she comes hoping to see her boyfriend and possibly score a job.
Despite a frosty welcome from Shirley and Tom, she stays on, learning the ropes of the job. When she isn’t working shutting down the camp for the winter, she hangs out with a disinterested Tom and her only friend, camp worker and part-time beautician Jade (Stefanie Martini). Soon, however, the day-today is broken up by strange discoveries. Red lipstick kisses on Tom’s mirror and unexplained red hairs in his bed arouse jealousy. As Ruth falls further and further down the rabbit hole of her own paranoia, she begins to question everything, even her own sexuality.
The isolation of “Make Up’s” location creates an atmosphere that writer-director Claire Oakley, in her feature debut, milks for all it is worth. Strange, unsettling sounds from nature break the night’s stillness and the park itself is a smörgåsbord of ethereal sights. Think “The Shining’s” Overlook Hotel, but with wheels. Ruth sees odd, tormented figures shrouded in the plastic wrap they use to protect the newly fumigated trailers and the primordial power of the sea is apparent, even when you can’t see the water. It adds up to an atmosphere that feels ripe for things that go bump in the night… or at least things that wear a red wig and run around at night.
“Make Up” can’t rightly be pigeonholed. It’s not an outright body horror, ghost story or thriller. Instead it’s an exercise in dread, the feeling you get when you know something is terribly wrong but can’t quite place your finger on it. Oakley employs plainspoken dialogue to tell the tale but uses intense sound design (be careful of this one is you have Misophonia) and interesting photography to heighten the experience. Put together, it’s a redefinition of horror as a metaphor for coming-of-age can be and a self-assured and exciting directorial debut.
Magazines may be becoming an artifact of the past but Hollywood still looks to them for inspiration. In the last few years a half dozen movies found inspiration in the pages of “Esquire,” “Vanity Fair” and “The New Yorker,” including “The Friend,” a new drama starring Dakota Johnson, Casey Affleck and Jason Segel and now playing In theatres and on-demand.
Based on Matthew Teague’s “Esquire” article “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word,” the film uses a broken timeline—jumping back and forth—to tell the true story of Teague’s terminally ill wife Nicole and their friend-turned-nursemaid Dane. Affleck is Matt, a war correspondent with an attitude. “It’s Friday,” says his editor, “I’ve been tired of you since Wednesday.” He’s an up-and-comer, married to Nicole, a talented musical theatre performer played by Johnson. Her best pal at the theatre is Dane (Segel) a sad sack who can’t seem to get a girlfriend. “It’s not fair,” she says. “I’m the only woman who knows how special you are.”
By the time Nicole is diagnosed with cancer their lives have taken different paths, but Dane leaves his life in New Orleans behind to help his Atlanta-based friends. “Would it help if I stayed for a while? You don’t have to do this alone.” The planned week or two visit turns into months as Dane takes on more responsibility, becoming Matt’s pillar of strength and an indispensable part of Nicole’s transition.
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite has made a sensitive film about finding your logical, not biological family. Dane is an anchorless man who finds a sense of permanence with his friends. Segel brings his trademarked relatability to the role, exuding warmth but also a sadness due to his rudderless station in life. Staying with Nicole and Matt and their daughters provides him with a home, but it is temporary, a state of affairs bound to end in heartache. Behind every one of his toothy grins is the anxiety of the situation, carefully masked to spare his hosts the extent of his grief. It’s lovely work that quietly defines the width and breath of selfless giving.
Affleck plumbs the depths of the circumstances, examining grief tinged with anger over a situation he can’t control and Johnson brings grace and beauty, especially in the way she looks at Matt, Dane and the children knowing that she won’t be there for their birthdays, holidays etc, to the role of a woman counting her time in days rather than years. Cherry Jones, as a palliative nurse—an “Angel of Mercy” according to Nicole’s doctor—gives a no-nonsense performance that drips compassion.
“The Friend” is a showcase for Segel’s easy charm but also gives the actor a chance to dig deeper. The former sitcom star delivers some much-needed laughs but they are tinged with humility that is very touching.
“Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time,” now playing on digital TIFF Bell Lightbox and across Canada virtually and theatres, may have the longest title yet this year, but director Lili Horvát doesn’t stretch out the story. In just 94 minutes her romantic mystery is a tightly told story, heavy on the Hitchcockian intrigue.
In Hungarian with English subtitles, the film centres on 40-year-old neurosurgeon Márta Vizy (Natasa Stork). When we first meet her, she’s waiting for a rendezvous with a man she had a brief but torrid affair with during a medical conference. He’s a no show, and later, when confronted he claims to have never met her.
The story seems to be pointing its characters in the same direction as pulpy movies like “Fatal Attraction” as Márta cyber-stalks her mysterious lover, delving into every aspect of his life. But before she boils a rabbit on his stove, the film contorts, offering twists and turns that cast doubt on everything that came before.
Stylish, atmospheric and well-acted, “Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time” finds the crossroads where fixation and perception meet. Márta’s passion forces the viewer to ponder the blurred line between obsession and love, and wonder why and how she crossed it. The film offers no answers, just tantalizing clues as to why Márta finds herself on this path in life.
“Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time,” which is Hungary’s official entry for the international feature film category at the Academy Awards, is a study in alienation lead by an interesting performance from Stork who takes an enigmatic character and finds her humanity. It’s coolly effective and yet burns with a passionate heart.
We’ll never know exactly what was said between Cassius Clay, Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, soul singer Sam Cooke, and football superstar Jim Brown behind closed doors in a Miami hotel room on February 25, 1964, but a new film by Oscar winner Regina King in her directorial debut, offers up a fascinating what-if scenario.
Going into the boxing ring on that night against heavy weight champion Sonny Liston, Cassius Clay (Halifax-born Eli Goree), who had not yet officially changed his name to Muhammad Ali, was a 7-to-1 underdog. When the fight was over Clay was the youngest boxer to ever grab a title from a reigning heavyweight champion.
Helping him celebrate the landmark win are his three closest friends, mentor Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), hit maker Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and athlete Brown (Aldis Hodge). Convened at their Miami hotel on the warm February night, the foursome, all at turning points in their lives, share their thoughts, get heated, debate about how to end segregation, all with an eye toward the future.
That two of them would be murdered within the next year adds poignancy to an already charged conversation.
Cooke and Brown mull over career choices. A discussion of Cooke’s slick but conventional pop songs led to the writing and recording of “A Change Is Gonna Come,” one of the greatest anthems of the Civil Rights Movement. Brown, already a superstar on the football field, comes under fire for appearing in a movie Western called “Rio Conchos,” as a minor character, killed off early in the action.
Clay is celebratory, but plotting his next moves, both professionally and personally as he decides when to announce his conversion to Islam and his name change to Muhammad Ali.
The firestarter is X, the public figure under surveillance by the FBI, who encourages his friends to take a more militant stand, to use their celebrity and standing in a more meaningful way. He is the discontent, an activist who predicts hard times ahead.
“One Night in Miami” began life as a stage play by “Star Trek: Discovery” staff writer Kemp Powers, who also penned the movie’s script. As such, there’s a theatrical feel to King’s staging of the scenes, most of which take place in the hotel room. She has opened up the play, adding new locations and a series of vignettes at the beginning of the film, but this isn’t about action, it’s about the verbal fireworks of Powers’ script and authoritative performances.
It’s a snapshot of the cultural importance of this quartet; a history lesson made even more potent in the era of Black Lives Matter. “Power,” says Clay, “is a world where it’s safe to be ourselves.”
“Outside the Wire,” a new futuristic Netflix movie starring Anthony Mackie, is a run-of-the-mill action flick with more bullets than ideas.
Set in 2036, as “Outside the Wire” begins there is a violent civil war in Eastern Europe. The United States are there as peacekeepers, using robotic soldiers called Gumps to battle a ruthless warlord called Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbæk), the Terror of the Balkans, who may possess a doomsday device. In the midst of this conflict is Lieutenant Thomas Harp (Damson Idris), an U.S.-based drone pilot who makes the difficult, long-distance decision to sacrifice two Marine lives to save thirty-eight others. Instead of being commended for saving lives, an ethics committee sends him to a demilitarized zone in Eastern Europe to experience real combat up-close-and-personal.
He’s assigned to work with Captain Leo (Mackie), a hardnosed veteran who’ll show him the ropes. “War is ugly,” Leo says. “Sometimes you gotta get dirty to see any real change.” The twist is that Leo is only five years old. And no, before you ask, this isn’t a militaristic riff on “The Boss Baby.” Leo is a biotech android, a one-man militia, designed to be smarter, faster and more efficient than everyone else. “My existence is classified,” he tells Harp as they head off on a mission to deliver a vaccine to a cholera break twenty clicks outside the wire. The operation is partly humanitarian, and partly to act as a cover to meet an informant with intel on Koval’s whereabouts.
“Outside the Wire” is a slick mish-mash of “iRobot,” “Chappie” by way of “The Terminator” and modern war movies like “The Kingdom.” The derivative story is a delivery system for a series of clichés, large scale battle scenes and nifty special effects.
The social commentary on the ethics of using drones during wartime and what constitutes acceptable collateral damage feels blunted by the movie’s propensity to blow away soldiers and civilians alike with what must be the highest body count in a movie so far this year. It’s an important and ongoing discussion in the real world but don’t look for answers here, just giant fireballs and the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic weapons.
When the bodies aren’t dropping, the clichés are. It’s as if Leo’s speech functions were programmed by a bot who had watched a 1000 hours of 1940s war movies. He does, however, occasionally deliver a fun line. “I’m not an idiot,” says the “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” star. “That would make me human.”
“Outside the Wire” is a noisy time-waster that could have used some outside the box thinking to make its shop-worn story more effective.
Based on Julia Walton’s 2017 young adult novel of the same name, “Words on Bathroom Walls,” now on EST, VOD, DVD and Blu-ray, follows a teenager, diagnosed with schizophrenia, navigating mental illness and life in a new school. “How hard could it be to hide my burgeoning insanity from the unforgiving ecosystem that is high school?” says Adam Petrazelli (Charlie Plummer) in the film’s opening moments.
Adam is a foodie with dreams of being a chef but when he accidentally injures a classmate during a psychotic break in lab class his future is jeopardized. A diagnosis of treatment resistant schizophrenia leaves him ostracized from his former friends. They taunt him in the halls—“Where’s the straightjacket?” and call him “freak” as he confronts the voices in his head, the new-agey Rebecca (AnnaSophia Robb), the Bodyguard (Lobo Sebastian) and troublemaker Joaquin (Devon Bostick), a varied group he calls “my inescapable roommates.”
A new drug trial offers hope, as does a switch to a new Catholic school. For the first time in ages he feels like he has autonomy over his life. “I woke up to complete silence. No whispers. No banter. No visions. Just pure, unfiltered, beautiful quiet.” His friendship with valedictorian Maya (Taylor Russell) blossoms, but as the medication slowly affects his ability to cook he struggles to hide the side effects from mother (Molly Parker) and step dad (Walton Goggins).
“Words on a Bathroom Wall” is a coming-of-age story with a difference. Adam’s journey with schizophrenia is sensitively handled, with director Thor Freudenthal finding inventive ways to put the viewer into the main character’s shoes. The voices and hallucinations are brought to life without sensationalism or exploitation. Instead, they show us what is happening in Adam’s mind as he navigates the minefield of high school and first love. Far from demonizing his disease, as has been the case in other less humane cinematic depictions of schizophrenia, they add dimension to the story.
Plummer hands in a break out performance as Adam. He’s an awkward teen, a dutiful son who learns how to cook to comfort his mother and a teen struggling with an illness. His subtle performance goes a long way to creating a character in three-dimensions who is both strong and vulnerable. He shares good chemistry with Russell who brings depth to an underwritten Maya.
“Words on a Bathroom Wall” hits hard before settling into more familiar, optimistic territory but the respectful tone established early on makes up for the sappiness that bogs down the film’s final moments.
It would be easy to suggest that “Promising Young Woman,” a new drama starring Carey Mulligan, is simply a “Falling Down” for the #MeToo era but it is much more than that. It has elements of that but it is also an audacious look at rape culture and male privilege that weaves dark humour and revenge into the ragged fabric of its story.
It’s difficult to talk about “Promising Young Woman” without being spoilerific but here goes: Mulligan is Cassandra, a thirty-year-old drop out from medical school. She lives at home with her parents (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge), works at a coffee shop with her best, and only friend, Gail (Laverene Cox). “If I wanted a house, a career, a yoga class and a boyfriend my mom could brag about I’d do it,” she says. “In ten minutes. But I don’t want it.”
At night she hits the clubs, pretending to be intoxicated, waiting for men to approach her. Just when they think she is at her most vulnerable, she “comes to.” “What is this?” says one of the “nice guys” who tries to take advantage of her. “Are you some kind of psycho? I thought you were…” “Drunk?” she says, finishing his sentence.
At home she has a notebook, filled a list of the men she has encountered and the several names in store for a “day of reckoning.”
There’s more but one of the pleasures of “Promising Young Woman” is in its ability to surprise and shock with the story’s twists and turns. There is a lot in play here. The action here is fueled by Cassie’s trauma but writer-director Emerald Fennell keeps the action off kilter with the introduction of dark satire, revenge, an exploration of toxic masculinity and even some rom com-esque scenes. The culmination of all these disparate components is a film with a strange tone but a clear-cut point of view. It’s social commentary as art and it works.
Mulligan appears in virtually every frame, navigating the story’s left turns and holding its centre no matter what is thrown at her. The sense of loss that drives her is always present—she even wears a broken heart pendent—even when she is in control, steely-eyed and ready to rumble.
“Promising Young Woman” is occasionally rough around the edges structurally but despite its flaws is compelling and surprising.
“Pieces of a Woman,” now steaming on Netflix, begins with happy, loving couple Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and Shawn (Shia LaBeouf) on what should be one of the happiest days of their lives. In the scene, shot mostly in long takes, Martha is in labor, minutes away from giving birth to their daughter. With their midwife indisposed a replacement named Eva (Molly Parker), unfamiliar with their case, is sent in her place. By the end of the twenty five-minute pre-credit sequence tragedy has struck, and their lives are forever changed.
Director Kornél Mundruczó sets the bar very high in the opening moments of the film. It is riveting filmmaking, intimately showing Martha and Shawn’s anticipation, pain and anguish in real time. The bulk of the film deals with the aftermath as the couple are driven apart by grief and recrimination and it’s very strong, but cooler in tone than the opening.
It is interesting to note that “Piece of a Woman” was originally conceived as character sketches by Kata Wéber meant for the stage. You can feel the attention to detail that was lavished on each of the characters. They are richly drawn and carefully portrayed by the actors.
A trio of performances tell the story.
Kirby, best known as Princess Anne on “The Crown,” digs deep to create a portrait of a person devastated by the loss of her child; someone whose world stopped turning that day. As she looks for closure, there is an intensity that comes from her rage and sorrow manifesting themselves as heartbreak. It is layered, emotionally-draining, award worthy work.
LaBeouf plays Shawn as an attention hungry husband. A man trying to move on by forcing his attentions on Martha and when that doesn’t work, he looks elsewhere. LaBeouf is a bubbling cauldron of frustration, about to overflow.
As Martha’s mother, an imperious woman hell bent on assigning blame, Ellen Burstyn delivers a tour-de-force monologue about the way mothers raise their daughters that could be a short film all on its own.
“Pieces of a Woman” isn’t an easy watch. The performances are raw, real and uncomfortable that exhaust and exhilarate in equal measure.
