RICHARD’S CP24 WEEKEND REVIEWS FOR FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 20, 2024!
I join CP24 to have a look at the animated origin story “Transformers One,” the comedic thriller “Wolfs” and the gruesome horror flick “The Substance.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘action comedy’
BOOZE & REVIEWS: WWGCD? (WHAT WOULD GEORGE CLOONEY DRINK?)
I join the national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” to suggest the perfect cocktail to enjoy while taking in the new George Clooney/Brad Pitt comedic thriller “Wolfs” and then have a look at the big entertainment headlines of the night.
Listen to Booze and Reviews HERE! (Starts at 39:34)
Listen to the latest entertainment headlines HERE! (Starts at 11:01)
WOLFS: 3 STARS. “The movie is at its best as Clooney and Pitt fall in ‘like.’”
SYNOPSIS: In “Wolfs,” a new crime comedy in select theatres before moving to Apple TV+ on September 27, George Clooney plays Jack, a lone wolf fixer who aids the rich and powerful when they get into hot water. Need to get rid of a body? He’s your bagman.
“I was told that if I ever need help to call you,” says Margaret (Amy Smart), who finds herself in a hotel room with an inconveniently dead body. “I didn’t know people like you really existed.”
“They don’t,” he says. “There’s nobody who can do what I do.”
Except there is.
That person is Nick (Brad Pitt), a smug Mr. Fixit sent by the hotel. ”I’m here to fix your problem,” he says.
They don’t want to work together, but the hotel’s owner, whose been watching everything on hidden cameras intervenes. “The only course of action is for you to work together,” says Pamela Dowd-Henry (voiced by Frances McDormand), “to clean up this mess.”
As events spiral out of control, the two competitive troubleshooters reluctantly agree to partner up. “It’s gonna be a long night,” says Nick.
CAST: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams, Poorna Jagannathan. Written and directed by Jon Watts.
REVIEW: By the time the end credits roll “Wolfs” has revealed itself to not be about men immersed in a world of murder and mayhem, but as a study in loneliness.
Clooney and Pitt play loners—the title is meant to suggest they are each a lone wolf, not part of a pack, and therefore aren’t wolves, but wolfs… or something like that—whose job, for safety reasons, requires that friendships do not get in the way of the work. But, when thrown together, they slowly form a bond. They don’t exactly become Bert and Ernie, but find commonalities and form a bond of trust, possibly for the first time in their lives.
The movie is at its best as Clooney and Pitt fall in “like.” The rest is finely tuned filmmaking, with a few laughs and some shoot ‘em up action. It’s slick and fleet-of-foot but the events surrounding the characters are not quite as interesting as the characters themselves.
The two leads begin as enemies, become frenemies and finally allies. It is their banter, chemistry and gentle acknowledgment of age that drives the movie, not the intrigue. Clooney and Pitt have an easy charm, and their combination of humorous self-depreciation and charisma is where the action is, not in the car chases or gun battles.
“Wolfs” is a great argument for the existence of movie stars. It’s a good example of how star power (alongside the goofy charm of Austin Abrams as an optimistic kid in constantly thrust into life-and-death situations) can amp an up a run-of-the-mill movie.
BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F: 3 ½ STARS. “out of the ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ playbook.”
SYNOPSIS: Almost thirty years since his last Californian adventure, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), the street-smart police lieutenant from Detroit, Michigan, returns to Beverly Hills after threats are made on the life of his criminal defense lawyer daughter Jane (Taylour Paige). With the help of a new recruit, Detective Sam Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and old friends John Taggart (John Ashton) and Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), his investigation uncovers a deadly conspiracy.
CAST: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon. Directed by Mark Molloy.
REVIEW: A better name for “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” would have been “Beverly Hills Cop: Déjà Vu.” It’s been decades since Axel Foley’s last visit Los Angeles, and not much has changed. This time around, Foley has a daughter, which adds a new dramatic dimension for Murphy to play off of, but most everything else, for better and for worse, is straight out of the “Beverly Hills Cop” playbook.
The resulting burst of nostalgia doesn’t offer anything new. It does provide enough crowd-pleasing laughs—mostly courtesy of Murphy’s wisecracking, charismatic presence—and, like “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” from earlier this summer, some kick ass, old school action, that recalls the good times of 1980s funny action flicks.
The fourth instalment, now streaming on Netflix, is marred by a dull (and obvious) villain and by sticking a little too close to the established franchise formula. But the combination of Murphy’s fast talk and Harold Faltermeyer’s synth score, of action and laughs, is comforting, like a newly discovered artefact returned from the 1980s to soothe our frazzled 2024 neurons.
THE FALL GUY: 3 ½ STARS. “a crowd-pleasing mix of action, romance and star power.”
A love letter to the folks who jeopardize their lives so actors can look cool taking risks on the silver screen, “The Fall Guy,” based on the Lee Majors’s TV show of the same name, is an action romance that is easy to like, but hard to love.
Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers, stuntman for pompous Hollywood action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). He’s jumped out of tall buildings, crashed countless cars, been lit on fire and jumped through who knows how many breakaway windows in the name of making Ryderlook brave on screen and catching the eye if camera person Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt).
When a stunt goes horribly wrong, Seavers disappears, leaving the business and his relationship with Jody behind.
A year of isolation and recuperation later he goes back to work. But this time around the stunts aren’t the most dangerous part of the job. Moreno, now a director of a big budget action flick called “Metal Storm,” is pissed with him and to make matters worse, Ryder has gone missing mid shoot.
“The Fall Guy” delivers a crowd-pleasing mix of action, romance and high wattage performances from Gosling and Blunt. It is their chemistry that makes this as much fun as it is.
Set to a recurring musical motif of KISS’s “I Was Made for Loving You Baby,” their scenes provide good, old fashioned star power, with charisma to burn. The twinkle in Gosling’s eye, even as he is repeatedly brutalized on and off set, is a perfect foil for Blunt’s warmth and dead-on comic timing.
Together they help smooth over the film’s rough patches. A bit overlong, it gets unnecessarily convoluted in its last act, and loses some of its charm, but the whiz bang action and funny moments—like a fellow stuntman who helps Severs beat up the baddies as he calls out the various fighting styles from movies like “The Bourne Identity”—showcase what the movie does best, and that is deliver a sugar rush.
A cotton candy confection, light and airy, “The Fall Guy” is a bit of fun that leaves you with a sweet taste in your mouth, but not much else.
MAFIA MAMMA: 3 STARS. “Like ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ but with 100% more gunplay.”
“Mafia Mamma,” a new action comedy starring Toni Collette now playing in theatres, is a coming-of-middle-age story about a suburban woman who travels to Italy for the reading of her grandfather’s will, and accidentally gets her groove back.
Collette is Kristin Balbano, a chatty American advertising executive whose life changes in an instant when her phone rings, long distance from Wurope. On the other end of the line is Bianca (Monica Bellucci), consigliere for the Balbano crime family. “Your grandfather is dead,” she says. “You need to settle his affairs. You’ll fly to Italy tomorrow night.”
Although she’s always wanted to go to Rome, Kristin can’t leave at such short notice. “Everything is crazy at work and my husband needs me.” Besides, she wasn’t close with her grandfather. In fact, they never met.
She has a change of heart, however, when, while still on the phone, she catches her husband cheating on her with their son’s guidance counselor.
Her marriage in tatters, she figures some time away would be a tonic and accepts Bianca’s offer. It isn’t until she arrives in Rome for the funeral that she learns she is one of her grandfather’s only blood relatives, and is next in line to run the family business. Even though the old crew isn’t impressed by her—”How are we supposed to appear strong when she is dressed like a librarian?”—she reluctantly steps into the lead role.
Unfortunately, the business is under siege, involved in a turf war with a rival family. As assassins circle around, Kristin discovers a new life as decides whether she can run a crime organization and still be the good person she always thought she was.
“It’s not about losing yourself,” says Bianca. “It’s about becoming yourself.”
“Mafia Mamma” is like “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” and “Eat, Pray, Love” only with 100% more gunplay and slapstick violence. Kristen’s story of personal awakening and empowerment is predictable, played at a sit com level, but Collette’s easy charm counts for something. Her broad comedic approach wrings laughs out of the material. Whether she is killing a baddie with a stiletto, or admitting to never having seen “The Godfather” because, “It’s really hard to find three-and-a-half hours,” she elevates this standard fish out of water tale.
The story of a woman fighting sexism and an old-school male-centric system doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises, but it does so with a fair amount of enthusiasm.
BULLET TRAIN: 2 STARS. “Tarantino and Guy Ritchie meet in a head-on collision.”
Your enjoyment of “Bullet Train,” a new action adventure now playing in theatres, will depend directly on your enjoyment of star Brad Pitt. He’s having fun punching, shooting and generally behaving badly throughout, but it’s possible he’s having more fun than the audience.
Based on the Japanese novel “Maria Beetle,” “Bullet Train” stars Pitt as assassin “Ladybug.” Plagued by mishaps—“My bad luck is biblical,” he complains.—he wants out of the criminal life. “You put peace into the world and you get peace back,” he says.
When his handler, Maria Beetle (Sandra Bullock), needs a replacement for a quick job aboard a bullet train heading from Tokyo to Kyoto, she reaches out. He gives her the “peace” line. Her response? “I think you’re forgetting what you do for a living.”
She ropes him in with the promise of an easy gig. Grab a silver briefcase full of cash and get off at the next stop. “What’s the catch?” “There is no catch,” Beetle says.
Of course, there is a catch. In this kind of movie there is always a catch.
In this case the world’s fastest train is packed with some of the world’s most highly trained killers, and every one of them has some kind of tie to a psychotic crime syndicate boss known as the White Death. “He doesn’t need a reason to kill people like you,” says a passenger. “He needs a reason not to.”
Among them are Cockney killers Tangerine (Brian Tyree Henry) and Lemon (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), The Prince (Joey King), a British assassin posing as a schoolgirl and The Wolf (Benito A Martínez Ocasio), a Mexican murderer with a vendetta against Ladybug.
Cue the darkly comedic action.
For all its high-speed antics, “Bullet Train” feels been-there-done-that. It’s as if Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie met in a head-on collision. Director David Leitch and screenwriter Zak Olkewicz borrow elements from both filmmakers, but despite the flash and sass, the quick edits and even quicker quips, their film lacks the gusto of its inspirations. It’s a familiar tale told with flashbacks, revenge motifs, pop culture references—one of the assassins endlessly quotes “Thomas the Tank Engine”—pop songs layered over violent fight scenes and Ninja swords.
It is, I suppose, a great example of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, except other than the reductive script, Leitch doesn’t actually reduce anything. Reuse and recycle, for sure, but the film’s commitment to ultraviolence, sprawling cast and excessive 126-minute running time don’t suggest a reduction of any kind.
Pitt appears to be having fun, but the character’s New Age journey—he’s a nonstop font of “let this be a lesson in the toxicity of anger” style platitudes—grows wearisome and it’s hard to shake the feeling that the actor is revisiting his Cliff Booth character in the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s” LSD fight scene. It is a hoot to see him cold-cock a giant Anime character, but his befuddled killer act gets old quickly.
“Bullet Train” is a derailment. It’s a movie with the odd highlight—Lemon and Tangerine’s banter is a hoot—but despite its desperate need to entertain, it ultimately goes off the rails.
THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT: 3 ½ STARS. “wild at heart.”
There is perfect casting and then there is Nicolas Cage, playing a heightened version of himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” a meta new action comedy now playing in theatres.
Off screen Cage is a larger-than-life character, an Oscar winner known for his penchant for purchasing dinosaur skulls, tax troubles and wildly uneven cinematic output. He brings the weight of that public persona to this movie, making myth out of his own legend of self-indulgence.
Cage plays Cage as a faded Hollywood prince. Once a box office draw, he’s down on his luck, going broke and in need of a big money gig. He has become the White Claw of serious actors. He’s good, but no one with taste is taking him seriously.
Producers, scared off by his wild-at-heart reputation, give him the Hollywood kiss off. We love you, but are going in a different direction.
Depressed, he decides to leave Hollywood. “I’m done,” he says. “I’m quitting acting. Tell the trades it was a tremendous honour to be part of storytelling and myth-making.”
Before he leaves the life, he gets an offer he can’t refuse. Olive magnate Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) will pay Cage a million dollars to attend his birthday bash in Mallorca. The actor reluctantly agrees, and soon finds himself drinking and cliff-diving at Javi’s beautiful estate.
Javi is a huge fan, with a collection of cage collectibles. “Is this supposed to be me?” cage asks, gesturing at a statue of himself. “It’s grotesque. I’ll give you twenty thousand for it.”
Turns out the starstruck Javi isn’t what he appears. “Do you know who you’re spending time with?” CIA agent Vivian (Tiffany Haddish) asks Cage. “He’s one of the most ruthless men on the face of the earth.” They think Javi kidnapped the daughter of the president of Catalonia to influence an upcoming election.
Vivian and Agent Martin (Ike Barinholtz) recruit Cage to work undercover on Javi’s estate to get to the bottom of the case. “That little girl doesn’t have anyone,” says Vivian, “and if you leave, I don’t know what will happen to her.”
It’s a chance to do some good, but for Cage, it is also the role of a lifetime.
“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is an entertaining, oddball movie. Essentially a one joke premise—i.e.: Cage as Cage—it plays with the tropes of many of Cage’s films, but doesn’t play as strictly homage or satire. It’s something else. What, exactly, I’m not quite sure.
It’s almost as if this is Nic Cage’s screw you to the folks who deride him for being a working actor who pumps out two or three movies a year. “I’ve always seen this as a job, as work,” he says, as though he feels bogged down by the weight of the critical appraisal of his artistic choices.
But this isn’t a movie about score settling. It’s a silly action comedy, unabashedly interested in entertaining the audience. It occasionally errs, mistaking familiar references from Cage’s filmography for jokes. It’s that “meme-ification”—the pinpointing of Cage call-backs—of the film’s humour that prevents it from becoming a knee slapper all the way through. There are laugh out loud moments, but there are more moments that feel more Instagram ready than cinematic.
Still, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is a good time, worth the price of admission to see young Cage advising older Cage and commit the most surreal example of actorly self-love ever seen on film.
RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL REVIEWS FOR NOV. 05 WITH Merella Fernandez.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Merella Fernandez to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including director Kenneth Branagh’s poignant coming-of-age drama “Belfast,” the Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot action comedy “Red Notice” and the literary adaptation “Passing” starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
