SYNOPSIS: Six years after the events of “Deadpool 2” comes “Deadpool & Wolverine,” a new superhero movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, and now playing in theatres.
Now working as a used car salesman, Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has retired his wisecracking mercenary Deadpool persona. His life is up-ended when the Time Variance Authority (TVA) enlists him to undertake a new mission with another reluctant superhero Wolverine (Jackman).
“Wade, you are special,” says TVA agent Mr. Paradox (Macfadyen). “This is your chance to be a hero among heroes.”
CAST: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Rhett Reese, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells. Directed by Shawn Levy.
REVIEW: If the word bombastic took steroids it might come close to describing the R-rated “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Vulgar, gory with a “whiff of necrophilia” and irreverence to burn, it’s a showcase for the bromance stylings of its stars, who pull out all the stops to lovingly put a cap on Fox’s Marvel movies. “Disney bought Fox,” Deadpool explains, “[so there’s] that whole boring rights issue.”
At the film’s start, it takes some doing to explain Wolverine/Logan’s return from the dead—“Nothing will bring you back to life faster than a big bag of Marvel cash,” Deadpool says to Wolverine’s remains.—but once that convoluted (but action-packed) set-up is out of the way, the film barrels through plot with both fists flailing.
Before, during and after the big, bloody action sequences the movie cheekily blurs the line between on-screen and off-screen life. Deadpool obnoxiously calls Logan “Hugh,” and even takes a jab at jackman’s recent divorce. Later he leeringly mentions “Gossip Girl,” the show that made Reynolds’s wife, Blake Lively, famous.
That fourth-wall-breaking riffing suits Reynolds’s trademark delivery, and sets the self-aware “Deadpool” movies apart from other superhero films. ““Fox killed him,” Deadpool says of Wolverine. “Disney brought him back. They’re gonna make him do this till he’s 90!”
Humor has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), in Tony Stark’s one-liners, in Taika Waititi era “Thor” movies and “Guardians of the Galaxy” to name a handful of examples, but none of those subversively poke fun at superhero movies and themselves in the way “Deadpool & Wolverine” does. What other MCU movie would self-deprecatingly admit that the characters are entering the multiverse “at a bit of a low point”?
Jackman mostly plays it straight, acting as a soundboard for “the Merc with the Mouth’s” one liners. Filled with regret over past events, the self-loathing Wolverine is a hard drinking mutant, in full comic book costume, who reluctantly embraces heroism.
Wolverine provides the story’s heart as a counterpoint to Deadpool’s constant quipping.
Both characters may be physically indestructible, but their psyches aren’t. Both are tortured, and when the movie isn’t gushing blood or cracking wise, it’s about lost souls and their search for redemption. That story chord is a grace note that often gets lost amid the film’s cacophonic action, but is a welcome relief from the constant clatter.
A love letter to the now by-gone Fox era of superhero films, “Deadpool & Wolverine” ushers in a new epoch overstuffed with overkill, cameos, Easter eggs, juvenile humour and a villain who reads minds by thrusting their fingers into their victim’s heads. It’s fun fan service, and a good time at the movies, even if the experience of watching it sometimes feels like being on the inside of a blender set to puree.
SYNOPSIS: “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” a comedic Guy Ritchie World War II movie starring Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson, and now streaming on Amazon Prime, is the mostly true story of an outlaw band of violent rogues and outlaws put together by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to neutralize Hitler’s fleet of German U-boats during World War II. “We both know that I’m not very popular with the administration,” says Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill). “The reason they find you unattractive,” says Brigadier Gubbins (Cary Elwes), “is the very reason I find you attractive.”
CAST: Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding and Alex Pettyfer. Directed, co-written and co-produced by Guy Ritchie.
REVIEW: This story of charismatic rule breakers doesn’t break any new ground for director Ritchie, but it does deliver the kind of slick spectacle you expect from one of his films; the violence is exaggerated, with the kind of body count usually reserved for John Wick movies, the dialogue is cheeky and there’s pyrotechnics to spare. It’s a World War II movie via breezy comic book storytelling, so don’t expect a history lesson, expect the kind of charismatic antiheroes Ritchie has made a career of documenting, with a nod to “Inglorious Basterds.”
The ugly work of killing Nazis is performed by an undeniably handsome, square-jawed cast. Now on the other side of the DC Universe, Cavill lets loose, launching the same kind of charm offensive he first displayed in Ritchie’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” reboot. His take on March-Phillips is all roguish, devil-may-care charm and deadpan delivery. His star power is equaled by Ritchson, who, as Anders Lassenn, a.k.a. “The Danish Hammer,” cements his bonafides as an action star who can also deliver a funny line. In the midst of the film’s deadly mission these two, in tandem with Eiza González as Marjorie Stewart, the film’s femme fatale and sharpshooter, bring some personality to the bombastic action.
“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is kind of predictable. It’s a simple story of good vs. evil with a twist, the good guys are, to put it mildly, ungentlemanly.
But, Ritchie understand that people love a heroic rascal, and the more ungentlemanly March-Phillips and Co. behave, the more enjoyable the movie becomes. Their antics, accompanied by composer Christopher Benstead’s peppy Morriconesque score, have the bluster that made Ritchie’s early films like “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” so much fun.
“Ordinary Angels,” a new faith-based film starring Hillary Swank and Alan Ritchson, and now playing in theatres, is an uplifting film about the virtues of not taking “no” for an answer.
Based on a true story, “Ordinary Angels” sees Ritchson, still pumped-up from playing former U.S. Army military policeman on Amazon Prime’s “Reacher,” as Ed Schmitt, the recently widowed single father of two preteen girls, Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) and Michelle (Emily Mitchell).
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Ed would have any luck at all.
“Have faith,” his mother (Nancy Travis) tells him.
“A lotta good faith is doing me,” he says.
Already drowning in debt from his late wife’s medical bills, Ed is also struggling with Michelle’s life-threatening liver condition. She will need a transplant, but finding a donor could take years, and until then, the medical bills will continue to pile up.
In another part of town, while Michelle waits for a new liver, Sharon Stevens (Swank), a brassy hairdresser with a drinking problem, is doing everything she can to ruin hers. She is bold, the kind of drunk who dances on (and falls off of) bars, and says “I ain’t great with boundaries.”
The morning after a bender, while buying beer at a local shop, a newspaper headline about Michelle’s dire condition grabs her by the heart. Uninvited, she shows up at Ed’s church as the preacher implores his flock to, “Find a way to help this family.”
Sharon trades her enthusiasm for drinking with fund-raising efforts to help Ed and his family dig themselves out of their financial hole. After she arrives at Ed’s home with an enveloped stuffed with $3000, he reluctantly accepts her assistance. “I’m good at a lot of things,” she says. “Taking ‘no’ for an answer isn’t one of them.”
Co-writers Kelly Fremon Craig (who recently wrote and directed the film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”) and Meg Tilly, lean on the details of true story from 1994 in linear fashion. So, there are no big surprises in “Ordinary Angels,” just compelling characters and a three Kleenex story.
Ritchson leaves Jack Reacher’s sarcastic brashness on the shelf to play Ed as a quiet, broken man who puts his family’s needs ahead of his own. Without time to properly grieve his late wife, he has tamped down his heartache as he carries the weight of the world on his very broad shoulders.
Swank gives Sharon a blustery shell that camouflages a troubled past. Her soured relationship with her adult son and alcoholism are confronted, but neither are fully explored. Sharon says she doesn’t like to talk about herself, but a bit more backstory may have fleshed out the psychology behind her extraordinary generosity. Still, Swank makes her forceful in an Erin Brockovich kind of way.
“Ordinary Angels” is formulaic—the highs are really high, the lows are really low—and the climatic race against time goes on too long to be truly exciting, but the film’s themes of the importance of community, of the healing power of kindness and of how one person can make a difference, may tug at the heartstrings.
Everything about “Fast X,” the latest entry in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, is big. Really big.
The a-lister cast list is a laundry list, including returning stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Charlize Theron along with the addition of Marvel superheroes Jason Momoa and Brie Larson. The villain is faster and more furious than ever before and the action can only be described as bigly. There’s even a surprise cameo from one of the world’s biggest movie stars.
But is bigger always better?
A jumble of the usual mix of family, friends, fast cars and flashbacks, “Fast X” begins with relative calm in the world of former criminal and professional street racer Dominic Toretto (Diesel). The patriarch of the “F&F” gang, he has left the fast life behind, and retired with wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), and his son Brian. “We used to live our lives a quarter mile at a time,” he says. “But things change.”
Not so fast, there Dom.
Dom’s past comes back to haunt him in the form of flamboyant villain Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), the sadistic, revenge fueled son of drug lord Hernan Reyes. “I’m Dante,” he says by way of introduction. “Enchanté.”
Way back in “Fast Five” Dom and Co. were responsible for the loss of the Reyes family fortune. “The great Dominic Toretto,” Dante snarls. “If you never would’ve gotten behind that wheel, I’d never be the man I am today. And now, I’m the man who’s going to break your family, piece by piece.”
Cue the set-up to the second part of the franchise’s three-part finale. It is, as they say on the movie poster, just the beginning of the end.
In the “Fast & Furious” world the word “ludicrous” is not just the name of prominent cast member Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, it’s also the name of the game. Since the franchise’s humble 2001 debut, the movies have grown bigger and sillier with each entry. “If it can violate the laws of God and gravity,” says Agent Aimes (Alan Ritchson) in “FX,” “they do it twice.”
The latest one redefines ridiculousness.
The out-of-control car stunts that crowd the screen have no touchstone in reality, other than the cars have four wheels and drive along streets when they aren’t bursting into flames or flying through the air. It’s as if the wild car chases were dreamed up by fourteen-year-olds playing with their Hot Wheels sets as images of canon cars danced in their heads. Anything goes, and no idea is too big or too ludicrous.
When the tires aren’t squealing, Dom is whinging on about the importance of family with a straight face and a serious tone that makes Leslie Nielsen’s “Naked Gun” deadpan look positively flamboyant. Only Momoa seems to understand how colossally silly the whole thing is, and has fun pulling faces, doing a Grand Jeté or two and peacocking around as he rolls a neutron bomb through the streets of Rome. It’s a ludicrous performance in a completely ludicrous movie and it fits.
The bombastic “Fast X” is overstuffed with characters—it seems like every actor in Hollywood has a cameo—plot and, if this is possible, it is overstuffed with excess. The very definition of “go big or go home,” it is for “F&F” fans who have been along for the ride for more than two decades everyone else may want to take a detour.
In the cold-blooded world of turtles, Yertle, Gamera, Koopa Troopa and Fastback are hot names. But the most famous testudines of all time have to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Stars of movies, comic books, television and video games, the four anthropomorphic turtle brothers even had action figures and breakfast cereals as part of their reptilian empire.
They were 20th-century pop-culture icons, which ain’t too bad for four hard-shelled crime fighters named after Renaissance artists.
Stephen Amell, who plays hockey-mask wearing hero Casey Jones in this weekend’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, says he grew up with Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello.
“The live-action films did it for me,” says the actor, who was just nine when the turtles hit the big screen for the first time. “I’ve always ingested superheroes, especially comic book superheroes, via feature films. Like Superman, Batman, Christopher Reeve, Michael Keaton, all that stuff. When they did the live-action turtle movie I remember my brain not being able to fully comprehend how they were going to do this. Those were seminal moments from my childhood.”
The story of four pet turtles transformed by radioactive ooze into sewer-dwelling, crime-fighting ninja warriors appealed to kids, but the original 1984 black-and-white comics were dark, gritty and violent, a subversive homage to popular books like Daredevil, Cerebus and Ronin. Sharp-eyed readers of the second issue of TMNT will notice old issues of Cerebus and Ronin discarded on the floor of the Turtles’ sewer home.
They sliced and diced bad guys and even uttered the odd PG-13 word.
Turtlemania really began in 1987 with an animated series aimed at younger viewers. They quickly became something of a sensation, but with popularity came an erosion of the rebellious aspects of the story. In short, they became the thing they once poked fun at.
The turtles went mainstream, and soon there were arcade games, action figures, clothing, movies and more.
Kids were taken with the turtle soup of gags, colourful characters and pizza obsession, but Amell says there is more than that to their appeal.
“At the baseline of this entire experience, we are talking about the relationship of four brothers — the relationship as they struggle through adolescence,” he says. “I feel like whether you have brothers, sisters, close friends, any type of family, everyone can relate to that.
“It’s this unique idea. It’s so unique it tends to be universal. I don’t know what the secret sauce is, otherwise I would create my own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and just sit back and collect the royalties.”
For many, including the crowds that will no doubt flock to Out Of The Shadows this week, the allure of the turtles is at least partly nostalgic, a return to a simpler time.
I get the feeling that for the Toronto-born Amell, the appeal is partly sentimental, partly professional.
“It’s pretty cool,” he says. “It’s a really great franchise to be part of. It’s amazing to play a character like Casey Jones. I was just at Yonge and Dundas Square [in Toronto] and it is overrun with Turtles’ posters. It’s a dream come true.”
I never thought I would miss the first wave of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies. The foam rubber-suited lead characters and tongue-in-cheek humour were very much of their time, almost a time capsule of 1990s genre cheese. Just as “The Secret of the Ooze” et al are emblematic of their day, the CGI fest “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows” is symbolic of its time. Trouble is, I have no nostalgia for pixels and bytes no matter how artfully arranged on the screen.
The action begins one year after the events of the last film. The turtles—leader Leonardo (Pete Ploszek), the rebellious Raphael (Alan Ritchson), good-time turtle Michelangelo (Noel Fisher) and the brains of the outfit, Donatello (Jeremy Howard)—saved the world by bringing super duper bad guy Shredder (Brian Tee) to justice. News cameraman Vernon Fenwick (Will Arnett) got all the credit, and is now a media darling. The turtles, however, are content to stay in the shadows, afraid that people won’t accept them because they are all turtlely. And ninja-esque.
Now trouble has come back to town as Shredder escapes police custody and forms an alliance with inventor Dr. Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry), two mutants named Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams) and Rocksteady (WWE Superstar Stephen “Sheamus” Farrelly) and Kraang (Fred Armisen), a slimy alien octopus with a robotic shell. “Together we can bring the people of your planet to their knees,” crows the mucus covered ET.
The heroes on the half shell, along with their old sidekicks April O’Neil (Megan Fox), Splinter (Tony Shalhoub) and hockey stick wielding newcomer Casey Jones (Stephen Amell), spring into action to prevent—what else?—the end of the world as we know it.
Ladled into this turtle soup of action, comedy and crazy science—“Inside every human there is a gene that connects us to our animal ancestors!”—are good messages of T’N’T—tolerance ‘n teamwork—but despite the explosive nature of the movie there are no real fireworks here. Maybe it’s because our eyes are so accustomed to CGI spectacle. Turtles can literally fly, but who cares? In a film where anything is possible, nothing is terribly exciting. The computer-generated images bring the turtles, rhinos and warthogs to vivid life but the artificial nature of the main characters do nothing to breathe life into this story.
I’m not saying I expect anything approaching realism in a movie about talking turtles. I’m suggesting that the quirky appeal of Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello isn’t well suited by CGI that looks interchangeable with every other superhero flick. It’s as if the very things that made the turtles unique—there’s only one “Cowabunga!” in the whole film and it isn’t even Michelangelo who says it—have been downplayed in the hopes of turning them into generic, franchise building heroes. I say let their freak flags fly. We liked them because they were subversive. We liked them because, like Godzilla, they were more fun when you could see the zipper on the back of their rubber suits. Smoothing out their edges sands off the stuff that made them unique.
Kraang, the sadly underused villain, is as over-the-top as you might hope and a nice counterpart to the bland Tee as Shredder. As cool as Kraang is, though, this is really the turtle show. They are given more screen time than anyone else, and other than Bebop and Rocksteady, who morph into a rhino and warthog, dominate the proceedings. In the background are Laura Linney and Perry. Linney steps out of the art-house to do a forgettable turn as a justice department honcho and Perry adds little to the flick other than name value.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows” is a CGI orgy that left me (half) shell shocked and nostalgic for a time when four wisecracking, world-saving turtles were something unique and not simply another entry in the superhero sweepstakes.
