I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Renée Rodgers to talk about the origin story “Clayface,” the stop-motion animated “Wildwood,” the documentary “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” and the adult fairy tale “Wicker.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres including the origin story “Clayface,” the stop-motion animated “Wildwood,” the documenary “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” and the adult fairy tale “Wicker.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Wicker,” a new romantic fantasy/comedy, Olivia Colman plays a woman who jokingly commissions a master weaver to make her a husband made of wicker.
CAST: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Elizabeth Debicki, Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizwan, Richard E. Grant, Peter Dinklage. Written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson.
REVIEW: A bawdy farce with a tender heart, “Wicker” is an innuendo laden look at unconditional love, jealously and envy.
Adapted from the short story “The Wicker Husband” by Ursula Wills, “Wicker” is set in an uptight medieval farming village. Olivia Colman is the Fisherwoman, a woman ostracized by her community due to the odor of fish that follows her around and her unconventional (for the time) thinking.
Tired of the constant taunts from the locals—“Fisherwoman,” teases a villager, “you caught yourself a lover yet?”—she sarcastically commissions the local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband out of wicker.
To everyone’s amazement, the wicker man (Alexander Skarsgård) comes to life and proves to be the perfect companion. Handsome, loyal and adoring, he tells the Fisherwoman, “I am here to marry you.”
Their passionate relationship—“I’ll be fixing the bed this afternoon,” he says after their wedding night. “It broke again.”—causes the Fisherwoman to reassess her, “love seems more burden than a prize” mantra, and becomes the talk of the town, inspiring envy and jealousy. “The wives, they’re all aflutter!”
An adult fairy tale, on the surface “Wicker’s” unconventional, “Beauty and the Beast” love story is horny and hilarious but dig deeper and it’s also a satirical look at marriage and gender roles.
In this story women are “collared” to their husbands, giving up their own identities at the moment of matrimony. So, as a representation of a woman finding love on her own terms, the Fisherwoman’s relationship with her Wicker Husband is a slap to the face of the villager’s social norms. She is a nonconformist, not looking for approval in a place where fitting in is the custom.
At the center of it all is Coleman. A mix and match of boldness and insecurity, her take on the Fisherwoman as a fiercely independent woman who opens up to her unusual beau, allows for broad comedy and heartfelt, tender moments.
Instead of playing the joke Skarsgård, hidden beneath a wicker suit, plays it straight. He’s the love interest, and, as such, plays it like a romantic leading man role. The subtle creaking of the woven wicker that makes up his body aids in the performance, adding a handmade feel to the character.
“Wicker” is weird and wonderful, but its study of societal expectations, and a woman who breaks them, that makes it memorable, not the flashy wicker suit.
“Save Yourselves!,” opening in theatres across Canada this weekend, is a whole new genre of movie. A mix of romance and aliens, it is, as far as I can recall, the first apocalyptic rom com.
Young Brooklynites Su and Jack (“Glow’s” Sunita Mani and John Reynolds of “Stranger Things”) are at a crossroads in their lives. Their jobs are unfulfilling and when they bump into an old friend who now runs a company that makes sustainable 3-D printed surfboards out of algae, they realize their lives aren’t contributing to society at large.
To get their heads together and figure out a path forward they go off the grid, disconnect from their devices and spend a week hibernating at a cabin in the mountains. The lack of technology doesn’t bother Jack, but Su has a harder time cutting the iPhone and laptop cord. When she sneaks a listen to a strange voicemail from her mother, she doesn’t register that something really weird is happening in the world outside of their idyllic getaway.
When an alien creature, imagine one of “Star Trek’s” Tribbles, or as jack says, “a tiny, furry footstool,” shows up on the property, they must fight for their lives. Trouble is, as Su says, “We don’t have any skills.”
What they do have, however, is each other.
“Save Yourselves!” is a slight but enjoyable rom com with a quirky premise but some real chemistry between the characters. Su and Jack are what may kindly be called cidiots, people who think anything north of 125th Street is Upstate New York. Unprepared for any crisis outside of a Starbucks pumpkin spice shortage, they are forced to adapt and engage with their new surroundings.
It’s here the movie works best.
Mani and Reynolds bring the funny during the crisis but the humour is always grounded in some sort of situation that recalls the issues in their relationship that pushed them to visit the cabin in the first place. Director/writers Eleanor Wilson and Alex H. Fischer have crafted a story about two hapless folks trying to improve their lives without a clue of how to do it. It has humour and heart and despite a lull in the middle, “Save Yourselves!” is goofy good fun.
