Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make your bed. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the legacy sequel “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” the unsettling “Hokum” and the shallow “Deep Water.”
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 legacy sequel “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” the unsettling “Hokum” and the shallow “Deep Water.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Hokum,” a new folk horror film now playing in theatres, Adam Scott plays an author whose trip to Ireland takes a supernatural twist.
CAST: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Michael Patric, Will O’Connell, Brendan Conroy, Austin Amelio. Directed by Damian McCarthy.
REVIEW: “Fado, fado… Long, long ago… Deep in the woods… There lived… An old Cailleach… A witch.”
“Severance” star Adam Scott is Ohm Bauman, a misanthropic American author of the best-selling Conquistador series of novels. Prone to fits of drunkenness and cruelty, he’s travelled to Ireland to finish his new novel and find personal closure by spreading his parents’ ashes in a forest near their favorite place, the remote Bilberry Woods Hotel. “My folks came here for their honeymoon,” he explains, “and always wanted to come back.”
He quickly manages to alienate the quirky staff, including handyman Fergal (Michael Patric), concierge Mal (Peter Coonan), bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh) and owner Mr. Cobb (Brendan Conroy).
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he says, “but there are some oddballs walking around this place.”
“There are worse things than strangers out there, yank,” Mr. Cobb replies grimly.
His curiosity peaked by whispers of an ancient witch the inn’s owner has trapped in the honeymoon suite, he investigates the locked room after one of the inn’s workers disappears on Halloween night.
Inside the room he has terrible visions that compel him to explore his troubled past.
“You do know these things exist,” says local pariah Jerry (David Wilmot). ”It’s just closed minds can’t see them.”
From dead animals and darkened hallways to creepy carved Halloween gourds and things that lurk in the shadows, there is a cloak of unease that hangs over the movie even before the action officially starts.
Director Damian McCarthy subliminally weaves dread into the film’s fabric. The simple haunted house story is elevated with classic but skillfully employed slightly off kilter camera work, which emphasizes empty space and the hotel’s many shadowy corners. It sets up a disquieting atmosphere of unease that pays off when Bauman’s investigation on to the mysterious, claustrophobic hotel room begins.
It’s then that the little details, a harmless chiming clock, the draping around the four-poster bed, become sinister without the aid of CGI creatures.
The monster here isn’t the Honeymoon Suite Witch, it’s the long-lasting effects of trauma and the consequences of immoral human behavior.
The atmosphere is so thick it almost distracts from Bauman’s unlikability. Almost, but not quite. Scott plays the writer as persnickety and pretentious, broken and bitter, without ever overplaying his hand. Casually cruel, he’s not a moustache twirling baddie, just a narcissist with a mean streak.
When the room forces him to confront his past, vulnerabilities shine through, but he never breaks character. He doesn’t suddenly become likable or sympathetic. He remains a pain, and Scott keeps the performance as layered as the horror McCarthy creates with his camera and setting.
“Hokum, even though the mid-section feels a bit stretched, is the real deal, a movie that is genuinely unsettling.
A very unusual thing happened when I saw Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” at last year’s TIFF. After the movie’s best and funniest scene, one that shows the comedic chops and chemistry of leads Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, the audience burst into applause. It was a spontaneous, organic moment, the kind usually reserved for comedy clubs, not sold-out festival screenings.
Powell, who also wrote the script, plays Gary, a seemingly mild-mannered psychology and philosophy professor at the University of New Orleans. When he isn’t lecturing to bored students about breaking out of their comfort zones, he leads a quiet life, tending to his pet birds and two cats, Id and Ego.
On the side he works with local law enforcement as a sound technician, secretly recording undercover officer Jasper (Austin Amelio) as he entraps people who want to hire him to kill a spouse or a business partner.
When Jasper is suspended for bad behavior, Gary subs in.
Turns out, he’s a natural, and more importantly, it gives him an adrenaline rush he hasn’t felt for many years. With Jasper out of the picture, Gary dives in, wearing disguises to create a new hitman character for every meeting.
“I realized not everyone fantasized about the same hit man,” he says. “Every sting operation was a performance. And each arrest was like a standing ovation.”
When he meets Madison (Adria Arjona), a distressed wife who wants him to kill her husband, he immediately falls for her. In their meeting he gets her to stop talking before she incriminates herself, and soon, they begin dating. Trouble is, she knows him as self-assured badass Ron, not as the affable Gary.
Complications ensue, culminating in the above-mentioned applause-worthy scene, a mix of slapstick and the pure chemistry between Powell and Arjona, where they know the police are recording them, but continue their conversation as though they don’t.
Very loosely based on the true story of Gary Johnson, as written by Skip Hollandsworth in “Texas Monthly,” “Hit Man” is a rom com with some thrilling twists. Light and frothy, it’s anchored by a smart script that acts as a showcase for the lead performances.
Powell pulls off a full-on leading man turn as a guy who embodies an ideal by creating a role-playing fantasy of what a hit man would be like, based on the wants and needs of the client. It gives him a chance to show his versatility and step away from the bland leading man roles that have marked some of his most popular work to date.
“Hit Man” makes the most of that performance. As the disguises get nuttier and nuttier, and the plot more pretzel-shaped, director Richard Linklater finds a balance between Powell’s showcase work, the script’s big laughs and the story’s inherent tension. It could have gone south very easily, but Linklater pulls off a bit of a magic trick and keeps it hilariously humming along on all cylinders.
