Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the transformational horror of “Wolf Man,” the resilience of “The Last Showgirl” and star power of “Back in Action.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I give you the perfect libation to enjoy while watching “Wolf Man.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: “Wolf Man,” now playing in theatres, is a new take on the 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. horror classic. Set in the Pacific Northwest, the story sees Blake and his family barricade themselves inside a farmhouse following an attack by a strange feral creature. “What was that thing? It sounded like an animal. But I swear to God it was standing on two feet.” As the animal lurks outside something insidious begins to happen inside the house. “’What’s wrong with Daddy?” asks daughter Ginger.
CAST: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger, Ben Prendergast, Benedict Hardie, Zac Chandler, Beatriz Romilly, Milo Cawthorne. Directed by Leigh Whannell.
REVIEW: The Wolf Man has always been a tragic figure. A man and a monster, the cursed character is an unwitting victim of an animal bite that transforms him into a bloodthirsty werewolf. Through no fault of his own he is a villain, but, as “Wolf Man” suggests, he’s also a victim. “What’s happening to me?” Blake asks.
The story begins as Blake’s (Christopher Abbott) estranged father goes missing and is presumed dead. When Blake inherits his dad’s rural Oregon property, he sees an opportunity to mend his tattered marriage to Charlotte (Julia Garner) with a trip away from their big city San Francisco life.
With daughter Ginger (Matlida Firth) in tow they set off, but as the trio approach their destination, they’re attacked by someone, or something. Locking themselves inside Blake’s isolated childhood home, Charlotte notices changes in her husband’s behavior. Blake says, “’It’s a little too dangerous for us to go outside right now,” but as he begins to transform, the real danger may already be in the house.
Director Leigh Whannell’s take on the werewolf story has as much to do with David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” as it does with George Waggner’s 1941 “The Wolf Man.” Gone from the traditional werewolf story are any religious or supernatural elements. This is a story of an infection—or, as one character calls it, “a disease” typical to the rural region—and the life changing effects it has, not only on Blake, but also on his family.
It’s an allegory, with a horror twist, for any disease that strips away physical and mental health.
Blake’s transformation into a beast happens slowly. He doesn’t collapse behind a desk and emerge as a hairy handed gent. As his humanity gradually slips away his teeth fall out, his senses are heightened—a spider crawling up a wall sounds like an eight-legged timpani drum—and his grip on reality erodes. Whannell uses POV shots to illustrate the otherworldly visions Blake sees, effectively displaying how his take on the world is changing.
The horror here comes from Blake’s transformation, his struggle to contain the beast within as Charlotte and Ginger stand by, watching the man they once knew slowly disappear.
As such, it’s also a family drama, a love story of a sort and a monster movie that never lets go of its humanity.
But this is also a movie that wants to deliver scares. To that end there is dimly lit atmosphere, some creepy shadows and the odd jump scare but, as Blake shifts from victim to villain, Whannell stages gorier moments—like one involving a bear trap—that will linger in the memory.
“Wolf Man” is ambitious in its reinvention of the werewolf myth as an allegory for sickness. Light on plot and dialogue, it delivers its message effectively, even if Julia Garner, so great in “Ozark,” isn’t given more to do. In a performance that is mostly wide-eyed and reactional, she often disappears into the film’s thick atmospherics.
Despite that, “Wolf Man” is a smart reinvention of a story we’ve seen many times before.
“Judy and Punch,” a new film starring Mia Wasikowska and now on VOD, is set in mid-17th century. There’s lace collars and cuffs, petticoats, breeches and jerkins on display but make no mistake, this is a timely tale of ideology over logic, of justice, revenge and puppetry.
The action begins in Seaside, an English town the movie tells us is nowhere near the sea. It’s the first clue that not everything is right in this small settlement. It’s a place where women are stoned to death on the suspicion of witchcraft (one woman is killed because she stared “at the moon for a suspiciously long time.”) and law and order is administered by angry mobs. It’s here that Judy (Wasikowska) and Punch (Damon Herriman) eke out a living as puppeteers, making money by passing around a hat. She is clearly the more gifted artist but there is little room left for her in the spotlight as his ego takes up so much space. He is an ambitious but arrogant artist who craves attention almost as much as he thirsts for booze.
When his drinking leads to an unspeakable turn of events, Punch’s venal nature comes to the fore, and in a case of his Punch and Judy style art imitating real life, he puts his own self interest ahead of everyone, particularly his gentle-natured wife who must seek vengeance for his deeds.
“Judy and Punch” finally gives Punch his comeuppance after centuries of bad behavior. That’s not a spoiler, just the premise of the movie. The why and how of his punishment provide the subtext that makes the movie timely. A study in toxic masculinity, of abuse and misogyny, the movie mixes very dark satire, brutality and puppets to tell a story of addiction and domestic abuse.
Wasikowska grounds the story, playing Judy as a gentle soul pushed to extremes by tragic circumstances. Herriman—who played Charles Manson in both “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “Mindhunter”—is a flamboyant Punch, a calculating drunk incapable of loving anyone as much as he loves himself. They are the movie’s yin and yang, and the conflict between them leads to a dark conclusion, equal parts magic realism and real life.
“Judy and Punch” is an impressive debut from actor-turned-director Mirrah Foulkes. Although uneven it cleverly balances everything from humour and tragedy to fairy tales and feminism, in a sly story of love and vengeance.
The new thriller from Leigh Whannell, the co-creator of “Saw” and “Insidious,” is part ripped-from-the-headlines, part “Twilight Zone.” News outlets are reporting on the trend of implanting microchips to function as contactless credit cards and key cards in humans. Whannell took that premise, ran it through the RodSerling-izer™ and added a dollop of “RoboCop” to come up with a silly and sentient piece of sci fi.
Set sometime in the near future “Upgrade” sees mechanic Grey Trace (Logan Marshall Green), an “unaugmented” man in an increasingly augmented world. Microchips and other human upgrades are common, but Grey is old fashioned, favoring humanity over any kind of mechanization. In a world of self-driving cars and “energy walls” he’s a DIY guy. When four strangers murder his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) and leave him a quadriplegic he is wheelchair-bound and depressed until he is offered a unique opportunity.
One of his former clients, tech wizard Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson), offers to implant a chip called STEM, kind of an auxiliary brain, into Grey’s spine. The bio mechanic enhancement would leave him “ungraded, better, stronger and faster than everyone else,” and, of course, in perfect shape to get bloody revenge on the men who killed his wife and shattered his life.
Like Whannell’s other movies “Upgrade” is a dark, atmospheric and grim film. Blood flows but so do ideas about our addiction to computers and what happens when machines start thinking for themselves. But don’t worry, it’s not that heady. Like all good idea-soaked sci fi b-movies, it’s more about engaging your gut with visceral, i.e. violent, action, and even some humour. It’s gutsy and gory futurist Cronenberg-esque body horror made interesting by the speed at which technology approaches some of the film’s ideas about biotechnology.
“Upgrade” becomes conventional when the police procedural subplot kicks in but until then it is B-movie fun.
