I join the CTV NewsChannel to talk about Jude Law in “The Order,” the whimsical “Universal Language,” the Irish drama “Bring Them Down,” the Nertflix comedy “Kinda Pregnant” and the horror comedy “Heart Eyes.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
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 Jude Law in “The Order,” the whimsical “Universal Language” and the Irish drama “Bring Them Down.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In” Bring Them Down,” a violent new drama starring Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott and now playing in theatres, a bloody feud with a rival family forces a sheep farmer to confront a traumatic incident from his past.
CAST: Barry Keoghan, Christopher Abbott, Nora-Jane Noone, Paul Ready, Aaron Heffernan, Conor McNeill, Susan Lynch, and Colm Meaney. Directed by Christopher Andrews.
REVIEW: Grim and gritty, “Bring Them Down” is a mishmash of resentment, gripes and tensions that makes “The Banshees of Inisherin” seem positively lighthearted by comparison.
The story of shattered relationships and open wounds, set in remote Ireland, begins with a car accident that leaves sheep farmer and driver Michael’s (Christopher Abbott) mother dead, and his soon-to-be-ex Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone) scarred for life.
Cut to years later.
Caroline is now married to rival sheep farmer Gary (Paul Ready) and is mother to Jack (Barry Keoghan). When Jack steals two prize rams from the farm Michael runs with his cruel father Ray (Colm Meaney), all hell breaks loose. The feud between the farmers turns violent, endangering not only their lives, but also their way of life.
The dreary rural Irish setting enhances the story’s inherent bleakness. Not that the subject matter needed much help.
The downbeat story offers little in the way of reprieve from its dour point of view, but director Christopher Andrews takes pains to delve into the complexity of the personalities involved. Using a nonlinear timeline Andrews shifts perspective to reveal the character’s backstories, and the toxicity, insecurity and hopes that push Michael and Jack to the edge.
It is a testament to Abbott and Keoghan’s fine performances that the characters pop as much as they do. In Abbott’s hands the deeply troubled Michael still manages some sensitivity. Keoghan’s Jack is quiet, but capable of extreme behavior. In the end, however, it is the weight of the pair’s commonalities, a mix of familial expectation and trauma, not their actions that threaten to crush both.
“Bring Them Down” is a brutal movie, both in its depiction of animal cruelty and its unneighborly blood feud, that paints an unrelentingly intense portrait of desperation. It’s gripping right up to, but not including its vague, final moments. The conclusion blunts the power of what came before, leaving behind only uncertainty tinged by sadness.
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.
SYNOPSIS: “Kraven the Hunter,” a new superhero flick now playing in theatres and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, follows the Marvel Comics character of the same name from his teen years to his emergence as the world’s most skillful and feared hunter. “Once you’re on his list, there’s only one way off.”
CAST: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe. Directed by J. C. Chandor.
REVIEW: There are three bad guys in “Kraven the Hunter,” a toxic father (Russell Crowe), the enigmatic assassin The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) and the thick-skinned Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) but the real villain here is the lazy script.
The idea of The Hunter as an antihero, a bad guy who kills even worse guys (think “Dexter”), is a solid, if slightly shopworn idea. Even when you add a mystical potion that give him a Doctor Dolittle style connection with animals and the ability to stalk and kill using the methods of all the creatures of the jungle, the character is no more absurd than a physicist who transforms into a giant green monster when he gets mad or a half-Atlantean, half-human superhero.
With some suspension of disbelief, “Kraven the Hunter” and its lore is no more outlandish than any other superhero movie. It’s the execution, not the kills but the handling of the material, that sinks the movie.
Origin movies are tough. The script must introduce characters, motivations and backstories, and do so in an expedient, entertaining manner. “Kraven the Hunter,” scripted by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, manages neither. Talky and repetitive, the script never met a cliché it wouldn’t embrace, or a story element it couldn’t reiterate to the point of numbness.
Granted, one of the fight scenes uses a bear trap in a grimly unique fashion, but the other action scenes, while nicely choreographed, suffer from wonky CGI and frenetic editing.
Taylor-Johnson is suitably buff to play Kraven but he is saddled with clunky dialogue in several unintentionally hilarious scenes that undercut the character’s menace. Kraven is a classic example of, “fight not with monsters, lest you become one,” but, despite his piercing eyes, chiseled abs and parkour skills, he’s simply not compelling enough to maintain interest.
Worse, the stakes don’t appear to be very high.
As Nikolai Kravinoff, gangster, and father to Sergei, a.k.a. Kraven and Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), Crowe is reduced to a mouthpiece for the script’s ideas of manhood. “Man who kills legend,” he says in his best Boris Badenov accent, “becomes legend.”
And the other baddies, The Foreigner, whose superpower appears to be his ability to count, and the Rhino, seem like small timers when compared to previous Sony Spider-Man Universe rogues like Venom or Doctor Octopus.
If there is a sequel to this movie, and I highly suspect there won’t, but if there is, Kraven should spend his time hunting for a better script instead of new villains.
“Poor Things,” a new Gothic drama starring Emma Stone, is one unique woman’s journey through science, sex and self-discovery.
Based on Scottish writer Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, and set in 19th century London, the story focusses on Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), who, when we first meet her, is a fully grown woman with the mind of a child. Her “mental age and body are not synchronized,” says her guardian, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) a.k.a. “God,” a disfigured man of science with an unconventional mind.
They live in a lavish home, which also houses Godwin’s menagerie of strange animals, like a half chicken, half dog, creations right out of the Island of Dr. Moreau, and an ever-patient housekeeper who cleans up after Bella’s frequent temper tantrums.
When Bella isn’t acting out, she soaks up knowledge like a sponge, wearing her curiosity like a badge. To chart her progress Godwin recruits his protégé Max (Ramy Youssef), a young scientist with an open mind and an open heart.
As Max develops feelings for the young woman, Bella becomes curious about the world outside the walls of Godwin’s home. She gets the chance to explore with lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a flamboyant character who accompanies the now free-spirited Bella off on a romantic, picaresque excursion to Lisbon, Portugal. For the rapidly developing young woman, everything is new and she dives into every experience, including sex with gusto. “Why do people just not do this all the time?” she says to Wedderburn post coitus.
Her journey to self-discovery, free from the prejudices of polite society, sees her plot her own way to liberty by working as a Parisian prostitute, studying medicine, expanding her mind with the writings of Emerson and travelling the world. “I am finding being alive fascinating,” she says matter-of-factly.
An off-kilter “Frankenstein” story, “Poor Things” is the darkly funny tale of a human experiment who is not beholden to her creator. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, she has a lust for life, an eagerness to drink from the chalice and savor every drop. From figuring out how to walk, spitting out food she doesn’t like—“Why keep it on my mouth if I find it revolting?”—to running off to an uncertain future, she finds freedom in the moment, and the zest with which Stone brings Bella to life is irresistible. “Ideas are banging in Bella’s head like lights in a storm!” she says.
It is a raw, strange performance, fearless in its execution. Rich in comedy—it takes a well-defined character to say, “I must go punch that baby,” and get away with it—and deep in pathos, Bella is the kind of character that we’re likely only to see in a film by Yorgos Lanthimos, director of oddball delights like “The Favourite,” “The Lobster,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “Dogtooth,” but it is Stone who makes the character simultaneously hilarious, sympathetic and disturbing.
Stone is supported by Dafoe as a mad scientist who wouldn’t be out of place working alongside James Whale or Tod Browning. It’s a bravura performance, under an inch of monstrous make-up scars, that reveals the human side of a man mostly interested in data, but who makes a space in his heart for Bella.
Ruffalo lets it rip, gleefully embodying the worst of humanity. The old money lawyer is braggadocious, uptight and a bit of a dim wit. The Avengers actor milks Wedderburn for all he’s worth, emphasizing his ridiculous suaveness to create a comedic character that is part Errol Flynn, part Derek Zoolander.
The success of “Poor Things” is due to that trio of performances laid against Lanthimos’s ornate set design and odd-ball sensibility. It is a coming-of-age, a long strange journey unlike any other, but one with a strong message of female agency. “A woman plotting her course to freedom,” says brothel owner Swiney (Kathryn Hunter). “How delightful.”
How delightful, indeed.
“Black Bear,” now in select theatres and on VOD, is a psychological drama that draws you in with a false sense of familiarity before a mid-movie turn that turns expectations upside down.
Set in a remote B&B on a beautiful lake in Upstate New York run by semi-pro musician Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and his pregnant, former dancer wife Blair (Sarah Gadon), are the Bickersons by way of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” No comment from either of them goes unanswered by a barb or withering look. “It’s not that I can’t stand that you have thoughts about the world,” Blair says to Gabe in one heated exchange. “It’s that I can’t stand the thoughts about the world you have.”
Into this insular situation comes Allison (Aubrey Plaza), an actress-turned-filmmaker who booked a weekend away hoping to find inspiration in nature for her next movie. “I’m waiting for something meaningful to happen to me,” she says. Instead, she becomes entwined in the personal lives of her hosts. Secrets are shared, recriminations fly and hostilities arise.
The talky first half, with a long, drunken discussion about traditional gender roles, leads into Part Two: The Bear by the Boat House, a surreal jump to the filming of the movie-within-the-movie. Without giving anything of substance away, Gabe is now the film’s egomaniacal director while Blair is now Allison’s co-star in a tortured indie film that seems to be taking its cues from the real-life retreat. Themes of the creative process, temptation and the pain of toxic relationships introduced in the first half are further reflected in part two.
“Black Bear” is an audacious movie that defies categorization. It’s playing in select theatres, wherever theatres are open, but I suspect it will mostly be seen on VOD. That’s a shame because the layered story is not something you can digest casually while thumbing through Twitter or eating a sandwich. The personal dynamics on display are filled with conflict and every line is a trigger that sets the next into motion.
The performances bring the difficult material to life. Abbott and Gadon are very good, but it is Plaza whose work leaves a mark. She brings a furious intensity to Allison that will blow the hair back on anyone only familiar with her work as the darkly disinterested April Ludgate on the sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” It’s a complex and challenging performance that is bracingly and simultaneously real and surreal.
“Black Bear” will confound viewers looking for easy answers and a neatly tied up bow at the end. Like the creative process it portrays, it is unknowable in its entirety, a deliberate cypher meant to engage both your head and your heart.
