CTV NEWSCHANNEL: ‘It feels like an infomercial’: Richard on ‘Melania’ doc
I join the CTV NewsChannel to have a look at the documentary “Melania,” the desert island drama of “Send Help” and the déjà vu of “Shelter.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘Daniel Mays’
CTV NEWSCHANNEL: RICHARD’s MOVIE REVIEWS FOR FRIDAY JANUARY 30, 2026!
I join the CTV NewsChanel to talk about the desert island drama of “Send Help,” the déjà vu of “Shelter” and the awesome animation of “ARCO.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
YOU TUBE: THREE MOVIES/THIRTY SECONDS! FAST REVIEWS FOR BUSY PEOPLE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make a smoothie! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the desert island drama of “Send Help,” the déjà vu of “Shelter” and the awesome animation of “ARCO.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SHELTER: 3 STARS. “here’s something reassuring about the actor’s consistency.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Shelter” Jason Statham plays Statham Character #2. That’s the “loner with a past who must protect a youthful innocent.” (As opposed to Statham Character #1 in which he plays “a loner with a past who must protect a loved one.”)
CAST: Jason Statham, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Bill Nighy, Naomi Ackie, Daniel Mays. Directed by Ric Roman Waugh.
REVIEW: Whenever I watch a Jason Statham film, I imagine that somewhere in Hollywood there is a small, organized office with two employees called the Déjà Vu Department, whose sole job it is to oversee the writing of Jason Statham scripts.
Statham has made a career of repeatedly making the same movie. They are not sequels— locations, character names and situations change—but in their mix of formula and form, they are remarkably similar.
In his new film “Shelter,” instead of a beekeeper with the past (à la “The Beekeeper”) he’s a lighthouse keeper with a past (see: “Homefront,” “Mechanic: Resurrection” and many others) who rescues a young innocent woman (as he did in: “Transporter 2,” “Safe” and others) by switching to one man army mode (see: “Wrath of Man,” “A Working Man,” “The Mechanic” and too many others to mention here).
So, to say “Shelter” doesn’t reinvent the wheel is like saying that Statham’s signature character is handy with his fists.
Still, despite the echoes of past movies that reverberate throughout the movie, “Shelter,” like Statham’s other films, is entertaining. It’s a by-the-Statham-book story but, for fans, his take on a character who says, “People like me don’t get to live normal lives,” is comfort food. Like meatloaf or a hot soup on a cold day, there’s something reassuring about the actor’s consistency. In a constantly changing world, where everything is disrupted, there is something appealing about knowing exactly what you’re going to get when you buy a ticket to one of his movies.
They are as cozy and reassuring as a movie with a body count in the dozens can be.
Add to that a talented teen sidekick in the form of Bodhi Rae Breathnach—even though most of her role consists of being told to, “Sit here. Don’t move.”—and Oscar nominee Bill Nighy to class up the joint, and you’re left with another entertaining, if forgettable, action film from Statham’s Déjà Vu Department.
Near the film’s climax young innocent Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) laments that with the bad guys after him Michael (Statham) won’t be able to return to the refuge of his isolated island.
“There’s always another island,” he replies. And for Statham, there’s always another film.
CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET: 3 ½ STARS. “mix of charm and craft.”
“Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget,” a new stop motion animated film from Aardman Animations and playing in theatres this week before moving to Netflix next week, comes with great eggs-pectations. The original film, 2000s “Chicken Run,” is a beloved classic of British humour, heartwarming and heavy on the charm.
But can a sequel, twenty-three years in the making, be all it’s cracked up to be or will it lay an egg?
The new film picks up years after revolutionary chicken Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and American circus rooster Rocky (Zachary Levi) escape the prisoner-of-war style Tweedy’s Industrial Farm. The happy couple now celebrate their freedom, living on an island bird sanctuary, far from the dangers of humanity, with friends Babs (Jane Horrocks), elderly rooster Fowler (David Bradley), Bunty (Imelda Staunton) their rat BFFs Nick and Fetcher (Romesh Ranganathan and Daniel Mays) and daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey).
“Life doesn’t get better than this,” Ginger says. “We’ve put the past behind us. We have Molly to think about now.”
It’s a wonderful life, but Molly, who has her mother’s rebellious spirit, feels fenced in. “You can’t make me stay here,” she tells Ginger.
Molly flies the coop, eager to check out Fun-Land Farms, a new operation on the mainland. With her feather-brained friend Frizzle (Josie Sedgwick-Davies) they soon discover the new farm is a processing plant for, you guessed it, chicken nuggets.
“Behold the dawn of the nugget,” says evil plant owner Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson).
It’s up to Ginger, Rocky and Company to come to the rescue. “Last time we broke out of a chicken farm,” says Ginger. “This time we’re breaking in.”
Like so many sequels, the story has bloated from the simplicity story of the 2000 film. But despite the food-for-thought subtext involving fast food and heavier plotting, “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” is still nimble and action packed.
The original “Chicken Run” was a riff on World War II great escape style films. “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” pays homage to the first movie, but leans into the James Bond and “Mission Impossible” franchises as inspirations for the wild poultry action.
Most of all, there is something welcoming about the Aardman stop motion animation. The house style is bold and beautiful, vivid and uncluttered, but it is the eccentric characters that really appeal. With their large eyes and exaggerated mouths and eyebrows, the Plasticine characters brim with personality and unmistakably come from the same creators that gave us the cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his mute and long-suffering canine side-kick Gromit. Shot one frame-at-a-time, the animation feels handcrafted and organic, and has a warmth most CGI kids flicks don’t have.
“Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” is pretty cluckin’ good. It’s an entertaining, family-friendly mix of charm and craft.
FISHERMAN’S FRIENDS: 3 ½ STARS. “a bracing gust of sea air in our cynical times.”
Another entry in the Real-Life-Underdog-Brits-Overcoming-Adversity genre of movies—think “The Full Monty,” “Calendar Girls” and more recently “Military Wives”—“Fisherman’s Friends,” now on VOD, is a good-natured crowd pleaser with some deep laughs but no major surprises.
Daniel Mays is Danny, a “proper bigshot” London music biz executive, on a quick weekend get-a-way with some mates in Port Isaac in Cornwall. They are fish out of water in the village. The locals poke fun at their city-slicker ways, treating them like outsiders. “We have our ways down here,” Jim (James Purefoy) warns Danny, “and once you cross the River Tamar you’re not in England anymore. We’re a land apart. You get my drift, son?”
After hearing a local group of fishermen, led by Jim, Jago (David Hayman) and Leadville (Dave Johns), singing a cappella sea shanties Danny’s pals jokingly convince him that he should sign the band to a record contract. He’s skeptical at first, but there’s something about the music that speaks to his soul. But first, he has to persuade the fishermen who are suspicious of his motives. “We have no need to sell our souls for fifteen minutes of fame,” Jim tells him.
His friends can’t believe he fell for the joke. “Do you really think we’d sign a boy band with the combined age of 643?”
But, convinced the public will want to see real people with real talent communicating 500 years of naval history, Danny perseveres. “In a world saturated with manufactured pop bands,” he says, “the fishermen are a real catch.” Plus, he’s fallen for life in the village and Jim’s daughter Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton).
The story of the band’s success is almost stranger than fiction. In real life The Fisherman’s Friends “buoy band” signed a contract with Island Records and their debut went on to become the biggest selling traditional folk album of all time. “Fisherman’s Friends” keeps the bones of the real story but amps up the big emotional moments. The highs soar and the lows have a heartfelt sentimentality. None of it quite feels like reality but by the time the end credits roll it’s clear that Port Isaac in Cornwall is a nice place to visit for 115 minutes.
“Fisherman’s Friends” is formulaic, clearly manipulative, and any sense of subtlety was clearly cut adrift around the second draft of the script but the story’s feel-good underdog story mixed with innate messages of decency and loyalty make it as refreshing as a gust of sea air in our cynical times. “We stick together down here,” Says Jago. “One and all. That’s the difference between sinking or swimming in a place like this.” A good message, even when delivered with a heavy hand.
THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM: 3 STARS. “should satisfy fans of Victorian horror.”
“The Limehouse Golem” is a slice of Victorian Grand-Guignol gaslight horror that owes a debt to Jack the Ripper and to the great Hammer films of he 1960s.
London’s fog-drenched Limehouse district is in the spell of a serial killer who leaves behind mutilated bodies and cryptic messages written in his victim’s blood. The ritualistic killings are so savage, so inhuman the press presume they could only be the work of an ancient evil, the Golem.
Stumped, Scotland Yard assigns Inspector Kildare (Bill Nighy) to the case. Brilliant but troubled, the veteran policeman immediately starts putting clues together even though he knows his superiors think the case is unsolvable. His first break comes with the discovery of a diary of the Golem’s crimes, written in his own hand, kept in the reading room of a library. On the day of the last entry, September 24, only four men where in the reading room, music hall comedian Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), German philosopher Karl Marx, novelist George Gissing and playwright John Cree (Sam Reid).
They each become suspects but high on his list is Cree, a pompous failed playwright poisoned by his wife Elizabeth (Olivia Cooke) on the night of the last Golem murder. The Inspector is convinced she knew he was the killer and poisoned him to stop the carnage. Now he must go full Sherlock to prove that, solve the case and save Elizabeth from the gallows.
“The Limehouse Golem” is a lurid piece of work. Handsomely decked out with fine period details and sumptuous production design, it lures you in with “Masterpiece Theatre” style only to make a sharp U-turn into Hammer Horror territory. Victims are sawn into pieces, beheaded and generally ripped to pieces in ways that would make Jack the Ripper envious. It’s gory and gruesome but what it isn’t is a thriller. Despite a labyrinthine story structure—there’s more flashbacks than you can throw a dismembered head at—the good Inspector seems to be the only one who doesn’t know who the killer is.
On the plus side “The Limehouse Golem” has great performances—does Nighy ever disappoint?—and paints a vivid picture of Victorian music hall, onstage and off. The bawdy nature of the shows nicely compliments the theatrical nature of the killings, helping to create an otherworldly, weird atmosphere.
“The Limehouse Golem” isn’t much of a penny dreadful thriller—there’s too many red-herrings for that—but it does spill enough of the red stuff to satisfy fans of Victorian horror.
