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.
In “Ordinary Love,” a new family drama on VOD starring Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville, the “Taken” star is up against a foe that tests his special set of skills.
Neeson and Manville are Joan and Tom, a retired Northern Ireland couple whose perfect life is upended when she finds a lump in her breast. Determined to ease his wife’s journey into the medical morass of mammograms, chemotherapy and all the attendant side effects, he is optimistic and supportive. “There isn’t a moment I won’t be there with you,” he says.
From there the film follows Joan’s year-long treatment, from discovery to treatment to double mastectomy and all the emotions that come with a potentially deadly diagnosis. It is the year that will test the stay-at-home couple’s bond like no other. “We’re both going through this,” he says. “No, we’re not!” she says.
There is nothing ordinary about “Ordinary Love.” It is a well-observed slice of life that celebrates the mundane things that make up a life, particularly when trauma comes to town. Never maudlin and always heartfelt, it realistically handles the seven stages of shock—shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance— and even adds in a few others that accompanies a life changer like cancer. Screenwriter Owen McCafferty carefully navigates the story as far away from melodrama as possible to delve into the more elemental emotions of everything from compassion and kindness to resentment and rage.
Neeson and Manville, ably assisted by directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Lyburn, appeal to the audience’s sympathetic tendencies but also mines the humor that arises from the uncomfortable situations.
“Ordinary Love” avoids the pitfalls of many other films that deal with illness. It never shies away from the reality of the situation but finds tenderness in its character’s humanity. After thirty years of marriage they still like one another and it shows. I defy you to watch Tom cut Joan’s hair as it falls out in clumps due to chemotherapy and not feel the warm authenticity of the scene.
