I joined CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to have a look at new movies coming to theatres, including Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” the action comedy “Nobody 2” and the crime drama “Americana.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CP24 Breakfast to talk about the big movies hitting theatres his week including the action comedy “Nobody 2,” and Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” the action comedy “Nobody 2” and the crime drama “Americana.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Highest 2 Lowest,” the new film from director Spike Lee, Denzel Washington plays a music mogul faces a moral dilemma as he attempts to protect his friends and family from a kidnapping plot and stave off the takeover of his legendary record label, Stackin’ Hits Records.
CAST: Denzel Washington, Ilfenesh Hadera, Jeffrey Wright, ASAP Rocky, and Ice Spice. Directed by Spike Lee.
REVIEW: When Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” a modern-day reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film “High and Low,” is firing on all cylinders it is a thing of propulsive beauty. A subway chase sequence, based on the car chase in “The French Connection,” is edge of your seat stuff, and a showdown between music mogul David King (Denzel Washington) and rapper Yung Felony (A$AP Rocky), is an acting masterclass with the intensity of a rap battle.
Those scenes represent the movie in full flight, and they are vital and exciting, the kind of filmmaking and performances that jump off the screen. Both scenes up the stakes for everyone involved, which is lucky, because the rest of the film, while fraught with complications, is never imbued with a sense of danger. Sure, there are guns, a kidnapping and a ransom bag filled with 17.5 million dollars, but this isn’t a crime drama.
Not really.
Spike Lee and screenwriter Alan Fox use the kidnapping as a backdrop to explore fatherhood, relevancy in a changing world, ethical dilemmas, legacy and, of course, Lee’s favorite basketball team, the Knicks.
It makes for a dizzying, but uneven film.
The first hour, wallpapered with Howard Drossin’s melodramatic score, paints the gregarious David King as a man who lives up to his last name. He lives, with his wife Pam (Ilfanesh Hadera) and son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) in a NYC penthouse palace, decorated with museum quality art and mementos from King’s illustrious career. His record label, his life’s work, is about to be sold and he’s willing to risk it all to buy it back. “It’s not a risk,” he tells Pam, “it’s a rebirth.”
The business deal is thrown into jeopardy when a kidnapping plot (NO SPOILERS HERE) throws King’s life and finances into limbo. Forced to reckon with his past, present and future, King must make some very difficult choices.
The second hour, as the kidnapping plot kicks in and the financial talk fades, revs up the film’s momentum as King takes action to resolve the kidnapping and kickstart his personal and professional rebirth.
Howard Hawks once said that a great film has three great scenes and no bad ones, and while “Highest 2 Lowest” has great scenes, and the sheer force of Washington’s work ensures there are no bad ones, it feels as if the puzzle pieces don’t quite fit together. As the character work of the first half gives way to the more exciting second half, the film takes on a disjointed, idiosyncratic feel.
It never settles into a groove, it’s restless, idiosyncratic, mixing tones, themes and even film stocks. Even so, it’s compelling to watch Lee and Washington, two lions in winter, strut their stuff.
Washington hands in a bravura performance, almost Shakespearean in its theatricality. Like Washington said at the Cannes Film Festival before a screening of the film, “King Kong ain’t got s— on me.”
Lee captures that work in a movie that feels like a Spike Lee joint. It’s vibrant, in love with its characters and, even though it feels disordered, it’s a film that feels both contemporary and classic. It’s an utterly unique work that only Spike Lee could have made.
Ultimately, “Highest 2 Lowest” is a story about staying relevant for a new generation, about getting your groove back headlined to two artists who have never lost their groove.
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for Booze & Reviews! This week we have a look at the sword and sandal epic “Gladiator II” and the drink that made real life gladiators fit to fight!
Listen to Booze & Reviews HERE! (Starts at 21:08)
Listen to the entertainment headlines, including the details on Netflix’s deal with Beyoncé HERE! (Starts at 10:48)
SYNOPSIS: In “Gladiator II,” director Ridley Scott’s long-gestating sequel to his 2000 blockbuster of almost the same name, Paul Mescal plays Lucius, former heir to the Roman Empire, now forced to battle in the Colosseum after his home is invaded by General Marcus Acacius on the orders of Rome’s syphilitic, power-hungry emperors Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn).
CAST: Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Lior Raz, Derek Jacobi, Connie Nielsen, and Denzel Washington. Directed by Ridley Scott.
REVIEW: Come to see a man bite a monkey, stay for Denzel Washington’s deliciously devious villain.
The follow-up to Best Picture Oscar winner “Gladiator” is long on spectacle—Lucius not only battles giant monkeys, but also sharks and a huge, bloodthirsty rhino—but short on soul. It is loud and proud but the emotional connectivity offered by the original film, and specifically Russell Crowe’s performance, gets lost in this new translation.
The story of corruption, loyalty, birthright, vengeance and angry fighting animals is lavish and epic, but it isn’t much fun.
The set pieces in the Colosseum deliver big CGI action, there’s a fake severed head (a practical effect that makes the infamous rubber baby in Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” look photorealistic) and throngs of soldiers for as far as the eye can see. It is epic filmmaking on a grand scale, but it’s missing adrenaline, that hit of dopamine that gives you a rush.
The opening battle scene and the abovementioned monkey bite are rousing, but after that the movie gets bogged down, not with plot—that’s relatively simple—but with heroic banter and political intrigue.
Paul Mescal, as Lucius, son of Russell Crowe’s character Maximus Decimus Meridius from the first film, takes pains to differentiate himself from Crowe’s Oscar winning performance. His gladiator is pensive, weighed down by the death of his warrior wife at the end of an arrow fired by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal). Mescal is charismatic but in his quest for vengeance, he’s tasked with delivering a series of heroic speeches, none of which are as memorable as Crowe’s “Are you not entertained?” declaration.
Pascal’s gets the job done as the conflicted Roman general Marcus Acacius. He’s a warrior, but fears Rome is headed in the wrong direction under the sadistic twin emperors, Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn).
Both hand in fine performances, but then, into the mix, comes Denzel Washington. It’s a supporting role, but he’s here for a good time, not a long time. As Macrinus, a wealthy former slave with a plan to control Rome, he gives the film some bounce, some real personality.
As the villain of the piece, his cunning would put Machiavelli to shame. He’s a master chess player, moving everyone around as though they are pawns in his devilish game. His scenes are the film’s most memorable, and remember, this is in a movie where the lead character bites a monkey!
Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II” has sword and sandal sequelitis. It’s bigger, louder and longer than the original film, but more, in this case, doesn’t mean better.
I join the “Vassy Kapelos Show,” with guest host Stefan Keyes, segment “The Explainer” on the iHeartRadio Network to talk about Denzel Washington’s recent retirement announcement.
Liusten to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 32:26)
For an avenging angel, a righter-of-wrongs, it seems the work is never done. Take the world-weary Robert McCall, (Denzel Washington) former government assassin turned protector of the exploited and oppressed in “Equalizer 3,” for instance. After taking a bullet on the job, he takes time out to recuperate in a Southern Italian village. As he ponders his own salvation over a cup of tea in a local cafe, he tells people he’s retired from “government work,” and settles in to enjoy a quiet life in his new home.
Trouble is, violence seems to follow this guy around like a trained puppy.
The trouble comes in the form of Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio), a mafia kingpin looking to take over the town and establish a base for his operations.
“What happens here,” says McCall’s new friend Enzo (Remo Girone), “happens in many towns. The mafia. They’re a cancer. No cure.”
Not one to accept threats and extortion as a way of life, McCall sends a warning.
“Whatever it is you and your friends do,” he says, “do it somewhere else.”
“You warning me?” says Vincent’s brother, mafia tough guy Marco Quaranta (Andrea Dodero).
“I’m preparing you.”
Meanwhile CIA agent Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) is hot on McCall’s trail, trying to figure out the question at the heart of the movie: Is Robert McCall a good guy or a bad guy?
“The Equalizer 3” is a revenge story, plain and simple, tarted up with some talk of salvation, but let’s face it, this is “Death Wish” with nicer scenery. McCall slices and dices his way through the mafia crime family, a vigilante on a mission.
When director Antoine Fuqua, working with a script by Richard Wenk, isn’t staging homages to “Spartacus” and “Godfather 3,” he’s setting the stage with stock characters. The Italian villagers are good, honest salt-of-the-earth types. The baddies aren’t memorable, just extra evil, with no redeeming features. You don’t need white hats and black hats to tell who is who in this movie.
Into this mix comes McCall, an unwieldy mix of ruthlessness and benevolence. He’s there to give the bad guys what they’ve got coming, and it is the promise of his handiwork—decapitations, impalement, broken bones etc—that gives the movie its forward momentum.
But it’s Washington who delivers the satisfaction in the film’s scenes of gory revenge. There’s lots of revenge movies out there, but they usually don’t have the special set of skills that Washington brings to the brutal character. From his soft-spoken threats and wisecracks to his carefully timed fights and search for solace, Washington and his trademarked movie star magnetism make the character far more complex than he actually is. McCall is essentially a serial killer, a violent fantasy of justice at any cost, but Washington’s charisma makes it feel cathartic rather than exploitive.
At a sleek 1 hour and 43 minutes, “The Equalizer 3” is an entertainingly efficient finale to the franchise that goes out with a bang. Literally.
Sidney Poitier, who passed away in January 2022, led a remarkable life, one vividly portrayed in the Oprah Winfrey-produced documentary “Sidney,” now steaming on Apple TV+. “He doesn’t make movies, he makes milestones,” says U.S. President Barack Obama in the film, “milestones of America’s progress.”
In an interview shot with Winfrey in 2012, the “To Sir with Love” actor, staring directly into the camera, tells of his childhood in Nassau. A master storyteller, he recalls how he almost died as a baby, shares wonderful stories about his loving parents, recalls seeing a car for the first time, and marvels at his first glance into a mirror.
His move to the United States from a predominantly Black community in the Bahamas, is fraught with racism and threats of violence from the Ku Klux Klan, but tempered by kindness from a waiter who helps him learn to read, using the newspaper as a textbook.
Landing in Harlem, he is introduced to the world of acting, and has the good fortune to go on as an understudy in a New York City stage production on the same night a big-time Broadway producer is in the house. That leg up set on a path that would see him become the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor (for 1963’s Lilies of the Field), a civil right activist and diplomat.
It is a comprehensive, linear look at Poitier’s life, one that brings Winfrey to tears, and in the retelling of a pivotal scene in “In the Heat of the Night,” where Poitier, as detective Virgil Tibbs responds to being slapped by a white redneck, by slapping him back, brings a delightful response from Morgan Freeman.
Director Reginald Hudlin assembles a mix of archival footage, new interviews with Halle Berry, Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Winfrey and others, and plenty of film clips, to present a well told story of a well lived and influential life. The result is an entertaining and informative doc about an extraordinary life. “When I die,” Poitier said, “I will not be afraid of having lived.”
