Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Jennifer Burke to have a look at new movies coming to VOD and streaming services, including the new Ethan Hawke thriller “Zeros and Ones,” the psychological drama “Marionette” and “Ray Donovan: The Movie.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Marionette,” a new psychological thriller, now on VOD, begins with a shocking scene of self-immolation that sets the scene for the psychological fireworks to come.
The story circles around a child psychiatrist Dr. Marianne Turner (Thekla Reuten) who relocates to Scotland from America for a new job. Why did she move to Scotland? “I like rain,” she says.
She replaces Dr. McVittie, who left after psychiatric issues prevented him from properly treating his patients. One of those patients, 10-year-old Manny (Elijah Wolf) is a curly-haired boy with a faraway look who expresses himself through his drawings. “He’s a mystery,” Turner says. “My impression is that his world view is some sort of defence system, a fortress.”
Turns out, Turner is the only doctor Manny has ever spoken to. Usually, he communicates solely through his pictures, drawings of violence and disaster. As Dr. Turner settles into her new job, she makes friends with Kieran (Emun Elliott) at a book club where they discuss the mind-bending thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat among other high-minded ideas. “We all need to see a psychiatrist if we think this is a good way of passing the evening,” Dr. Turner jokes at the end of a club meeting.
Soon, strange things start happening. Mysterious phone calls suggest, “You have to kill him before he kills you,” as Manny continues to draw unsettling images. Dr. Turner soon makes a connection between Manny’s drawings and real-life events. “You draw a lot of accidents and disasters, don’t you Manny?” she says. “What are you thinking of when you draw them?”
Leaving science and the metaphysical cat behind, she looks to the paranormal to determine whether Manny is predicting the calamitous events or causing them. “What’s in there,” she asks, pointing to a large portfolio of his pictures. “The future,” he says.
“Marionette” is a gloomy psychological drama that effectively creates an atmosphere of tension throughout. Co-writer and director Elbert van Strien weaves ambitious ideas into the story, elevating a pulpy story to something approaching gothic proportions.
Dr. Turner arrives in Scotland with the baggage of a dead husband she left behind in the States, and her grief informs the story and her reactions to the situations she finds herself in. Dutch actress Reuten—her uneven accent is explained away with a quick, “Oh, I’m not American. I just lived there for a long time.”—brings the complicated doctor to life in a performance that is equal parts anguish, intellectual curiosity, paranoia and empathy. Her quest for the disturbing truth takes her to some uncomfortable places, but Reuten keeps us interested.
Reuten may provide the heart of “Marionette,” but it is Wolf who brings the creepy kid vibe that is the movie’s engine. With a relatively small amount of screen time, he makes a startling impression with his mannered speech and wide eyes.
“Marionette” spends a bit too much time on its philosophical underpinnings. It asks big questions like, Do we have free will or are we simply marionettes dangling on the end of a string operated by something or someone we don’t understand? without truly exploring them. Also, a bit of knowledge on Schrödinger’s cat might give you a leg up. Or not, depending on how deeply you become invested in the story. Either way , these aspect of the storytelling hammer their points home with a sledgehammer when a tap would have sufficed.
A late movie twist subverts some of what came before, but before it disappears down its philosophical rabbit hole, “Marionette” is an enjoyable Hitchcockian story.
Richard makes a Gin Old Fashioned, the perfect cocktail to enjoy while watching the new M. Night Shyamalan thriller “Old.” Have a drink and a think about “Old” with us!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard joins Jay Michaels and guest host Deb Hutton of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush to talk about the pirate who invented the Pina Colada and some movies, “Old” and the rock and roll biopic “Creation Stories,” to enjoy while sipping one of the creamy drinks.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
They grow up so quickly. That’s what everyone always says when you have kids. That old axiom comes to horrifying life in “Old,” the new film from director thrill meister M. Night Shyamalan, now playing in theatres.
Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps are Guy and Prisca Capa, parents to 11-year-old daughter Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and six-year-old son Trent (Nolan River). They are headed for divorce but before the ink dries on the legal papers, they want one last three-day family vacation at a fancy resort. “Can you believe I found this place on-line?” says Prisca, taking in the beautiful hotel.
Despite tension between mom and dad, the kids have fun, and when the resort offers an invitation to visit an exclusive beach, they eagerly accept. “It’s a once in a lifetime experience,” purrs the manager.
Coming along on the day trip is an assortment of other guests, including high strung cardiothoracic surgeon, Charles, (Rufus Sewell) and his family, rapper Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre) and long-married couple Jarin (Ken Leung) and Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird).
A shadow is cast on the day of sun, surf and sand when a dead woman washes ashore on the beach. Trying to call for help, the panicked vacationers quickly realize they are alone, isolated, with no cell service or anyway to get back to civilization.
When the mysterious body decomposes right in front of their eyes, wounds heal instantly and their kids begin to age two years every hour, they realize, in a masterstroke of understatement that “there’s something wrong with this beach.” “It’s hard to explain,” adds Guy.
Is it mass hysteria or is something more sinister happening?
Based on the graphic novel “Sandcastle,” by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, “Old” has an intriguing premise, one that could sit on the shelf comfortably next to the “Twilight Zone” box set. But the ain’t-it-funny-how-time-slips-away premise is almost undone by painfully bad dialogue and the strangely muted reactions of most of the characters. When your six-year-old grows up and has a baby in a matter of hours I would expect some deep introspection alongside shrieks and confused looks. Instead, this group is unusually accepting of the beyond strange situation.
Having said that, Shyamalan is a stylist who creates arthouse horror in “Old.” He effectively builds tension—most of the movie is as taut as a tightrope—and finds interesting ways of showing, not telling, the character’s physical changes like blindness and hearing loss. In addition, the really terrible stuff is mostly off screen, an old school Val Lewton technique, that allows the audience to imagining things much worse than he could show us.
Beyond the horror are poignant messages about embracing the time we have and that a life that whips by without memories or experiences, is time wasted. As time passes, the movie suggests, leaving things unsaid and undone are the greatest crimes in the timelines of our lives.
“Old” is melodramatic and has a protracted ending that wraps things up without providing much satisfaction but Shyamalan provides enough thrills to make it time well spent.
