The 2023 worry-of-the-week, that Artificial Intelligence is too powerful, that it will soon be controlling our lives, is kicked up a notch or two in “Heart of Stone,” the new Gal Gadot high tech thriller now streaming on Netflix.
Gadot is Rachel Stone, a computer tech/operative for a super-secret peacekeeping group called The Charter. “When governments fail, the only thing left is the Charter.” They are a specialized unit of “the most highly trained agents with no political leanings, no national allegiances, working together to keep peace in a turbulent world.”
Helping them to police humanity is a powerful AI program called the Heart. “If you own the Heart,” says MI6 agent Parker (Jamie Dornan), “you own the world.” It’s a vital organ, the most advanced AI program on earth, capable of scrutinizing and evaluating all human data, finding patterns and using those results to make predictions of future global threats. “The Heart is knowledge and power. It can crash a market or drop a plane out of the sky. Who needs to steal a nuclear bomb when you can control them all?” says Parker.
In the wrong hands a program that formidable, with the totality of human knowledge, could destabilize the world, which is exactly what mastermind hacker Keya Dhawan (Bollywood superstar Alia Bhatt) has in mind. “Now you will answer to me,” she taunts like a good movie villain should.
Cue the globetrotting mission to stop Dhawan from stealing the Charter’s Heart.
Directed by Tom “Peaky Blinders” Harper, “Heart of Stone” is a big, slick story of international intrigue that works best when it is in motion. When Godot is flying through the air on a skidoo or going one-on-one with the baddies, it zips along like a 90s era 007 movie. That means, loads of high-tech nonsense, flamboyant characters, a dastardly villain, international intrigue, a propulsive soundtrack and, of course, outlandish action.
But when the characters speak, and they speak quite a lot, the 007ness of it all reduces to a jumble of b-movie spy clichés. It looks good, but speaks in the language of truisms. In other words, been there, done that.
Cinematographer George Steel shoots for the big screen, and has an eye for action. The location work—including the now obligatory chase scene through the cobble streets of a European city—gives the movie an up-market sheen, but don’t be fooled, this is an expensive knockoff, a Canal Street copy of other, better spy movies.
In the whodunnit genre few names loom larger than Agatha Christie. The author of 66 novels and 14 short story collections was known as the Mistress of Mystery and holds a Guinness World Record as the best-selling fiction writer of all time.
Her books are the fuel for countless stage plays, television shows and movies, but the spark that make the novels so entertaining often goes missing in translation.
It speaks volumes that the best Christie movie of late, “Knives Out,” isn’t an adaptation of her work. It borrows the mechanics of her best stories, including the climatic singling out of the murderer in a roomful of suspects, to make the most enjoyable movie tribute to her style in years and that includes Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 thriller “Murder on the Orient Express,” which is actually based on a Christie classic.
The director takes a second kick at the Christie can with “Death on the Nile,” an adaptation of the writer’s best-selling 1937 mystery of jealousy, wealth and death.
The film begins with a flashback to World War I and the origin of Belgian soldier Hercule Poirot’s (Branagh) flamboyant moustache.
Cut to 1937. Poirot, now a world-renowned detective, is on vacation in Egypt aboard the lavishly appointed ship S.S. Karnak. Also aboard are heiress Linnet (Gal Gadot) and her new husband Simon (Armie Hammer), a glamourous, honeymooning couple cruising the Nile in an effort to hide from the jealous Jacqueline (Emma Mackey), who happens to be Linnet’s jealous former friend and Simon’s ex-lover. Jacqueline has other plans, however, and comes along for the ride. “It’s indecent,” says Simon. “She’s making a fool of herself.”
Linnet fears that Jacqueline is up to no good and reaches out to Poirot to look out for her safety on the ship. “Maybe Jacqueline hasn’t committed a crime yet,” she says, “but she will. She always settles her scores.”
When Linnet turns up dead, Jacqueline is the obvious suspect, but she has a rock-solid alibi.
So who could the killer be? Is it Linnet’s former fiancé Linus Windlesham (a very subdued Russell Brand)? Jazz singer Salome Otterbourne (Sophie Okonedo)? Maybe it’s Marie Van Schuyler (Jennifer Saunders), Linnet’s Communist godmother or Rosalie Otterbourne (Letitia Wright) Linnet’s old classmate.
Only one person can get to the bottom of the matter. “I am Detective Hercule Poirot and I will deliver your killer.”
“He’s a bloodhound,” says Rosalie, “so let him sniff.”
“Death on the Nile” has an old-fashioned Hollywood epic feel to it. There’s glamour, beautiful costumes and even more beautiful people set against an exotic backdrop shot with sweeping, expensive looking crane shots over CGI pyramids. There are, as they used to say, more stars than there are in the heavens populating the screen and a knotty mystery that only Poirot can untie.
It also feels old fashioned in its storytelling. Branagh takes his time setting the scene, adding in two prologues before landing in Egypt. It takes almost an hour to get to the sleuthing and the weaving together of the clues and the characters. The leisurely pace sucks much of the immediacy out of the story, and despite all the moving parts, the mystery isn’t particularly intriguing.
More intriguing is Branagh’s take on Poirot. On film the detective has often been played as the object of fun, and while the character’s ego, persnickety personality and quirky moustache are very much on display, but here he is a serious man, heartbroken and brimming with regret. We learn how the death of a loved one changed him, turning him into the man we see today. It’s a new take on the crime solver that breathes some new life into the character’s lungs.
Then there is the pyramid in the room. Yes, Armie Hammer, the bland slab of a leading man, has a large role in the action. He is so interwoven into the movie that he couldn’t be cut out, à la Kevin Spacey in “All the Money in the World,” despite his recent scandals. At any rate, despite having one of the larger roles, he doesn’t make much of an impression.
“Death on the Nile’s” high style and all-star murder mystery may please Agatha Christie aficionados but it could use a little more of the “Knives Out” vibe to make it feel less old fashioned and conventional.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Merella Fernandez to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including director Kenneth Branagh’s poignant coming-of-age drama “Belfast,” the Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot action comedy “Red Notice” and the literary adaptation “Passing” starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.
“Red Notice,” a new globe-trotting crime caper movie starring the powerhouse trio of Ryan Reynolds, Gal Godot and Dwayne Johnson, and now streaming on Netflix, is set against the backdrop of international crime and the theft of priceless, ancient treasures.
The story begins in 30 BC as Roman general and statesman Mark Antony gifts his true love Cleopatra with three gilded eggs. Think Fabergé eggs, only bigger and rarer than rare. Two of them are in private hands but a third disappeared thousands of years ago and now an Egyptian businessman has offered a king’s ransom to anyone who can locate the third egg and reunite it with the others in time for his daughter’s birthday. The promise of a huge payday draw the attraction of two international criminals, the smart-alecky art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) and the coolly calculating Sarah Black (Gadot), both the subject of the Interpol-issued Red Notice, a warrant for immediate arrest and detention.
Leading the investigation into the theft of the eggs is Inspector Das (Ritu Arya) with FBI profiler Agent John Hartley (Johnson). When Hartley becomes a suspect in the egg heist, he teams with Booth to prove his innocence and bring Black to justice.
“Red Notice” is an odd couple buddy movie that takes advantage of the existing personas of Johnson and Reynolds. Johnson makes full use of his physicality to provide some goofy slapstick while Reynolds displays his way with a one-liner. They click and make the most of the generic action and plot.
It’s also great example of a deeply average movie made enjoyable by its charismatic cast. If you took away The Rock, Van Wilder and Wonder Woman from the screen all you’d have left is an empty heist flick with exotic locations, implausible plot twists and villains right out of Central Casting.
Instead, the trio brings just enough charm and good times to the story to make it a check your brain at the door old fashioned fun and that’s why I gave “Red Notice” three stars, one star each for each of its stars, Reynolds, Gadot and Johnson.
The release of “Wonder Woman 1984,” now available in theatres and as a 48-hour rental on digital movie stores for $29.99, comes as an answer to one of the worst dad jokes of all time.
Do you know why Diana Prince was called Wonder Woman? Because we all wondered what she was going to do next.
I know, it’s a terrible joke, but there was a great deal of talk about what was next for the character and, in pandemic times, when and how we’d be seeing the finished film.
Now that we know what Diana Prince’s next moves are, I’m wondering about something else. Where did the wonder go?
Set seven decades after the events of the first film, “Wonder Woman 1984” sees Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) living the life of a part time superhero. During the day she works in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian. Occasionally she transforms into her alter ego and solves a crime, help humanity or, in the film’s most fun action scene, use her Golden Lasso to hogtie some bad guys at a local mall.
Still mourning the love of her life, World War II flyboy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), she leads a quiet life until one of her Smithsonian co-workers, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), is tasked with identifying a slew of recently recovered ancient artefacts. Among them is the dream stone, a mystical crystal rumored to grant wishes.
The insecure Barbara is reeled in by Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a flamboyant Gordon Gekko wannabe who charms her to lay his hands on the magical relic.
Turns out, the stories are true; the artefact can change lives, granting wishes and making the impossible, possible. But there are unforeseen, global consequences.
Diana’s wants to be reunited with Steve, but as their loves grows, her powers diminish. Barbara’s dream of having confidence comes true in spades, and she morphs into the villainous Cheetah. “I want to be an apex predator,” she says. Lord’s greed-by-the-way-of-wishes makes him the most powerful person on the planet, and with Cheetah at his side, his thirst for influence and authority may also be unstoppable.
“Wonder Woman 1984” has flashes of the vibrancy that made the original film so much fun but it isn’t as nimble.
A fifteen minutes opening Themyscira-set flashback to Diana’s youth starts things with an extended thud. The youngster competes against a bevy of older Amazons, learning an important life lesson in the process. It’s a blend of action and the film’s core message of honesty above all, but we’ve already seen Diana’s original story done better. As it is, it feels like a stall before we get to the main action.
Once there, things get off to a promising start as Wonder Woman does what she does best, help people in need. A quick montage of do-gooding introduces an inventive and action-packed sequence that sees Wonder Woman thwart crime in a way that could have been ripped from the comic books. Shot in vivid 1980s Day Glo, it’s the sequence that promises the rollicking good time to come. Except that the good times are few and are between.
There are some exciting moments. A car chase, expertly shot and executed, brings the closest thing to the kind of action established in the first film. It’s no run across No Man’s Land, but it gets the pulse racing. More aesthetic is a trip through the clouds, illuminated by fireworks down below. It’s a dreamy bit of aerial work that sets the stage for a lovely learning-to-fly sequence that is part metaphor for Diana’s life and part movie magic.
Those moments work and work well, but get lost in the film’s extended running time.
Gadot brings the same understatement and restraint that shaped her character in the original movie and she still shares great chemistry with Pine, but as far as messaging goes, why does Wonder Woman need a man to come to her rescue? Together they’re fun in the 1980s-fish-out-of-water scenes but his presence in the action scenes feels counter to Wonder Woman’s message of empowerment.
And I loved Wiig’s dig at a colleague who refers to her as Miss. “It’s Doctor,” she corrects, channeling her best Dr. Jill Biden, but the film also suggests that Minerva is only interesting when she dolls herself up with tight dresses and superpowers.
“Wonder Woman 1984” adequately fills the superhero pandemic gap but it isn’t wonderous. Where the first film pointed the way to where superhero movies could go, this one feels like a follower, not a leader.
Richard interviews “Ralph Breaks the Internet” producer Clark Spencer on why it took six years to make the sequel, the design of the animation and much more.
Given the movie’s subtext “Ralph Breaks the Internet” could have been called “Ralph Wants You to Think About the Ramifications of Internet Usage.” Not as catchy, I’ll admit, but amid the fun and games the sequel to “Wreck-It Ralph” is a strong message about the dangers of Internet culture.
It’s been six years since we met Wreck-It Ralph (voice of John C. Reilly), a disgruntled video game character who demanded respect. This time around the action begins when the steering wheel controller on the Sugar Rush game console breaks. “It might be time to sell Sugar Rush for parts,” says Stan Litwak (Ed O’Neill), owner of Litwak’s Family Fun Center & Arcade.
Before Litwak unplugs the machine Ralph and the game’s racer Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) rescue Sugar Rush’s characters by moving them to other games.
To get the game up and running Ralph and Vanellope hit the Internet, using the Arcade’s wifi to explore the net in search of a replacement steering wheel. They find the wheel at eBay, trouble is, they don’t have any money. “I left my wallet at home,” Ralph tells the eBay cashier. “In the wallet room and the door is locked!”
When they befriend Shank (Gal Gadot), a racer in Slaughter Race, their problems seem to be over. The violent racing game overs a source of money but as Shank’s influence on Vanellope grows Ralph worries that his friend is drifting away.
“Ralph Breaks the Internet” is at its best when it’s subversive. The colourful animation, coupled with an imaginative take on what it would be like to be inside the internet—eBay is an actual auction house, and “likes” are sucked up by a vacuum cleaner—will make eyeballs dance but it’s the messaging that is memorable. Woven into the story are clever lessons on toxic friendship, how insecurity can infect a relationship like a virus on the computer and the dangers of obsessing about getting likes on social media posts.
Even better is a scene where Vanellope, while visiting OhMyDisney.com, stumbles into the Disney Princess break room. Here the film makes fun of Disney’s bread-and-butter, the stereotype of the princess. “Do people assume all your problems get solved because a strong man came along?” Fans of the first film know that Vanellope is a reluctant princess, preferring the title president. Her, among her spiritual sisters, she helps them shed some of their stuffy weays and they help her along the way to figuring out her path in life. “I stare at the important water and all of a sudden I start singing about my problems? I don’t think so,” Vanellope says, bursting one of Disney’s most familiar princess tropes.
The princess scene is a highlight in a film that has laughs but isn’t exactly a comedy. It’s more a heartfelt examination of friendship—“It’s not right to hold a friend back from her dreams.”—with some wild cartoon action and satire.
“Ralph Breaks the Internet” is a very specific story about two animated characters that illuminates universal themes from the real world.
Baby Driver: Although it contains more music than most tuneful of movies “Baby Driver,” the new film from director Edgar Wright, isn’t a musical in the “West Side Story,” “Sound of Music” sense. Wallpapered with 35 rock ‘n roll songs on the soundtrack it’s a hard driving heist flick that can best be called an action musical.
The Big Sick: Even when “The Big Sick” is making jokes about terrorism and the “X-Files” it is all heart, a crowd-pleaser that still feels personal and intimate.
Call Me By Your Name: This is a movie of small details that speak to larger truths. Director Luca Guadagnino keeps the story simple relying on the minutiae to add depth and beauty to the story. The idyllic countryside, the quaint town, the music of the Psychedelic Furs and the languid pace of a long Italian summer combine to create the sensual backdrop against which the romance between the two blossoms. Guadagnino’s camera captures it all, avoiding the pitfalls of melodrama to present a story that is pure emotion. It feels real and raw, haunted by the ghosts of loves gone by.
Darkest Hour: This is a historical drama with all the trappings of “Masterpiece Theatre.” You can expect photography, costumes and period details are sumptuous. What you may not expect is the light-hearted tone of much of the goings on. While this isn’t “Carry On Churchill,” it has a lighter touch that might be expected. Gary Oldman, not an actor known for his comedic flourishes, embraces the sly humour. When Churchill becomes Prime Minister his wife, Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) makes an impassioned speech about the importance of the work he is about to take on. He raises a glass and, cutting through the emotion of the moment, says, “Here’s to not buggering it up!” It shows a side of Churchill not often revealed in wartime biopics.
The Disaster Artist: The key to pulling off “The Disaster Artist” is not recreating “The Room” beat for beat, although they do that, it’s actually about treating Wiseau as a person and not an object of fun. He’s an outrageous character and Franco commits to it 100%. From the marble-mouthed speech pattern that’s part Valley Girl and part Beaker from The Muppets to the wild clothes and stringy hair, he’s equal parts creepy and lovable but underneath his bravado are real human frailties. Depending on your point of view he’s either delusional or aspirational but in Franco’s hands he’s never also never less than memorable. It’s a broad, strange performance but it may also be one of the actor’s best.
Dunkirk: This is an intense movie but it is not an overly emotional one. The cumulative effect of the vivid images and sounds will stir the soul but despite great performances the movie doesn’t necessarily make you feel for one character or another. Instead its strength is in how it displays the overwhelming sense of scope of the Dunkirk mission. With 400,000 men on the ground with more in the air and at sea, the sheer scope of the operation overpowers individuality, turning the focus on the collective. Director Christopher Nolan’s sweeping camera takes it all in, epic and intimate moments alike.
The Florida Project: This is, hands down, one of the best films of the year. Low-budget and naturalistic, it packs more punch than any superhero. Director Sean Baker defies expectations. He’s made a film about kids for adults that finds joy in rocky places. What could have been a bleak experience or an earnest message movie is brought to vivid life by characters that feel real. It’s a story about poverty that neither celebrates or condemns its characters. Mooney’s exploits are entertaining and yet an air of jeopardy hangs heavy over every minute of the movie. Baker knows that Halley and Moonie’s well being hangs by a thread but he also understands they exist in the real world and never allows their story to fall into cliché.
Get Out: This is the weirdest and most original mainstream psychodrama to come along since “The Babadook.” The basic premise harkens back to the Sidney Poitier’s classic “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” In that film parents, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, have their attitudes challenged when their daughter introduces them to her African American fiancé. The uncomfortable situation of meeting in-laws for the first time is universal. It’s the added layers of paranoia and skewered white liberalism that propels the main character’s (Daniel Kaluuya) situation into full-fledged horror. In this setting he is the other, the stranger and as his anxiety grows the social commentary regarding attitudes about race in America grows sharper and more focussed.
Lady Bird: Greta Gerwig’s skilful handling of the story of Lady Bird’s busy senior year works not just because it’s unvarnished and honest in its look at becoming an adult but also, in a large degree, to Saoirse Ronan’s performance. I have long called her ‘Lil Meryl. She’s an actor of unusual depth, a young person (born in 1994) with an old soul. Lady Bird is almost crushed by the weight of uncertainty that greets her with every turn—will her parents divorce, will there be money for school, will Kyle be the boy of her dreams, will she ever make enough cash to repay her parents for her upbringing?—but Ronan keeps her nimble, sidestepping teen ennui with a complicated mix of snappy one liners, hard earned wisdom and a well of emotion. It’s tremendous, Academy Award worthy work.
The Post: Steven Spielberg film is a fist-pump-in-the-air look at the integrity and importance of a free press. It’s a little heavy-handed but these are heavy-handed times. Director Spielberg and stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are entertainers first and foremost, and they do entertain here, but they also shine a light on a historical era whose reverberations are being felt today stronger than ever.
The Shape of Water: A dreamy slice of pure cinema. Director Guillermo del Toro uses the stark Cold War as a canvas to draw warm and vivid portraits of his characters. It’s a beautiful creature feature ripe with romance, thrills and, above all, empathy for everyone. This is the kind of movie that reminds us of why we fell in love with movies in the first place.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: The story of a mother’s unconventional war with the world is simple enough, it’s the complexity of the characters that elevates the it to the level of great art.
Wonder Woman: Equal parts Amazon sword and sandal epic, mad scientist flick, war movie and rom com, it’s a crowd pleaser that places the popular character front and centre. As played by Gal Gadot, Diana is charismatic and kick ass, a superhero who is both truly super and heroic. Like Superman she is firmly on the side of good, not a tortured soul à la Batman. Naïve to the ways of the world, she runs headfirst into trouble. Whether she’s throwing a German tank across a battlefield, defying gravity to leap to the top of a bell tower, tolerating Trevor’s occasional mansplaining or deflecting bullets with her indestructible Bracelets of Submission, she proves in scene after scene to be both a formidable warrior and a genuine, profoundly empathic character.
Richard’s interview with “Justice League” star Ray Fisher.
What’s it like playing Cyborg in Justice League? Ray Fisher compares his excitement to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
“It’s like someone handing you the keys to the chocolate factory and saying, ‘Go ahead, it’s yours now,’” says the 30-year-old actor… Read the whole thing HERE!
