I join CTV Atlantic anchor Todd Battis to talk about the animated action adventure of “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” the photorealism of “Mufasa: The Lion King” and the thrills of #Carry-On.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the action adventure of “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” the photorealism of “Mufasa: The Lion King” and the thrills of #Carry-On.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host BIll Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the animated action adventure of “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” the photorealism of “Mufasa: The Lion King” and the thrills of #Carry-On.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: When a mysterious and powerful enemy threatens to destroy the planet, Sonic (Ben Schwartz), Knuckles (Idris Elba) and Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) are recruited by the secretive Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N.) to save the day.
CAST: Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, Natasha Rothwell, Shemar Moore, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Idris Elba Krysten Ritter, Keanu Reeves. Directed by Jeff Fowler.
REVIEW: A combination of live action and animation, “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” starring Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves and now playing in theatres, sees the lead trio of heroes, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles face-off against “the Ultimate Lifeform.” He’s Shadow the Hedgehog, a powerful villain, recently unleashed after fifty years of captivity, who is determined to destroy Earth. To save the planet the trio teams with an old adversary, Ivo Robotnik. “Let’s do this,” the formerly evil doctor says. “If I can’t rule the world, I might as well save it!”
Usually by the time a franchise gets to the point where they have a “3” in the title the movies are bigger and louder but not better. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” is one of them.
90s nostalgia takes the day. A generation who grew up with the Sonic videogames—the first one was released in 1991—are rewarded with a story that packs loads of lore into the fast moving movie.
Sometimes it feels like there’s too much lore.
The plot is all over the place and the film jumps to and fro through time and mythology at breakneck speed, but even though it’s convoluted, it’s a lot of fun for old fans and new.
The bonus for Generation Y’ers is the presence of Jim Carrey in the dual role of Dr. Robotnik and Gerald Robotnik, Ivo’s grandfather and Shadow’s creator. Carrey is in fine comedic form, recalling his up-for-anything performances in 90s favorites like “The Mask” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” It’s double the fun as Carrey delivers the film’s funniest lines and shows off his mastery of physical humour.
Another 90s superstar, Keanu Reeves, takes a role that could have been a standard issue villain and makes us understand the source of his malevolence. When he talks about the effect of the death of his best friend had on his psyche, it’ll make you feel something for an evil, animated hedgehog.
Not all of it works. James Marsden and Tika Sumpter aren’t given much to do as the adoptive father of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, simply adding another story shard to an already crowded movie.
“Sonic the Hedgehog 3” defies the rule of sequel diminishing returns. It builds on the strengths of the first two films in the franchise to deliver a fun family friendly movie just in time of the holidays.
For five BBC series and a feature film, Idris Elba has played the unconventional British detective DCI John Luther as a psychologically dark combination of Columbo’s rumpled intelligence with the deductive abilities of Sherlock Holmes. Thirteen years after first donning Luther’s famous grey wool jacket, Elba returns with “Luther: The Fallen Sun,” a nihilistic crime thriller now playing in theatres before moving to Netflix next week.
The story begins with the blackmailing and abduction of teenaged office cleaner Callum Aldrich (James Bamford). By the time London copper Luther arrives on the crime scene a crowd has gathered, including Callum’s distraught mother Camille (Borislava Stratieva). She insists Luther promise that he will bring her son’s abductor to justice, and breaking the first rule of police work, he gives her his word.
But before he can solve the case, Luther’s history catches up with him when his past transgressions are made public. Criminal charges are filed. He is found guilty of witness tampering, vigilantism and a myriad of other crimes. Sent to a maximum-security facility, he can’t let go of the case, especially when the abductor (Andy Serkis) taunts him from the outside.
One elaborate prison break later, Luther is back on the case, despite the best efforts of counter intelligence operative Odette Raine (Cynthia Erivo) to track him down and send him back behind bars.
“Luther: The Fallen Sun” brings back many of the hallmarks of the beloved TV series. Luther is still the perceptive detective who knows the intimate inner workings of the criminal mind, the rain-soaked streets of London have rarely looked more gothic, the baddie is as unhinged as a screen door flapping in the wind, the unveiling of Luther’s iconic grey jacket is treated like the unearthing of a priceless religious artefact and, of course, Elba’s charisma cuts through the movie’s gloomy look and feel like a hot knife through butter.
So why, then, is “Luther: The Fallen Sun” such a bummer?
It begins promisingly, with the abduction and creepy Luther-esque set up, before allowing the story to overwhelm the thing that make the BBC series so watchable, Luther’s complicated relationship with the order part of law and order. His ability to think, and sometimes behave, like the villains he hunted was exciting, particularly in his complicated, line-crossing relationship with malignant narcissist Alice Morgan, played by Ruth Wilson, on four seasons of the TV show. It was that dynamic that gave the character, and by extension, the show, its complex aura of danger.
That was no ordinary police procedural. Unfortunately, “Luther: The Fallen Sun” is. Keeping Luther on the run, isolating him for much of the film’s running time takes away the interactions so crucial to bring the story to life. What’s left is a sorta-kinda action movie with a pantomime baddie but the heart of what made “Luther” great is missing.
“Luther: The Fallen Sun” has all the earmarks we expect from “Luther” but this time around they feel as rumpled as Luther’s famous jacket.
George Miller may be best known as a director of wild action movies, but at the heart of all his films, whether it is the outback opera of his “Mad Max” series, or the gentle inspiration of “Babe: Pig in the City,” or the fantasy of “The Witches of Eastwick,” is masterful storytelling.
His latest movie, “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, celebrates the art of storytelling with a tale about how a well told story can bring people together.
Swinton plays Alithea Binnie, a lonely professor of narratology. “I am a solitary creature by nature,” she says. “I have no children, or siblings, nor parents. I did once have a husband.” Her work has left her wondering about the importance of mythology in the age of technology. “Sooner or later,” she says, “our creation stories are replaced by science.”
Her compartmentalized and orderly life is turned upside down when she buys a memento at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. “Whatever it is,” she says of her purchase, a small decorative glass bottle shaped like a Genie’s lamp, “I’m sure it has an interesting story.”
Make that stories. Within are a multitude of stories. And a Genie.
When Alithea opens the bottle, she unleashes a cloud of iridescent smoke. The Djinn (Elba), as the magical character imprisoned by King Solomon (Nicolas Mouawad) inside the bottle for three thousand years because he “cried out my heart’s desire,” appears. His only path to true freedom comes with granting Alithea’s wishes based on her three deepest yearnings.
Alithea’s study of ancient myths has left her wary of accepting the Djinn’s offer. “I cannot for the life of me, summon up one eligible wish, let alone three,” she says.
Nonetheless, the Djinn regales her with stories from his life, Scheherazade style, in an attempt to lure her into making a wish.
Based on the short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt, and co-written for the screen by Miller, “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” has much of the director’s visual flair, and rock-solid performances from Swinton and Elba, but this fairy tale about the importance of stories and romance doesn’t contain the magic promised by its premise.
There is sentimentalism to burn in the Djinn’s retelling of the great loves of his life and how his “fondness for the conversation with women” has kept him bottled up, literally, for millennia, but this often feels like an academic exercise. His stories reveal an appealing vulnerability in the mysterious creature’s personality, but instead of being swept away by the spectacle of the storytelling into worlds of romance, we’re left waiting for the emotional impact which is delayed and, even then, muted. It’s all allegory with not enough passion.
“Three Thousand Years of Longing” has undeniably cool moments, most likely conjured up in Miller’s fevered imagination. King Solomon’s magical, self-playing stringed instrument is wondrous, and the period details contained in the flashback from the Djinn’s life are beautifully rendered, despite some dodgy CGI. But, unlike the great stories it celebrates, the movie doesn’t have the kind of tension between the leads necessary to create a compelling narrative.
“Beast,” a new nature-gone-wild flick starring Idris Elba and a big, angry CGI lion, and now playing in theatres, is a throwback to man vs. beast movies like “Jaws” and “Anaconda.” “I’ve never seen anything like this,” says wildlife biologist Martin Battles (Sharlto Copely). “Multiple attacks, without eating its prey. Lions don’t do that. At least no lion I’ve ever seen.”
Elba is Dr. Nate Samuels, a recently widowed father of two teenage daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Jeffries). In an attempt to reconnect with his kids, he arranges a holiday to a South African wildlife reserve, run by Battles, a childhood friend of his late wife.
Daniels met his wife in South Africa, and, although he was separated from her when she passed, he wants his daughters to connect to their mother’s homeland.
The trip is idyllic until they arrive at a village that has been devastated by a gruesome lion attack. Soon, they meet the culprit, a wrathful male lion who regards all humans as enemies after his pride was wiped out by poachers. The lion is now fighting back.
“It’s the law of the jungle,” says Battles. “It’s the only law that matters.”
Elba hasn’t had great luck with felines on screen (see “Cats”), and faster than you can say, “Old Deuteronomy,” Samuels and family are engaged in a horrifying fight for their lives.
“It’s you against him,” says Battles, “and that is not a fight you are designed to win.”
As a thriller “Beast” is so predictable the subtitle could have been “Maul’s Well that Ends Well.” Nonetheless, Icelandic director Kormákur does stage a few straightforward action scenes in long takes that will make your blood pressure rise. The fight sequences in and around the jeep the main cast spends most of the film in, are claustrophobic and primal, with a real sense of danger.
Screenwriter Ryan Engle attempts to weave some father-daughter dynamics into the story, but we’re not here for the dysfunctional family stuff. We’re paying top dollar to see Idris Elba punch a lion in the face (before you @ me, these are CGI creations, no animal’s pride was harmed in the making of this movie) and so he does in fine b-movie style.
“The Ghost and the Darkness” this ain’t.
Between lion attacks, the silence is filled with a variety of dialogue that ranges from, “You stay right here,” to “We’ve gotta get out of here.” Elba does bring some emotive qualities to this action character, while Copely lends the story some grit. As the sisters, Halley and Jeffries bring a mix of steeliness and empathy. There is more to them than being scream queens on the Savannah.
“Beast” is not an ambitious film. It doesn’t have to be. It has Elba and enough angry animal action to make its 90 minutes fly by in the swipe of a lion’s paw.
Bright-blue extraterrestrial hedgehog Sonic comes bounding back into theatres with the imaginatively titled “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” a Sega sequel to the highest-grossing video game movie of all-time.
At the beginning of the flick Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz), a hedgehog whose lightning-fast reflexes and ability to run faster than the speed of sound, have helped him save the world on numerous occasions, is living with his adopted “parents,” Montana police officer Tom (James Marsden) and his veterinarian wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter).
When Tom and Maddie go on a Hawaiian vacation, Sonic is left to his own devices. That opens the door for the hedgehog’s nemesis, baddie Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) to return with anteater sidekick Knuckles (voice of Idris Elba). Robotnik is still sore from his exile on a remote planet, but has returned with a thirst to exact revenge on the spiny blue mammal who put him there and a plan to take over the world.
“Since I’ve been gone,” he says, “I’ve discovered the source of ultimate power.”
That power stems from a mystical emerald with the power to destroy civilizations. To save the world Sonic teams with Tails (voiced by Colleen O’Shaughnessey), a yellow fox with two tails who appears through a magic portal.
Sonic’s plan to make sure Robotnik doesn’t destroy the world? “Step one, light taunting,” he says. “Step two? I have no idea.”
Plan or no plan, Sonic’s tenacity could save the day.
“You’re unskilled, untrained, unworthy,” says Knuckles. “You forgot one,” Sonic replies. “Unstoppable.”
Story wise “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” is about as imaginative as its title. A standard save-the-world video game story with an unusual amount of CGI, it doesn’t pave any new paths forward, but fun performances—both live and CGI—keep things buoyant for most of the slightly too long two-hour running time.
Sonic is the star, the heart and soul of the franchise, but it is Jim Carrey who steals the show with a performance that goes over-the-top in search of a new top. It’s big cartoony work that brings an organic touch to an overload of computer-generated animation.
More understated, but just by a hair, is Natasha Rothwell as Maddie’s sister Rachel. She brings the funny and brings some respite to the non-stop blur of action.
“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” is a family film for video game fans, comprised of a series of big, loud set pieces banged together to entertain the eye while sprouting messages of the importance of family and teamwork.
Richard joins Ryan Doyle and Jay Michaels of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today he talks about how Mick Jagger singlehandedly made the Tequila Sunrise a staple on drink menus everywhere. Then they talk about “Dune” and “The Harder They Fall,” now playing in theatres.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
