Posts Tagged ‘Jacki Weaver’

EQUALS: 1 STAR. “101 minutes of whispered words and blank stares.”

Screen Shot 2016-07-06 at 4.43.19 PMYou’d be forgiven for thinking that “Equals,” the new film starring Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult, was a zombie movie. Characters roam around aimlessly, mumble dialogue and stare at one another as though they’d like to take a bite out of one another.

But it’s not a zombie flick, it’s a high-concept sci-fi love against-all-odds story set in a utopian society where emotions don’t exist. IE, it’s 101 minutes of whispered words and blank stares.

“Equals” is takes place in a place where human emotions have been eradicated. It has resulted in a peaceful, if somewhat dull world. Like small town Ontario, everyone dresses the same and is unfailingly polite. The only disease they have been unable to remedy is S.O.S., a virus that eats away at their icy demeanours and restores their pleasure centers. In other words, it allows people to feel again. Illustrator Silas (Hoult) is infected with feelings, developing romantic thoughts for co-worker Nia (Stewart). She is also sick but undiagnosed. They begin an affair but when a cure is found their new-found feelings and romance are threatened.

Director Drake Doremus has set up an almost impossible situation for himself and his actors. Flat and unaffected, “Equals” is icy in the extreme. The only heat on display comes from several hand-holding sessions which, I suppose, are meant to melt the screen but honestly, there are Amish love stories with more sexual tension.

What could have been an exploration of the very core of what makes us human, a kind of star-crossed sci fi “Romeo and Juliet,” is instead a plodding look at two people experiencing late puberty.

It’s a shame, but perhaps not a surprise, that a movie that aims to sap the emotion out of most of its characters, is a bit of a slog.

PARKLAND: 2 ½ STARS

parklandGravitas literally drips off the screen during “Parkland,” director Peter Landesman’s impressionistic look at the three days surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Somber music spills from the soundtrack, people fret and pray while Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley pontificate on “one of the more horrible days in American history.”

Trouble is, there’s no story.

Instead, it’s a character study of the folks, from the doctors and nurses at Parkland Memorial who tried to save JFK’s life (Zak Efron, Colin Hanks and Marcia Gay Harden) to secret service and law enforcement officers on the scene (Billy Bob Thornton, Ron Livingston) to Lee Harvey Oswald’s family (James Badge Dale, Jacki Weaver) to the reporters who broke the story (Mark Duplass) and the man who took the most famous images of the shooting, Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti).

It’s a sprawling cast who all vie for enough screen time to make an impact in this fast moving but ultimately ineffective study of the time.

The period details are all in place, and Giamatti, Dale and Thornton shine, but former journalist-turned-director Landesman’s lack of a point of view adds nothing to this often told tale.