SYNOPSIS: In “Carry-On,” a new thriller now streaming on Netflix, Taron Egerton plays an airline security guard blackmailed into smuggling a dangerous package through an LAX security checkpoint and onto a plane on Christmas Eve.
CAST: Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler and Jason Bateman. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.
REVIEW: Another entry into the “Is it a Christmas movie or not?” category, “Carry-On” is a preposterous thriller, set on Christmas Eve, that reverberates with echoes of “Die Hard 2.”
This is the kind of movie that feels like you’ve already seen it, even as you watch it for the first time.
There’s an unlikely hero, racing against time and circumstance to save the day. There’s an airport setting. Been there, done that.
But “Carry-On” isn’t looking to break new ground. Director Jaume Collet-Serra is more interested in taking familiar tropes and twisting them just enough to feel fresh.
As Ethan, Taron Egerton is a classic b-movie everyman hero, a guy of modest ambition—he’s a middling TSA agent who wants to be a cop—thrust into an extraordinary situation.
For much of the movie he’s stationary, sitting behind his screening station, reacting to orders being barked through an earpiece by a ruthless terrorist played by Jason Bateman. It takes some chops to keep these sequences compelling and Egerton, with the help of some slick filmmaking from Collet-Serra, manages to convey a suitable amount of paranoia and tension even when nothing much is happening on screen.
When the action finally kicks in the movie becomes a bit more conventional but the high velocity third act, while completely silly, will up your pulse rate.
By the time the end credits have rolled “Carry-On” reveals itself to be a Christmas movie for people who don’t like Christmas movies, a showcase for Bateman playing against type and a bit of forgettable fun.
It may be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the words Nike and basketball were not synonymous. Way back in the early years of the Reagan administration, Nike was a third tier sneaker company, better known for lagging behind Adidas and Converse than for their now famous swoosh logo.
“Air,” a new sports drama that reteams Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, tells the story of the celebrity endorsement that changed the game for Nike, sports merchandising and popular culture.
Damon is Sonny Vaccaro, a pudgy marketer who tries to convince basketball stars to align themselves with Nike. Trouble is, back then the company was best known for making comfortable shoes for middle-aged joggers.
“There’s nothing cool about Nike,” says college basketball coach George Raveling (Marlon Wayans).
When Vaccaro finds rookie Michael Jordan (Damian Delano Young), he is convinced the 21-year-old backboard-shattering phenom could be the face of the company. “I believe he is the future,” says Vaccaro. Now all he has to do is convince his skeptical boss, the elaborately toupéed Phil Knight (Affleck), and Jordan’s even more skeptical parents James and Deloris (James R. Jordan Sr. and Viola Davis) that this is a good deal for everybody.
“I believe in your son,” he says to Deloris. “And his story is going to make us want to fly. But a show is just a shoe.”
“Until my son steps into it,” she replies.
“Air” is a biography of a brand that, somehow, doesn’t feel like a two-hour advertisement for basketball shoes. That’s because it’s really not about the shoes, although there are several beauty shots of the prototype Air Jordans. Like all good sports stories, the specificity of the story, in this case Vaccaro’s journey, becomes a universal story of inspiration, determination and risk taking.
Damon is in likable puppy dog mode here, handing in an affable performance that relies on his considerable charm as an actor to buoy the movie’s never-say-die themes. We know how this story ends, but because Damon is easy to get on side with, we go along for the ride.
He’s supported by a terrific secondary cast, including Jason Bateman and Chris Tucker as the rule-breaking members of the Nike marketing team and Chris Messina as an over-the-top agent who says, “I don’t have friends. I have clients.”
As Michael Jordan’s mother Deloris, it is Viola Davis who delivers the film’s most potent message. In a performance fueled by grit and warmth, the character’s steadfast belief in knowing the value of a person is conveyed without a trace of sentiment or manipulation.
The lack of Michael Jordan, in what is essentially a Jordan origin story of a sort, is puzzling. Affleck, who also directed the movie, says because Jordan is so well known, he felt making him a character would be distracting. We’ll never know for sure, but it does feel odd that on the handful of times he appears—other than in archival footage—we never see his face, only his back and shoulders and usually out of focus.
According to “Air,” number three on Nike’s business manifesto was “Break the rules,” and certainly, in the courting and signing of Jordan, they did. Affleck breaks fewer rules, using standard montages and a lot of needle drops to establish the 1980s backdrop. We’ve seen a lot of this stuff before, usually in movies that aren’t as good as this one. But despite some familiar visuals and music, “Air’s” underdog story is still a crowd-pleaser.
This is Jesse Plemons like we’ve never seen him. Best known for a trio of dramatic roles on television—Landry Clarke in the football drama Friday Night Lights, Todd Alquist in crime series Breaking Bad and Ed Blumquist in Fargo—he has made a name playing characters he describes as “intense or creepy.”
On the phone from Los Angeles to chat up his new comedy Game Night, he’s neither of those things. Friendly and soft-spoken, he says his latest character Gary, a cop with a broken heart and a suspicious nature, “feels like he was in his own movie or had snuck from some other movie and just seemed really out of place.”
Game Night sees Plemons as the oddball neighbour to Max and Annie, played by Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams. The hypercompetitive couple host weekly game nights, get-togethers Gary used to be invited to before he divorced their friend Debbie. When an innocent murder mystery game escalates to real life danger Max and Annie welcome Gary’s expertise in law enforcement.
Plemons hasn’t done a lot of comedy but says he liked Game Night immediately.
“You read a lot of scripts,” he says, “and I find that you know pretty early on whether you respond to it or not. It is pretty rare to read a comedy script and actually laugh out loud sitting by yourself.”
To create the character Plemons, who will soon be seen alongside Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci in the Martin Scorsese movie The Irishman, mixed deadpan delivery with a thousand-yard-stare that is as unnerving as it is funny.
“I watched a lot of cops for inspiration,” he says. “Not to say I ever found a Gary per se, but I felt like it was an easy world to step into.”
When I mention that Gary’s situation—he’s a lonely sad sack, still pining for his ex wife—might make it easy for an audience to feel sorry for him and not laugh, he shudders.
“I didn’t even think about that,” he says. “I should have been worried about that but somehow I wasn’t. I could immediately picture him. I feel like everyone has come across someone in their lives who is a great person but you don’t necessarily want to talk to them. There is something really sweet and innocent about Gary that I really liked and I think maybe that’s what people will respond to.
“No matter what genre I am doing I still try and try to bring truth and honesty to it. That is also the kind of comedy I respond to. Not that I don’t like broad comedy but this is something I haven’t been able to play around with in the past.”
Ultimately, however, he says the only difference between playing drama and comedy is “that it is hard to escape that, ‘I hope people laugh,” thought in the back of your mind.”
He says Game Night, like his recent appearance in Oscar nominated The Post, offered up the chance to do something new and stretch as an actor.
“That’s what I love about acting,” he says. “I don’t feel like you ever really arrive or feel like you’ve done it all. There is always a new part, a new story to try and figure out.”
“Game Night” is a new thriller comedy with Jason Bateman that is more comedy than actual thriller.
Bateman and Rachel McAdams are Max and Annie, two competitive people who meet at a trivia night, bond over obscure “Teletubbies” facts, fall in love and get married. They’re so into games they even play Just Dance at the wedding reception.
Cut to a couple of years later. They are comfortably tucked away in the suburbs and hosting weekly game nights with friends, the dimwitted Ryan (Billy Magnussen) and long time couple Kevin and Sarah (Lamorne Morris and Hamilton, Ontario-born Kylie Bunbury). They used to invite neighbours Debbie and Gary (Jesse Plemons), but since Debbie moved out they take great pains to ensure that Gary, a creepy cop, doesn’t find out about their get-togethers.
On a personal level they’re trying to have a baby, but it isn’t going well. Their doctor (Camille Chen) thinks stress is making it impossible for them to conceive. The source? Max’s brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler), a good looking, venture capitalist who loves to flaunt his wealth. “He’s like the Mark Wahlberg to Max’s Donnie,” says Ryan.
When Brooks rolls into town, driving Max’s dream car, a vintage Stingray, he throws a special game night at his new, rented mansion. With no Risk, Scrabble or Monopoly in sight, the regular gamers gather for a murder mystery party. The winner gets the Stingray. “This will be a game night to remember,” Brooks says.
When the murder mystery turns into a real kidnapping the game players are sucked into a world of intrigue as they have to solve the “game.“ Seems there’s more to Brooks than meets the eye. “I can’t believe your brother has been lying to us this whole time,” guffaws Ryan. “He’s even cooler than I thought.”
This isn’t a Hitchcock movie. There’s no real mystery in “Game Night,” just some twists and turns and engaging performances from a cast game to have fun. It’s more about spending time with the characters on their wild night out.
Much of the humour comes from the casual back-and-forth between Bateman and McAdams. They interact like an old married couple, not people in a bad situation. Bateman is a natural at this kind of deadpan comedy and McAdams, who generally features in dramas, keeps pace. Their chemistry is one of the reasons this slight comedy works as well as it does.
Magnussen, who plays a likable dim bulb, and Morris and Bunbury who work their way through a mystery of their own making aid the above-the-title stars. The biggest surprise and certainly the film’s oddest performance belongs to Plemons. Best known for his work on “Breaking Bad” and “Fargo,” he mixes deadpan delivery with a thousand-yard-stare that is as unnerving as it is funny.
“Game Night” isn’t slap your knee funny but it is an amiable enough comedy that makes up in charm what it lacks in procedural thrills.
In Office Christmas Party T.J. Miller plays Clay, a scattered office manager with a “mind like a drunk baby.” In a last ditch effort to save his branch from closure he tries to woo a lucrative client by throwing a no-holds-barred Christmas party.
“This is the way we close Walter,” says Clay. “We throw the best Christmas party he’s ever seen. We could save everybody’s jobs.”
Miller leads an ensemble cast featuring heavy-hitters like Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, Kate McKinnon and Jennifer Aniston but he doesn’t want to talk about that. Not right away, anyway.
Instead he begins the interview with, “Let’s talk comedy in a time of tragedy.”
OK, lets.
“Basically I have a political obstacle to my social mission statement,” he says. “The social statement was, tragedy permeates our everyday lives, people are lonely, they’re scared, they have death anxiety, they don’t know how to attribute meaning to their own existence, so through comedy we can provide an opiate or distraction that permeates our everyday lives. Through satire we can hopefully frame the world in a way that people can laugh at.
“Also I aim to help people, through my stand up, to release the death anxiety. I aim to help people not take themselves so seriously.”
When Miller, who also currently plays Erlich Bachman on Silicon Valley, finally gets around to talking about Office Christmas Party, he’s still on message.
“It’s very easy to promote a comedy during the apocalypse,” he says.
The Christmas film, which features a greedy pimp, a sexually repressed head of HR and an office load of drunk, disgruntled employees, is a mix and match of sentimentality and debauchery that Miller thinks is perfect for the season.
“What better way to spend the holidays?” he asks. “First of all you don’t have to talk to your family for an hour-and-a-half during the holidays. That’s a bonus. If the movie is funny, you talk about how funny it was for half-an-hour. How dynamic Jenifer Aniston, Jason Bateman and Courtney B. Vance are. How strange I look in a Santa suit for that long. That my facial hair is still abrasive and arresting. That’s two- and-a-half to three hours towards a stress free holiday. That’s what we’re pitching you.
“It’s a funny movie. It’s a laugh a minute. Well, it’s a laugh every minute-and-a-half to two minutes. We wanted to give you a break. It’s exhausting to laugh every minute.”
Miller, who once worked as a legal secretary in the same Chicago office building seen in the film, says the movie is silly and fun but shares his core comedy philosophy.
“Workplace environments have become so sterile and corporations have become so much about profit and not the people they work with that we’ve lost the fun of work. We don’t have cool office Christmas parties anymore. We are saying, ‘You spend so much time with the people you work with, why not have a night or two a year where you can kind of just relax? Take a night off from worrying about offending someone or giving ‘tude.’
“That is our message to North America. Take the holidays, drink way too much eggnog, laugh, relax and know that we’ve got a lot of work to do in 2017.”
Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman appeared in the edgy “Horrible Bosses” films so you’d expect their new movie, “Office Christmas Party” to be holiday fare more naughty than nice. But you’d be wrong. Their latest suffers from not being too vulgar, but from being not vulgar enough.
Aniston runs Zenotech Data Storage Systems, a tech company she inherited from her late father. Dad left her the company but gave the main branch to her party animal brother Clay (T.J. Miller). She’s a strict by–the-book business person the Grinch who cancels all branch Christmas parties to save money and gives Clay until the end of the quarter, just two days away, to turn things around or she will lay off 40% of the staff and cancel all bonuses.
Clay is scattered with a “mind like a drunk baby,” but determined to protect his branch and his staff. To that end he recruits head programmers Josh (Jason Bateman) and Tracey (Olivia Munn) to woo a lucrative client (Courtney B. Vance) by throwing a no-holds-barred office Christmas party. “This is the way we close Walter, we throw the best Christmas party he’s ever seen,” says Clay. “We could save everybody’s jobs.”
Despite Clay’s warning, “When I drink a lot bad things happen,” they proceed with the party. Add in a greedy pimp, $300,000 in cold hard cash, a sexually repressed head of HR (Kate McKinnon) and an office load of drunk, disgruntled employees and you have a Bacchanalia that would make would make Caligula blush.
Given the premise “Office Christmas Party” is not nearly as wild as a movie about and out of control party should be. Despite the excess of flesh and booze the movie often opts for sentimentality over debauchery. It most certainly doesn’t put the ‘X’ in Xmas.
Tone wise it should feel like anything could happen; like the movie could go off the rails at any second. Instead it’s as sweet and gooey as a (slightly soiled) Hallmark Christmas card.
Packed with comedy heavy hitters like Aniston, Bateman, McKinnon and Miller, it’s the supporting cast who garner most of the laughs. Fortune Feimster, a comic best known for her work on “The Mindy Project” livens things up as a motor mouth Uber driver and Randall Park’s take on a shy-but-kinky office worker has its charms but it is Courtney B. Vance who steals the show. The velvet-voiced character actor who specializes in playing lawyers—think “Law & Order” and his Johnnie Cochran in
“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”—unexpectedly lets his freak flag fly and the results are glorious. If it was his movie it might have been more fun.
Disney animator Trent Correy may be an Ottawa native, but three years of living and working in Burbank, Calif., have changed him.
“I get home about once or twice a year now,” he says. “It’s hard to go in the winter, my body has adapted to here. I tend to send my parents photos of me on the beach in February when it is -42 C back home. I have flip flops on now while we’re talking just to turn the knife a little bit.”
Ironically the sun worshipper’s breakout was helping to animate the snowman Olaf in Frozen. You’ve also seen his handiwork in Big Hero 6 and this weekend he’s back with the furry and funny film Zootopia.
Disney animator Trent Correy may be an Ottawa native, but three years of living and working in Burbank, Calif., have changed him.
“I get home about once or twice a year now,” he says. “It’s hard to go in the winter, my body has adapted to here. I tend to send my parents photos of me on the beach in February when it is -42 C back home. I have flip flops on now while we’re talking just to turn the knife a little bit.”
Ironically the sun worshipper’s breakout was helping to animate the snowman Olaf in Frozen. You’ve also seen his handiwork in Big Hero 6 and this weekend he’s back with the furry and funny film Zootopia.
“The nice part of Zootopia was working with a number of different characters,” says the Algonquin College graduate. “I worked with everything from a mouse to a sloth to an elephant. It kept the job very interesting.”
Set in an alternate universe where animals, both predator and prey, live harmoniously in a city called Zootopia, the movie’s funniest sequence involves a slow moving sloth named Flash. It was the first scene Correy helped animate. “There are a lot of challenges animating a sloth moving at that speed,” he says, “and a lot of other challenges animating a mouse or an elephant with their different weights and animal attributes.”
The 28-year-old is a rising star at Disney — he’s currently working on the mythological epic Moana — so it might come as a surprise that he didn’t take art in high school.
“I failed art,” he admits. “It was totally my fault. I wasn’t into the art history stuff at the time and I was really interested in drawing cartoons. That was looked upon as not real art so the teacher and myself had disagreements. I ended up having to take drama, and that’s fun too.
“I did always love to draw. I have to thank my mom, who is an artist, who encouraged me to draw and keep going.”
He rediscovered his passion for art after high school and now joins the rather long and impressive list of Canadians who are helping to shape the future of animation. I ask him why Canadians are so in demand as animators.
“There is a rich history of animation in Canada with the NFB and a lot of TV work in the ’80s and ’90s,” he says. “I think a lot of it has to do with work ethic. I tend to see a lot of people who come from TV animation who are faster. They have to be because they get paid per frame in a lot of places in Canada, whereas here it’s salary. So to make your money you have to be fast, you have to be efficient and you have to be economical in your choices.
“Our whole crew here is very international, we have people from all over the world. I think there is a bit of, ‘I’m coming from a different country and I’m trying to prove myself in this big place.’ It feels so far away from Ottawa.”
Around this time of year bunnies usually visit kids with baskets of jellybeans and chocolate. This March, however, a baby rabbit named Judy “Don’t call me cute!” Hopps bounces into theatres bringing with her a message of tolerance. The new Disney film “Zootopia” is social commentary disguised as a furry and funny cartoon.
Growing up on a carrot farm Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) has dreamed of being a police officer in the city of Zootopia, despite the fact, as her father (Don Lake) constantly reminds her, “There’s never been a bunny cop.” In fact, her parents preach the virtues of complacency and want her to go into the family business and become a carrot farmer. “It’s OK to have dreams,” says dad, “just as long as you don’t believe in them too much.”
The call to service to too strong, however, and she soon graduates for the Police Academy at the top of her class. Despite her small size (Message #1: Never give up on your dreams.) she’s sent to Zootopia’s city center, a cosmopolitan place filled with hustle and bustle and animals of all shapes and sizes. “In Zootopia,” she says, “anyone can be anything.”
She’s a keener who introduces herself with, “Ready to make the world a better place?” only to be assigned to parking enforcement duty. True to form she becomes the city’s best ticketer (Message #2: Be The Best Version Of You!) but is unsatisfied by the work. When a missing otter case falls into her lap she starts her investigation by questioning a con artist named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a sly fox with a smart mouth and underworld connections. Together (Message #3: We all do better when we work together.) they learn to look past sly fox/dumb bunny stereotypes (Message #4: Er… look past stereotypes and don’t judge others.) and uncover a plot that threatens Zootopia’s basic precept of celebrating one another’s differences. (Message #5: There is beauty and strength in diversity.)
There are more messages in “Zootopia” than in Hillary Clinton’s private server’s spam folder but the film doesn’t feel like a Successories motivational poster come to life. The life lessons are nicely woven into the story and washed down with a spoonful of humour. Kids and parents alike should find Flash, the fastest sloth at the DMV funny, although for very different reasons, while a “Godfather” take-off will likely mean nothing to children but give older folks a chuckle.
Co-directors Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush pack every inch of the frame with in-jokes, like a billboard for Zuber car services, the carrot logo on a smart phone, or my favourite, the sloth’s mug that reads “You want it when?” If the messages don’t connect the animation will.
“Zootopia” is more than just another cartoon to entertain the eye. It’s a timely and relevant children’s tale with a social agenda.
Jason Bateman shares a first name with one of modern horror’s most famous villains, but as an actor he’s best known as a comedic actor. In “The Gift,” however, he explores the dark side of his horror icon namesake.
Simon (Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) are a married couple recently relocated back to Simon’s Los Angeles hometown. Work prospects are good, they live on one of those airy, open concept houses that rich movie characters often own and are even trying for a baby to complete their perfect Southern Californian life.
Things change when the past, in the form of Gordo (Joel Edgerton, who also wrote the script and directed), an old school mate of Simon’s, becomes a little too pushy in rekindling their acquaintance. Unwelcome encounters and unexpected “gifts” bring to light a decades old slight and expose cracks in Simon and Robyn’s relationship.
A study in allowing bygones to be bygones, “The Gift” is a tightly wound psychological thriller that takes it time getting to the surprises. Instead of delivering quick thrills Edgerton concentrates on character. He weaves a linear but complex story that will leave some viewers pointing the finger of blame for all the trouble at Gordo, some at Simon. It’s rich storytelling that sees both sides of the argument and burrows itself under the audience’s skin.
Much of the success of the film is due to Bateman’s startling performance. Years of comedic roles have labelled him the good-natured everyman, long on charm, short on malice. “The Gift” effectively turns that persona on its head, giving Bateman the chance to get dramatic as the heavy, a man content to ruin people’s lives to get what he wants. Bateman is perfect as Simon, presenting him as a caring, giving man before he taking a bone-chillingly sinister shift.
Hall adds to an already impressive resume, evolving the character of Robyn from naïve to gritty. Caught in limbo between Simon and Gordo, she is the film’s emotional core, showing apprehension, betrayal and anger in equal measures.
In front of and behind the camera Edgerton shows a steady hand doling out character and story information in small doses. Each revelation builds tension until the climax, which packs a mighty psychological wallop. No spoilers here, but near the end the thriller aspect of the story gives way to an unsettling Machiavellian revenge angle, but not a Tarantino style bloodbath. Instead it’s a high-minded stab at the heart that cuts deeply to the core of what the movie is really about—should facts get in the way of a good rumour?
“The Gift” is a sophisticated European flavoured scene spinner with fine performances that will have you asking, Who is the real villain?
