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 transformational horror of “Wolf Man,” the resilience of “The Last Showgirl” and star power of “Back in Action.”
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about the transformational horror of “Wolf Man,” the resilience of “The Last Showgirl” and star power of “Back in Action.”
I join CTV Atlantic anchor Todd Battis to talk about the transformational horror of “Wolf Man,” the resilience of “The Last Showgirl,” the star power of “Back in Action” and the life and times of David Lynch.
I sit in with hosts Jim Richards and Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the transformational horror of “Wolf Man,” the resilience of “The Last Showgirl” and star power of “Back in Action.”
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the transformational horror of “Wolf Man,” the resilience of “The Last Showgirl” and star power of “Back in Action.”
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 thriller “September 5,” the epic “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” and Daniel Craig in “Queer.”
SYNOPSIS: “Queer,” a romantic drama based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs and now playing in theatres, finds American ex-pat Lee, played by Daniel Craig, living in 1950s Mexico City. He’s cut adrift and lonely until a young man named Eugene Allerton, a recently discharged US Navy serviceman, becomes the object of his infatuation.
CAST: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Henrique Zaga, Lesley Manville. Directed by Luca Guadagnino.
REVIEW: A study of loneliness and longing, “Queer” is a melancholic film with a slow burn, introspective story that explores both the main character’s mind and outward desires. More than anything this is a character study, a dive into the deep end of Lee’s (Craig) psyche.
He’s lost, looking for a love that may never come, and even if he can find a companion like Eugene, how can he be sure the feeling is reciprocal? Feelings of sadness, self-doubt and frustration are the character’s fuel, the thing that makes move him through the story, and make him so interesting.
Daniel Craig is terrific, casting off the suave James Bond persona, and once again reminding us of what a great actor he is outside the action-adventure of the 007 world. It’s a touching performance in a very specific movie that touches on universal themes about aging, one’s value to others and longing for love.
Craig is the film’s centerpiece, casting a long, charismatic shadow over the supporting cast, save for Joe, Jason Schwartzman’s welcome comic relief and an almost unrecognizable Lesley Manville as the scruffy Dr. Cotter.
Director Luca Guadagnino stays true to the wandering, rambunctious Beat Generation spirit of Burroughs’s book, sending Lee into the night, or to bed with a stranger or to the jungle to take a psychedelic drug that may help him ascertain how Eugene really feels about him. The connective tissue is Craig in a performance that is as intensely personal as the intimate work by Burroughs that inspired it.
SYNOPSIS: “Megalopolis,” a new fable from legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, now playing in theatres, is a mix of Ancient Roman politics, sci fi, and even a little bit of mime.
Visionary artist Cesar (Adam Driver) has plans to build a utopian city to inspire hope within the rotting framework of New Rome. “When we leap into the unknown,” he says, “we prove that we are free.” He’s up against the corrupt Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), agent of chaos Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) and the threat of partisan warfare.
CAST: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D. B. Sweeney, and Dustin Hoffman. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
REVIEW: As idiosyncratic a movie as we’re likely to see this year, “Megalopolis,” the forty-years-in-the-making passion project from Francis Ford Coppola, is equal parts hammy and hopeful, dense and dazzling. It’s the work of a filmmaker with nothing left to prove, and brims with imagination, ambition and, unfortunately, self-indulgence.
Coppola, who says he rewrote the script for “Megalopolis” at least 300 times, empties out the idea drawer, producing a script that overflows with his thoughts on legacy, survival and hope for the future. Using lessons learned from the intrigue of Roman history, he throws in a dollop of sci- fi—Cesar Catalina (Driver) can stop time with a flourish of his hands—to tell a story of utopian values pitted against city hall.
It’s a mix of Ayn Rand and Marcus Aurelius, and not unfamiliar ground for the director. He has essayed the effects of power, political paranoia and the bloom of love in previous films like “The Godfather,” “The Conversation” and “One from the Heart.” The difference is, those movies, while often epic in scope, didn’t take a kitchen sink approach to the storytelling.
“Metropolis” is overstuffed to the point of bursting. The grand vision of warring billionaires and politicians is rendered almost incomprehensible by scenes that never lift off or, worse, feel randomly inserted into the narrative.
Coppola sets his story against a city in a fall of the Roman Empire decline, which should bring along with it very high stakes, but there is never a sense of danger or tension.
Instead, head-scratching line readings, spontaneous Shakespearean monologuing, and unintentionally funny, heightened performances distract from the actual story. “Megalopolis” is operatic in its ambition, experimental in its execution and rather baffling in its intentions.
Perhaps the film’s most telling line is a quote from Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius: “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority.”
And so it goes with “Metropolis.” Despite the presence of big-name talent like Adam Driver and Aubrey Plaza, this is a deliberating non-commercial film. Coppola’s vision is experimental, difficult to penetrate, impossible to pigeonhole, and occasionally thrilling, but mostly a slog.
“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” is an origin story, because what good is a franchise if it doesn’t splinter off in an origin story or two? The prequel set 64 years before the events of the successful Jennifer Lawrence franchise, is a big and bold movie about the future ruler of Panem that feels as though it may have worked better as a miniseries.
The new film centers on Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), scion of the once powerful Snow family.
Orphaned during a civil war that divided the nation of Panem into a wealthy Capitol city, where everyone seems to dress like the keyboard player of Spandau Ballet circa 1983, surrounded by twelve poverty-stricken Rocky Mountain districts, where everyone speaks like a Dolly Parton impersonator.
Coriolanus is living hand-to-mouth with his grandmother (Fionnula Flanagan) and cousin Tigris (Hunter Schafer), trying hard to keep up appearances at his fancy school, and hoping to win an academic scholarship. “Look at you,” says Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage), Academy dean and creator of the Hunger Games. “Your makeshift shirt and your too tight shoes, trying desperately to fit in, when I know you Snows don’t have a pot to piss in.”
Despite his hardships, A-student Coriolanus is a shoo-in to win the scholarship until Highbottom announces that the bursary will no longer be award for grades. As part of the upcoming Hunger Games, a televised gladiatorial death-match that pits kids, or “tributes,” from the districts against one another, Coriolanus will have to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a tribute from the impoverished District 12, given to bursting into rebel showtunes. If she survives the game under his leadership, he’ll get his scholarship and an entrée into the life of his dreams.
What begins as a battle for life and death, becomes a larger story of good vs. evil, of love and destiny, of opportunity and choice.
“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is a big handsome movie with a lot on its mind. Fans of the series will know that Snow goes on to become a villain, an autocratic ruler with a sadistic side. This is how he got there, from outcast to insider, from protagonist to antagonist. The detailed descent into evil is born from his instinct for self-preservation that overrides whatever righteousness once resided in his soul.
Fans may enjoy the trip back top Panem, but “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” has a different feel from the originals. The first set of films were very much about Katniss Everdeen’s (who does not appear here) decency as a galvanizing symbol of rebellion against oppression.
This is the anti-hero’s journey, and, as such, it’s darker and not as action packed.
It’s a character study, divided into three sections and stretched to an over-long two-hours-and-forty-minutes. Each episode covers an aspect of the story, but, particularly as we get to the last section, the storytelling feels disjointed, rushed, as if there is too much story for one movie. The world building is interesting, and Blyth is suitably icy, but as we’re ushered through the episodic tale, it feels as if this could have used a different approach to fully flesh out the story. A mini-series might allow the time the story needs to feel fully realized.
“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is a different beast than its predecessors. Lucy Gray’s musical numbers—it sometimes feels like “Hunger Games” done by theatre kids—add a new dimension, and the tone is different, but it is the study of the banality of evil that really sets it apart from what came before.