I join CTV Atlantic anchor Bruce Frisco to talk about the one-horned horrors of “Death of a Unicorn,” the rompin’, stompin’ deja vu of “A Working Man,” the flightless dramedy of “The Penguin Lessons” and the off-kilter Prime Video film “Holland” with Nicole Kidman.
Watcxh the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres including the one-horned horrors of “Death of a Unicorn,” the rompin’, stompin’ deja vu of “A Working Man” and the flightless dramedy of “The Penguin Lessons.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the one-horned horrors of “Death of a Unicorn,” the rompin’, stompin’ deja vu of “A Working Man,” the flightless dramedy of “The Penguin Lessons,” the character study of “Darkest Miriam” and the off-kilter Prime Video film “Holland” with Nicole Kidman.
Listen to 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 deja vu of “A Working Man,” the horrors of “Death of a Unicorn” and the dramedy of “The Penguin Lessons.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Feeling bored? Here’s a list of supercharged movies to help you fire up the neurons, tweak the imagination and drop kick boredom into the next century.
Read the whole thing HERE!
A grade-A Jason Statham B-movie, “The Beekeeper” is a back-to-basics effort from the action star that adds a new variation to his standard character assortment. We’ve seen Statham Character #1, in which he is a “loner with a past who must protect a loved one.” Then there’s Statham Character #2 which is the “loner with a past who must protect a youthful innocent.” And now we have Statham Character #3, a “loner with a past who avenges the death of ‘the only person who ever took care of me.’”
When we first meet Adam Clay (Statham), his neighbor, the kindly Mrs. Parker (Phylicia Rashad), invites him over for dinner. Later in the evening, he returns with a jar of the liquid gold produced by the bees he keeps on his property, to find a terrible scene. Turns out, while he tended his bee hives, she was the victim of a sophisticated phishing scam that siphoned out all the cash from her personal accounts, and from the children’s charity she controlled.
He arrives to find dinner burning unattended, and Mrs. Parker dead from a self-inflicted gun-shot wound. After a tussle with Mrs. Parker’s F.B.I. agent daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman), he sets off to get to get even with the people who caused the death of, “the only person who ever took care of me.”
“Taking from an elderly person is as bad as stealing from a child,” he says, buzzin’ around the bad guy’s hive.
Turns out he’s a retired operative for a clandestine organization called “Beekeepers.” The deadliest of the deadly, they make John Wick look tame, and are sworn to protect the hive at all costs.
As the bodies pile up, all roads lead to Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), the human grease stain at the head of Danforth Industries, a sleazy operation that makes millions by separating the vulnerable from their cash.
“Just tell me who this guy is,” Danforth demands from his head-of-security Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons).
“He’s probably the last pair of eyes you’re going to stare at,” he replies.
“The Beekeeper” is Primal Statham. It’s exactly the Jason Statham movie you expect it will be.
A man of few words, Clay is someone who lets his fists do the talking, and they speak multitudes. An exercise in overkill, this is a violent movie that delights in punching the bad guys in the face. Or tying them to a runaway truck. Or nailing them repeatedly with a stapler. It’s pure good vs. evil, no more or less.
It’s also a little silly. Statham actually asks, “To bee, or not to bee?” at one point, but the laughs are part of the experience. Verona delivers one of the film’s biggest, possibly unintended, laughs when she says, to the cockney-accented Clay, “There’s some British Isles hiding in your accent.” That line makes as much sense as anything in this movie, but that’s cool because “The Beekeeper” is an old-school, over-the-top actioner, laced with one-liners, that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
In the world of The Expendables it’s not enough to simply kill the enemy. In their boomtastic alternate reality every kill must be overkill and accompanied by a quip to punctuate the death.
“Expend4bles,” the all-star shoot ‘em up now playing in theatres, delivers quips and kills galore, but to paraphrase Tony Jaa’s character Decha, “The more people you kill, the less joy you have.”
In the new film, CIA agent Max Drummer (Andy García) rounds up the team of elite mercenaries—wizened warriors Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), sniper Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), demolitions expert Toll Road (Randy Couture) and new recruits Easy Day (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), and Galan (Jacob Scipio)—to prevent terrorist Suarto Rahmat (Iko Uwais) from stealing nuclear bomb detonators from Muammar Gaddafi’s former old chemical weapons plant in Libya.
When things go sideways, Christmas becomes the expendable Expendable, kicked out of the group and replaced by his mercenary girlfriend Gina (Megan Fox) and her deadly colleague Lash (Levy Tran). As the new band of soldiers set off to curtail a conflict that could ignite World War III, Christmas does his part to bring peace on earth.
This 103-minute ode to murder, mayhem and manliness doesn’t waste any time getting to the money shot. The first blast of action in “Expend4bles” lights up the screen roughly one minute in, followed by lots of talky bits that come between the boomy bits.
The talky bits are mostly lines of dialogue that sound lifted from the “Action Movies for Dummies” guidebook—generic stuff like “This is gonna be fun,” as the bullets start to fly—with the odd nod to something deeper, like a settling of accounts for one’s past. When we first meet Decha, for instance, he’s a former warrior, a reformed man of violence. But his peaceful ways don’t last long, because in “The Expendables” if you’re not a killer, you’re just filler.
If you’ve seen the other movies in the franchise, you already know what to expect; lots of R-rated violence, some dodgy CGI and a body count that would make John Wick blush. But this instalment feels different, less an homage to the days when Stallone and Schwarzenegger (who sat out this chapter) were blockbuster action stars and more a collection of familiar faces cut loose in a Jason “man-on-a-mission” Statham video game. It’s the Statham Show, which dissipates the camaraderie that gave the first movies a cohesive vibe.
By the time the end credits roll the thrill is gone. Despite its all-star cast, action sequences and kill ratio, “Expend4bles” proves Decha’s, “The more people you kill, the less joy you have” philosophy correct. On their fourth time out, the Expendables seems more expendable than ever.
Five years ago “The Meg,” a prehistoric creature feature starring a CGI shark and underwater actionman Jason Statham, took a $500 million bite out of the worldwide box office. This weekend, Ben Wheatley, a director best known for the arthouse, satirical thrills of movies like ”High Rise” and “Kill List,” dives in for the sequel, hoping to make a splash by reteaming Statham with a super shark. Question is, will “Meg 2: The Trench” be fin-tastic or does it jump the shark?
The fishy business centers on billionaire philanthropist Jiuming (Wu Jing) and eco-warrior Jonas Taylor (Statham). Jiuming owns an oceanographic institute, home to its own captive Meg, a nickname for a megalodon—think Bruce the Shark from “Jaws” on steroids—once thought to have been extinct for about 2 million years. Taylor is a former U.S. Marine whose steely gaze is rivalled only by the dead eyes of the Meg.
The unlikely pair lead a dangerous mission to an “ancient ecosystem untouched by man,” an oceanic trench twenty-five thousand feet under the surface of the ocean. The mission goes sideways when an illegal mining operation sets off an explosion that creates a breach in the thermocline, trapping Jiuming, Jonas and crew six kilometres deep, surrounded by colossal, Megs and all manner of aggressive, primordial undersea creatures. “Three massive Megs and who knows what else have escaped the breach!”
Midway through “The Meg: The Trench” Statham rasps, “This ain’t good.” It’s a meta moment that feels like the actor has broken the fourth wall to comment on the movie. He hasn’t of course. The movie isn’t clever enough to have that kind of built-in self-awareness.
But he’s not wrong.
From the reams of cliched dialogue seemingly borrowed from other, better action movies and half-hearted homages to “Jaws” and “Jurassic Park” to the rehash of Statham Stock Character #2—the man with a past who must protect a young, innocent child—and lame attempts to create a catchphrase (“See you later chum.”), “The Meg 2: The Trench” doesn’t add up to much until it becomes a creature feature in its last half hour. Even then, the alleged giant octopus is left mostly to the viewer’s imagination and seen only as a tentacle or two sticking out of the water.
“Meg 2: The Trench” spends much of its runtime underwater, which makes sense, because for 95% of its running time, it’s all wet.
Everything about “Fast X,” the latest entry in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, is big. Really big.
The a-lister cast list is a laundry list, including returning stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Charlize Theron along with the addition of Marvel superheroes Jason Momoa and Brie Larson. The villain is faster and more furious than ever before and the action can only be described as bigly. There’s even a surprise cameo from one of the world’s biggest movie stars.
But is bigger always better?
A jumble of the usual mix of family, friends, fast cars and flashbacks, “Fast X” begins with relative calm in the world of former criminal and professional street racer Dominic Toretto (Diesel). The patriarch of the “F&F” gang, he has left the fast life behind, and retired with wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), and his son Brian. “We used to live our lives a quarter mile at a time,” he says. “But things change.”
Not so fast, there Dom.
Dom’s past comes back to haunt him in the form of flamboyant villain Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), the sadistic, revenge fueled son of drug lord Hernan Reyes. “I’m Dante,” he says by way of introduction. “Enchanté.”
Way back in “Fast Five” Dom and Co. were responsible for the loss of the Reyes family fortune. “The great Dominic Toretto,” Dante snarls. “If you never would’ve gotten behind that wheel, I’d never be the man I am today. And now, I’m the man who’s going to break your family, piece by piece.”
Cue the set-up to the second part of the franchise’s three-part finale. It is, as they say on the movie poster, just the beginning of the end.
In the “Fast & Furious” world the word “ludicrous” is not just the name of prominent cast member Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, it’s also the name of the game. Since the franchise’s humble 2001 debut, the movies have grown bigger and sillier with each entry. “If it can violate the laws of God and gravity,” says Agent Aimes (Alan Ritchson) in “FX,” “they do it twice.”
The latest one redefines ridiculousness.
The out-of-control car stunts that crowd the screen have no touchstone in reality, other than the cars have four wheels and drive along streets when they aren’t bursting into flames or flying through the air. It’s as if the wild car chases were dreamed up by fourteen-year-olds playing with their Hot Wheels sets as images of canon cars danced in their heads. Anything goes, and no idea is too big or too ludicrous.
When the tires aren’t squealing, Dom is whinging on about the importance of family with a straight face and a serious tone that makes Leslie Nielsen’s “Naked Gun” deadpan look positively flamboyant. Only Momoa seems to understand how colossally silly the whole thing is, and has fun pulling faces, doing a Grand Jeté or two and peacocking around as he rolls a neutron bomb through the streets of Rome. It’s a ludicrous performance in a completely ludicrous movie and it fits.
The bombastic “Fast X” is overstuffed with characters—it seems like every actor in Hollywood has a cameo—plot and, if this is possible, it is overstuffed with excess. The very definition of “go big or go home,” it is for “F&F” fans who have been along for the ride for more than two decades everyone else may want to take a detour.
