SYNOPSIS: In “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” a new whodunnit now playing in theatres before switching to Netflix on December 12, Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is thrust into a hellish new case involving a fist-fighting priest, his congregation and a murder most foul. “The devil didn’t do this,” Blanc announces, “a parishioner did. The devil’s just jealous he didn’t think of it first.”
CAST: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Church. Directed by Rian Johnson.
REVIEW: A tribute to locked-room mysteries, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and novelist John Dickson Carr, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” mixes spirituality and death in a story that crackles with life.
The action begins when rebellious young priest Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) is assigned to a parish called Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude in upstate New York to work with hellfire preacher Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin).
The two butt heads, and when the charismatic Monsignor turns up dead amid mysterious circumstances, the congregation including tightly wound lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), former concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), town doctor Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner) and church matriarch Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) suspect Father Jud to be the doer of the dirty deed. “I came here to save souls,” Father Jud says, “not count stab wounds.”
As the local police, led by chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) investigate, Benoit Blanc, “the world’s greatest detective,” played by Daniel Craig, sorts through the clues to bring his own expertise to the case. “This was dressed as a miracle,” Blanc says, “it’s just a murder. And I solve murders.”
The most fleet-footed, and best, entry in the “Knives Out” franchise, the star-studded “Wake Up Dead Man” benefits from the chemistry between Craig, as Southern detective Blanc and the young priest played by O’Connor. Their scenes pop with energy and mystery, while Josh Brolin, as an unpredictable priest, brings an unexpected sense of menace.
Director Rian Johnson carefully reveals clues, building the on the whodunnit part of the mystery, but it’s the whydunit that gives the movie some unexpected depth. No spoilers here but Johnson, who also wrote the script, infuses the story with different kinds of spirituality. Wicks is all fire and brimstone, Judd preaches mercy, and the film asks, which is more effective, fear or love? Complete with the startling image of a bleeding cross, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” is a look not just at sinners, but their sins as well, wrapped up in an entertaining mystery.
The words “most-anticipated movie of the year” get tossed around a few times every season, usually describing a beloved fan sequel or an Oscar hopeful riding a wave of good press.
After “Avengers: Endgame” we can retire those words until January 2020. Before it played on one public screen the follow-up to 2018’s “Avengers: Endgame” smashed records. Demand for tickets crashed AMC Theatres’ website and app, it became Fandango’s top-selling pre-sale title and in China, advance sales topped a record one million tickets in a matter of hours. Someone in the United States paid a staggering $15,000 on-line for a pair of tickets (I hope that includes popcorn) and box office prognosticators predict forecast a domestic debut in the $260 million range.
Most-anticipated indeed but the question remains, Does “Avengers: Endgame” deserve all the hype?
In the spirit of #DontSpoilTheEndgame I’m cribbing the synopsis of the movie from IMBD.com: “After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018), the universe is in ruins. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers assemble once more in order to undo Thanos’ actions and restore order to the universe.”
“Endgame” is, first and foremost, a fan service movie. From the sheer number of returning Marvel faves—characters number in the dozens, if not the low hundreds—too deep character backstory—superheroes have mommy and daddy issues too!—to the crew’s biggest world-saving mission to date, it indulges every aficionado’s story hopes and desires. It may leave the casual superhero fans feeling overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the film but people willing to line up for hours to see the movie on opening weekend will be rewarded for their patience.
It is epic in the terms of length—it’s three hours so get a snack—location—infinity and beyond!—but it feels like “a lot“ rather than epic.
The story begins on a minor chord, spending much time with the characters grappling with the loss of friends and family before finding a way to right the world-destroying wrongs of Thanos. There is humor, some action but mostly character work. Hulk is in a form we haven’t seen before, Rudd and Downey still have a way with the line and it’s a whole new Thor than any other movie. As the story hopscotches through time and space directors Anthony and Joe Russo keep the focus on the characters fans have come to love.
It’s in the third hour the movie loses its human touch, becoming a noisy CGI orgy that must’ve required the power of 1 million networked computers working overtime to render the frenetic images we see on screen.
As for who lives and who dies? (SPOILER ALERT WITH ABSOLUTELY NO REVEAL) You’ll get no hint here. Suffice to say one of the characters says, “part of the journey is the end,” and I can tell you there will be unsigned contracts and actors suddenly free to do other movies that do not require the wearing of spandex.
“Endgame” feels like the end of the old cycle, the beginning of a reset. Old favourites gone, passing the mantle to others before they go. We even see a poster that reads, “Where do we go, now that they’re all gone?” I’m sure the next several Avengers movies will point the way but it is worth noting there are no hints in the post-credit scene because there is no post-credit scene (at least at the screening I saw).
The film has a sense of self-importance that fans will love, giving the characters the respect that franchises owe characters who have made them billions of dollars.
It can be tough to stay in touch with friends after college. People scatter, get married, have kids, don’t answer the phone as much. In real life Joe Tombari and his pals figured out a unique way to stay connected, an elaborate game of tag that has kept them in touch—literally—for more than two decades. “The best thing about the game,” he told “The Guardian,” “is that it has kept us in touch over all these years—it forces us to meet and has formed a strong bond between us, almost like brothers.”
A new film starring Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Jake Johnson, Isla Fisher, Annabelle Wallis, Leslie Bibb, Ed Helms, Hannibal Buress, and Rashida Jones takes Tombari’s game to an extreme.
For one month of each of the last thirty years Hoagie (Helms), Jerry (Renner), Bob (Hamm), Chili (Johnson) and Kevin (Buress) go to war, playing a game of tag with no rules and no prisoners. The last ‘it” of the season lives in shame for the rest of the year.
The latest game overlaps with the wedding of alpha dog Jerry, the only undefeated player. “He’s the best who ever played,” says Hoagie, “and now he wants to retire and make us all look like fools.” The old friends rally to put an end to Jerry’s winning streak.
The movie takes the real life premise and pushes it to extremes. These competitive fools will stop at nothing—including physical harm—to win. It’s a funny idea that does deliver some laughs but ultimately becomes a one-joke premise tarted up with some mild action, a dollop of psychological warfare, some raunchy humour and even a simulated war crime played for yuks. The bromantic chemistry between the guys is good—and Buress with his non-sequitirs and deadpan delivery steals the show—but the film works best before it overindulges in elaborate set pieces. Hoagie disguised as a woman in an attempt to take Jerry by surprise is funny. Jerry’s booby-trapped forest, à la “Apocalypse Now,” pushes the story too far from the core—a friendly movie about male bonding—and into the realm of the ridiculous.
The movie finishes with clips of Tombari and his pals playing the real-life game and suggests that a documentary might have been just as entertaining as the narrative film.
Last year Taylor Sheridan helped breathe new life into the western genre with the script to Hell or High Water. It was a hot and sweaty West Texas crime drama that earned four Oscar nominations. Before that he penned Sicario, the Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro drama about an idealistic FBI agent working with an elite task force to stem the flow of drugs between Mexico and the US.
His latest film, this time as both writer and director, is another neo-western but feels much different. “Wind River” is a wintry murder mystery set on a First Nations Reserve.
“They are each exploration of the modern American frontier,” he says, “a real examination of the exploitation of these areas. [They are also about] fathers managing grief and moving on or overcoming and accepting perceived failures as fathers. I had become a new father when I wrote these and obviously was terrified of the notion of failing my child. So what does a writer do? He imagines the worst scenario and writes about it.”
In the film Jeremy Renner plays Cory Lambert, a Wyoming Fish and Wildlife agent called to a reserve to track a mountain lion that has attacked local livestock. While hunting his prey he discovers the dead body of local teen. She’s miles away from the nearest house, barefoot and frozen solid. Lambert figures she died running away from something or someone until her lungs froze and burst in the 20 below weather. When FBI agent Jane Banner, played by Elizabeth Olsen, arrives the pair soon discover that mountain lions aren’t the most dangerous predators in the area.
Wind River, like his other films, explores social issues. Sicario dove into the soft underbelly of the American war on drugs while Hell or High Water was a financial-crisis drama set against a backdrop of outlaws, buddies and banks. Wind River shines a light on law enforcement’s apathy in investigating the disappearance of indigenous women. All are, as he says, “examinations of grief,” a topic he admits isn’t exactly the stuff of summer blockbusters.
“Obviously the studio system is trying to figure out what most people want to watch and make a movie that appeals to most people,” he says. “I’m not trying to do that. I’m trying to write a film that I want to go see. I assume I am not that unique about things that matter to me. That’s what I do. I can’t go into the writing of a screenplay with concerns about the audience I’m trying to reach or the expense or difficulty of making them. When I am struck with something I care about and I’m curious about the way a character might deal with this issue or that issue, then I explore. I have no regard for who is going to come see it and I can’t.”
Sheridan, who, when he isn’t directing or writing, is also a busy actor, most recently starring on the hit show Sons of Anarchy, says making Wind River was difficult but he’s happy with the film.
“The ultimate goal is to do what you set out to do,” he says, “which is make a movie that excites and entertains and has you thinking about it later. That is the Holy Grail of filmmaking. If I can do that, I’ve done my job.”
Last year Taylor Sheridan helped breathe new life into the western genre with the script to “Hell or High Water.” It was a hot and sweaty West Texas crime drama that earned four Oscar nominations. His latest film is another neo-western but feels much different. “Wind River” is a wintry murder mystery set on a First Nations Reserve.
Jeremy Renner plays Cory Lambert, a Wyoming Fish and Wildlife agent called to the reserve where his ex-wife (Julia Jones) lives to track a mountain lion that has attacked local livestock. While hunting his prey he discovers the dead body of local teen Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Asbille). She’s miles away from the nearest house, barefoot and frozen solid. Lambert figures she died running away from something or someone until her lungs froze and burst in the 20 below weather. When FBI agent
Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) arrives solo she asks Lambert to aid in the hunt for Natalie’s killers. “You’re looking for clues,” Lambert says, “but missing all the signs.” The pair soon discovers that mountain lions aren’t the most dangerous predators in the area.
Sheridan’s scripts (he also directed “Wind River”) explore social issues. “Sicario” dove into the soft underbelly of the American war on drugs while “Hell or High Water” was a financial-crisis drama set against a backdrop of outlaws, buddies and banks. “Wind River” shines a light on law enforcement’s apathy in investigating the disappearance of indigenous women.
Set against the snow and silence of Wyoming mountain country “Wind River” is a much quieter movie than “Sicario” or “Hell or High Water,” and a little more conventional as well. Apart from a gun battle late in the film, there is little in the way of complex drama or action. Instead this is more about location, the harsh climate and the characters.
Sheridan populates the film with compelling characters. Renner is at his craggy best as a man as tough as the land he makes his living on. Olsen is a scrappy presence as a young, inexperienced agent trying to maintain control of the situation.
As Natalie’s grieving father Gil Birmingham (who appeared in “Hell or High Water” as Jeff Bridges’ partner) hands in a steely but soulful performance while Graham Greene brings a world-weary humour to the role of the local sheriff. “This is the land of no back up,” he says to Banner, “it’s the land of your own back up.”
“Wild River” may be set in a winter wonderland—bring a blanket, the iciness is infectious—but despite the abundance of snow Sheridan and his actors insert enough humanity to keep the story’s warm heart beating.
In Arrival, a new humanistic sci fi film from future Blade Runner director Denis Villeneuve, Amy Adams plays a woman who sees life on a fractured timeline, like a Tarantino movie where the beginning is the end and the end is the start.
She plays Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist recruited by the U.S. Military to communicate with giant alien heptapods—think Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons— who have landed in Montana and eleven other sites worldwide. Are the ETs scientists, tourists or warriors?
“Most science fiction movies are about a display of technology or weaponry,” says Villeneuve, “and Arrival is not that at all. It is an intimate story about a linguist who is confronted by a huge challenge. In a way Arrival has some elements of a sci fi movie but it is closer to a strange cultural exchange.”
War of the Worlds this is not. Based on the short story Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, this is an alien invasion film with more in common with the heady sci fi of Andrei Tarkovsky and the crowd-pleasing emotionalism of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s more about the importance of communication—“Language is the first weapon drawn in conflict.”—than alien technology or Independence Day style Martian marauding.
The story is an exploration of the unknown, exactly the thing that sparked Villeneuve’s interest in the script and to the genre in general.
“The vertigo that is created by the unknown,” he says, “that is what attracted me to sci fi.”
The director, who is currently putting the finishing touches on Blade Runner 2049 starring Ryan Gosling, says he was a bit of a Walter Mitty type while growing up in Quebec.
“I was really a dreamer and was surrounded by science fiction coming out of Europe. There is a moment I remember vividly. At a very young age one of my aunts came home one night and she had brought two or three big cardboard boxes filled with magazines. Those magazines were all about sci fi. Those boxes changed my life because the amount of the poetry and creativity among the guys that were drawing those comic strips. They were very strong storytellers. They were all like mad scientists playing with our brains. They really influenced me big time as a youngster and then came the wave of sci fi movies coming out of the US that were so strong at the end of the seventies.”
He cites a Stanley Kubrick masterpiece as a potent example of the kind of sci fi that lit his imagination on fire.
“The biggest impact was 2001: A Space Odyssey,” he says. “The first time I saw it was on television. I remember vividly the vertigo that movie created. Even though I saw it on TV I still think it is one of the most significant cinematic experiences I have had.”
In Arrival Villeneuve takes a page from Kubrick’s playbook and by the time the end credits roll he presents the audience with a climax that is both spacey and grounded.
“It is a privilege when you can take a camera and ask people to sit for two hours in a theatre,” says Villeneuve. “It is nice if you take that privilege to explore something out of our reality, to bring some poetry to it.”
In “Arrival,” a new humanistic sci fi film from future “Blade Runner” director Denis Villeneuve, Amy Adams plays a woman who sees life on a fractured timeline, like a Tarantino movie where the beginning is the end and the end is the start.
Adams is Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist recruited by the U.S. Military to communicate with giant alien heptapods—think Kang and Kodos from “The Simpsons”— who have landed in Montana and eleven other sites worldwide. Are they scientists, tourists or warriors?
“What do they want?” asks Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker). “Where are they from?”
With voices that sound like a Didgeridoo mixed with an out-of-tune electronic tuba and a written language that resembles “The Ring” logo, no answers are immediately forthcoming. Working with theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) Banks slowly forms a bond with the multi-legged ETs. In return she receives a gift from them that changes everything.
“War of the Worlds” this is not. Based on the short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, this is an alien invasion film with more in common with the heady sci fi of Andrei Tarkovsky and the crowd-pleasing emotionalism of Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” It’s more about the importance of communication—“Language is the first weapon drawn in conflict.”—than alien technology or “Independence Day” style Martian marauding. It’s a deliberately paced, contemplative film that suggests an alternative to the old ethos of shooting first and asking questions later. Questions are asked, few are answered but the result is an intelligent but dreamy story that never lets the scene get in the way of the film’s emotional core.
That core is supplied by Adams. As Dr. Louise Banks she dominates the movie. Everyone else, including Renner and Whitaker, are basically window dressing for a performance that bristles with wonder, sadness and yes, even scientific method. Banks may be methodical but Adams isn’t. She wrings every bit of sentiment from a script that tries to balance its cool social accountability with a story that delves into the soul of its main character.
I can’t reveal more about how or why Banks goes about deciphering the alien intentions. The film plays with timelines and by the time the end credits roll “Arrival” has offered the audience an explanation that is both spacey and grounded.
When Rebecca Ferguson was cast as Ilsa Faust in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, the fifth film in the mega Tom Cruise franchise, she didn’t know exactly what she was getting into.
“This is a Mission film,” says the Swedish actress. “You process that in your head. It means action. I don’t know what kind of action, but it will be action. I met Tom Cruise and it was phenomenal. It was welcoming and warm and coffee and chats and laughing and talking. Then we talked about the character and the build up of the script because they were working on it. They were tweaking it. There wasn’t a full script for me to read at that very specific moment but I got the gist of it.”
Ferguson, who is best known for period dramas like BBC’s The White Queen and The Cousin’s War, expected the role would be physical but adds, “they were kind enough not to inform me about the high jumps that were to be held on the first day of shooting.”
She describes her first stunt, a seventy-five foot leap from the roof of the Vienna Opera House, as, “completely, absolutely gob-smackingly terrifying.”
“I told them, ‘Look, I’m great underwater. I dive. I love all that. Jumping off buildings? I’m thinking no.’ They said, ‘That’s fine. We have stunt doubles.’ I went, ‘Stunt doubles? No, no, no, no, no. What do I have to do?’”
For weeks she trained six hours a day to meet the physical demands of the shoot and mentally prepared to overcome her vertigo for the Opera House stunt.
“We just worked our way up and got to seventy-five feet,” she says. “I did the jump.”
What went through her mind as she stepped off the building? “Don’t look down and keep your legs wrapped tightly around Tom. Jump and look cool.”
She says she was not forced into the stunt and could always have said no, but ultimately enjoyed doing it “I love the intensity of the action sequences. There is an energy that is just incredible and your heart is beating.”
The thirty-two year-old actress, who will next be seen opposite Meryl Streep in the Stephen Frears film Florence Foster Jenkins, says in those moments of stress she becomes very focussed. Later though, the weight of the situation sinks in.
“After,” she says, “it hits me. I go, ‘Is that Tom Cruise? Am I kicking ass with Tom Cruise?’”
Check the IMDB page for Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation. You’ll learn that Tom Cruise clung to the outside of an Airbus A400M at an elevation of 5000 feet, held his breath for six minutes underwater and performed dangerous driving scenes all without the aid of an on-camerahttps://metronewsca.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php stuntperson.
It’s not that he is trying to break the stunt union or put anyone out of work. Instead it is Cruise’s commitment to making sure the stunts in his films have a true, palpable sense of danger to them.
Much of what we see on screen these days is computer generated, illusions made up of bits and bytes, but many of the truly eye catching images we’ve seen in movies this summer were created the old fashioned way.
Remember the “car drop” scene from Furious 7? Stunt co-ordinator (and former Knight Rider stunt driver) Jack Gill actually arranged for autos to be launched out of a C-130 Hercules four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft. They shot the scene twice. First aerial photographers in parachutes followed the cars as they dove from an altitude of 12,000 feet and then again from 8000 feet to get helicopter shots. The result is a wild sequence that feels like a rollercoaster ride with real cars.
After years of “following the CG evolution,” using computer generated images to create beautiful animated films like Happy Feet and Babe: A Pig in the City, Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller says he was keen to go back to “old school” filmmaking “with real cars and real people and real desert.”
That means, unlike the Avengers and their ilk, respecting the laws of physics by using practical effects and keeping the action earthbound. In other words, in a call back to the original Max films — Mad Max, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome — when a car blows up it doesn’t rocket into space. Instead it explodes spectacularly but organically. The wild action you see in Fury Road are actual stunts performed by stunt men and women and not generated by a clever computer operator in a studio. “It was like going back to your old home town and looking at it anew,” Miller says.
Nicholas Hoult, who plays Nux in Fury Road, says having the stunts performed for real added to his performance.
“Because it was all real it actually makes your job a lot easier,” he said. “Rather than being on a stage and having to pretend that things are happening around you and react to nothing, things are actually happening and your reactions are real.”
Carla Gugino says there was quite a bit of greenscreen action in her earthquake movie San Andreas, but adds director Brad Peyton “wanted to do as much in camera as possible.”
In one pivotal scene she and Dwayne Johnson are in a helicopter flying above the carnage.
“The helicopter was in a stage, on a greenscreen,” she says, “but was on a gimbal many, many feet up that literally dropped, dove and spun. We were twenty-five feet off the ground.”
“I think it makes a difference in watching the movie too. It feels much more viscerally connected.”
So filmmakers and actors love giving audiences the real deal thrill of practical effects, but how did Tom Cruise, what feel about hanging on to the side of an aircraft in full flight?
