LOGLINE: In the live-action/animated fantasy comedy “IF,” a tragedy gives teenager Bea (Cailey Fleming) the power to see the imaginary friends—“IFs” for short—left behind as their real life friends age and mature. When she discovers her adult neighbor Cal (Ryan Reynolds) has the same gift, they work together to reconnect adults with their childhood Ifs.
CAST: John Krasinski (who also directs), Cailey Fleming, Ryan Reynolds, Fiona Shaw, Alan Kim, Liza Colón-Zayas, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr., Steve Carell,
REVIEW: “IF” is a contemplative story about the importance of friends, imaginary or not, experiencing grief and loss and the power of imagination. Although told from a twelve-year-old point of view, it is more an exercise in wistful nostalgia than kid’s adventure. Writer and director John Krasinski has a lot on his mind, and infuses the story with an unexpectedly healthy dose of melancholy.
The storytelling is a little bumpy, and the pace a bit slow, but it packs an emotional punch as Bea comes to understand her life through interactions with the IFs and their humans. Fleming’s performance cuts through, standing apart from the flashier IF characters (voiced by a-listers like Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Awkwafina and Bradley Cooper) and even the perennial scene-stealer Reynolds, who hands in his least Ryan Reynoldsy performance in years.
Part “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” part Spielbergian childhood drama, “IF” is a tad darker than the trailers suggest, and tries a little too hard to strum the heartstrings but as it leans into sentimentality it pays off with a message of the importance connection.
We all know that Jor-El and Lara, sent their infant son Kal-El to Earth minutes before their planet Krypton self-destructed. Less known is the story of Kal-El’s Kryptonian Labrador Retriever, the boy’s faithful best friend, who leapt into the Earth-bound spaceship to start a new life on the little blue planet third from the sun. “Look after our son,” Jor-El says as the ship careens out of sight in “DC League of Super Pets,” a new animated movie now playing in theatres.
When we meet them on Earth they are now settled in Metropolis and are known as Clark Kent a.k.a. Superman (John Krasinski) and Bark Kent a.k.a. Krypto (Dwayne Johnson). “I’m his ride or die,” Krypto brags. They live the lives of best friends, sharing an apartment, watching their favorite cooking shows on the Food Network and fighting crime. “My only friend is Superman,” Krypto sings to John Williams’ “Superman” theme. They are inseparable, except for the time Superman spends with his girlfriend, and Daily Planet reporter, Lois Lane (Olivia Wilde).
Sensing that Krypto needs a friend, Superman visits the local animal rescue, just as Ace (Kevin Hart), is making a run for it. In the cage above him is Lulu (Kate McKinnon), a hairless guinea pig who was once a test subject for Superman’s archenemy Lex Luthor (Marc Maron). The supervillain is experimenting with orange kryptonite, a variation of the green kryptonite that saps Superman’s powers.
In a battle of the superheroes and supervillains, Superman and Krypto are hobbled by green kryptonite while the orange kryptonite empowers Ace, Lulu and the other rescue animals. “I figured out something Lex didn’t know,” Lulu gloats. “Orange doesn’t work on people. It only works on pets!”
It is revealed that Lulu is an evil genius who, with the help of her newly recruited injustice squad, plans on reuniting with Luthor and putting an end to the work of the Justice Squad, Wonder Woman (Jameela Jamil), Aquaman (Jemaine Clement), The Flash (John Early), Cyborg (Daveed Diggs), Batman (Keanu Reeves) and Green Lantern (Dascha Polanco).
Now, it’s up to Krypto, with the help of Ace and the other super pets, to rescue Superman and the world savers.
“DC League of Super Pets” tries hard to mold the superhero movie formula into a kid-friendly shape. For much of the movie director Jared Stern succeeds. Supes and Krypto have a good ‘n goofy relationship, punctuated by funny banter and antics. Everyday chores, like dog walking are given a superhero spin as Superman and Krypto’s daily constitutional becomes a supersonic flight around the world, powered by their extranormal abilities.
Kids should also get a kick out of fun characters like McKinnon’s sarcastically sinister Lulu, the Natasha Lyonne-voiced Merton McSnurtle, the turtle with superspeed, and a cat who coughs up hand grenade furballs. Parents should appreciate the good life lessons about team work, sharing, learning by listening and being true to yourself to unlock your true powers, while getting a laugh out of the film’s more self-aware moments. “Every superhero struggles to learn their powers, “ says PB (Vanessa Bayer), a potbellied pig who can change size at will, “until they have their training montage.”
But, and there is a but, the movie eventually goes the way of all superhero movies and devolves into a loud, messy climax that feels as though it doesn’t line up with the kid friendly action that came before it.
“DC League of Super Pets” doesn’t have the same sense of fun as “The Lego Batman Movie,” and sticks too closely to the adult style of storytelling we’ve come to expect from superhero movies—there are even two after credit scenes—but it does deliver some cute characters and a handful of superlaughs.
What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Five! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movies to stream, rent or buy from the comfort of home isolation. Today, too much money, a murderous game and SSSHHH! They’re listening!
John Krasinski didn’t just direct and star in the thriller A Quiet Place — he and wife Emily Blunt actually lived it. Sort of.
“One night she said, ‘Living silently would be hard,’” he says. “As the weeks went by we would constantly make note of it. It wasn’t even just getting silverware to make the kid’s lunch. It was more like you’re putting the kids to bed and the bed creaks. You think, we are legitimately surrounded by sound.”
The famous couple star as parents fighting for the survival of their kids in a world invaded by monsters that use sound to hunt human prey. The family must live in silence, use sign language and eat off leaves to avoid the clinking of cutlery on china but what happens when their newborn baby cries? Can life go on?
Krasinski, who starred as Jim Halpert on The Office for eight years, calls the spec script “truly one of the best ideas I’d ever heard,” but admits worrying “that a lack of dialogue would be a thing.”
“Then on about Day 2 or 3 was, ‘Wait a minute. Maybe the thing I am most scared of is our superpower. This is actually super engaging.’ The fact that people are going to be able to experience sound in a completely different way was really fun.”
The silence of the first half of A Quiet Place is deafening. In the way that many filmmakers use bombast to grab your attention Krasinski uses the absence of sound to focus the audience on the situation.
“One of my favourite things about this whole experience has been listening to audiences understand what’s happening,” he says. “Usually the first thirty seconds of the movie you hear people shifting in their seats. Maybe they take a couple bites of popcorn. Then you realise collectively in the room people say, ‘I can’t do this.’ I love that.”
Krasinski and Blunt have been married since 2010 and have two children, Hazel and Violet, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t nervous to ask her to co-star in the film.
“I always wanted Emily to do it but the two versions of this in my head were going to go really wrong. I ask her to do it and she says no, which makes dinner really awkward. Or she says yes, ‘For you I’ll do it.’ I didn’t want her to choose this for me and have it be a weird experience. I’ve seen how good a career she has because of what she’s chosen to do. I needed her to come to it on her own.
“When she asked me to read the script I didn’t think she’d say yes. She was doing Mary Poppins and we had our second child, so she was busy. Then she said, ‘You can’t let anybody else do this role.’ I know it sounds corny but it is true. It is still the greatest compliment of my career because I know what it takes for her to say yes.”
As director, writer, star and executive producer Krasinski has had a hand in all aspects of A Quiet Place. How does he feel now that the film is winning critical raves? “It goes back to that primal thing of the kids at school thinking what you think is cool, is cool.”
Imagine living in complete silence. Never raising your voice over the level of a faint whisper. No music. No heavy footsteps. You can’t even sneeze. Silence. Then imagine your life depends on staying completely noiseless. That’s the situation for the Abbott family—and the rest of the world—in the effective new thriller “A Quiet Place.”
Real life couple John Krasinski (who also wrote, produced and directed) and Emily Blunt are Lee and Evelyn, a mother and father fighting for the survival of their kids Beau (Cade Woodward), Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus (Noah Jupe) in a world where making a sound, any sound, can be deadly. Deadly blind aliens who hunt their prey through sound have invaded the world turning noisy people into human cold cuts. The family lives in silence, using sign language and eating off leaves to avoid the clinking of cutlery on china but what happens when a newborn baby cries? Can life go on?
The silence of the first half of “A Quiet Place” is deafening. There is no spoken dialogue for forty minutes, just dead air. In the way that many filmmakers use bombast to grab your attention Krasinski uses the absence of sound to focus the audience on the situation. Very little information is passed along. We don’t know where the aliens came from, why they’re terrorizing earth or how many there are. Ditto the Abbotts. We know nothing about them. The connection the family feels is transmitted through looks and actions, not words. This isn’t a story where character development is important, it’s a tale of survival pure and simple.
Tension grows in the first, artier half and pays dividends in the second more genre-based half. Set up out of the way Krasinski raises the stakes, putting the family directly in the way of the creatures. Like all good genre movies as the story escalates it becomes not simply about predatory monsters, all teeth and giant ears, but about a universal truth. In this case it is about a parent’s primal need to protect their kids at any cost. Krasinski nails this, providing both the b-movie thrills and chills necessary to the genre and a deep undercurrent of humanity.
He’s aided by the actors. Blunt is all poignancy and strength. Krasinski brings stoicism while the kids make us care about the family.
“A Quiet Place” is a nervy little film. Other filmmakers might have tried to find a way to wedge in more dialogue or spell things out more clearly but the beauty of Krasinski’s approach is its simplicity. Uncluttered and low key, it’s a unique and unsettling horror film.
Hollywood has a long tradition of bending history to suit their stories.
For instance the title of the historical disaster film Krakatoa: East of Java is a geographical head-scratcher. Krakatoa was actually west of Java. In 10,000 BC woolly mammoths are used as labour to build the pyramids in Egypt. That’s Hollywood history. Woolly mammoths weren’t desert creatures and the pyramids weren’t built until 2500 BC. Then there’s Mel Gibson’s wardrobe from the future in Braveheart. The movie is set in the late 13th century, but the kilts he wears didn’t come into existence until 300 years later.
The movie theatre is definitely not Mr. Parker’s history class.
Detroit, the new film from Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow, aims to bring historical accuracy back to the big screen. The movie focuses on the Algiers Motel Incident, the most infamous episode of the Detroit riots of the summer of 1967. The shocking story details how young African-American men and women sought the safety of the motel only to come under fire from police who handled them as revolutionaries. When it was done three young African-America men lay dead, shot, allegedly at close range. None of the officers charged with the Algiers murders were convicted.
“The Algiers Motel is a real American tragedy,” says Bigelow. “One of the most important aspects of preparing this movie was to spend time with the people who actually lived it.”
Filming this important slice of history brings with it the responsibility of getting it right. To that end Bigelow, screenwriter and former journalist Mark Boal and investigative reporter David Zeman, did considerable research. “My marching orders were to find as many of the principles as I could who could tell us something about their perspective on what happened,” said Zeman.
That may be so, but even the best-researched true-life drama brings with it a degree of artistic licence. Take for instance Bigelow’s last movie, Zero Dark Thirty. She called it a “reported film,” suggesting it existed somewhere in the murky middle between drama and documentary, yet it drew fire from critics (including the CIA) who felt it exaggerated the enhanced interrogation techniques allegedly used in the search for Bin Laden. So despite the opening credit claim that the movie was “Based on Firsthand Accounts of Actual Events” it may have fudged some facts.
So while there’s nothing in Detroit as egregious as Season of the Witch’s plague outbreak 76 years before the Black Death struck, it will not be a 100 per cent true and accurate representation of real life — it’s not possible. What it can do, however, is open a dialogue about the past, and in Detroit’s case, the present.
In a statement Charles Ferrell, the director of public programs of Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History said the film, “echoes the current proliferation of extra-judicial fatal shootings of African Americans by police who have been exonerated and highlights the major issue of criminal police violence and racial injustice that this nation must face and resolve through dialogue and corrective actions.”
Perhaps instead of looking at Detroit as a historical document it might be better used as a springboard for further study and conversation into the systemic racism that allowed the Algiers Motel Incident to happen and why so little has changed in the intervening years.
There is a disclaimer at the end of “Detroit,” Kathryn Bigelow’s latest look back at our recent history. Before the final credits roll a title card reads something to the effect that the details of the bloody Algiers Motel Incident, the most infamous episode of the Detroit riots of the summer of 1967, were pieced together from available sources and eye witness accounts.
It reminds us that what we have just seen is an interpretation of history and not a strict, unequivocal statement of fact. The title card may be a reaction to the backlash that followed Bigelow last film “Zero Dark Thirty.” She called that film, a look at the decade long hunt for Osama bin Laden, a “reported film,” suggesting it existed somewhere in the murky middle between drama and documentary. Despite her claim the film drew fire from critics (including the CIA) who felt it exaggerated the enhanced interrogation techniques allegedly used in the search for Bin Laden.
Her new film is every bit as provocative but whereas “Zero Dark Thirty” felt of its time, “Detroit,” despite its 1967 setting, feels ripped from the headlines. It uses historical fact and dramatization as an urgent plea for further study and conversation into the systemic racism that enabled Detroit police to murder three young African American men and why so little has changed in the intervening years.
The film begins with a police raid of an unlicensed nightclub filled with African American men and women enjoying a drink, some music and each other’s company. Manhandling men and women alike the raid attracts the attention of the entire neighbourhood. As club goers are forced into paddy wagons for the crime of congregating and having a drink, cries of “You can’t do that,” erupt into rage and the frustrated shouts change to “Burn it down.” A riot breaks out leading to looting, curfews and mass arrests.
The story splinters to introduce Philip Krauss (Will Poulter), a racist trigger-happy Detroit cop who justifies gunning down a man who stole a bag of groceries because, “They’re destroying the city.”
Nearby are Larry Cleveland Reed (Algee Smith) and Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore), a wannabe Motown singer and his best friend respectively. When Larry’s big debut at the Fox Theatre is scuttled because of the riot outside the theatre’s doors he Fred head to the Algiers, a nearby hotel, “until all this slows down.”
The laid back vibe at the Algiers seems a million miles away from the violence on the street, which by this point has seen 3200 people arrested and blocks of Detroit burned to the ground. Larry and Fred meet some girls (Hannah Murray and Kaitlyn Dever), listen to John Coltrane and feel safe until another resident, Carl Cooper (Jason Mitchell), shoots a starter’s pistol out the window. “We should teach those pigs a lesson,” he says. The police below, including Krauss, think a sniper is shooting at them and invade the building, guns drawn. By the time their “investigation” is done three young African-America men lay dead, shot at close range.
The lone uniformed voice of reason comes from Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), a security guard in a grocery store down the street from the Algiers who tries his best to prevent bloodshed.
“Detroit” is an uncomfortable, gruelling watch. The physical intimidation, racially based violence, murders utilized against Reed, Temple and others as they plead innocence, is sickening. “I will kill you one by one until I find out what’s happening here,” says Krauss. Using psychological games and hard-core interrogation tactics he (and a handful of others) terrorizes his suspects and it is gut wrenching. Bigelow has a historical POV setting up the story and in the subsequent court case but her handling of the interrogation sequences is pure psychological horror. Claustrophobic and violent, it is as compelling as it is abhorrent.
Bigelow uses archival footage and stills to set the stage but it is a combo of her kinetic, muscular filmmaking and strong performances that make an impression. Boyega channels a young Denzel Washington, radiating decency while Poulter is a snarling ogre who revels in the powerlessness and dehumanization of his victims. As a paratrooper recently returned from Vietnam Anthony Mackie is a stoic presence amid the chaos.
Best of the bunch is Algee Smith as the young singer whose dreams are crushed when the Fox Theatre is evacuated just before his debut. While the dirty cops assert that “one bad minute shouldn’t define their lives,” it is through Smith’s performance that the long term effects of the Algiers event are the most tangible. The repercussions of that vicious, lawless night echo throughout his psyche, changing him forever.
The story in “Detroit” is fifty years old but the names of Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Michael Brown Jr., Ezell Ford, Dante Parker or any number of others who have been killed at the hands of the police in recent times, echo throughout.
Making a war movie is hard work with long hours and tough conditions. According to 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi star Pablo Schreiber making a war movie with Michael Bay is extra difficult.
“Everyone who has worked with Michael Bay has told me the set can be a challenging place to work,” he says of the Transformers director. “I got all these stories to prepare but ultimately nothing anybody says can prepare you for that experience. He works faster than any director working. We do about 75 set ups a day, which is massive especially when each of them is like its own action sequence. It’s an insane amount of work. He demands a lot from you. It’s very necessary that you come prepared, that you are ready to perform any piece of the movie at any given time.”
The Canadian born actor and winner of the We Love to Hate You Award at the 2014 Young Hollywood Awards for his work as George “Pornstache” Mendez on Orange Is the New Black, says Bay took him by surprise during the 2015 shoot in Malta.
“There’s a scene at the end where a convoy is rolling in and we don’t know if they are friendly or bad,” he says, “and it is one of the emotional peaks of the movie. For me it was a scene I had checked off as an actor as one I had to be ready and prepared for. Then he shot it a week before we were supposed to shoot it. I had about five minutes to prepare. He said, ‘Let’s go on the roof and get that last sequence.’ He started setting up cranes. To be ready at any moment for whatever he’s going to throw at you is very important. As actors all six of us ended leaving there feeling like if we had gotten through that experience we could deal with anything.”
When I ask if the chaotic set conditions were Bay’s way of not so subtly exposing his actors to the same kind of unpredictable situations their characters were dealing with, he laughed.
“I’m not sure how much forethought was put into that vibe, but it was definitely effective and it works. As actors we were constantly disoriented and didn’t quite know where we were and didn’t know where we were going to be on any given day.”
Schreiber plays Kris “Tanto” Paronto, a former U.S. Army Ranger who was one of six CIA security contractors working in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 when when well-armed Libyan militants—using weapons pilfered from former Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi’s abandoned arsenals—invaded the American embassy. Their attempt to rescue ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and Foreign Service Information officer Sean Smith led to a harrowing thirteen-hour battle.
The thirty-seven year old actor met Tanto and says he felt a great responsibility in playing a real person who was on set and would eventually see the film but adds that director Bay tried to keep show the humanity of the story’s heroes.
“Michael Bay made this movie and he normally make these big extravaganzas but this is not a superhero movie,” he says. “This is a movie about very, very real human beings who behaved extraordinarily under the most difficult circumstances.”
The word subtle is never used in reference to Michael Bay. On film the “Transformers” filmmaker has never left a bullet unfired or ever met a building he didn’t want to blow up. His films are frenetic odes to carnage and his latest one, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” takes a page out of the recent past and gives it the Bay Bias.
Based on the 2013 nonfiction book “13 Hours” by Mitchell Zuckoff, the bulk of the film takes place on the eleventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Rone Woods (James Badge Dale), Jack Da Silva (John Krasinski), Oz Geist (Max Martini), Bub Doherty (Toby Stephens), Tanto Paronto (Pablo Schreiber) and Boon (David Denman) are tough guys with 1000 yards stares. They are former Navy SEALS, Marine Force Recon and Army Special Forces now working as CIA security contractors in in Benghazi, Libya in a top-secret facility so undercover it doesn’t officially exist.
The city is a hellhole known as the most violent place on earth. When well-armed Libyan militants—using weapons pilfered from former Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi’s abandoned arsenals—invade the American embassy the contractors, located about a mile away from the attack, want to help but are ordered to stand down by their on-site CIA chief. As the fighting intensifies they spring into action—“Things change fast in Benghazi,” they snarl.—launching a rescue mission for ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and Foreign Service Information officer Sean Smith.
There’s more—things blow up and bullets fly—and it is public record, but there will be no spoilers here.
“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is a fast and furious look at an event the ripples of which are still being felt today, but this is a Michael Bay movie so it is unburdened by the weight of controversy. Instead the politics are downplayed—there is no mention of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or President Obama—and it is presented as an action film.
On that level it works. Bay knows how to build tension and entertain the eye. He indulges his artier side with some beautifully composed photography and throws in some interesting details to bring the action alive. For instance, the city is such a chaotic place the locals barely notice the mounting violence as they watch soccer as buildings explode just down the block. “Just another Tuesday night in Benghazi,” says Da Silva.
Unfortunately Bay is so in love with his images he drops the ball on the story. This is a tale of men who stepped up and put their lives on the line despite bureaucratic interference. The contractors should be complex characters, balancing their stateside lives with their training as warriors and while the movie tries to explore that divide, it does so in the most Michael Bay way as possible. Instead of investigating the things that drive them we are treated to an sketchy subplot regarding Da Silva’s family that sheds little light on how his job affects his wife and daughters or vice versa. No amount of scenes showing these men Skyping with their families or lovingly gazing at photos of their babies will do enough to humanize them when they are so underwritten. Bay emphasizes the action in Benghazi, but choses to ignore the emotional side except in the most superficial of ways.
“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” could have been a fascinating and timely study of men juggling their jobs with complicated families lives but instead it is just another Michael Bay movie.
