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 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.”
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I give you the perfect libation to enjoy while watching “Wolf Man.”
SYNOPSIS: “Wolf Man,” now playing in theatres, is a new take on the 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. horror classic. Set in the Pacific Northwest, the story sees Blake and his family barricade themselves inside a farmhouse following an attack by a strange feral creature. “What was that thing? It sounded like an animal. But I swear to God it was standing on two feet.” As the animal lurks outside something insidious begins to happen inside the house. “’What’s wrong with Daddy?” asks daughter Ginger.
CAST: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger, Ben Prendergast, Benedict Hardie, Zac Chandler, Beatriz Romilly, Milo Cawthorne. Directed by Leigh Whannell.
REVIEW: The Wolf Man has always been a tragic figure. A man and a monster, the cursed character is an unwitting victim of an animal bite that transforms him into a bloodthirsty werewolf. Through no fault of his own he is a villain, but, as “Wolf Man” suggests, he’s also a victim. “What’s happening to me?” Blake asks.
The story begins as Blake’s (Christopher Abbott) estranged father goes missing and is presumed dead. When Blake inherits his dad’s rural Oregon property, he sees an opportunity to mend his tattered marriage to Charlotte (Julia Garner) with a trip away from their big city San Francisco life.
With daughter Ginger (Matlida Firth) in tow they set off, but as the trio approach their destination, they’re attacked by someone, or something. Locking themselves inside Blake’s isolated childhood home, Charlotte notices changes in her husband’s behavior. Blake says, “’It’s a little too dangerous for us to go outside right now,” but as he begins to transform, the real danger may already be in the house.
Director Leigh Whannell’s take on the werewolf story has as much to do with David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” as it does with George Waggner’s 1941 “The Wolf Man.” Gone from the traditional werewolf story are any religious or supernatural elements. This is a story of an infection—or, as one character calls it, “a disease” typical to the rural region—and the life changing effects it has, not only on Blake, but also on his family.
It’s an allegory, with a horror twist, for any disease that strips away physical and mental health.
Blake’s transformation into a beast happens slowly. He doesn’t collapse behind a desk and emerge as a hairy handed gent. As his humanity gradually slips away his teeth fall out, his senses are heightened—a spider crawling up a wall sounds like an eight-legged timpani drum—and his grip on reality erodes. Whannell uses POV shots to illustrate the otherworldly visions Blake sees, effectively displaying how his take on the world is changing.
The horror here comes from Blake’s transformation, his struggle to contain the beast within as Charlotte and Ginger stand by, watching the man they once knew slowly disappear.
As such, it’s also a family drama, a love story of a sort and a monster movie that never lets go of its humanity.
But this is also a movie that wants to deliver scares. To that end there is dimly lit atmosphere, some creepy shadows and the odd jump scare but, as Blake shifts from victim to villain, Whannell stages gorier moments—like one involving a bear trap—that will linger in the memory.
“Wolf Man” is ambitious in its reinvention of the werewolf myth as an allegory for sickness. Light on plot and dialogue, it delivers its message effectively, even if Julia Garner, so great in “Ozark,” isn’t given more to do. In a performance that is mostly wide-eyed and reactional, she often disappears into the film’s thick atmospherics.
Despite that, “Wolf Man” is a smart reinvention of a story we’ve seen many times before.
Richard makes a Bloody Mess, the perfect cocktail to enjoy while having a drink and a think about “Spiral: From the Book of Saw,” the latest chapter in the “Saw” franchise.
“And Justice for All,” the last four words of the American Pledge of Allegiance, sum up the dynamic of “Spiral: From the Book of ‘Saw,’” the ninth instalment of the “Saw” franchise, now playing in theatres.
On one hand you have a murderer dispensing their own brand of justice; inventively slaughtering people who have broken a twisted moral code known only to the killer. For instance, a detective who has lied on the stand many times, is given the choice, provide justice by tearing out his own lying tongue, or be killed. “Live or die. Make your choice.”
Then, there are the police who must use more traditional means to enforce their brand of justice.
It might not be exactly what Congress had in mind, but in the “Saw” universe there is more than one definition of the word justice.
Chris Rock is Zeke Banks, an idealistic-but-disillusioned big city detective trying to get out from under the shadow of his father Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson), a decorated, hero cop and retired police chief. When Zeke and his partner, an eager rookie named William Shenk (Max Minghella), catch an unusual, grisly case, the game is afoot.
Literally.
A new serial killer, playing from the same gamebook as the notorious villain Jigsaw, who put his victims through deadly scenarios he referred to as “games” or “tests,” is terrorizing the city’s dirty cops, looking to avenge wrongs perpetrated by the South Metro Police and “reform” the department. “A Jigsaw copycat,” says Marcus. “That could be difficult.”
As the bodies pile up Zeke suspects the killer isn’t just playing around, that he has another motive. Something personal.
After eight instalments of the “Saw” franchise, countless deadly traps and one iconic baddie, “Spiral” finds a newish way in to tell an old story. Billy the Puppet and Jigsaw are gone, as is much of the gore that splattered the screen in earlier incarnations of the series. They’ve been replaced with a timely but underdeveloped subtext regarding police corruption and the addition of humor, an element often sorely lacking from previous instalments.
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, who helmed the second, third and fourth “Saw” movies, “Spiral” is as character based as it is consequence based. Bousman, and “Jigsaw” screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger, have dialed back the grim stuff. There are still enough traps and gore to keep “Saw” purists happy—there’s a finger ripping machine and some nasty hot wax—but an increased emphasis on character raises the stakes so the gory stuff has more impact. It’s still a horror film, but Bousman structures it like a thriller, even if his reliance on flashbacks and exposition mutes some of the thrills.
There’s also loads of uninspired hard-boiled dialogue and lots of yelling but also just enough of the nasty stuff and deadly game playing to keep fans satisfied.
The spiral logo that gives the movie its name is supposed to be emblematic of change and progress, but the movie doesn’t quite live up to the symbol’s meaning. It shakes some of the dust off the old franchise without reinventing it or doing justice to it.
The new thriller from Leigh Whannell, the co-creator of “Saw” and “Insidious,” is part ripped-from-the-headlines, part “Twilight Zone.” News outlets are reporting on the trend of implanting microchips to function as contactless credit cards and key cards in humans. Whannell took that premise, ran it through the RodSerling-izer™ and added a dollop of “RoboCop” to come up with a silly and sentient piece of sci fi.
Set sometime in the near future “Upgrade” sees mechanic Grey Trace (Logan Marshall Green), an “unaugmented” man in an increasingly augmented world. Microchips and other human upgrades are common, but Grey is old fashioned, favoring humanity over any kind of mechanization. In a world of self-driving cars and “energy walls” he’s a DIY guy. When four strangers murder his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) and leave him a quadriplegic he is wheelchair-bound and depressed until he is offered a unique opportunity.
One of his former clients, tech wizard Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson), offers to implant a chip called STEM, kind of an auxiliary brain, into Grey’s spine. The bio mechanic enhancement would leave him “ungraded, better, stronger and faster than everyone else,” and, of course, in perfect shape to get bloody revenge on the men who killed his wife and shattered his life.
Like Whannell’s other movies “Upgrade” is a dark, atmospheric and grim film. Blood flows but so do ideas about our addiction to computers and what happens when machines start thinking for themselves. But don’t worry, it’s not that heady. Like all good idea-soaked sci fi b-movies, it’s more about engaging your gut with visceral, i.e. violent, action, and even some humour. It’s gutsy and gory futurist Cronenberg-esque body horror made interesting by the speed at which technology approaches some of the film’s ideas about biotechnology.
“Upgrade” becomes conventional when the police procedural subplot kicks in but until then it is B-movie fun.