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 thrills of “Black Bag,” the speculative “Can I Get A Witness?” and the psychological satire of “Opus.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I joined CP24 Breakfast to have a look at new movies coming to theatres, including the spy drama “Black Bag” and the psychedelic psychodrama “Opus” and the Crave comedy “The Trades.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres including the thrills of “Black Bag,” the speculative “Can I Get A Witness?,” the psychological satire of “Opus,” the action of “Novocaine” and the aniimated antics of “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I review the espionage thriller “Black Bag” and suggest drinks that real spies–not movie spies–drink when they are on assignment.
Listen to Shane and I talk about why the TV show “Severance” is making dogs go wild HERE!
What would a real spy order at a cocktail bar? Listen to “Booze & Reviews” and find out!
SYNOPSIS: In “Black Bag,” a new thriller from director Steven Soderbergh, and now playing in theaters, Michael Fassbender plays a methodical spy who must choose between his country and his wife when a dangerous device is stolen, and she is a prime suspect.
CAST: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, and Pierce Brosnan. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp.
REVIEW: “What’s on the menu?” asks Kathryn Woodhouse (Cate Blanchett) asks her husband George (Fassbender) at the film’s start.
“Fun and games,” he replies, and he ain’t lying.
Like John le Carré meets “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” “Black Bag” is a dialogue driven spy drama fueled by star power rather than fire power.
Steven Soderbergh, working from a script by his frequent collaborator David Koepp, creates a stylish, slick and suspenseful London-based thriller where people say cool spy things like, “This ends with someone in the boot of a car.”
At the helm is Fassbender. A master spy and happily married man, he’s a buttoned-down character in the John le Carré mode. He’s not a James Bond style bruiser. He’s reserved, a cold fish who once even put his own father under surveillance, concerned only with data and gathering cold hard facts. After one eventful dinner with all his suspects he says, “That was the rock, now I watch the ripples.”
Still, he generates heat in his scenes with Blanchett. They’re both spies, and as such, live in a world where there are secrets and not everything is what it seems to be. Their cat and mouse relationship is effervescent, providing sex appeal, domestic drama and intrigue as the limits of loyalty are tested. Their relationship just may give new meaning to the term, “I would die for you.”
A strong supporting cast—“Industry’s” Marisa Abela, “Mank’s” Tom Burke, “No Time to Die’s” Naomie Harris, “Bridgerton’s” Regé-Jean Page and Pierce Brosnan—add much but the real star here is Soderbergh and his crisp, fast paced and stylish filmmaking. Offset by a chic electrojazz score by David Holmes (who also scored “Out of Sight” and the “Ocean’s” trilogy), “Black Bag” slowly untangles its web of deception and keeps you guessing until the end.
LOGLINE: The Amy Winehouse (Marisa Abela) biopic “Back to Black,” now playing in theatres, details the chaotic relationship with husband Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell) that inspired the internationally best-selling album “Back to Black.”
CAST: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, and Lesley Manville. Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and written by Matt Greenhalgh.
REVIEW: With all the depth and curiosity of a Wikipedia page, “Back to Black” attempts to tell the tale of a complicated artist who left a mark, but who left us too soon. Painted in the broadest of strokes, this sad story of sex, drugs and jazz is buoyed somewhat by Marisa Abela, who looks and sounds like the late singer, but instead of becoming a well-rounded character, Winehouse comes across as a walking, talking attitude with an impressive beehive hairdo and an alcohol problem.
An early scene detailing the writing of “What Is It About Men” hints at what is to come. Struck by a bolt of inspiration, she sings, “My destructive side has grown a mile wide.” It’s a shame, then, that “Back to Black” wallows in Winehouse’s self-destruction.
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson, working from a script by Matt Greenhalgh, tiptoes around many of the story’s landmines—the intrusive paparazzi, the exploitation she suffered by those close to her—to focus on the doomed romance with Fielder-Civil. “I need to live my songs,” she says, and her relationship certainly did inspire many of “Back to Black’s” songs, but the focus on her obsessive love, punctuated by the occasional musical performance, shifts the focus from the joy of making music to the story’s tawdry aspects.
Amy Winehouse was a singular artist, a fearless performer who made her own rules, and dug deep to create her art. So, it’s a shame her biopic is such a standard cautionary tale that skims the surface. Recommended instead is “Amy,” director Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary that carefully, and fulsomely, examines the life of a person who, as Tony Bennett says, didn’t live long enough to learn how to live.
