Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Jennifer Burke to have a look at new movies coming to VOD and streaming services, including Johnny Knoxville and the unnatural acts of “Jackass Forever,” the reboot of “Scream,” the unhappily ever after fairy tale “The King’s Daughter” AND the great punk rock doc “Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Everything old is new again.
It’s been more than a quarter of a century since the original “Scream,” starring David Arquette, Neve Campbell and Drew Barrymore, reinvented the slasher genre with a scary, funny and self-reverential take on things that go stab in the night.
Three sequels later, there’s a new edition, the inventively titled “Scream.” It’s the fifth film in the series, and they’re not calling it a sequel. It is, God help us, a relaunch, or, as they call it in the movie, a “requel.”
A mix of new and old characters, “Scream” takes place in Woodsboro, California, a sleepy little town whose peace and quiet was interrupted twenty-five years ago by a killer in the now iconic Ghostface mask.
The action in the new film gets underway as a new Ghostface killer sets their sights, and knife, on Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), a teenage senior at Woodsboro High who enjoys “elevated horror.” (MILD SPOILER) Unlike the opening scene characters before her, Tara survives and is tended to by older sister Sam (Melissa Barrera) whose thorny history with Ghostface makes the pair a target for the masked killer.
As Ghostface’s killing spree continues, Sam turns to the old guard, Dewey Riley (David Arquette), television morning show host Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), for help.
“Scream” is much cleverer than the retread title and recycled killer would suggest. It continues the meta commentary on the rules characters in slasher movies must abide by if they expect to survive the knife but, more than that, it plays like a satire of itself. It’s a trickly line to walk but directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett stay the course.
As the killer carves notches on his belt, characters talk about “elevated horror,” and toxic fandom until the line between what the characters are talking about and what we’re watching on screen blurs into one bloody riff on postmodern horror and what it really means to be a “requel.” It is simultaneously self-reverential and mocking of the slasher genre, and values its cleverness as much as the kills that provide the scares.
The scary scenes don’t have quite the same atmosphere Wes Craven brought to his “Scream” instalments, but there are moments that linger in the memory. The old trope of revealing the killer behind an opening door is played for laughs and tension, and the loss of one of the “legacy” characters is actually kind of touching.
As expected, the killings are brutal and bloody, and mostly not played for laughs. The new “Scream” is the most gruesome film in the franchise, offering up piercing knives and gallons of pouring plasma. There are plot holes everywhere and the victims have usually done something to out themselves in harm’s way, but the killings are effectively played out.
“Scream” is a slasher movie that bends the rules of slasher movies but, best of all, it also breaks the sequel rule of diminishing returns. Adding a fifth entry to an established franchise, that holds up to the original, may be the movie’s biggest achievement.
They had me at ape. Rampage stars Dwayne Johnson as primatologist Davis Okoye along with an all-star cast, including Naomie Harris and Malin Åkerman, but for me it’s all about the ape with the unlikely name of George.
Based on the 1986 arcade game Rampage, the new film directed by Newfoundland native Brad Peyton sees a genetic experiment go horribly wrong. “We’ve created the next chapter in natural selection. Project Rampage works.” Except when it doesn’t.
George, a giant but gentle silverback gorilla, a winged wolf and a reptile are transformed into monsters with an appetite for destruction. That’s right, there’s a gorilla so big it makes The Rock and his oversized muscles look like a first grader by comparison.
Luckily Okoye raised George and they share an unbreakable bond, a connection so strong the primatologist just might be able to reason with the gorilla and put an end to the invasion of the mega-beasts.
Primate power! I go ape over simian cinema. Whether it’s the Disneynature Earth Day documentary Chimpanzee which follows the story of Oscar, an African chimpanzee born into a troop led by alpha male Freddy or the animated simian reworking of The Right Stuff called Space Chimps, I’m buying a ticket. I even enjoyed The Hangover 2 largely because of Crystal the Monkey who played a drug dealer.
Paving the way for Crystal and her primate kin was simian superstar Peggy the Chimp who appeared alongside future president Ronald Reagan in Bedtime for Bonzo. “I fought a losing battle with a scene-stealer with a built-in edge,” said the 40th President of the United States, “he was a chimpanzee!” Actually he was a she, a trained chimp who once almost strangled Reagan by mistake. The inquisitive ape grabbed the actor’s necktie and pulled it so tight the knot was “as small as my fingernail,” Reagan remembered. A quick thinking crew member cut the tie off before the Republican turned blue, setting him free to finish the cheesy movie Johnny Carson joked would become, “a favourite of old movie buffs and Democrats.”
The Tarzan movies made a superstar out of Cheetah the Chimp even though no chimpanzees appear in the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels that inspired the films. Over a dozen apes worked on the Tarzan movies and TV shows but the most famous must be Cheeta who starred in two dozen films. In 2008 he released Me Cheeta, a memoir ghostwritten by James Lever. “’I acted into my thirties,” “he” wrote. “Most chimps retire by the age of ten because they won’t do what they’re told. I didn’t want to end up in a lab with an electrode in my forehead.”
Long before computer generated special effects made digital apes like the ones featured in movies like Rampage and War for the Planet of the Apes possible, a makeup artist named John Chambers pioneered primate makeup. His work on the original Planet of the Apes was based on a technique he developed during World War II to give disfigured veterans a natural look.
The makeup process was so intense that Kim Hunter, who played chimpanzee psychologist and veterinarian Zira, had to be prescribed valium to keep her calm during the sessions. Chambers’ makeup work was extreme, but it earned him a special Academy Award his statue was presented by—who else?—a tuxedo-clad chimpanzee.
Dwayne Johnson has finally found a co-star bigger and musclier than he is, a giant silverback gorilla named George, the only living thing on earth large enough to flip The Rock the bird and get away with it.
Based on the 1986 arcade game “Rampage,” the new film directed by Newfoundland native Brad Peyton, sees a genetic experiment go horribly wrong. “We’ve created the next chapter in natural selection. Project Rampage works.” Except when it doesn’t.
George, the giant but gentle silverback gorilla, a winged wolf and a reptile are transformed into monsters with an appetite for destruction. That’s right, there’s a gorilla so big it makes The Rock, who plays Davis Okoye, a Dr. Doolittle talking-to-animals type with king-size muscles, look like a first grader by comparison.
Luckily Okoye raised George and they share an unbreakable bond, a connection so strong the primatologist just might be able to reason with the gorilla and put an end to the invasion of the mega-beasts.
I’m no different than anybody else. I’m happy to spend cash to watch nature go wild as humungous beasts (including the pumped up Johnson) battle one another. It should be loads of fun, peppered with Johnson’s trademarked one-liners, some heavy beast-on-beast action topped off with an evil corporation with an appetite for destruction and a scientist with something to prove but instead it’s a about spectacle and little else. Don’t give me wrong I didn’t expect “Coriolanus” with a giant flying wolf but in the CGI era when anything is possible I know the visuals will pop. I’d also like the script to do some of the work as well. It’s the kind of big budget b-movie where it takes four credited writers to come up with bon mots like, “I can’t believe we survived that,“ and “Thank you for saving the world.” (That is not a spoiler. You know the world will survive the rampaging creatures.) Johnson is an engaging performer, so is co-star Naomie Harris, but imagine how much better the movie would be if they were given better things to say than, “Davis, try not to get killed.” Without characters you care about who cares if giant beasts made of pixels destroy a pretend city?
“Rampage” isn’t the only oversized fiend film coming this year. To warm us up for “Rampage” they showed a trailer for “The Meg,” a.k.a. “Jason Statham and The Giant Shark.” Call it the year of the gigantic beast if you like but so far—I haven’t seen “The Meg” yet–bigger isn’t always better.
