Blood drenched and brutal, stylish and silly, “Boy Kills World,” a new action comedy starring Bill Skarsgård, and now playing on theatres, is a pure and simple story of revenge.
A prologue paints a picture of a post-apocalyptic future. Fascist leader Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen) rules with an iron fist, using cruelty and unhinged televised murders called “The Culling,” featuring breakfast cereal mascots, to “make an example of those who pose a threat to the Van Der Koys.”
Into this, comes Skarsgård as Boy, a youngster left traumatized by Van Der Koy’s murder of his entire family. Deaf and mute, the orphaned Boy is rescued by enigmatic martial arts master Shaman (Yayan Ruhian). Years of training transform Boy from a small scared child, to a muscle-bound killer filled with rage, thoughts of vengeance and guided by an inner voice, courtesy of his favorite video game.
“I am an instrument, shaped for a single purpose,” his inner voice declares. “to kill Hilda Van Der Koy!”
With the help of resistance fighters Basho (Andrew Koji) and Benny (Isaiah Mustafa), Boy unleashes a deranged campaign of chaos that will lead him to the top echelons of power.
Recently “Monkey Man” mined some of the same territory as “Boy Kills World.” Both are films about avenging the death of a mother, both are high octane fight fests, but “Boy Kills World” replaces the solemn tone of “Monkey Man” with irreverence. The new film is essentially a series of cartoony, splatter-zone fight sequences hung around a simple story that sees Boy seek revenge using fists, knives, guns and even a cheese grater to an armpit.
“Boy Kills World” packs a wallop in those scenes, but does not deliver an emotional smackdown. Director and screenwriter Moritz Mohr floats a family story in the puddles of blood left behind by Boy’s rampage, but by the time we get there it is too little too late. We’ve already been desensitized by the ballet of bullets and buckets of blood. The tonal shift doesn’t work and goes on too long, but for genre fans, Skarsgård’s finely sculpted abs and twitchy action should satisfy.
This week on the Richard Crouse Show we meet Kevin Doyle. He is one of the stars of “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” the big screen continuation of the adventures of the aristocratic Crawley family. Doyle plays the Abbey’s former second footman, and now village school master, Joseph Molesley and was a regular on the beloved television series for all six seasons.
I spoke with Kevin Doyle during the release of the first Downton Abbey movie, on the show’s popularity and learning the ins and outs of being a footman at the Abbey.
We’ll also meet award-winning Sri Lankan Canadian novelist Shyam Selvadurai. His new novel “Mansions of the Moon” is a reimagining of ancient India through the extraordinary life of Yasodhara, the woman who married the Buddha.
Then: Did you have a toy light sabre when you were a kid? I did… it was a Kenner Inflatable Light Saber that kept me and my friends safe from the Darth Vader and the Dark Side when I was thirteen years old. Later in the show we’ll meet Roger Christian, the English set decorator, production designer and feature film director who won an Academy Award for his work on the original Star Wars and was Oscar-nominated for his work on Alien. He is the man who built the lightsaber, probably one of the most famous props in movie history. He stops by to talk about his new film, a memoir documentary called Galaxy Built on Hope, which fills in a major missing chapter in the history of the making of “Star Wars.” The film tells the story of the Star Wars Art Department and how Roger worked with the brilliant production designer John Barry to bring George Lucas’ fantastic vision to the big screen on a budget.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Ethan Hawke, director Brad Bird, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Roberts, Brian Henson, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. “The most interesting man in the world,” and best selling author Linwood Barclay.
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The title, “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” promises a moving-forward of the big screen adventures of the aristocratic Crawley family. Fans want more story, but progress? That’s something else.
The popular television series and 2019 film delivered a preserved-in-amber glimpse at melodramatic “Upstairs, Downstairs” classism mixed with some laughs, a touch of sentimentality and expertly delivered barbs from Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess. Fans embraced the illusion of high-mindedness and the fantasy of life at the mansion.
For enthusiasts, a return to Downtown is a creature comfort, like a cup of hot tea with a warm crumpet. You don’t have it often, but when you do, you want it to taste exactly the same as it always has. The presentation can be tweaked, but the essence must be untouched.
Director Simon Curtis and writer Julian Fellows, seem to understand what fans expect, and deliver. It may be predictable, but narrative complacency is part of its appeal for folks who spent six seasons on television getting to know these characters.
The story begins in 1929 as the Dowager Countess of Grantham inherits a beautiful villa on the Cotes d’Azur from a long-ago admirer. The family, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), Lady Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), Tom (Allen Leech), Lucy (Tuppence Middleton) and the ever-dutiful Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) pack up there best and head to the South of France. “They better be warned,” says Mr. Carson, “the British are coming.”
Once there, a mysterious locket appears to hold the key to a long-withheld family secret and a decades-old “idyllic interlude.”
Meanwhile back at Downton Abbey, an expensive roof repair convinces Lord Grantham to allow a film crew to shoot in the grand old mansion in return for a large rental fee. The downstairs workers are excited but Grantham’s enthusiasm is muted. “I think it’s a horrible idea,” he snorts. “Actresses plastered in make-up and actors just plastered.” Still, the roof is leaking and soon the house’s grand rooms are overrun by a film crew, including director Jack Barber (Hugh Danccy) and his stars, matinee idol Guy Dexter (Dominic West) and the glamorous Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock). “We got through the war,” groans the Dowager Countess. “We can get through this.”
Later in the film the Dowager Countess says that life is about “getting past the unexpected.” That may apply to life at the Abbey, but it certainly doesn’t apply to the movie because there is nothing unexpected about anything that happens in the film’s two-hour running time. A better title may have been “Downton Abbey: Fan Service,” because it is a crowd-pleasing slow simmering stew of favorite ingredients, with no extra spice or flavorings. It is what the fans expect, no more but sometimes less.
“Downton Abbey: A New Era” is a plucky, stiff upper lipped movie meant for devotees who will likely excuse the filmmaking, which is as dry as a day-old scone at tea time.
Anyone who thinks the Guy Ritchie of old has disappeared, crushed under the weight of the huge box office grosses of the family-friendly “Aladdin,” need look no further than the blood splattered pint mug of “The Gentlemen’s” opening scene for proof to the contrary.
Highly stylized crime comedies like “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” made Ritchie the king of fast-paced, politically-incorrect stories of life on the streets. The big budget movies, his Sherlock Holmes series and “Aladdin,” among others, made more money but lacked the visceral thrills of his early work. His new film, “The Gentlemen,” starring Matthew McConaughey, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant, feels like a hybrid of the two phases of his career. A spiritual cousin to “Lock, Stock” and ”Snatch,” it brings Ritchie back to London’s underworld, a place populated by Saville Row suit-wearing tough guys, ruthless tabloid editors and henchmen who speak like down-on-their-heels Oxford drop outs.
Matthew McConaughey is Mickey Pearson, an American who built a weed empire in his adopted home country of England. Intelligent and ruthless—qualities matched only by his wife Rosalind (Dockery)—he’s now middle-aged and looking to cash out. His offers to sell the business to billionaire drug lord Matthew Berger (a very mannered Jeremy Strong) for $400 million attracts unwanted attention from Dry Eye (Golding), the ruthless youngest nephew of an aging crime lord.
There’s more, but this is a pretzel of a story, twisted and tied in knots.
“The Gentlemen” is not a sequel or a reboot but it feels like one. The hyper-masculine story telling style, inventive use of swear words and spider-web plotting, while audacious, will be very familiar to Ritchie-philes. It’s “Snatch 2.0” with the same kind of big name cast who seem to be having fun mouthing Ritchie’s profanity laden dialogue but no amount of fast cutting and fast talking can replace real energy. As rock ‘n rolling as the filmmaking is, the story acts as an anchor, bogging things down as it gets more and more convoluted.
It’s too bad because Ritchie takes pains to create the very specific world his characters inhabit, and it is a colourful place but it seems that he never met a plot twist he didn’t love. As the plot thickens, and it does thicken almost to the point of impenetrability, the movie begins to feel overstuffed. To help the audience along Ritchie binds everything together with a silly framing device involving Fletcher (Grant), a private eye/blackmailer who unfurls the complicated story to Pearson’s right-hand-man Raymond (Charlie Hunnam). It’s time consuming and adds little to the picture except for Hugh Grant’s exaggerated accent as he delivers flowery lines like, “Our antagonist explodes on the scene, like a millennial firework.”
“The Gentlemen” feels like an exercise in nostalgia, back to era of Ritchie’s frenetic jump cuts and outdated attitudes about race disguised as quippy dialogue.
Based on a 1927 science fiction/horror story by H. P. Lovecraft, “Color Out of Space” is a strange film starring everyone’s favorite purveyor of strange performances, Nicolas “Dad’s been acting weird” Cage.
Cage is Nathan Gardner, a former artist living on his late father’s remote farm near the fictional town of Arkham, one of Lovecraft’s favorite settings. His family, Wiccan practitioner Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), weed aficionado Benny and youngster Jack (Brendan Meyer and Julian Hilliard) and mother Theresa (Joely Richardson), leads a quiet if unconventional life until late one night when a meteorite crash lands on their front lawn. Unsure of what it is, Nathan calls the police. “I’m sorry about the smell,” he says. “Can you smell it? It’s like somebody lit a dog on fire.”
The smell will turn out to be the least of his problems.
The meteorite disappears over time but the effects of the crash landing linger. The Gardeners and their animals—they raise alpacas—begin acting strangely. Mom cuts her own fingers off as psychedelic hallucinations shroud the family’s thoughts. Hydrologist Ward (Elliot Knight), in the area surveying for a future dam project, thinks the water is poisoned but the real answer is a little more out there, as in outer space alien brain, out there.
Directed by Richard Stanley, who hasn’t made a feature since infamously being fired from 1996’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” “Color Out of Space” is a trippy, darkly humorous descent into madness. Lovecraft has proven tricky to adapt to the screen but Stanley does a good job here, building a sense of unease with a clever mix of CGI and practical special effects that build upon the natural disorienting nature of the story. Add to that body horror and cosmic terror, each heightened by the committed—read unhinged—performances from the leads and you have a movie that keeps the viewer as off-kilter as the characters they are watching.
“Color Out of Space” is a little uneven, cramming too many ideas into the mix, but the mix of two gonzo artists like Cage and Stanley offers up a movie that amps up the cinematic anxiety in unpredictable ways.
Last night Richard hosted a screening of the new “Downton Abbey” movie at the Varsity Theatre in Toronto with Lesley Nicol who played Mrs. Patmore, Phyllis Logan who was Mrs. Hughes and Kevin Doyle who played Mr. Mosley. When Richard asked if anyone took any mementos home from the set after the film was done Doyle joked, “I took Maggie Smith home!”
Near the end of “Downton Abbey,” the big screen finale to the widely popular slice of British upper-class life, Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) coos, “I do love our adventures.” I imagine the vast majority of the audience will nod in silent agreement, basking in the reflected glow of highly polished silverware in this very fan friendly film.
The story picks up shortly after the end of the television series. Inside the mammoth country house that gave the show its name Earl Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) sips tea and trades barbs with his acid tongued mother the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), his wife Cora at his side. Daughters Edith (Laura Carmichael) and Mary (Michelle Dockery) are married to the 7th Marquess of Hexham (Harry Hadden-Paton) and Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode) respectively. Son-in-Law Tom Branson (Allen Leech), former chauffeur, Irish socialist and current estate manager for the property, raises his daughter with the help of… well, the help, who live downstairs.
Everyone, upstairs and down, are whipped into a tizzy when it’s announced that Queen Mary (Geraldine James) and King George V (Simon Jones) will be stopping by for a visit.
The news sends the house staff into a frenzy of silverware polishing and menu planning. Retired butler Carson (Jim Carter) is called back into service, while his head housekeeper wife Elsie (Phyllis Logan) gets the staff, including snooty butler Thomas Barrow (Rob James-Collier), cook Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) and assistant cook Daisy (Sophie McShera), ready for the Royal visit.
Trouble is, Lady Maud Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton), one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting is in the Dowager Countess’s bad books. Seems Lord Grantham is her closest relative but she intends to leave her substantial estate to someone else. Prepare for some grade-a Dowager zingers.
Add to that a suspicious character in the village (Stephen Campbell Moore), the pompous royal staff, questions about Tom’s allegiance, stolen knick-knacks, a mild mutiny in defense of Downton’s honour, unlikely love stories and one royal meltdown and you have a story that feels like a high-falutin’ soap opera made by Merchant Ivory on an Earl Grey binge.
“Downton Abbey” is pure fan service. Most of the characters return, although Lily James fans will be disappointed, the house is as grand as ever and James is just as petulant as ever, if perhaps a little less villainous this time around. Revelations are made, storylines from the TV show are closed and, as always, life goes on at Downton. It all feels very familiar but like a comforting cup of tea, very welcome.
“Our life is not our life,” says Tony Webster (Jim Broadbent), “it’s just a story we’ve told to others.” Such is the theme of “The Sense of An Ending,” a gentle retelling of Julian Barnes’ Man Booker Prize-winning 2011 novel about human nature and the vagaries of memory.
Webster’s life is uneventful. An alarm wakes him at the same time every day. After a light breakfast he heads to his camera repair shop, puts in his hours and returns home. Occasionally he attends a birthing class with his pregnant-soon-to-be-single-mom daughter (Michelle Dockery) or enjoys a quick phone call with his cagey ex-wife Margaret (Harriet Walter).
A solicitor’s letter disrupts his quiet semi-retirement. Out of the blue he discovers the mother of his long ago ex-girlfriend Veronica (Freya Mavor) has died and left him something in the will. It is the diary of Adrian (Joe Alwyn) an old friend and classmate at Cambridge. Trouble is, Veronica (played in later life by Charlotte Rampling) doesn’t want to hand it over. Obsessed with getting what is rightfully his, Tony launches an investigation into Veronica and, ultimately, his own unsettled past.
Flip flopping between the present day and 1960s England, “The Sense of An Ending,” is an engaging look at what happens when the debris of a life lived enters into Tony’s well-ordered old age. The story is compelling—although the “as told to” nature of the flashbacks, complete with Margaret’s “so what happened nexts” seem a bit contrived—but the performances are bang on.
Broadbent is a careful mix of curmudgeon and charmer, a self-effacing man forced to confront and rediscover what is important to him. It’s subtle, effortless work and draws us deep into Tony’s tale.
He is supported by strong work from the women in Tony’s life, Walter, Dockery and Rampling. Each are key to the story and each help Tony on his journey of self discovery while never losing themselves or being relegated to stereotypical roles. Also worth a mention is a short but storing performance from Emily Mortimer as Veronica’s mother.
“The Sense of An Ending” is occasionally light and breezy when it should hunker down and dig a little deeper, but Broadbent and Co ensure it is never less than involving.
