Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 37:41)
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 21:23)
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
CAST: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing, Joey King, Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña, Solly McLeod. Directed by Susanne Bier.
REVIEW: Fans of the original film will welcome the return of the supernatural Owens sisters, but newcomers may find the sequel less than magical.
Set twenty-five years after the events of the first film, the Owens family of witches, sisters Sally and Gillian Owens (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) and eccentric aunts Frances (Franny) and Jet (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest), has expanded to include Sally’s daughters Kylie (Joey King, in the role originally played by Evan Rachel Wood) and Antonia (Maisie Williams). They are a tight knit group, but Sally hasn’t told her daughters that they have magical powers or about the family curse.
“No magic is stronger than sisterhood,” says Aunt Frances. “Cast by fate, tested by time, and never broken.”
When Kylie falls in love with “tall, dark and possibly cursed” Gideon (Xolo Maridueña), he becomes the latest victim of the family’s centuries old curse.
“Everyone we love dies,” says Sally. “It’s not great for the Tinder bio,” says Gillian. “We’re Owens women. Love is our undoing.”
Desperate to break the curse’s cycle, Kylie jets off to England, with Sally and Gillian in hot pursuit, to get to the bottom of their family history and the curse that has fated their loved ones to die. “I’m gonna go fix this,” she says.
A legacy sequel with one foot planted firmly in the past and the other in present day, “Practical Magic 2” offers callbacks to the original, a hint of romance, lighthearted humor, curses and witch’s spells. It’s a bit of a hodge podge that binds together the disparate elements with fan service and good will.
Bullock and Kidman effortlessly slip into their roles of the quarter century ago, recreating the same kind of chemistry that made the original film a hit, but it is Dianne Wiest as kooky Aunt Jet who finds the balance between warmth and comedy.
It’s a fine line in an unnecessarily complicated story that involves a missing daughter, a century’s old curse, and an innocent man in a coma because of the family hex. The very survival of the Owens family hangs in the balance, and yet, Sally and Gillian still find time to goof around. One minute they’re in tears, wondering if they’ll ever see Kylie again, the next Gilly is de-pantsing Sally and telling her to lighten up. The comedy doesn’t match the situation and Bullock’s sharp way with a line often breaks the film’s dramatic spell.
“Practical Magic 2” is bewitched with its characters. Perhaps a little too much. Even at just a titch over two hours, the film feels overlong, padded with character work, subplots and moments that don’t forward the story. By the time we get to the feel-good ending–with Sally and Gillian using their powers to make margaritas–it feels like the movie delivers more tricks than treats.
SYNOPSIS: In “Holland,” a new Nicole Kidman thriller now streaming on Amazon Prime, Nancy suspects her husband of having an affair. Her self-styled investigation hints that nothing, and no one, may be what they seem.
CAST: Nicole Kidman, Gael García Bernal, Matthew Macfadyen, and Jude Hill. Directed by Mimi Cave.
REVIEW: “You think you know someone, then you don’t,” says Holland, Michigan suburban home economics teacher Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman).
Intruding into her perfectly curated world are nagging suspicions that her optometrist husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) is having an affair. When she finds Polaroid film, she tells her friend Dave (Gael García Bernal), that Fred uses it to “take kinky sex photos with his lover.”
As Nancy’s distrust grows, she and Dave begin a homegrown investigation into Fred’s behavior. As they dig deeper and deeper to find proof of his infidelities, they develop feelings for one another.
As their relationship bears fruit, so does their investigation, and for the first time Nancy imagines a life outside of the one she has always known.
File “Holland” under the Suburban Anxiety category. The seemingly perfect small Michigan town is, of course, less than perfect, let alone wholesome, and director Mimi Cave, working in concert with cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, infuses the film with a sense of undefinable unease.
That vibe is continued in Kidman’s performance. Nobody does off kilter like Kidman. Her resume is dotted with eccentric characters, like Nancy, who present a polished veneer but soon reveal a darker underbelly. But Nancy isn’t completely quirky. She is simply a person who allows her dissatisfaction to dictate her extreme actions. Kidman masterfully finds the humanity in her and never overplays her hand, no matter how deep down the rabbit hole she falls.
Unfortunately, Nancy is placed at the heart of movie that is short on thrills. The action unfolds slowly without enough twists and turns to fully immerse the audience in the strange world of Nancy and Holland, Michigan.
SYNOPSIS: In “Babygirl,” a new erotic thriller now playing on theatres, a high-powered CEO, played by Nicole Kidman, risks her career and family over an affair with a much younger intern (Harris Dickinson).
CAST: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde, and Antonio Banderas. Directed by Halina Reijn.
REVIEW: A story of sexual power, control and humiliation that extends far beyond a typical office romance story, “Babygirl” is risky and frisky with a fearless performance from Nicole Kidman.
Kidman is Romy, a high-flying executive who shares two daughters with husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas). Outwardly the couple are happy, but Romy harbors a deep dissatisfaction with their sex life. Then, when she interviews Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a confident young man applying to be an intern at her company, something happens.
As he questions her coffee intake—“You shouldn’t drink coffee after lunch,” he scolds.—sparks fly, and soon Romy tests the boundaries of the employer / employee power dynamic.
But this isn’t a typical movie about a cheating spouse or secret workplace trysts. In Samuel, Romy finds the thing she is missing in her marriage. She wants to be dominated, to relinquish her power within her sex life. She has the power in the workplace (unless they are alone), while relinquishing it extra-curricular-ly.
The difference between “Babygirl” and “50 Shades of Grey” comes down to consent. Romy finds satisfaction within the submission she offers Samuel. While subservient, she is getting what she desires out of their relationship.
As Romy, Kidman contains multitudes. Steely and vulnerable, daring and passionate, she doesn’t play shame. This is a story about finding one’s authentic self and while Romy may be submissive, she’s also a seeker.
“Fatal Attraction” this ain’t.
The movie belongs to Kidman, but she’s ably supported by Dickinson, who oozes confidence and charisma and Banderas, who charmingly plays against his sex symbol image.
“Babygirl” is a daring, unapologetically erotic film that explores the character’s sexuality and psychology.
Jason Mamoa returns as the universe’s most famous merman in “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” the last film of the DCEU, now playing in theatres.
“I’m the King of Atlantis,” says Arthur Curry / Aquaman (Mamoa). “Half a billion from every known species in the sea call this place home. But that doesn’t mean they all like me.”
Angriest of all the seafarers is David Kane / Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a pirate and high-seas mercenary who holds Arthur responsible for the death of his father. Jesse Kane perished when his hijacked Russian nuclear submarine flooded with water. Aquaman could have saved him, but refused. Now, Black Manta wants revenge and is prepared to use the dark magic of the cursed Black Trident to get it.
“I’m going to kill Aquaman,” he says, “and destroy everything he holds dear. I’m going to murder his family and burn his kingdom to ash. Even if I have to make a deal with the devil to do it.”
Like I said, he’s angry.
To stop Black Manta from destroying everything important in his life, Aquaman decides to join forces with his estranged half-brother Orm Marius / Ocean Master (Patrick Wilson). Trouble is, the former King of Atlantis is being held in a desert jail for crimes against his old kingdom. Wearing a camouflage suit, Aquaman liberates Orm, and reluctantly, the former king agrees to battle Black Manta.
“I don’t know what lies ahead,” says Aquaman as they begin their adventure. “But we can’t leave our children in a world without hope.”
“Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” has the vibe of an episode of the Saturday morning cartoon “Super Friends.” A mix of goofy humour and action, it delivers spectacle, but ultimately feels like it is hobbled by too much exposition, too much muddy CGI, not enough character development and not enough Black Manta. After a messy first hour of set-up, it catches a wave in the second half, but even when it picks up, the stakes are never high enough to match the first drama of the first film.
Mamoa is game. He understands that Aquaman is a mix of kitsch, charm and action chops, (“There are those who think I’m ridiculous,” he says.), a mighty underwater superhero who rides around the sea courtesy of a giant sea monkey, but the tonal shifts, whether because of reshoots or rewrites or just jerky editing, often make for disjointed viewing. The fine balance of humour and emotion isn’t as carefully calibrated here as it was in the first movie, and the character’s sudden temperament swings, from beast mode to jokester, are jarring.
Abdul-Mateen II is underused. He’s a villain with relatively little screen time whose thirst for retribution is matched only by his ability to make the silly, retro-sci fi Black Manta suit look cool.
Many movies have been fuelled by revenge, but here it quickly becomes a McGuffin, the thing that gets the movie in motion, but is soon forgotten as other plotlines crowd it out of the picture. His scheme to speed the warming of the planet by detonating his store of orichalcum fuel, is the work of a supervillain for sure, but is underdeveloped. “It has to be stopped,” says Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) in a textbook definition of understatement.
Of the supporting characters Wilson is given the only character arc. From disgraced leader to unlikely hero (no spoilers here), he’s as stoic as Aquaman is playful, but, nonetheless, delivers the film’s funniest scene (again no spoilers here, but it would not be out of place on the icky reality show “Fear Factor”). His presence, however, allows the film to explore a redemption storyline that gives the otherwise generic plot a bit of juice.
Amber Heard fans, and haters, may be divided by her appearance. Supporters will think she is underused, while the haters will think she takes up too much screen time. Suffice to say, she is a supporting character who appears throughout, but has little to do with the main action.
“Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” has its moments (stick around for the amusing mid-credit scene), but the script’s choppy waters, and a low stakes storyline offer a low reward.
Robert Eggers is an idiosyncratic filmmaker whose previous films, “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” have more in common with silent era movies and formal stage presentation than they do with the blockbusters that rule today’s box office. His latest, the violent Viking drama “The Northman,” now playing in theatres, has all the hallmarks of Eggers’ work, but despite the inclusion of old Norse language, mysticism and its occasionally psychedelic tone, it may be his most accessible movie yet.
When we first meet Amleth, the Viking warrior prince, played as a teen by Oscar Novak, as a muscle-bound adult by Alexander Skarsgård, it is the year AD895 somewhere in the North Atlantic. He is a child about to enter the line of succession to one day take over from his father, King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke).
An unspeakable act of betrayal interrupts Aurvandill’s plans for the future, forcing Amleth to flee the only home he has ever known, leaving behind his mother Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman).
Years pass. Adult Amleth is now a fierce warrior with revenge on his mind. When the would-be prince and his band of berserkers ravage a village, the locals who survived the carnage are sold off as slaves. When Amleth learns the purchaser is the man who betrayed his father, he disguises himself as one of the prisoners with a plan to get close to the man who destroyed his life and family, and earn back his honor. “I will haunt this farm like a corpse returned from the grave,” he declares.
On the journey he meets Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy), a sorceress who becomes his ally and love interest. “You are still a beast cloaked on man flesh,” she tells him. His strength, she tells him, will break their bodies. Her cunning will break their minds.
Amleth’s journey is also a spiritual one, driven by mysticism and the words of a whispering seeress played by Björk. ““Remember for whom you shed your last teardrop,” she says, sending him off on his mission. Eggers seamlessly blends the supernatural and the nature until the lines blur into one trippy whole.
“The Northman” is based on the Scandinavian legend that influenced William Shakespeare‘s beloved “Hamlet.” It’s a familiar story of payback, violent, visceral and vengeance-filled, but Eggers’ singular vision, and fondness for pathetic fallacy, ancient symbolism and psychedelia, make it a singular experience.
And don’t forget the violence. So much violence.
Amleth chews one man’s neck, killing him in a memorably bloodthirsty fashion, and that is before the revenge story comes into play. Eggers amps up the brutality, shooting long scenes in unbroken wide shots that provide full few of the action. This ain’t Michael Bay’s frantic cut and paste. It’s full coverage, carefully orchestrated violence that drives home the brutality of the battles. It’s ferocious, audacious—check out the showdown at the Gates of Hel—if occasionally unpleasant, stuff.
It’s not all fun and bloody games, however. The storytelling gets bogged down from time to time and Amleth’s frequent vocalizing of his mission mandate—avenge his father, kill his uncle and rescue his mother—gets old after a while.
Having said that, “The Northman” more than delivers on the director’s pure, primal cinematic vision. To Valhǫll!
