Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 13:38)
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the animated anarchy of “Coyote VS Acme,” the dystopopian “The Dog Stars,” the fresh rom com “Finding Emily,” the silly smarts of “Idiots” and the supernatural slasher “Buddy.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
CAST: Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Mason Thames, Kiernan Shipka, Nicholas Braun, Peter Dinklage. Written, produced, and directed by Macon Blair.
REVIEW: Despite its title, “Idiots” is a smart cultural commentary that examines the haves and the have-nots.
Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. play unemployed odd couple Mark and Davis. Mark’s poor impulse control cost him his call centre job while the earnest and awkward Davis was cut loose from his church after subjecting the Bible Studies kids to a screening of Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist,” mistakenly thinking it was an educational movie about the life of Jesus.
To make ends meet they take jobs as drivers for a shady transport service. “You know what we do here? Drive rich kids to rehab.” It’s a tricky gig with lots of loopholes. Chief among the one-sided rules were the provisos that they, and they alone, would be legally responsible for their cargo from the beginning of the trip until drop off and they won’t be paid until the job is over.
Their first assignment pairs them with Sheridan Kimberley (Mason Thames), an amoral trust fund kid who’ll do anything to avoid going to rehab. A delay caused by a flat tire sends them off on an odyssey that sees the unlikely trio up against Irina (Kiernan Shipka), an exotic dancer who makes house calls, a militia that includes Peter Dinklage and Pricka Bush Da Werewoof (Nicholas Braun), a lycan-obsessed SoundCloud rapper who is convinced the drivers have kidnapped the troublemaking teen. “That kid made a fool of me,” Mark, “and I will take his scalp for that. And that is not a metaphor.”
“Idiots” isn’t exactly a buddy comedy. It’s not consistently funny enough to earn that title.
Instead, it’s a dark, unpredictable look, with some funny, raunchy moments, at privilege, inequality and decency. Director and screenwriter Macon Blair isn’t afraid to play some scenes for sheer comedic shock value, but he’s also unafraid to weave some bleak social commentary in the story’s fabric.
Mason Thames plays Sheridan Kimberley as the poster boy for toxicity, a smirking rich kid whose consequence free behaviour has made him an internet sensation with one million followers. Sociopathic and remorseless, he forces the “idiots”—Mark and Davis—to confront their place on the food chain. Despite despicable behavior, Sheridan is insulated by money against any repercussions. Mark and Davis, however, are left to pay the price for Sheridan’s actions.
The social commentary isn’t subtle but Thames, best known for his work in “The Black Phone” and the live-action “How to Train Your Dragon,” doesn’t play Sheridan as a moustache twirling baddie. Instead, he’s even more insidious, someone who feigns vulnerability, who lies and cheats through a smile.
The secret sauce, however, is the relationship between Mark and Davis. Polar opposites, there is comedy to be mined from the differences, but it is in the unlikely bond that grows between them that the movie finds its heart.
“Idiots” feels stretched in its final third, but up until then is a sporadically funny socially aware reinvention of the buddy comedy.
SYNOPSIS: In “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” a new action movie starring Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr., and now playing in theatres, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Detective Nick “Big Nick” O’Brien’s search for bartender-turned-criminal Donnie Wilson leads him to the dangerous world of diamond thieves and the infamous Panther mafia, as they partner to plot a massive heist of the world’s largest diamond exchange. “I’m broke,” says O’Brien, “and I want in on the action.”
CAST: Gerard Butler, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Evin Ahmad, Salvatore Esposito, Meadow Williams, Swen Temmel. Directed by Christian Gudegast.
REVIEW: Seven years after the first “Den of Thieves” movie debuted comes the sequel, a hard-boiled heist movie that spends most of its time on simmer.
When we first see “Big Nick” O’Brien (Gerard Butkler), he’s a little worse for wear. He tosses his divorce papers, along with his wedding ring, into a bathroom bin, before crawling into the bottom of a bottle. When he learns of a heist in Antwerp (based on the real life 2003 Antwerp diamond heist) he instinctively knows it bears the fingerprints of his old adversary Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.).
Working with the police in Europe, he tracks down Wilson, who is planning an 850 million Euro heist at the World Diamond Center, one of the most secure facilities in the world. Catching a glimpse of the kind of cash involved the broke cop tells Wilson, “You’re gonna rob that place and I’m going to work with you.” But there’s a catch. “I can haul you in anytime I want,” he says. “Depends on my mood. Right now, I’m in a good mood.”
The bad-guy buddy movie—“Cop goes gangsta,” says Wilson—spends the rest of its runtime (a tad over two hours) in twisty-turny-more-is-less-mode. Elaborate plans are made, flirtations are had, alliances are tested, and diamonds prove to be harder to hang on to than originally thought. It feels cluttered, even when there isn’t much actually happening, which is a lot of the time.
“Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” has all the ingredients of a fun thriller. There’s exotic locations—and the prerequisite drone shots to announce each of them—some fancy cars and stern-faced baddies. What it doesn’t have is the excitement to tie it all together.
My review of “Cocaine Bear” is quoted in this article from Screen Rant.
“Before buying a ticket to “Cocaine Bear” ask yourself this question: Am I likely to enjoy a movie called “Cocaine Bear”? I can tell you authoritatively that it is the best stoned bear movie of the year. Admittedly, it is a small field, but if that turns your crank, by all means check it out…” Read the whole thing HERE!
Talk about wildlife.
“Cocaine Bear,” a grisly new hybrid of “Scarface” and “Yogi Bear” starring Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Ray Liotta in his last filmed performance, and now playing in theatres, delivers on the promise of its premise. Like “Snakes on a Plane,” another movie whose entire plot was contained in the title, “Cocaine Bear” lives up to its name. There’s a bear and he is tweaked on the devil dust, but is that enough to get people in theatres, or will audiences just say no?
The movie plays fast-and-loose with the true 1985 story of a 79-kilogram American black bear who, while wandering the Georgia wilderness, stumbled across and ate a discarded duffle bag of cocaine. Later nicknamed Pablo Escobear, in real life the poor unfortunate beast overdosed immediately and spent its afterlife stuffed and on display at a local mall.
Director Elizabeth Banks uses the real-life set up as a kick off for her story. In her retelling, drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II (Matthew Rhys), in a bid to avoid police, dumps 40 kilos of cocaine in the forests of Georgia. When the bear finds it and ingests it, instead of keeling over he becomes a character out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, setting off on a bloody, coke fueled rampage through the forest in search of more drugs.
Along the way the Cocaine Bear (one character actually calls him that) gets her paws on a variety of folks, including a concerned mom (Keri Russell), a mob boss (Ray Liotta) and his henchmen (Alden Ehrenreich and Jackson Jr.) and a park ranger (Margo Martindale).
Before buying a ticket to “Cocaine Bear” ask yourself this question: Am I likely to enjoy a movie called “Cocaine Bear”? I can tell you authoritatively that it is the best stoned bear movie of the year. Admittedly, it is a small field, but if that turns your crank, by all means check it out.
If you need convincing, then “Cocaine Bear” may not be for you. On the fence? Read on.
The one-joke premise aside, the movie is a throwback to the slasher films of the 1980s. The gruesome stuff is outlandish, bloody and the kind of thing that you know you shouldn’t be laughing at, but here you are, laughing out loud at the misfortune of others.
Unfortunately, although there is a good vibe between Ehrenreich and Jackson Jr, most other characterization is kept to a bare minimum—many of the characters are essentially sentient slabs of bear food—and the dialogue isn’t nearly as camp or funny as it should be. It feels choppy—there is a good pun to be made here about chopping up lines of cocaine, but I’m too lazy to make it—and the gaps between the action sequences stretch on a bit too long.
However, “Cocaine Bear” has quite a few solid laughs. That makes up for the lack of satire or deeper meaning. This isn’t about anything other than truth in advertising. It’s about a bear and a bunch of cocaine and is only about 90 minutes long. If that appeals, make like the bear and snort it up.
If Blue Öyster Cult were to write the hit song “Godzilla” today they’d have to change the lyrics. In 1977 they sang, “Oh, no, there goes Tokyo.” Today the prehistoric sea monster has expanded his worldview beyond Asia and is now concerned with the entire planet.
The action in “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” begins when paleo-biologist Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) and her daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) are kidnapped by terrorists. What would these bad people want with this Emma and Madison? Turns out Emma belongs to the crypto-zoological agency Monarch, a scientific watchdog group who study the Titans, creatures long believed to be myths. Along with her ex-husband Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) Emma invented “the Orca,” a device that allows communication with these mysterious beasts. More importantly, for the bad guys at least, it can also “control them using their bioacoustics on a sonar level.”
As reluctant hero Mark teams with Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Dr. Graham (Sally Hawkins) to save Emma and Madison from the kidnappers the Titans, Mothra, Rodan, the three-headed King Ghidorah and others, rise, threatening to destroy the earth. It’s the ultimate clash of the Titans as Godzilla (who now appears to have a beer belly) stomps in to level the playing field. Cue the Blue Öyster Cult: “Go, go, Godzilla (yeah).”
“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” is a remarkable achievement. It’s one of the most incomprehensible movies in the “Godzilla” franchise and that is really saying something. This story of restoring harmony to the world by releasing these angry monsters is pure codswallop and remember, this is the series that once devoted an entire movie to the king of the monsters teaching his dim-witted son how to how to control his atomic breath.
I’ll start with the script, and I only call it that because it contains words and was presumably written by people and not some kind of Kaiju-Auto-Cliché generating device. Ripe with pop psychology (“Moments of crisis can become moments of faith.” #Deep), horrible dialogue (“We’ve opened Pandora’s Box and there is no closing it!” #howmanytimeshaveweheardthat?) and several big emotional moments you won’t care about because the characters are walking, talking b-movie stereotypes, the movie is as clumsy as the script is dumb.
But you don’t go to a Godzilla movie for the human content; you go to see Titans battling it out and on that score “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” delivers. Unlike the 2014 Gareth Edwards reboot the new film wastes no time in introducing the radioactive monsters. We then sit through a bunch of pseudo-scientific pontification until the main event, the cage match between G-zil and his three-headed foe. In those moments the film improves, mostly because these characters don’t spout endless exposition about saving the world. They simply fight. It’s WrestleMania with fire-breathers and when they’re wreaking havoc it’s a good, fist-pumping time.
“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” is in 3D—Death, Destruction and Decibels—and has a certain kind of cheesy appeal. Watching the cast of good international actors try and play it straight as they muddle through the nonsense leading up to the climax is fun for a short time but next time I hope we get more actual monsters and less monstrous scripting.
A new film tells us Los Angeles is the bank robbery capital of the world. “Den of Thieves,” a new crime drama starring Gerard Butler, shows us an elaborate heist, the bad guys who steal and the even badder guys who try to stop them.
Butler is Nick Flanagan, major case squad cop and wild card. We know he’s a tough guy because he keeps telling us—“You’re not the bad guys,” he growls at a suspect, “we are.”—and because he smokes indoors. When he arrives, hungover, at a crime scene where several police officers have been shot and an armoured truck stolen, he and his team begin tracking the most sophisticated robbers in LA, the Merriman Gang. Named for its leader (Pablo Schreiber), the gang, Bas (Max Holloway), Bosco (Evan Jones), Levi Enson (50 Cent) and getaway driver Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), will stop at nothing when it comes to relieving banks of their cash. With Flanagan on their trail they plan their most audacious robbery yet, a $30 million takedown of the bank of banks, the Los Angeles Bank of the Federal Reserve.
“Den of Thieves” is more concerned with its own mythology and troubled cop clichés than the story. Butler is a walking, talking cliché, a cop with a bad marriage and even worse attitude. Over the course of a too-long 2 hour and sixteen minute running time he reaffirms his badass bone fides again and again, whether it is eating a donut from a blood spattered box at a crime scene, throwing back the booze or threatening a prisoner. “Do we look like the types who will arrest you? Put you in handcuffs and drag you to the station? No will just shoot you. Less paperwork.” He’s the “original gangsta cop,” and we’ve seen that all before and we’ve seen it better.
“Den of Thieves” attempts to get mileage from the old chestnut that good and evil—in this case Flanagan and Merriman—are mirror images of one another. It’s a classic push-and-pull but isn’t given much new life here apart from some flashy editing that visually ties the character together.
The been-there-done-that feel to “Den of Thieves” wouldn’t matter as much if director Christian Gudegast had kept the pace up. Instead he draws scenes out, pads an already overlong movie with family drama subplots that go nowhere—the only female characters are kids, wives and hookers who make brief appearances—and stages what must be one of the longest and most reckless shoot outs in cinema history. It’s one thing for the bad guys to shoot one another, but when cops place dozens of innocent people in the middle of an automatic gun battle it feels gratuitous even for a movie like this.
