I go to the vault to unearth a vintage interview I did with Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman. We don’t talk superheroes, instead, the actor gets personal, talking about the projects that worked, the ones that didn’t and what drives him. “When I started acting I was the dunce of the class,” he says.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join Shane Hewitt on “The Night Shift” to talk about helping to unveil a stamp commemorating the late, great Norman Jewison at the Canadian Film Center.
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 30:36)
Listen to Shane and Richard talk about “Deadpool & Wolverine” HERE! (Starts at 30:49)
SYNOPSIS: Six years after the events of “Deadpool 2” comes “Deadpool & Wolverine,” a new superhero movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, and now playing in theatres.
Now working as a used car salesman, Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has retired his wisecracking mercenary Deadpool persona. His life is up-ended when the Time Variance Authority (TVA) enlists him to undertake a new mission with another reluctant superhero Wolverine (Jackman).
“Wade, you are special,” says TVA agent Mr. Paradox (Macfadyen). “This is your chance to be a hero among heroes.”
CAST: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Rhett Reese, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells. Directed by Shawn Levy.
REVIEW: If the word bombastic took steroids it might come close to describing the R-rated “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Vulgar, gory with a “whiff of necrophilia” and irreverence to burn, it’s a showcase for the bromance stylings of its stars, who pull out all the stops to lovingly put a cap on Fox’s Marvel movies. “Disney bought Fox,” Deadpool explains, “[so there’s] that whole boring rights issue.”
At the film’s start, it takes some doing to explain Wolverine/Logan’s return from the dead—“Nothing will bring you back to life faster than a big bag of Marvel cash,” Deadpool says to Wolverine’s remains.—but once that convoluted (but action-packed) set-up is out of the way, the film barrels through plot with both fists flailing.
Before, during and after the big, bloody action sequences the movie cheekily blurs the line between on-screen and off-screen life. Deadpool obnoxiously calls Logan “Hugh,” and even takes a jab at jackman’s recent divorce. Later he leeringly mentions “Gossip Girl,” the show that made Reynolds’s wife, Blake Lively, famous.
That fourth-wall-breaking riffing suits Reynolds’s trademark delivery, and sets the self-aware “Deadpool” movies apart from other superhero films. ““Fox killed him,” Deadpool says of Wolverine. “Disney brought him back. They’re gonna make him do this till he’s 90!”
Humor has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), in Tony Stark’s one-liners, in Taika Waititi era “Thor” movies and “Guardians of the Galaxy” to name a handful of examples, but none of those subversively poke fun at superhero movies and themselves in the way “Deadpool & Wolverine” does. What other MCU movie would self-deprecatingly admit that the characters are entering the multiverse “at a bit of a low point”?
Jackman mostly plays it straight, acting as a soundboard for “the Merc with the Mouth’s” one liners. Filled with regret over past events, the self-loathing Wolverine is a hard drinking mutant, in full comic book costume, who reluctantly embraces heroism.
Wolverine provides the story’s heart as a counterpoint to Deadpool’s constant quipping.
Both characters may be physically indestructible, but their psyches aren’t. Both are tortured, and when the movie isn’t gushing blood or cracking wise, it’s about lost souls and their search for redemption. That story chord is a grace note that often gets lost amid the film’s cacophonic action, but is a welcome relief from the constant clatter.
A love letter to the now by-gone Fox era of superhero films, “Deadpool & Wolverine” ushers in a new epoch overstuffed with overkill, cameos, Easter eggs, juvenile humour and a villain who reads minds by thrusting their fingers into their victim’s heads. It’s fun fan service, and a good time at the movies, even if the experience of watching it sometimes feels like being on the inside of a blender set to puree.
I compare the experience of watching “Spiderhead,” a new psychological prison thriller starring Chris Hemsworth, Jurnee Smollett and Miles Teller and now streaming on Netflix, with going to a nice restaurant with a dirty bathroom. The food, service and atmosphere are top notch, but go to the restroom after dinner and if it’s dirty, that’s what you’ll remember most about your visit.
Such is the fate of “Spiderhead,” a movie that makes a good impression right up until the final minutes.
Hemsworth is visionary Steve Abnesti, a chemist who runs Spiderhead, a remote penal institution where his experimental, mind-altering drugs are tested on inmates. Prisoners live in beautiful cells that resemble hip hotel rooms and eat gourmet food. There are no bars on the doors and not a single orange jumpsuit in sight. “Your presence in this facility,” says Abnesti, “while technically a punishment, is a privilege.”
In return for the relaxed rules and relative luxury of the prison, inmates are equipped with a module or Mobi-Pak containing mood altering drugs. Administered by the amiable Abnesti, these concoctions are part of a larger study analyze the effects of manipulating emotions. “Our work will save lives,” says Abnesti. “Not just one life, many lives. We’re making the world a better place.”
Inmate Jeff (Teller) is Abnesti’s go to guinea pig. The pair have a special bond forged over a shared belief that the inmate experiments are for the good of all humanity. But when Jeff is forced into partaking in a cruel drug trial, he suspects his trust has been misplaced. “The time to worry about crossing lines,” Abnesti says, “was a lot of lines ago.”
Based on the New Yorker short story “Escape from Spiderhead” by George Saunders, the film explores moral dilemmas and the ethical quandary of exerting control over the powerless for personal gain. The very idea of forced injections is an even bigger hot button topic than when Saunders wrote the short story.
So why did I feel like I just left a dirty bathroom as the end credits rolled?
It’s the recency theory. The last thing you see is the thing that makes the lasting impression and “Spiderhead,” despite an interesting premise, some good performances and a growing atmosphere of apprehension and mistrust, rushes the ending to the point where you wonder if the filmmakers ran out of film, time or interest in the story. Tonally, the all-of-a-sudden action packed ending feels tacked on and uninspired.
Ultimately, “Spiderhead” disappoints because it gets so much right, but, in the end, doesn’t trust the idea-driven story to satisfy.
Best selling romance writer Jude Deveraux declares that there are no new stories, just interesting, inventive ways of taking the journey with characters. “In romances,” she says, “the characters are going to fall in love with each other; you know that when you see the syrupy cover. It’s how they get there that’s the fun.”
The new monster-in-space flick “Life” would seem to prove this theory. It hits theatres on a mighty gust of déjà vu courtesy of “Alien” and “Gravity,” two movies that share its DNA and several plot points.
Headliners Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds are David Jordan, Miranda North and Roy Adams, three of six astronauts (alongside Olga Dihovichnaya and Hiroyuki Sanada) aboard an International Space Station. Their mission involves intercepting a shuttle containing a space specimen from Mars. In the beginning the microscopic alien, nicknamed Calvin, is benign, an inert collection of cells.
“We’re looking at the first proof of life on Mars,” says head honcho scientist Hugh Derry (Arlyon Bakare).
What could have been one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time, however, changes when Derry feeds Calvin a glucose meal. The snack changes the organism from extraterrestrial to extra-terrible as it grows into some kind of jelloy-gremlin-Martian-hellbeast, gains intelligence and goes on a homicidal rampage. The astronauts says things like, “We can’t let that thing in here!” and “You don’t know what it can do!” as they fight, not only for their own safety but also the survival of Earth. “If it is between letting it here,” says Miranda, “or letting it down there, we let it in here!”
If the story sounds familiar it’s because it is, but is Ms. Deveraux right? Is the journey enough to keep the audience interested? For most of the running time the answer is yes.
Director Daniel Espinosa keeps things wound tight as he ramps up the danger and the stakes for the characters. Unlike most space operas, “Life” is an ensemble without a clear hero. The small cast are all equally important, and all equally expendable which adds an air of unpredictability that ratchets up the tension. As Calvin’s powers increase the movie’s powers decrease slightly, changing from finely tuned thriller to space caper.
Near the end, with just minutes to spare, characters (I will not tell you who, no spoilers here) have an extended moment of solace. A time of reflection and for a discussion about procedure and from that point on it’s a by-the-book Got-To-Kill-The-Space-Monster flick.
By the time the end credits roll, however, “Life” will have subverted your expectations enough to earn it an “all systems go.”
