Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the anarchy of “Minions & Monsters,” the relationship woes of “The Invite” and the music bio “Peter Asher: Everywhere Man.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CTV Atlantic’s Stephanie Tsicos to talk about anarchy of “Minions & Monsters,” the relationship woes of “The Invite” and the music bio “Peter Asher: Everywhere Man.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Akshay Tandon to talk about the new releases in theatres, including The anarchy of “Minions & Monsters,” the relationship woes of “The Invite” and the music bio “Peter Asher: Everywhere Man.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join “CP24 Breakfast” hosts Nick Dixon and Jennifer Hsiung to talk about the anarchy of “Minions & Monsters,” the animated adventures of Disney+’s “X-Men ’97” and the Prime Video “Legally Blonde” prequel “Elle.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Invite,” a new comedy directed by Olivia Wilde now playing in theatres, a dinner party thrown by an unhappy couple spirals out of control amid pent up frustrations and surprising propositions. “Why do I feel like everyone knows something except for me,” says Joe.
CAST: Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton. Directed by Olivia Wilde.
REVIEW: Sexy and cringy, “The Invite” is a sharp, insightful portrait of a crumbling marriage, that shifts from high comedy to emotionally raw over the course of 107 eventful minutes.
A throwback to a time when adult dramas earned wide releases in theatres, “The Invite” begins with longtime couple, the eager-to-please Angela (Olivia Wilde, who also directs) and cynical music teacher Joe (Seth Rogen) prepping their well-appointed San Francisco apartment for a dinner party.
Joe claims Angela didn’t tell him their sophisticated neighbors were coming and wants to cancel. It’s too late, she says, she’s already made an elaborate charcuterie board and put the soufflé in the oven.
They’re bickering, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” style, as sexologist Pina (Penélope Cruz) and sensitive former fire fighter Hawk (Edward Norton) arrive. Impossibly cool, they’re completely untroubled by the argument they heard through the door. “We love a contentious environment,” Hawk says.
From then on, the evening rides a razor’s edge as secrets are shared, propositions are presented and frustrations aired. The real action begins when Pina and Hawk announce, “We have something we wanted to talk to you about.”
It’s cutting stuff, sharp enough to possibly sever Angela and Joe’s relationship.
An emotionally chaotic chamber piece, “The Invite” allows each of its actors to strut their stuff. All have a facility with the rapid fire, ping pong dialogue, making the theatrical seem natural.
Rogen mixes comic timing with true vulnerability and Norton’s wit switches on a dime as he delivers one of the film’s lengthier monologues, laying bare his soul.
The film’s real surprises, however, lie in the performances of Cruz abnd Wilde.
Cruz sparks with Norton, but it’s in the third act when she switches from seductress to therapist in the final act that sparks really begin to fly. Charismatic and fiery, she delivers magnetic, top-flight work, on par with “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and “Parallel Mothers.”
But, despite the dynamic efforts of the cast, it’s Wilde’s movie. As a director, she’s in top form, creating something that doesn’t feel anything like her previous efforts “Booksmart” and “Don’t Worry Darling.”
Using artful, sometimes claustrophobic, blocking to create humor and tension, her control over the tone of the piece is remarkable. The script leap frogs from serious and sincere to funny and inflammatory and Wilde, along with cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, subtly and effectively use the kinetic visuals to communicate the emotions experienced by the characters.
It’s great show me, don’t tell me work, but it’s her performance that lingers after the end credits roll. Wearing Angela’s neurosis on her sleeve, she delivers a tightly wound portrait of a person in the grips of a prolonged anxiety attack that is earnest, funny and vulnerable. She deserves an Oscar simply for the artful way she disposes of the abovementioned soufflé after realizing its burnt and can’t be served. It’s a small moment that perfectly blends mild slapstick with Angela’s state of mind and it makes a big impact.
“The Invite” is a terrific, uncomfortable movie that beautifully constructs an evening where everything falls apart.
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to reanimate the dead. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the monstrous and messy “The Bride!,” PIxar’s “Hoppers” and the hockey drama “Youngblood.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Bride!,” a new gothic story of love and crime loosely inspired by “The Bride of Frankenstein,” and now playing in theatres, a lonely Frankenstein’s monster finds companionship with the recently murdered, reanimated Bride. “What do you want with a dead girl?” she asks. “I’m the same. Born from the dead,” he says. “I am… a monster.”
CAST: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, Penélope Cruz. Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
REVIEWS: A mix of classic horror and “Bonnie and Clyde,” with a side of “Wild at Heart,” “The Bride!” is a modern and monstrous, but messy, take on what it means to challenge expectations just by being alive.
Set in the 1930s Chicago, “The Bride!” begins with a lovelorn monster (Christian Bale) asking scientist Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) for a cure for his loneliness. He wants a companion; someone to love.
The pair dig up the dearly departed Ida and jolt her back to life as the fragmented Bride (Jessie Buckley), a woman possessed by the spirit of her former persona, a take-no-prisoners flapper (“I would prefer not to,” is her catchphrase.), and the ghost of nineteenth century English novelist Mary Shelley, author of the Gothic novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.”
“The bride… of Frankenstein,” “Frankie” calls her. “No,” she replies, “just The Bride.”
Rebellious and powerful, she’s far from a demure monster’s mate. As romance blossoms, they connect during a chaotic crime wave that turns The Bride into an accidental folk hero. Their monstrous crime spree inspires women nationwide to break the law, coming together as a community of vigilantes marked with The Bride’s distinctively stained lips and cheek trademark.
On the run from detectives Det. Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz) “Frankie” says, “There is nothing left to do now, except live.”
There is no shortage of ideas in “The Bride!” Director Maggie Gyllenhaal, who also wrote the script, packs the movie with thoughts on bodily autonomy, identity, feminist reclamation, loneliness and what it means to be truly alive.
Unfortunately, these notions feel stitched together as randomly as the roughhewn sutures and staples that bind Frankenstein’s creature together. A more-is-more take on the story of a woman living a second life, an existence forced upon her by Dr. Euphronius and the creature, the film becomes muddled in a sea of ideas that ultimately feel unsupported by the nuts-and-bolts of the story.
At the film’s heart is Jessie Buckley’s uninhibited performance. As a vessel for Ida, Mary Shelley and The Bride, she flip-flops between the characters randomly, spitting out rapid fire lines in various accents, often nonsensically, depending on which of her personas is in the forefront.
Buckley’s commitment to it will be seen as brave, or annoying, depending on your tolerance for over-the-top theatrics. Either way, channeling the three characters doesn’t really work, even in Buckley’s skilled hands.
Gyllenhaal and Bale lend a more restrained hand to the creature. The lovesick “Frankie” is both tender and volatile, and Bale, under an inch of make-up, brings real humanity to the character.
“The Bride!” is an audacious movie. The title’s exclamation mark suggests a movie made with urgency, and Gyllenhaal embraces that sense of excitement in her reimagination of The Bride character, but her enthusiasm for the topic overwhelms the film’s storytelling.
“Ferrari,” director Michael Mann’s long gestating look at the summer of 1957 and the existential crisis that plagued Italian motor racing pioneer Enzo Ferrari, both personally and professionally, goes flat out, even when it isn’t on the racetrack.
When we first meet Ferrari (Adam Driver) he is a cultural hero in Italy, but his company and marriage are falling apart. His advisors tell him he must take on a partner, like Ford or Fiat, and
Increase his consumer car sales by four times if he hopes to stay afloat. Trouble is, Ferrari wants complete control of his company, and that means no partner and concentrating on race cars, not street vehicles.
At home, his infidelity pushes his wife Laura (Penélope Cruz) to extremes. She doesn’t care if he sleeps around, just so long as nobody knows about it. When he arrives home after the maid has served coffee, Laura expresses her displeasure by taking a potshot at him with a gun she carries for protection. That is, unfortunately, the extent of the passion left in the marriage.
Unbeknownst to Laura, who is grieving the loss of their young son, Enzo has a long-term relationship, and has fathered a son, with Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), a woman he met, and fell in love with, during the war. As their son’s baptism approaches, Lina wants to know if the child will carry the name Ferrari, but Enzo has other things on his mind, like the imminent collapse of his company.
His financial advisor Giacomo Cuoghi (Giuseppe Bonifati) suggests entering the grueling, 1000-mile open road race, the Mille Miglia. A win would establish Ferrari supreme over their main rival Maserati, and hopefully encourage sales. “Win the Mille Miglia, Enzo,” Cuoghi says. “Or you are out of business.”
Working from a script by Troy Kennedy Martin, who wrote 1969s “The Italian Job,” Mann’s film feels like two movies on one. On one hand there’s the drama with Laura, Lina and the company. On the other is a piercing look at the dangerous world of racing, circa 1957. “It is our deadly passion,” Enzo tells racers Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), Peter Collins (Jack O’Connell), and Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey). “Our terrible joy.”
The racing scenes are exciting, shot with verve and style, with a couple of unexpected turns (literally) that vividly capture the dangers of racing. But the racing scenes feel conventional when stacked up against the more complex portraits of Enzo and Laura.
Driver plays Enzo as a charismatic man of action, a physically imposing person haunted by the voices of those who have gone before him, his father, his son and racing colleagues taken too soon. It reveals a rich inner life hidden by his stolid façade. Driver doles out Ferrari’s personality in dribs and drabs; the contented lover with Lina, the hard driving boss with his racers and the stoic husband no longer in love with his wife. All aspects of this performance come packaged in the form of a man treated like a deity—a priest even refers to him as a “god”—but prone to real world failings. Driver captures the public and personal to create a complex portrait of a man driven by a variety of forces.
He is at his best when opposite Cruz. Laura is a supporting character in the story over-all, but her agony/rage for a loveless marriage, a son she was powerless to save and a company she co-founded but is unable to have a say in, is palpable.
You can’t make a movie about Enzo Ferrari and not include racing, particularly the career defining Mille Miglia, but Mann wisely keeps the focus on the interpersonal. “Ferrari” has race scenes, several very effective ones, but the memorable moments happen when Driver and Cruz put the pedal to the emotional metal.
This weekend the Orient Express pulls into the station, bringing with it murder and mayhem. Murder on the Orient Express features an all-star cast including Johnny Depp, Dame Judi Dench and Daisy Ridley. Directed by and co-starring Kenneth Branagh as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, the often-filmed mystery is based on the book of the same name by Agatha Christie first published in 1934.
The sensational story of a murder —13 strangers on the luxury train and an investigator’s race to solve the puzzle before the killer strikes again — is Christie’s best-known novel, but it is just one of 66 detective novels she penned in a career that spanned more than five decades.
“I think people have been pretty tough on her,” Branagh told The Guardian. “They’re suspicious of the volume of her output.”
It’s true that the author’s omnipresence on bookshelves, 20th century household-name status and massive popularity — over two billion copies of her books have been sold worldwide making her one of the bestselling authors ever — didn’t endear her to the literary elite, but Branagh sees her differently.
“Personally I admire the prolific nature of what she does … her ability to grab the audience’s attention is really striking,” he said. “The surface of what she writes has led people to dismiss her as a second-rater. But I think she is far more than that.”
Christie’s public persona was that of a button-down grandmother with a macabre imagination, but she led a remarkable life.
In an essay for Radio Times, Branagh writes, “This was a woman full of surprises.” He goes on to describe how the author became the first British female surfer to hang ten in Hawaii. “It was 1922,” he writes. “She was fully upright, scantily clad, and 32 years old.”
In her own words Christie says she wore a “wonderful, skimpy emerald green wool bathing dress, which was the joy of my life, and in which I thought I looked remarkably well!”
Another episode from her storied life feels like it could have been ripped out of the pages of one of her books. The year was 1926. Christie was on the verge of a divorce from her first husband when she vanished, leaving behind only her abandoned car, an expired driver’s licence and some clothes.
Already considered a national treasure, her mysterious disappearance was front-page news. Some thought it was a publicity stunt, others wondered if she was trying to frame her husband for murder.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, tried to solve the mystery with the help of a psychic. When Christie re-emerged 11 days later, after living under an assumed name in a small hotel, she offered no clues as to what had happened.
One popular theory suggests the Queen of Crime had fallen into a psychogenic trance. In the book The Finished Portrait, biographer Andrew Norman sites the adoption of a new personality and “failure to recognise herself in newspaper photographs” as signs that she was depressed and had fallen into a fugue state.
Christie never publicly commented on those missing days, not even in her official biography.
Now, 91 years later the mystery will likely never be solved. So much time has passed that not even Christie’s greatest creation, Murder On The Orient Express’s master detective Hercule Poirot, could get to the bottom of this mystery.
