I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres and streaming including the wonderful “Anora,” the intriguing “Conclave,” the interspecies bromance “Venom: The Last Dance,” the revenger thriller “Seeds” and thr rock doc “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” on Disney+”.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift”for Booze & Reviews! This week we have a look at the intriuguing sacred process of electing a new Pope in the film “Conclave” and I’ll tell you about some spirits, brewed by monks, to lift your spirits while watching the film.
Listen to Booze & Reviews HERE! (Starts at 20:40)
Learn why Stanley Tucci wants you to stop wearing track pants and more HERE! (Starts at 10:56)
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to tie a bowtie! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the ecclesiastical thriller “Conclave,” the revenge drama “Seeds” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Road Diary.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Blink Twice,” a psychological drama directed by Zoë Kravitz, and now playing in theatres, disgraced tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) invites cater waiter Frida (Naomi Ackie) to join him and his friends for an idyllic get-a-way on his private island. “Are you having a good time?” he repeatedly asks her as champagne flows, and she is… until, in the blink of an eye, she has a startling revelation.
CAST: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan, Geena Davis, Alia Shawkat. Directed by Zoë Kravitz.
REVIEW: A dark psychological thriller with elements of rage, humour and danger, “Blink Twice” is a confident, if scattered, directorial debut from Zoë Kravitz. A violent riff on “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s” memory erasing, it asks the question, Is it best to live with only good memories, burying the bad so deeply they never resurface?
A fantasy island trip gone wrong, “Blink Twice” takes a while to get where it is going, to let the Twilight Zone-ness of the situation sink in. It’s decadent and drug fueled, set to a soundtrack of dance tunes and King’s constant query, “Are you having fun?” Nothing matters except hedonism, and soon (NO SPOILERS HERE), but not soon enough, we find out why.
At this point “Blink Twice” flicks the switch. What begans as Jordan Peele style exploration of the ultra-wealthy, of the lingering, intergenerational effects of trauma and violence against women, becomes a revenge drama tinged with horror. After a long lead up, however, the transition feels rushed as the true cruelty of the party island, and the men who run it, is revealed.
Kravitz and co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum have a lot on their minds, but more isn’t always better. From the apology tours of cancelled celebrities and sexual violence against women to the price of trauma, white patriarchal privilege and gender disparity, it touches down on a litany of hot button topics. Add to that a private island with a Jeffrey Epstein vibe and a misbehaving billionaire and you have an overload of Twitter/X trending topics. With so much happening, “Blink Twice” feels like it is hop-scotching around its themes and doesn’t add much new to the discourse of any of them.
Still, as tightly packed as the movie is—no shrinkflation here—Kravitz keeps the pace up, nimbly navigating her way through to the film’s finale with style to burn. The direction trumps the storytelling, as Kravitz knows how to stage effective scenes that will entertain the eye and, perhaps even move you toward the edge of your seat.
She is aided by strong performances from the three leads, Ackie, Tatum and “Hit Man’s” Adria Arjona. Tatum is all charm as the romantic lead (for a while anyway) before revealing his true nature in a terrific turn-around for the character.
Ackie and Arjona enjoy the best-written roles and make the most of them. As Frida, Ackie (last seen playing the title role in “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody”) is relatable as someone who finds themself in an unimaginable situation, before tapping into a newfound iron will.
Arjona takes a role that could have been one-note—a reality show warrior with her eye on the billionaire’s affections—and makes her multi-faceted, kick-ass and very funny.
“Blink Twice” doesn’t entirely work, but as a story about the nature of memory, it is memorable enough to earn a recommendation.
“Leave the World Behind,” a new end of the world drama starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali and Myha’la, now streaming on Netflix, is a strange tale of how people become friends in trying times and the power of the sitcom “Friends.”
Based on the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam, the movie sees Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as A-type Amanda and go-with-the-flow Clay, New Yorkers and parents to teenagers Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and Archie (Charlie Evans). On a whim Amanda rents a luxury weekend retreat in Long Island, to get away from the stresses of the city.
“I figured if I made the reservation and packed our bags,” Amanda says, “it would eliminate most of the reasons to say no.”
They arrive to find a beautiful modernist home waiting for them, complete with interesting art, a lavish gift basket and an inviting pool in the backyard. It’s a paradise, although Rose, who has been binging “Friends” online, is annoyed that the spotty wi fi is preventing her from watching the last episode of the series. But that’s nothing that some fresh air and a dip in the pool can’t fix.
“Oh, this is nice,” Clay says. “The kids look so happy.”
Later that night, after dinner with lots of wine and well after nightfall, the doorbell rings. “Get a bat,” says the edgy Amanda. At the door are strangers G.H. Scott (Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la), who apologize for stopping by so late. “We were driving back to the city,” G.H. says, “then something happened.”
G.H. owns the home, and wants to spend the night in safety with his daughter. Turns out there is a blackout, or something happening in the city. With no internet, radio or television service, there is no way to know for sure what is going on. Amanda is immediately suspicious.
“Something is happening,” she says. “I don’t trust them.”
But, as strange things begin to happen, trust becomes essential if they are to survive.
Despite its luxurious trappings, “Leave the World Behind” is as bleak as any movie we are likely to see this year. It’s a “Twilight Zonesque” story that comments not only on societal collapse, but our reaction to it, and, as usual, the human aspect is the monstrous part. The idea of a cyberattack is scary enough, but the aftermath, the ripple effect of how humanity deals with implosion, is truly terrifying. While there are some scenes that approach action—planes dropping from the sky, an oil tanker that runs aground, and aspects of nature gone wild—this is a psychological drama with very high stakes.
After a slow start, director Sam Esmail heaps on the tension, ensuring the audience and the characters are on an equal plane. We don’t know anything more than they do, so we speculate along with them. It’s a clever ploy to draw the viewer into the story, to personalize the situation, and make us wonder what we would do in a similar situation.
An edgy score by composer Mac Quayle adds to the feeling of unease, but it is the performances that drive it home. It’s a character study in how these audience proxies respond, whether it is with racism, violence, greed or down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.
Roberts plays against type, edgy and racist, a coiled spring ready to unwind at any moment. Amanda wears her biases on her sleeve, seemingly unaware of the power of her words. She’s oblivious to her micro and macro aggressions, a misanthrope who excuses her behaviour with a simple mantra: “I hate people.” Plus, the look on her face when G.H. calls the couple’s Brooklyn N.Y. neighborhood is “affordable” is a highlight.
The script offers more subtlety to Hawke. Ruth says he looks like the kind of guy things come easily to. But when he is faced with real crisis, he is forced to make an extraordinary confession: “I am a useless man.” In finely tuned work, Hawke calibrates the performance, allowing desperation to sink in bit by bit until there is nothing left but fear and helplessness.
The movie really finds its feet, however, when G.H. Scott and Ruth emerge. Their appearance sets the action in motion, and introduces the film’s two most interesting characters.
G.H. is a bit of a man of mystery. Suave and obviously very wealthy, he has a gravitas that makes him an oasis of calm, but as the story progresses, it’s clear he knows more than he is letting on. He’s the only character who seems to understand the big picture, and is the conduit by which the movie fully explores the issues of technology’s stranglehold on the world, trust, race, class and international intrigue. Ali pulls off a neat trick, giving G.H. warmth and empathy, while building tension with the character’s fundamental unknowability.
The two daughters, Ruth and Rose are polar opposites. As Ruth, Myha’la is spirited, unwilling to put up with Amanda’s passive aggressive prejudice, while Mackenzie is a wide-eyed innocent, more concerned with what happens to Rachel and Ross on her favorite show, than the collapse of society.
The film tackles many big subjects, but is most compelling when it zeroes in on the interpersonal interactions between the two families, set against the backdrop of a divided America.
“Leave the World Behind” is an elegant post-apocalyptic film that asks far more questions than it answers. It is thought provoking, but the ending (which I loved) may leave some viewers wishing for more.
In “Eileen,” a 1960s-set, Hitchcockian psychological thriller starring Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway, a lonely woman’s life takes a sinister turn when she meets a glamorous new co-worker.
Mckenzie is the title character, a lonely and unhappy twenty-something secretary at a small-town Massachusetts juvenile detention centre. She lives with her ex-cop father (Shea Whigham), a widower with a nasty drinking problem and a personality to match. “Get a life, Eileen,” he says to her. “Get a clue.”
To pass the days she daydreams of having relations with her co-workers and, at night, is a voyeur, spying on couples making out in their cars at Look Out Point.
She is invisible at home and at work; a blank slate. “Some people, they’re the real people,” Eileen’s dad says. “Like in a movie. They’re the ones you watch, they’re the ones making moves. And other people, they’re just there, filling the space. That’s you, Eileen. You’re one of them.”
A ray of light in the form of Dr. Rebecca St. John (Anne Hathaway) illuminates the dark corners of Eileen life. Stylish and vivacious, the detention centre’s new counsellor is everything Eileen isn’t. A glamorous vision, squeezed into a red dress, topped with a burst of blonde hair, Rebecca drinks and smokes— “It’s a nasty habit,” she says, sparking up a fresh Pall Mall, “that’s why I like it.”—and her arrival inspires Eileen to examine her own wants and desires.
As Rebecca takes an interest in Sam Polk (Lee Nivola), a young inmate convicted of a gruesome crime, revealing a dark secret, Eileen shows there is more to her than meets the eye.
Based on the 2015 novel by Ottessa Moshfegh, “Eileen” begins as a character study, a slice-of-life look at a floundering woman, becomes a multi-pronged psychological thriller in its final third. The film takes an audacious turn, one that changes the film’s power dynamic, and closes things off with a bang (and a tremendous performance from Marin Ireland as Rita Polk, but no spoilers here).
Until then, it is a slow burn, a film that luxuriates in its characters. Mckenzie balances the character’s bored exterior with her bombastic inner life, creating Eileen, a ticking time bomb of emotion, careening toward a life defining moment (no spoilers here). It’s finely tuned work that cuts through the film’s dark ennui.
Hathaway has the showier role as Hitchcockian icy blonde Rebecca. Intelligent, enticing and ultimately empathic, she stands in stark contrast to the movie’s deliberately dull backdrop. Rebecca is a polar opposite to Eileen, the catalyst that gives the movie its spark.
“Eileen” is more about what’s left unsaid, than it is about the obvious story points (keeping it vague and spoiler free here). The suggestion of a budding relationship as a hand brushes against a knee, a shared slow dance in a bar and stolen looks, is ultimately more suspenseful than the pulpy twist at the film’s end. The end, while impactful, is more conventional than we might have expected from this moody period piece.
Edgy and tense, “The Royal Hotel” is a slow burn story about sexual violence and intimidation, power dynamics and revenge, wrapped up in a story about two young women on a work/travel visit to Australia.
Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick play Hanna and Liv, American backpackers, who claim to be Canadian when asked—“Everybody loves Canadians,” Hannah says.—on a work and travel program in an Australian city. The free-spirited Liv has burned through her cash, forcing the pair to apply for work at a job agency.
They are placed as bartenders in a hotel pub, but the gig comes with words of caution.
“It’s good money,” they’re told, “the only thing that makes it bothersome is the remoteness of the location. It’s a mining town, so you’ll have to get used to the male attention.”
“Will there be kangaroos?” Liv asks naively.
There are kangaroos, but they’re in the minority. The anything-but-regal Royal Hotel offers up a mostly male clientele, unused to the niceties of polite society. Add to that a drunken, gruff owner (Hugo Weaving) who is more concerned with selling booze than policing the behavior of his customers. “If I banned everyone who does bad stuff,” he says, “I’d be out of business.”
Their first night behind the bar is marked by a sign out front that reads “Fresh Meat.” Inside, the bar is filled with predatory customers who make lewd remarks and repeatedly encourage the stern Hannah to lean in while she serves them and to “smile more.”
People are strange, when you’re a stranger.
The longer they stay, and the more drinks they serve, the worse their customers behave. Hannah wants out, but, despite the menace, the adventurous Liv wants to stay. “You’re strong,” Liv says to Hannah. “No, I’m not,” Hannah says. “I’m weak and I’m scared and I want to go home!”
“The Royal Hotel” isn’t a travelogue or a “Shirley Valentine”-style journey of self-discovery. What begins as a lark, an adventure in Australia, soon turns into a cabin-in-the-woods style horror movie, where the boogeyman is toxic male behavior.
Director Kitty Green expertly ratches up the tension, allowing the sense of unease to simmer for much of the film until reaching full boil. Something is going to happen, but we’re never quite sure what, and by the time Green stages her cathartic climax, it’s a welcome release from the pent up anxiety felt by Hanna and Liv and the audience.
Garner and Henwick are both great, both steely and vulnerable, but the real star here is Green, whose examination of gender politics is provocative and unsettling.
The new Apple TV+ movie “Sharper,” starring Julianne Moore, Justice Smith and Sebastian Stan, is a story of love and lies, of swindles and avarice, of plot twists and, unfortunately, despite the zig-zaggy story, predictability.
The film opens with a rom-commy meet cute between book store clerk Tom (Smith) and Sandra (Briana Middleton), a student at NYU studying Redefining Radicalism the Rise of Black Feminism in American Literature. He asks her out for dinner, she demurs, but, like all good New York City romances, fate intervenes and they fall deeply in love.
But soon into the relationship it appears that Sandra isn’t as buttoned down as she first appears.
Welcome to the no-spoiler zone.
At this point director Benjamin Caron, best known for helming the acclaimed Benedict Cumberbatch “Sherlock” series, “The Crown” and “Andor,” goes episodic, breaking the film into sections to provide backstories for the characters and insight on their interconnecting relationships.
We meet Max (Stan), a shady character who always comes prepared with a quick line and a plan for parting some poor unsuspecting sucker with their hard-earned cash.
Moore and Lithgow play high society types Madeline and Richard. He is a self-made billionaire; she is a trophy wife with a troubled son.
Other chapters fill in Tom and Sandra’s comings-and-goings.
These seemingly unrelated characters are, of course, all closely related in a high stakes game of deception and duplicity where there will be big time winners and losers, cast aside to be forgotten about.
The film’s title refers to someone who is a gambling cheat or confidence man, and there is certainly enough of that on display, but taken in a different context, the story of “Sharper” isn’t as sharp as the literal meaning of the title might suggest. The structure is interesting, the characters compelling, if a little by-the book—there is the rich old man who falls for a beautiful younger women, the cold-as-ice conman and his emotional victims—but the multiple, crisscrossing con games on display aren’t clever enough by half to provide the payoff necessary for the movie to make an impression.
The script offers a few surprises (just don’t watch the trailer before watching the film) but the big game, the elaborate scams, feel a bit shopworn, especially if you’ve ever seen “The Sting.”
“Sharper’s” biggest con isn’t perpetrated by the characters, but by director Caron, who skillfully finds a way to string along the audience for almost two hours before leaving them empty handed in the finale.
“Alice, Darling,” a new psychological drama starring Anna Kendrick, now on VOD and in select theatres, is a portrait of a woman who rediscovers both her essence and courage in the aftermath of an emotionally abusive relationship.
Kendrick is Alice, a young woman under the control of her emotionally manipulative artist boyfriend Simon (Charlie Carrick). In the film’s opening scene, she is out for dinner with best pals Sophia (Wunmi Mosaku) and Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn), but is anxious, agitated, repeatedly checking her phone and bristling when her friends joke about the waiter having a thing for her.
When the three plan a remote weekend get-a-way to celebrate Tess’s birthday, Alice lies to Simon and spends the whole time on tenterhooks.
“You can’t tell your life partner that you’re going on a trip with our best friends?” asks Tess. “I can’t think of a bigger red flag than that.”
“I don’t know how any of this is any of your business,” replies Alice.
Tensions between the friends bubble over during the time away until Alice comes clean about the nature of her relationship with Simon.
“You never know what is going to make him angry,” she says. “I spend all this time trying to be good. Trying to be better. I’m never good enough.”
Just as it seems the clouds have lifted and smiles appear on their faces for the first time in days, Simon, who has been unable to reach Alice, shows up at their cabin. “You look different,” he says. “She looks like herself,” say her friends.
In a brisk ninety-minute running time, “Alice, Darling” conveys the warning signs of Simon’s gaslighting, and the effect it has on Alice. Simon’s brand of abuse is insidious. “He doesn’t hurt me or anything,” she says. But he does get into her head, using his narcissism like a shroud to cloak her own feelings and desires. Simon’s actual role in the film, in terms of screen time, is fairly brief, but his presence is felt throughout.
Carrick personifies the kind of malevolent, arrogant jerk who demands to know, “Why would you hurt me like this?” at the slightest of provocation, but it is Kendrick’s work that gives the movie its power. In a performance that mixes the introspective with the physical, she portrays Alice’s turmoil. From pulling her own hair out, to her hollow-eyed stare, Kendrick is an authentic and believable victim of Simon’s brainwashing.
Director Mary Nighy (daughter of recent Best Actor nominee Bill) relies on Kendrick to carry “Alice, Darling’s” weight. The film wraps things up a bit too tidily at the end, but the power of Alice’s story remains undiminished.
