Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make your bed. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the uncom rom com “The Drama,” the outer space antics of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and the singular “Dead Lover.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” to talk Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” lawsuit, romance on sale, the Ferris Bueller that almost was and I review the Zendaya and Robert Pattinson uncom rom com “The Drama,” and suggest wedding cocktails to go along with the film.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about new movies in theatres including the uncom rom com “The Drama,” the outer space antics of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and the singular “Dead Lover.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 15:38)
I join “CP24 Breakfast” host Nick Dixon to talk about he uncom rom com “The Drama,” the outer space antics of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and the Netflix special “Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit with Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to go over some of the week’s biggest entertainment stories and movies playing in theatres. We look at a new drama based on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, the latest meme-worthy edition to the Australian National Film and Sound Archive, Keenan Thompson’s “Unfunny Bunny,” a new book for kids and I review “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and the uncom rom com “The Drama.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join CTV NewsChannel’s Scott Hirsch to talk about the uncom rom com “The Drama,” the outer space antics of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and the singular “Dead Lover.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: An uncom rom com (uncomfortable rom com) “The Drama” stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a young couple whose relationship is threatened by an unexpected revelation.
CAST: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim, Hailey Gates, Zoë Winters. Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli.
REVIEW: Unconventional and uncomfortable, “The Drama” is a showcase for Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s embrace of the pitch-black material.
As quirky bookstore clerk Emma (Zendaya) and museum director Charlie (Robert Pattinson) plan for their wedding they take a moment to play a harmless game with friends. “All right, so before we got married, we did this thing where we said the worst thing we’ve ever done,” says Emma’s friend Rachel (Alana Haim). “I’ll tell mine if we all do it. Promise?”
After some encouragement Emma shares a dark secret so sordid it rocks her husband-to-be to the core. As the couple attempt to find “radical acceptance” of each other’s flaws and secrets, they first must ask if they ever really knew one another at all. “You have to stop thinking about it,” Emma says.
What begins as a meet cute rom com takes a turn into dark territory during a party game of “what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” over a bottle or two of wine. No spoilers here, but hot buttons are pushed by Emma’s confession, and the mist of romance disappears, crushed by the weight of the past.
Told with great energy by director/writer Kristoffer Borgli, the film is proof that many things can be true at the same time. It’s often uneasily hilarious but also upsetting. It’s stressful, provocative and yet awkward. Bound to be controversial, the gallows humor embedded in the script may corner the market on uncom rom coms as it mines some pretty dark material for laughs but somehow maintains a relatively fizzy tone.
Borgli uses the conventions of rom coms—the meet cute, obstacles and conflict, etc—but does so without the feel-good tone of a Drew Barrymore or Kathryn Heigl flick. The film’s shocking disclosure is a trigger for hurt feelings and bad behavior, but ultimately it contemplates the limits of love and empathy. It shares connective tissue with run-of-the-mill rom coms, but by its nature it digs deeper, examining the true nature of personal connection in the face of unpleasant surprises.
“The Drama” works because of Borgli’s fearless script, clever editing and Daniel Pemberton’s score, but it sticks because Zendaya and Pattinson bring messy humanity to Emma and Charlie that feel authentic no matter how twisted the plot machinations.
SYNOPSIS: In “Die My Love,” a new psychological drama now playing in theatres, Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) leave the hustle and bustle of New York City in search of a quieter life on a rural Montana ranch. As the couple welcome a child, Grace begins to feel isolated, trapped and acts out in unpredictable ways. “I’m right here,” she says to Jackson, “you just can’t see me.”
CAST: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek. Directed by Lynne Ramsay.
REVIEW: A non-linear, stream-of-consciousness look at one woman’s breakdown, “Die My Love” is not a movie you “enjoy” in the traditional sense. Like the recent “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” a psychological drama that mined similar territory, “Die My Love” is a confrontational, difficult watch.
The difference is in the execution.
While neither film can be called pleasurable, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” displays a sense of purpose missing from “Die My Love.”
Both feature compelling, raw performances from their leads, but “If I Had Legs” gives the viewer something to hang onto story wise. “Die My Love” has a premise—woman has a breakdown after moving to the country—but is frustratingly shy about fleshing out a complete narrative. The result is a film that feels like a series of escalating events rather than a cohesive whole.
The glue holding the entire thing together is Lawrence, whose fearless and ferocious performance physicalizes the character’s inner turmoil in increasingly unpredictable and upsetting ways. Crushed by postpartum depression and isolation, her behavior spirals, captured by director Lynne Ramsay, who co-wrote with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, in a series of loosely connected vignettes. With little-to-no narrative accompaniment, however, the incidents, while often shocking, become repetitive and drain away the film’s power as a portrait of postpartum and human frailty.
Lawrence’s portrait of psychological collapse is raw and challenging cinema but as a vehicle for the performance “Die My Love’s” mix of reality and delusion falters.
SYNOPSIS: In “Mickey 17,” a new sci fi black comedy from Oscar winning director Bong Joon-ho, and now playing in theatres, Robert Pattinson plays an “expendable worker” who takes on dangerous jobs on the outer space colony Nilfheim. “You’re an Expendable,” he’s told. “You’re here to be expended!” If he dies—which is likely—he is regenerated and sent back to work. When one of his clones, Mickey 17, is replaced before death and makes his way back to the colony, the two Mickeys must fight back or be destroyed.
CAST: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo. Directed by Bong Joon-ho.
REVIEW: An almost unclassifiable genre piece, “Mickey 17” has elements of sci-fi, comedy, drama, mystery, social commentary and suspense and more Robert Pattinsons than you can shake a stick at.
Fleeing a loan shark who threatened to hunt them down to the ends of the earth, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) and his best friend and business partner Timo (Steven Yeun) sign up for an outer space expedition to the human colony Nilfheim. “Nothing was working out,” Mickey says, “and I wanted to get off Earth.”
As Timo trains to be a pilot, Mickey becomes an “Expendable,” a disposable crew member, used for experiments, who when, and if, he dies, can be “reprinted” with his memories intact. “Every time you die,” he’s told, “we learn something new and humanity moves forward.”
As Mickey repeatedly dies and is reborn, all other life and death on Nilfheim is curated by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a vainglorious politician with sinister intentions for his new society.
When the seventeenth iteration of Mickey is presumed dead—“Even on my seventeenth go around I hate dying,” he says.—and replaced by Mickey 18, Nilfheim’s “no multiples” rule is inadvertently broken. “In the case of multiples,” Marshall says, “we exterminate every individual.”
With dueling Mickeys causing trouble for Marshall, a new threat emerges, an alien big bug life form called “creepers” that may be the key to the survival or destruction of Nilfheim.
Oscar winning director Bong Joon-ho crafts an absurd story with serious messages about identity, survival, and colonization. Based on the novel “Mickey7” by Edward Ashton, it’s a farce, and like any good farce, it aims to give you something to think about once the end credits have rolled.
Buried beneath Pattinson’s charmingly nerdy performance and the film’s sci fi antics are heavy-weight, philosophical questions regarding what makes us human and what it means to really feel alive. Is it our physical being, our memories or our ethics?
From a world building point of view “Mickey 17” ponders colonial cycles of violence and authoritarianism. It may be in the dark outer reaches of the universe, but it is a world Bong Joon-ho has essayed before in films like “Parasite,” “Snowpiercer” and “Okja.” His best works are futuristic cautionary tales that hold up a mirror to current society. No matter how fantastical the setting, the very human follies of class inequality, governmental ineptitude and broken social systems are front and center.
But Boon doesn’t overwhelm with ideology.
“Mickey 17” continues with his pet themes, and while the story gets muddled by times, the movie impresses with its originality and commitment to entertaining while firing up the synapses.
