I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about the charming “Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom,” the historical drama “The Weight” and the bloody good time of “Resident Evil.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 12:01)
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
CAST: Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Lucas Lynggaad Tonnesen, George Burgess, Cameron Brady, Avy Berry, Alec Newman, Sam Hazeldine. Directed by Padraic McKinley.
REVIEW: A showcase for Ethan Hawke, “The Weight” is an effective historical drama elevated by the actor’s emotionally charged study of a desperate man pushed to the limit.
Set in 1933, four years into The Great Depression, the story focusses on Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke), a recently widowed War World I veteran and father to Penny (Avy Berry). A jack of all trades, he can fix anything with a motor but is having a tough time finding work or keeping a roof over his daughter’s head.
Arrested after misunderstanding, he’s sentenced to a hard labor camp while Penny is sent to foster care and will soon be put up for adoption.
Samuel’s obvious intelligence and problem-solving skills catches the attention of the plain-spoken Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe) who offers Samuel a way he could be released before Penny is adopted and gone out of his life forever. “I have a friend who needs a little help,” he says. “I don’t trust any of these boys, but I trust you. You do this thing, your time is done.”
The offer, however, comes with strings attached. Clancy wants Samuel, and three other inmates, to transport precious cargo across very unforgiving terrain. When the job is complete, the warden will sign Samuel’s release papers, and he’ll be reunited with his daughter. But if he fails, he may never see his daughter again. “You ain’t getting your kid back if you’re dead.”
“The Weight” contains elements of a survival thriller and a crime drama and does a nice job of painting a picture of The Great Depression, but those are just some colors director Padraic McKinley uses to create a vivid portrait of his main character Samuel.
On the page and through Hawke’s layered performance, we see a story of a desperate man, not driven by greed, but by his love for his daughter. It raises the emotional stakes and allows Hawke to reveal the width and breadth of Samuel, from his doting dad side to hardened WWI vet and tactician.
McKinley doesn’t hesitate to put Samuel in precarious situations. The action scenes are deliberately paced in keeping with the historical nature of the story, but a sequence on a rickety rope bridge strung high above a deep canyon is low fi, but packs a punch.
“The Weight” has atmosphere to burn and some visceral violence, but it is Hawke who elevates and entertains. Samuel is the film’s most interesting character, and it’s not even close. The rest of the ragtag crew are colorful but broadly drawn place holders who are overshadowed by Hawke and Samuel’s story of resilience and family.
SYNOPSIS: In “Nuremberg,” a new historical drama starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, and now playing in theatres, a U.S. Army psychiatrist studies high-ranking Nazi officers, including Hermann Göring (Crowe), the notorious former Reichsmarschall and Hitler’s second in command, to determine their competency to stand trial for war crimes.
CAST: Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O’Brien, Colin Hanks, Wrenn Schmidt, Lydia Peckham, Richard E. Grant. Directed by James Vanderbilt.
REVIEW: Based on Jack El-Hai’s non-fiction book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,” “Nuremberg” is a handsomely mounted, old-fashioned drama that aims to comment on timely issues.
Set at the end of World War II the film sees U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) spearheading the world’s first International Military Tribunal. Among those accused of committing atrocities are Hitler’s right hand man Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) and 21 other members of the Nazi high command.
To determine the prisoner’s fitness for trial Army psychologist Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) is brought in to assess the men and their mental states. Entering into a “battle of wits” with the charismatic and intelligent Göring, Kelley attempts to understand the true nature of evil.
“Nuremberg” clarifies its intent in the film’s final moment when a title card reading, “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done,” a quote from English philosopher R.G. Collingwood, appears on the screen. Writer, co-producer, and director by James Vanderbilt (best known as the writer of “Zodiac” and “The Amazing Spider-Man”) makes an urgent plea for today’s audience to never forget how fascism can take hold. In our modern world, where intolerance is on the rise, the lessons of the past echo loudly and demand our attention.
I just wish the film was a more powerful vehicle for the messaging.
Despite scenes of trauma, suicide and a downbeat ending, “Nuremberg” is too restrained to leave a mark on viewers. Crowe and Malek spark in their scenes, creating a cat-and-mouse game in which the power dynamic is ever shifting, and while thier performances have dramatic heft, there’s a melodramatic edge to the storytelling that blunts the impact of the film’s central premise.
“Nuremberg” is packed with big, timely lessons but its stilted presentation doesn’t deliver the emotional impact to accompany its warnings.
SYNOPSIS: “Kraven the Hunter,” a new superhero flick now playing in theatres and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, follows the Marvel Comics character of the same name from his teen years to his emergence as the world’s most skillful and feared hunter. “Once you’re on his list, there’s only one way off.”
CAST: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe. Directed by J. C. Chandor.
REVIEW: There are three bad guys in “Kraven the Hunter,” a toxic father (Russell Crowe), the enigmatic assassin The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) and the thick-skinned Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) but the real villain here is the lazy script.
The idea of The Hunter as an antihero, a bad guy who kills even worse guys (think “Dexter”), is a solid, if slightly shopworn idea. Even when you add a mystical potion that give him a Doctor Dolittle style connection with animals and the ability to stalk and kill using the methods of all the creatures of the jungle, the character is no more absurd than a physicist who transforms into a giant green monster when he gets mad or a half-Atlantean, half-human superhero.
With some suspension of disbelief, “Kraven the Hunter” and its lore is no more outlandish than any other superhero movie. It’s the execution, not the kills but the handling of the material, that sinks the movie.
Origin movies are tough. The script must introduce characters, motivations and backstories, and do so in an expedient, entertaining manner. “Kraven the Hunter,” scripted by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, manages neither. Talky and repetitive, the script never met a cliché it wouldn’t embrace, or a story element it couldn’t reiterate to the point of numbness.
Granted, one of the fight scenes uses a bear trap in a grimly unique fashion, but the other action scenes, while nicely choreographed, suffer from wonky CGI and frenetic editing.
Taylor-Johnson is suitably buff to play Kraven but he is saddled with clunky dialogue in several unintentionally hilarious scenes that undercut the character’s menace. Kraven is a classic example of, “fight not with monsters, lest you become one,” but, despite his piercing eyes, chiseled abs and parkour skills, he’s simply not compelling enough to maintain interest.
Worse, the stakes don’t appear to be very high.
As Nikolai Kravinoff, gangster, and father to Sergei, a.k.a. Kraven and Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), Crowe is reduced to a mouthpiece for the script’s ideas of manhood. “Man who kills legend,” he says in his best Boris Badenov accent, “becomes legend.”
And the other baddies, The Foreigner, whose superpower appears to be his ability to count, and the Rhino, seem like small timers when compared to previous Sony Spider-Man Universe rogues like Venom or Doctor Octopus.
If there is a sequel to this movie, and I highly suspect there won’t, but if there is, Kraven should spend his time hunting for a better script instead of new villains.
