I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Scott Hirsch to talk about the strange sci fi of “Mickey 17,” the kid-friendly “Night of the Zoopocalypse” and the suspense of “Seven Veils.”
Watch 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 I talk about “Mickey 17,” a movie with double the usual amount of Robert Pattinsons and tell you the history of double drinks.
Listen to Shane and I talk about the life of Dolly Parton’s dearly departed husband Carl Dean, and what actor won a Guinness Book of World records Award this week HERE!
Have double the fun on Booze & Reviews with my review of “Mickey 17” and a history of double drinks HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make some toast! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the strange sci fi of “Mickey 17,” the kid-friendly “Night of the Zoopocalypse” and the suspense of “Seven Veils.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
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.
The trailer for “Nope,” the new alien abduction film from thriller auteur Jordan Peele, now playing in theatres, is one of the rare promos that gives next-to-nothing away about the plot. It’s meant to pique curiosity, to open your mind to the possibility of… well, almost anything.
The movie exists on the edge of possibility. It’s possible to see it simply as a good-time-at-the-movies UFO flick, but if you’re looking for more, Peele adds layers of subtext to the slow burn story, commenting on Hollywood, corralling nature and the belief in something bigger than yourself.
Set in current day, just outside of Los Angeles, “Nope” sees O.J. and Emerald Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) carry on the family business after the death of their father (Keith David). Descended from the Bahamian jockey who was the first person to be filmed riding a horse, they run Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, a ranch that supplies livestock to film and television shows. “Since the moment pictures could move,” says Emerald, “we’ve had skin in the game.”
Business is slow, and just as O.J. considers selling some of their horses to a local pioneer village style theme park owned by former child star Ricky “Jupe” Park (“The Walking Dead’s” Steven Yeun), strange things happen at the ranch. Some kind of disturbance in the force has caused electrical blackouts, weird weather and put the horses on edge. There’s also a cloud that hasn’t moved for months.
When O.J. spots something in the sky, something he says was “too fast to be a plane,” Emerald hatches a plan to film the airspace around the ranch to capture film of a UFO. “The money shot,” she says. “Undeniable. The Oprah shot.”
They set up surveillance cameras, and, working with tech support guy (and UFO evangelist) Angel Torres (Brandon Perea) and gravelly-voiced cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), they attempt to lure the mysterious craft—which resembles a giant sand dollar—to their elaborate trap and get “the impossible shot.”
“What we’re doing is going to do some good,” says Angel, “besides the money and the fame. We can save some lives.”
Like Peele’s other films, “Get Out” and “Us,” “Nope” has jump scares and disturbing images but this isn’t a horror film. It’s a sci fi movie that explores the fear of the unknown by way of Hollywood Westerns—it pays tribute to the doorway shot at the end of “The Searchers”—monster flicks, and of course iconic Steven Spielberg sci fi films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” These homages are lovingly assembled to create something fresh, but students of film will have a hoot dissecting the movie’s visual influences and Peele’s obvious love of the form.
Just as there are myriad visual inspirations, Peele has jam packed the film with ever-shifting thematic and plot elements. The straight-ahead alien showdown is prefaced by story threads and flashbacks that don’t always feel like they’re forwarding the story. A TV chimpanzee-gone-wild sequence, for instance, while kinda cool if it was part of another movie, is a bit of a head scratcher.
Having said that, the sheer size and spectacle of “Nope” are powerful. There are only a handful of characters, but their journeys are broad and there are unexpected twists and turns. It’s an ambitious movie that feels less focused than Peele’s other films, but nonetheless, “Nope” earns a Yup.
A nomination for a Golden Globe Award as Best Foreign Language Film should help “Minari,” now on premium digital and on-demand, the boost it deserves to find a wide audience. Simultaneously intimate and emotional, it is an authentic coming-of-age story about the resilience of the human spirit.
Drawing on his own personal experiences director Lee Isaac Chung has crafted a story about the Yi family, the Korean born mother and father, Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han), and their American born kids Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and David (Alan Kim). Dreaming of a better life, they relocate from California to start a food business in rural Arkansas. Buying a plot of land, he plans on growing Korean produce to sell in the tri-state area.
It’s a tough go. Water is scarce, particularly after Jacob declines the services of a local dowser in favor of trying to find his own source. To make ends meet Jacob and Monica take on jobs at a local hatchery, but the long hours, coupled with David’s heart condition, bring trouble at home. To ease the tension Monica’s mother Soonja (Yuh-Jung Youn) comes from Korea to lend a hand.
She’s a handful, not a “real grandma” says David. But her swearing, love of wrestling and life brings some much-needed spark to the Yi’s new trailer home. Best of all, her antics help David find his way from shy little boy, whose mother coddles him, to fun loving kid.
“Minari,” in English and Korean with subtitles, is a carefully observed movie. The look on Monica’s face when she sees her new home for the first time is a subtle but devastating. Grandma’s easy laugh is infectious and David’s reactions to his grandmother—“They don’t swear! They don’t wear men’s underwear!”—are funny in a wistful kind of way. Even farmhand Paul’s (Will Patton) eccentric religious beliefs are treated compassionately and never ridiculed, even when Jacob can’t understand why he would rather lug a giant cross down the road than accept a ride.
These moments build as the story unfolds, bringing empathy along with them. And while the film confronts the racism the Yi’s encounter in their new community, the story doesn’t look there for conflict. That comes from within the family and their struggles, not from external circumstances.
“Minari” is a true family drama, with a hint of “The Grapes of Wrath” thrown in for good measure.
“Sorry to Bother You” is set in an alternative reality version of present day but feels like a throwback to the politically charged satires of the 1980s and 90s. Echoes of “Repo Man” and the like reverberate throughout but nonetheless director Boots Riley is never less than original in his telling of the tale of a telemarketer who trades part of his identity for success.
The story centers around slacker Cassius Green (LaKeith Stanfield), a young man who lives in his Uncle Sergio’s (Terry Crews) garage. “I’m just out here surviving,” he tells his performance artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson). In need of money—he’s four months behind in rent—he goes to a telemarketing job interview armed with a phoney resume and some fake “Employee of the Month” awards. Lies notwithstanding he gets the gig. “This is Tele marketing,” says his new boss (Robert Longstreet). “We’re not mapping the human genome here. You will call as many numbers as possible. You will stick to the script we give you and you will leave here happy.”
After a rough start Cassius gets some advice that changes everything. “If you want to make some money here use your white voice,” says the guy in the next cubicle (Danny Glover). “I’m talking about sounding like you don’t have to care. Like you don’t really need this money. It’s what they wish they sounded like.” The technique works (David Cross provides Cassius’s white voice) and on the eve of a strike in the telemarking office Cassius is promoted, bumped upstairs to the elite Power Callers floor. “Welcome to the Power Caller suite,” says his new boss (Omari Hardwick). “Use your white voice at all times here.”
The new job involves selling power—fire power and manpower, specifically the services of WorryFree, a service that offers lifetime work contracts to desperate people. Run by mogul Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), the company has been accused of selling slave labour, and now Cassius is their number one salesperson. His success comes at a cost, however. His girlfriend doesn’t approve and his striking friends call him a scab. The new job may be on the wrong side of the ethical divide but, at first at least, Cassius grins and bears it. “I’m doing something and I’m really good at it. I’m important.”
From here the story goes places that will not be spoiled here. Suffice to say Riley takes “Sorry to Bother You’s” viewers on a journey unlike any other. The film is an audacious capitalist nightmare, heavy on anti-corporate, pro-union rhetoric filtered through a kaleidoscopic lens. It’s risky and witty, edgy and inventive and unrestrained in a way that makes it utterly unique. Scathing commentary on the state of the world—“If you are shown a problem,” says Squeeze (Steven Yeun), “and can’t do anything about the problem you get used to the problem.”—is coupled with creative, confrontational filmmaking.
In “Sorry to Bother You” Riley has created an apocalyptic world that looks like ours but tilted 180°. He’s populated it with offbeat characters who forward the story but bring humanity to the strange world they inhabit. Their take on race relations, employment and relationships feels real even though nothing else in the movie does. It’s the peak of satire to heighten the situation but still make real, humanistic points. Riley does both in a way that is both experimental and entertaining.
