Richard joins host Jim Richards of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today we talk about the the stylish crime drama “The Outfit,” the college horror “Master” and the “adult” scares of “X.” Then, we learn about the most stylish man who ever lived and the drink named after him.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Horror and social commentary are longtime bedmates. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” for example, is an allegory for 1950s fear of communism. “Frankenstein” warns of technology gone amok. More recently “Get Out” was a powerful condemnation of racism. “Master,” a new Regina Hall film now on Prime Video, confronts white supremacy in a story about legacy and the sins of the past.
“Master,” set at an upscale Massachusetts school built on land that was once the site of a Salem-era gallows, is the story of three African-American women. Liv Beckman (Amber Gray) is a literature professor battling against expectations and prejudices as she nears tenure. Gail Bishop (Regina Hall), is a tenured professor and the recently appointed student “Master.” “I am more than a professor,” she tells her students, “I am a confidante, an ally, a friend.”
Zoe Renee plays first-year student Jasmine Moore. When she arrives, she immediately becomes the talk of the campus as the new resident of room 302 in a co-ed dormitory called Belleville House. The other students whisper about supernatural activity and death in, what they ominously call, “the room.”
Each woman is forced to deal with a reckoning, whether it is the very real threat of insidious racism or the nightmarish reverberations of the Salem Witch Trials or both.
There are moments of stylish, elevated horror in “Master’s” handling of the historical haunting aspects of the story but it is in writer-director Mariama Diallo’s presentation of the allegorical dread of racism, microaggressions and exclusion experienced by the three lead characters that is truly terrifying.
The addition of real-life horror to the supernatural aspects of the tale deepens the movie’s effect, upping the atmosphere of unease and dread. The school’s current day institutional racism juxtaposed against the historical story of a bullied student who killed herself in Jasmine’s room decades ago because she thought a witch was stalking her, illuminates the privilege and bigotry in both timeframes.
“Master” is clunky at times, particularly near the end, but strong performances and deftly interwoven social commentary elevates the horror, exposing the ways that real life, injustice and privilege are often more disturbing than the ghostly realm.
“The Last Thing Mary Saw,” a new film about sexual repression, and now streaming on Shudder Canada, is more about mood and atmosphere and the toll that fear takes on people than it is about horror.
When we first meet Mary (Stefanie Scott), she is blindfolded, blood tickling down her cheeks, under interrogation regarding her grandmother’s (Judith Roberts) “sudden departure.”
Suspected of being a witch, one of her captors assesses the situation. “It is not our responsibility to give the devil a chance to repent. He must perish with her.”
Sombre and creepy, it is just the beginning of Mary’s unsettling journey.
Jump cut back in time to 1843 in rural Southold, New York. Much to the horror of her devout parents, Mary is having a love affair with Eleanor (Isabelle Fuhrman), the family’s maid. “Our daughter’s ears are deaf to the Lord’s preachings,” her father tells the soon-to-be-gone the family matriarch. “She continues to engage in acts with the help.”
Instead of sending the maid on her way, it’s decided the young lovers will be subjected to “corrections,” a torturous religious punishment wherein they are forced to kneel on grains of rice and recite Bible passages. “Mary and the maid played dangerous games and were punished accordingly.” Unsurprisingly, the rudimentary conversion therapy doesn’t work, and Mary and Eleanor continue to clandestinely see one another.
When they are discovered, lives are shattered as a mysterious character named The Intruder (Rory Culkin) enters the story.
“The Last Thing Mary Saw” isn’t particularly scary in its violence or visuals, save for a deeply unpleasant dinner scene, but it is chilling filmmaking. First time director Edoardo Vitaletti calibrates each scene, including a long, virtually silent middle section, for maximum discomfort.
Repression covers the entire film like a shroud, as Mary and Eleanor attempt to live their lives away from the fear and religious fervor spawned by Mary’s pious parents. Human nature is the boogeyman here, not Mary’s alleged witchcraft.
The forced clandestine nature of their relationship is enhanced by Vitaletti’s shadowy, candle lit photography. It is restrained and sophisticated throughout, etching some unforgettable images in the viewer’s imaginations.
On the downside, the restraint, while moody, feels as though the movie is holding back, stopping just short of fully embracing its horror elements. This straightforward, serious treatment undersells the creepy elements that could have made the story as memorable as the images.
“The Mad Woman’s Ball,” a new Gothic, French language thriller now streaming on Amazon Prime, is a human look at the dehumanizing oppression foisted upon patients at Paris’s notorious 19th century Pitié-Salpêtrière psychiatric hospital.
Young socialite Eugénie Cléry’s (Lou de Laâge) father is not happy. Her rebellious behaviour, like
sneaking off to read poetry and smoke at cafes, offends his deeply conformist world view. Even worse is her newfound belief in spiritualism. Eugénie believes she can communicate with the dead. Those encounters leave her in a state of anxiety and cher vieux papa Cléry is having none of it. Embarrassed, he forcefully commits her to Pitié-Salpêtrière, a women’s hospital specializing in experimental treatments devised by Professor Jean-Martin Charcot (Grégoire Bonnet).
Diagnosed as “hysterical,” she finds solace in the company of Geneviève (Laurent), a sympathetic nurse who believes Eugénie doesn’t belong at the facility. Together they plan the young woman’s escape on the night of the hospital’s degrading “Bal des Folles,” (Mad Woman’s Ball) where Paris elite mix with the clinic’s patients.
An adaptation from the 2019 book by Victoria Mas, “The Mad Woman’s Ball” is a melodramatic story of survival set against the backdrop of the barbaric beginnings of psychiatric medicine.
Director Laurent paints an evocative picture of life inside the 19th century hospital. Laughs and screams fill the air as Laurent’s camera details the gothic details of the facility. On the inside intimidation and oppression loom heavy, but the storytelling is compassionate. Eugénie and Geneviève are soldiers in the fight against fight against misogyny, personified by men like the arrogant Professor Charcot and Eugénie’s father, who oppress them and ultimately, misunderstand them.
It’s powerful storytelling, buoyed by wonderful performances, marred only by the occasionally overwrought contrivance. “The Mad Woman’s Ball” is best in its quiet moments between Eugénie and Geneviève when the power of their solidarity is heightened.
“Crisis,” the new Gary Oldham movie now available on demand, aspires to be a multi-pronged thriller in the same vein as “21 Grams” and “Traffic.”
Director Nicholas Jarecki presents three parallel story threads that bob and weave to put a human face on the opioid epidemic. First is Gary Oldman as Dr. Tyrone Brower, a university professor working on developing products for a pharmaceutical company. He is confronted by an ethical dilemma when the company announces a new “non-addictive” painkiller. Bribes and big pharma conspire to push his moral code to the limit.
Elsewhere, architect Claire Reimann (Evangeline Lilly) beats an oxycodone addiction to get to the bottom of her son’s drug related disappearance while DEA agent Jake Kelly (Armie Hammer) goes deep undercover to bust up a multi-cartel Fentanyl smuggling operation as drug movie staple “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’” by the Rolling Stones plays on the soundtrack.
Eventually the trio of story shards resolve, mixing the corporate, revenge and procedural plotlines into an entertaining but not particularly substantive look at a very serious subject.
Jarecki slathers an action movie sheen on the proceedings, heightening every scene, and while the propulsive pacing, “power gangsters” and Brower’s habit of snarling pat lines like, “This is the biggest public health crisis since tobacco!” amplify the movie’s popcorn aura, they minimize its complexity.
Oldman is predictably entertaining, all self-righteousness and bluster, while Hammer (in a role shot before his recent controversies) and Lilly are blandly appealing leads who get the job done in roles that require little from them other than angst and action. Canadian actor Guy Nadon brings a toxic mix of charm and danger as a drug lord named Mother alongside an all-star supporting cast that includes Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez, Kid Cudi and Luke Evans.
“Crisis” aims high as a well-meaning message movie that plays more like a Saturday afternoon matinee flick.
Six years ago writer/director Drew Goddard deconstructed the slasher movie genre with the whimsical and exhilarating “Cabin in the Woods.” A mash-up of horror and humour, of post-modern self-awareness and gruesome gags, it simultaneously adopted and challenged the conventions of the slasher genre. He returns to the big screen—his day job is writing, producing and directing TV shows like “Daredevil” and “The Good Place”—with “Bad Times at the El Royale,” an inversion of a 1990s broken timeline crime drama.
The El Royale is the kind of seedy hotel that dotted the highways and byways of 1960s America. Split down the middle by the California/Nevada border, it’s a perfect slice of mid-century kitsch, like the same guy who decked out Elvis’s rec room designed it. When we first lay eyes on it a shady character (Nick Offerman) with a bulging suitcase and a gun wrenches up the floorboards and hides a case of money before replacing the carpet and the furniture. It’s an act that establishes the El Royale as a home-away-from-home for transients and ne’er-do-wells and sets up much of the action to come.
As for the action to come, you’ll have to go see the film to find out what happens. I will tell you that the film takes place ten years after the suitcase was hidden in the hotel and begins with a disparate group of folks checking in well after the El Royale’s heyday. There’s slick talking vacuum cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), Reno-bound singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a priest with tired eyes and hippie chick Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson). All three pay front desk manager Miles (Lewis Pullman) the $8 deposit and take to their rooms.
Secrets are revealed about the guests and the hotel as an aura of menace clouds the sunny California/Nevada border. “We’re in a bit of a pickle,” says Father Flynn in what may be the understatement of the year.
Goddard takes his time setting up the narrative drive of “Bad Times at the El Royale.” He bobs and weaves, playing with time, slowly revealing the intricacies of the story. For the patient—it runs two hours and 21 minutes—it’s a heck of a ride but may prove too opaque for casual viewers. Large conspiracies are hinted at, secrets are kept and no one is really who they seem to be. For those willing to submit to the grimly funny and admittedly indulgent proceedings, it’s a Tarantino-esque web of intrigue and unexpected violence that plays both as a crime drama and a metaphor for the decay of 1960s idealism.
“Bad Times at the El Royale” is a good movie filled with bad people. It asks you to care about people who do terrible things and by the end, thanks to inventive storytelling and good performances—Erivo is s standout—you just might.
Like a perfectly cooked egg, or popping the individual pockets of air on bubble wrap or the “pawooof” sound a properly opened bottle of champagne makes, watching Denzel Washington open up a can of whoop ass on bad people is extraordinarily satisfying. His latest film, “The Equalizer 2,” the first sequel in his long and stories career, offers up a cornucopia of fisticuffian delights that should keeps fans of tough guy Denzel happy.
Denzel returns as former secret agent and righter-of-wrongs Robert McCall. Although he’s looking to scale back his ongoing quest to protect and serve the exploited and oppressed, when his former boss and close friend Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo) is murdered, he goes looking for revenge. “You killed my friend,” he says to the baddies, “so I’m going to kill each and every one of you. My only disappointment is that I only get to do it once.” Cue the carnage, Denzel-style.
There’s more, like a subplot with a young artist McCall tries to steer away from gang life and some double crosses, but you don’t go to an “Equalizer” movie for the social messaging or the plot. You go to see Denzel reign holy hell down on people that deserve a punch or two. That’s why the first, largely plot free, half of the movie is more satisfying than the second. We see McCall in random situations doing what he does best, not getting bogged down by the vagaries of narrative style or thematic statements. The fight scenes are don’t vary much, he scopes out the room, mutters a killer one-liner and devastates those who get in his way. It’s in the second half, after Susan’s murder that it sags as the movie strays into procedural territory. McCall’s investigative work leads to another improbable “Equalizer” style climax, although this one, set in a beach town during a hurricane, isn’t quite as ridiculous as the Home Hardware shootout—who knew those places were so dangerous?—in the first film, but it still requires some suspension of disbelief. (Start by asking yourself, when did he have time to hang up all those pictures of Susan in a wild windstorm?)
Director Antoine Fuqua has snapped up the pace from the first film, showcased the action, and added in two great motivators, betrayal and grief. Washington brings gravitas and ferocity to a character stuck somewhere between atoning for his violent life by helping those around him and knocking the snot out of people who get on his bad side. This sequel muddies the character by presenting him as a one-man posse, meting out his own brand of over-the-top justice. You can root for him, just don’t get on his bad side.
Not as trashy as “Death Wish” or as action-packed as “John Wick,” two other exemplars of the man on a crusade genre, “The Equalizer 2” is a solidly entertaining popcorn flick with pretensions of bringing Shakespearean level of pathos to the tale of vengeance. Instead, it’s “Taken” with the special set of skills and without the annoying daughter character.
“You Were Never Really Here” is about a man with a special set of skills who rescues young women and yet it couldn’t be any more different from “Taken” and other recent guardian angel action movies.
Joaquin Phoenix stars as Joe, a bulky, bearded veteran who lives with his mother. When he isn’t rescuing young girls from human traffickers he’s doing household chores, helping his mom clean the silver wear or, when memories of his violent past overtake him, trying to kill himself.
Driven by vengeance and haunted by memories of childhood abuse he metes out punishment to human traffickers, violently beating them with fists and hammers. “Can you be brutal?” asks a client. “I can,” he replies calmly.
When a job retrieving Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), the eleven-year-old daughter of a high-ranking New York politician (Alex Manette), from a pedophile ring goes sideways, Joe is forced to delve deeper than ever before.
There is violence in “You Were Never Really Here” but don’t expect a Liam Neeson style action flick. First of all Joe’s special set of skills mainly include surveillance and ball peen hammer assault. Secondly Joe doesn’t have any catchphrases. He’s a secretive man of action, plagued by PTSD and driven by a sense of righteous justice. Think Travis Bickle, not former Green Beret and CIA operative Bryan Mills.
Phoenix delivers a deceptively simple performance. A man of few words Joe expresses himself in other ways and Phoneix finds way to do much while doing very little. The pain in his eyes, amplified by random flashbacks to his troubled youth, reveals both his personal torture and why he works exclusively with mistreated children. More importantly are the traces of humanity that slip through Joe’s blank façade. The way he dotes on his mother or holds a dying man’s hand, singing along with a syrupy pop song, as life slips away. In another scene he instructs his pre-teen rescue to close her eyes, trying to protect what little innocence she has left, before he bludgeons one of her captors to death. It’s in these moments that Joe becomes a fully rounded character and not simply a killing machine.
Scottish director Lynne Ramsay never gives away the game, doling out the details only as necessary. The flashbacks are jagged, poking into the story like a shard of glass slashing through silk. Those elements, bolstered by an anxiety inducing score—loud, abrasive yet beautiful—from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, combine to present an intriguing, elliptical portrait of a tortured soul.
By Richard Crouse – Toronto Star
Centred around a motel in a small Alaskan town, Sweet Virginia is a story of people and a place gripped by greed, frustration and murder.
“I’m originally from a small town,” says the Timmins, Ont.-born director Jamie M. Dagg, “so I’m really fascinated by how the lack of anonymity in small communities changes the dynamics and how people relate to one another where everyone is incestuously interwoven into the fabric of the community. Keeping secrets is really difficult.”
In the film, opening Friday, Christopher Abbott is Elwood, a dead-eyed psychopath who comes to town to do a job. He’s been contracted to kill a man. He does the hit, callously killing two innocent bystanders in the process. Waiting for his money, he checks into the motel run by Sam (Jon Bernthal, star of The Punisher on Netflix), a former rodeo star now sidelined by injuries. The two men strike up a friendship as Elwood grows edgy and unpredictable waiting for the person who hired him to cough up his fee… READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!
