Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the romantic entanglements of “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” the adorable “Paddington in Peru” and the new MCU offering “Captain America: Brave New World.”
Watych the whole thing HERE!
I join the CTV NewsChannel to talk about the new MCU offering “Captain America: Brave New World,” the adorable “Paddington in Peru,” the romantic entanglements of “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” and the sci fi love story “The Gorge.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Captain America: Brave New World” the newly crowned Captain America, Sam Wilson finds himself at the center of an international incident after meeting with President Thaddeus Ross. “You may be Captain America,” says Ross, “but you’re not Steve Rogers.”
CAST: Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Carl Lumbly, Xosha Roquemore, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Giancarlo Esposito, Tim Blake Nelson, and Harrison Ford. Directed by Julius Onah.
REVIEW: When Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) handed his shield to former pararescueman Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), a.k.a. The Falcon in the finale of “Endgame,” it marked an exchange of power that went on to be explored in the Disney+ series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”
The new film picks up the story as Wilson and President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford), who previously butted heads about how much latitude “enhanced individuals” should have, are on the same side with a plan to rebuild The Avengers. “Work with me and we’ll show the world a way forward,” Ross says.
It’s all hunky dory between them until a daring assassination attempt places them at odds. Unless Wilson, and his sidekick Joaquin Torres / Falcon (Danny Ramirez), can get some quick answers, a cherished friend and the future of a worldwide peace treaty are in danger.
“Captain America: Brave New World” gets caught between its (relatively) grounded conspiracy story and its high-flying aspirations.
Dragged down by stitching up loose story threads from other films, it over explains the action, showcases Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) a diabolical but dull villain—although catchphrase, “Please, don’t be boring,” is pretty cool—and feels more like a Disney+ show than a big screen event.
And yet, it does have entertaining aerial scenes and, in the Red Hulk, a role that allows Harrison Ford, the best angry man in movies, to let his freak flag fly. It’s also nice to see Carl Lumbly’s Isaiah Bradley, the Korean War era Captain America, make the leap from the miniseries “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” to the movie.
At the heart of the whole thing is Mackie. As a Captain America with no superhuman abilities, he is a more grounded character. Sure, he flies through the air with the aid of advanced technology, and his vibranium shield comes in handy when things go south, but his inner turmoil over his place in the world of superheroes and his progressive nature make Wilson a hero for the modern age.
The political conspiracy story of “Captain America: Brave New World” serves as an official introduction for Wilson as Captain America, but by the time the end credits (and the one post credit scene) rolls, it’s the Red Hulk antics that stick in the memory.
SYNOPSIS: In “The Invisibles,” a new fantasy family drama starring Tim Blake Nelson and Gretchen Mol, and now playing in theatres, Charlie is feeling invisible. Ignored at work and having trouble at home, he leads a life of quiet desperation. As his troubles mount, he slowly disappears; literally unseen by everyone except those in a parallel universe who have also vanished from real life.
CAST: Tim Blake Nelson, Gretchen Mol, Bruce Greenwood, Simon Webster, Rachel Wilson, Tennille Read, Laura de Carteret, Juno Rinaldi, Courtenay J. Stevens, Rob Ramsay, Vinson Tran, Golden Madison, Jean-Michel Le Gal, Tal Gottfried, Elina Miyake Jackson, Nathan Alexis, Philip Van Martin, Grace Loewen. Written and directed by Andrew Currie.
REVIEW: Charlie’s (Nelson) trip into a new dimension isn’t so much an exploration of the hereafter as it is a journey of self-discovery. Charlie isn’t dead, he is simply absent from his life, watching his old reality from another point of view. It’s a little bit “It’s a Wonderful Life,” (with a charming Nathan Alexis subbing in for Clarence), and part low-key “Interstellar” rumination on human agency and what it means to be alive.
At the heart of it all is Nelson who gives Charlie a world weariness born of trauma, disappointment and apathy. He’s a “don’t know what you have till it’s gone guy,” forced to fight for his place in the world, and to accept that disappointment, frustration and loss are equal threads in the great human tapestry alongside love and joy.
The secret to the performance is in his eyes, as we see him processing whether to return to the unpredictable real world or stay in the relative emotional stasis of the invisible world. It’s lovely work, vulnerable but determined, imbued with both bliss and the blues.
As otherworld bartender Carl, Bruce Greenwood makes a convincing argument for sidestepping the pains of real life, but writer/director Andrew Currie chooses to dive deep, examining how and why emotional tumult shapes us.
“The Invisibles” is thoughtful, provocative filmmaking that asks fundamental questions about life, love and trauma is an entertaining, and often funny, way.
The action in “Ghosted,” a new espionage comedy now streaming on Apple TV+, begins with a meet cute between Cole and Sadie, played by Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, and a question, Is it romantic or weirdly obsessive to follow someone you’ve only met once halfway around the world to ask for a second date?
Cole and Sadie meet at a country market where he’s working a flower stall. It isn’t exactly love at first sight. They get off to a bad start when he refuses to sell her a plant that needs lots of TLC, even though she is often out of town for work, frequently for months at a time. “Who can be so indifferent to a living thing?” he asks.
Feeling guilty and rude, he catches up with her as she drives away and, then and there, they agree to go on a date. What begins as an afternoon coffee hook-up quickly turns into all night affair, leaving Cole convinced he has met his soulmate. He even took a selfie of her in bed, while she was asleep, so he could cherish the moment later.
When she doesn’t return his texts, he decides to track her through the microchip on his inhaler, which he conveniently left in her purse the night before. Turns out, she’s in London.
“She didn’t ghost me,” he says optimistically, “she just doesn’t have an international calling plan.”
Despite never having been out of the country—not true says his dad. “He was conceived in Ontario.”—he jumps on a plane to rekindle the fire that sparked the night before.
But instead of being met with a shower of hugs and kisses, he is caught in a hail of bullets, when it turns out Sadie is CIA operative on a dangerous mission. “I cannot believe you got me kidnapped and tortured after one date,” he says.
She points out that he flew across the ocean to find her after only knowing her for a few hours. “That is not passive behavior,” she says.
With Cole misidentified as a spy, cue the international intrigue, heavy artillery and some light romantic complications.
“Ghosted,” which pairs Evans and de Armas after “Knives Out” and “The Gray Man,” is an action-comedy-romance in the style of “Romancing the Stone.” A mismatched pair must rely on one another to survive, all the while falling in and out of love.
The movie works best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously. By the time we get to the “protecting the people you love is never a mistake” sentiments, much of the fun of watching Captain America play against type—Cole’s own sister calls him “smothering, needy, pathetic and delusional—and de Armas in full-on action mode has wilted. Up until then, however, screenwriters Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick—best known for writing the “Deadpool” and “Zombieland” movies—keep “Ghosted” fairly nimble on its feet, blending the action, adventure and romance into an appealing frothy confection.
During its two-hour running time “Ghosted” goes a little OTT with multiple MCU cameos, sets itself up for a sequel and slides by on the charm of its leads.
“Pinocchio,” the wooden boy with a lie detector for a nose and dreams of becoming a real boy bouncing around his sawdusty brain, is one of the most reimagined characters in children’s literature. Earlier this year Tom Hanks starred in a traditional remake of the 138 year-old-story that echoed the classic Disney film.
The Oscar winning director of “The Shape of Water” takes the story in his own direction in “Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio,” a stop motion retelling, now playing in theatres and coming soon to Netflix. In what may be the only version of the story featuring a cameo by Mussolini, the movie travels a different, darker path than previous adaptations.
Del Toro keeps the original story’s Italian location, but places the action between World Wars I and II. Woodworker Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) is a skilled artisan, lovingly teaching his young son Carlo the ropes of the craft while working on large crucifix at a local church. When Carlo is killed in a bombing raid, Geppetto spirals into despair and alcoholism.
While soothing his loss with booze, the heartbroken Geppetto cuts down an Italian pine tree near his late son’s grave and builds a roughhewn puppet as a replacement for his boy. Gangly, with a long nose, the puppet sits slumped in Geppetto’s workshop until a magical Wood Sprite (voice of Tilda Swinton) breathes life into him and appoints Sebastian J. Cricket (voice of Ewan McGregor), a mustachioed insect who lives inside the puppet, as his guide and conscience.
The rowdy newborn, dubbed Pinocchio (voice of Gregory Mann), doesn’t make a great first impression on Geppetto or the local townsfolk. But as Geppetto warms to him, the locals, including fascist government official Podestà (Ron Perlman), don’t quite know what to make of him.
“Everybody likes him,” says Pinocchio, pointing to the still under construction crucifix. “He’s made of wood too. Why do they like him and not me?”
As Pinocchio tries to figure out his place in the world, he soon discovers that not everyone has his best interests in mind.
This is not your parent’s “Pinocchio.” Del Toro sticks to the bones of author Carlo Collodi’s original plot, but expands the story with a deep dive into what it means to be human, mortality, the weight of expectation and the horrors of fascism. It doesn’t sound particularly family friendly, but while there are some intense, nightmarish images, this is a fairy tale in the Brothers Grimm tradition. It speaks to the issues surrounding growing up, whether you’re made of wood or flesh and blood, and should be fine for kids ten and up.
Visually spectacular, the stop motion animation gives the movie a more organic feel than it may have had if rendered in computer generated images. Rich in detail and imagination, the film’s style mixes and matches dreams with nightmares to create a palette that paints the fanciful and the earthbound in equal measure.
“Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio” does something remarkable. Just as the Wood Sprite breathed new life into Geppetto’s puppet, Del Toro breathes new life into a very familiar and often-told story. He is buoyed by fine voice work and visuals, but it is the auteur’s allegorical stamp that really brings this wooden boy to life.
When we first meet Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), known to friends and family as Johnny D, he’s in his element, in the woods chopping down a tree as part of his pulping business. The calm and serenity of his life is soon uprooted by Alabama lawman Sheriff Tate (Michael Harding). What at first seems to be a routine stop takes a turn when Tate snarls, “You wanna make a break for it? ‘Cuz after what you did I’m happy to end this now.”
Those words kick off the action in “Just Mercy,” a based-on-life-events legal drama starring Foxx and Michael B. Jordan. Johnny D is sent to death row even before he is tried and convicted of the murder of an eighteen-year-old local girl. “You don’t know what it’s like down here when you are guilty since you were born,” he says.
After languishing in a tiny cell near the prison’s “death room” for several years Johnny D is visited by Harvard-trained civil rights defense attorney Bryan Stevenson (Jordan). The former church pianist is an idealistic young man, new to the profession but fueled by a passion to fight injustice. “I wanted to become a lawyer to help people,” he says. Moving to Monroeville, Alabama—where Harper Lee wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird”—he sets up the Equal Justice Initiative with the aid of Eva Ansley (Brie Larson) with an eye toward undoing wrongs.
It’s a daunting task. On his first visit to the prison he is illegally strip searched by a leering guard on his way in. Worse, the community sees him as someone who wants to put convicted killers back on the street. He deals with death threats, witness intimidation and racism but the biggest hurdle comes down to one cold, hard fact. “You know how many people been freed from Alabama death row?” asks Johnny D. “None.”
Working against the odds Stevenson begins a campaign to expose the corruption that landed his innocent client in jail. “Whatever you did your life is still meaningful,” he says, “and I’m going to do everything I can to stop them from taking it.”
“Just Mercy” does a good job in setting up the obstacles Stevenson encounters on his search for the truth. The film could be criticized for director Destin Daniel Cretton’s traditional, linear approach but the entrenched racism and systemic resistance to change Stevenson deals with are undeniably powerful indictments of a legal system that favors the establishment over everyone else.
Bringing the tale of injustice to life are formidable but understated performances from the core cast. Jordan and Foxx keep the theatrics to a minimum. As Stevenson, Jordan is all business, driven by personal passion but bound by his professional attitude. Foxx is stoic, a man who has lost all hope. When his case takes a turn the change in his body language is a subtle reminder that his attitude has shifted.
Equally as strong are the supporting players. As death row inmate Herbert Richardson, Rob Morgan brings vulnerability to the kind of character who is so often portrayed as a one-dimensional stereotype.
The film’s showiest performance comes from Tim Blake Nelson as a man tormented by his role in Johnny D’s wrongful conviction. His face contorted and scarred he gives the character an arc within his relatively short time on screen.
What “Just Mercy” lacks in flashy storytelling it makes up for in its earnest examination of injustice and discrimination.
“The Report,” starring Adam Driver as lead investigator and author of the “Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Report of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program” Daniel Jones, sets up what is to come very early on in the film when a CIA agent says,
“Paper has a way of getting people into trouble at our place,” to Jones.
When we first meet Jones he is an idealistic staffer for California’s Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening). A hard worker, he throws himself into his latest project as chief investigator on what would become the largest study the Senate ever conducted, a look into the use and abuse of E.I.T.s – enhanced interrogation techniques, sanctioned by the Bush/Cheney administration in the months and years following 9/11.
Working with a small team in a small underground bunker with no wi-fi and, at first, no printers to create documents that could leave a paper trail, Jones uncovers unimaginable cruelty and through the course of six years and in generating a document that spans almost 7,000 pages cannot find any instances of the torture—i.e. waterboarding, sense deprivation techniques and physical abuse—leading to the uncovering of any useful information. When Feinstein is told one subject was waterboarded—a method of torture that simulates drowning—183 times she says, “If it works why do you have to do it 183 times?”
Jones finds himself stuck in the political process, a cog in a very big wheel determined to crush him and keep the results of his work, including accusation of CIA certified murder, under wraps.
“The Report” contains high voltage ideas and accusations but is dry as a bone. It’s a Sorkin-esque social drama without the engaging drama the “Social Network” writer brings to his projects. Writer-director Scott Z. Burns captures the labyrinthine machinations that keep Washington in a constant state of intrigue but gets lost in the complexity of the situation. Cover-ups are never straightforward, especially one with the juice to generate 7,000 pages of damning evidence. The result is a plodding procedural that, although incendiary, never catches fire.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
“I understand some people are angry at the silly elements of the film,” says Colossal director Nacho Vigalondo, “but I’m a comic book guy and those are for me a way to re-enact the golden age of comic books on screen. I’m OK with superhero films not being afraid to be silly sometimes.”
His film may have the year’s strangest premise. He takes a basic rom com format—woman in trouble returns to hometown and strikes up a friendship with a former schoolmate—and turns it upside down. And inside out. And flips it on its head. He simultaneously reinvents and destroys the form in a movie that might be best referred to as a rom mon.
“Colossal is an original idea,” he says, “and you have to be careful with original ideas. A movie doesn’t make it on originality alone, you need something else.
“If you were writing this film as a romantic comedy and you are in the third act of the movie and suddenly you have opposing monsters in it? That is impossible. You have to do it the other way. I started with a silly and dark premise of this woman affecting the monsters on the other side of the world but it didn’t become a real film until I found the characters.”
Anne Hathaway stars as Gloria, an unemployed Manhattanite who fills her days—and most nights—with booze. As her life falls apart she returns to her small hometown a broken, drunken wreck. On home turf she reconnects with Oscar, played by Jason Sudeikis, a childhood friend, now owner of the local bar and possible love interest. So far it sounds like the set up for an unconventional rom com.
She takes a job at the tavern, earns some spending cash and access to after hours booze. Then things take a weird turn.
One afternoon she wakes up with the forty-ounce flu to the news that a giant monster has attacked Seoul, South Korea. It soon becomes clear to Gloria that she is somehow related to the mysterious attacks. It sounds outrageous, like the ramblings of a drunken sot, but when she takes Oscar to the sandbox in the local playground, the monster suddenly appears on the other side of the earth, mimicking her every move. When her actions cause havoc in Seoul she is forced to confront the monster within, her addiction.
Colossal is the kind of script most Rom Com Queens would toss in the trash by page 11. Hathaway, however, throws herself at it, relishing the off kilter and dowdy character. This may be a monster movie, but the real monster is her alcoholism not the foot stomping Kaiju.
“When Anne Hathaway said she wanted to play this role that was probably the biggest turning point in my whole career. If I had a list actors in mind I would have been the crazy guy on the block. Let me put it to you this way. Let’s fanaticize, if this movie becomes an Oscar winner for Best Picture, that would be a lesser jump than these actors wanting to be in this film.”
Colossal isn’t exactly a monster movie or a Jennifer Aniston-esque rom com. It is something else, something original and that is its beauty. It’s a reinvention, for both Gloria and its genres.
