Movies based on videogames are either entertaining or eye-rolling. An interactive videogame that works at home on your PlayStation may not offer the same dopamine rush when translated to the one-way interactivity of the big screen. For every “Detective Pikachu” that hits the mark there’s a dozen “BloodRaynes” or “Mortal Kombat: Annihilations.”
“Uncharted,” a prequel to the wildly successful PlayStation series starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, and now playing in theatres, is the latest entry in the videogame sweepstakes.
Holland plays Nathan Drake, who, unlike Spider-Man, the actor’s other cinematic alter-ego, uses his sticky fingers to steal stuff, not scale the outside of tall buildings. Either way, both characters are adventurers who live outside the margins. In Drake’s case, it comes naturally. He’s a direct descendant of 16th century pirate Sir Francis Drake.
By day Nathan is a bartender in New York, by night he’s a thief. Day and night, he hopes to reunite with his long-lost treasure-hunting brother Sam who he hasn’t seen since he was ten years old. Big brother hit the road, with a promise to return, leaving behind memories and some cryptic clues to the location of $5 billion worth of Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s lost gold. “The gold isn’t gone,” he said, “it’s lost and if it is lost, it can be found.”
When fast-talking slickster Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) asks Nathan to help track down the lost treasure, he agrees, hoping to find the gold and information on his missing brother. “There’s only one rule,” says Sully of their dangerous mission. “Don’t get caught.”
The pair, along with fortune hunter Chloe (Sophia Ali), travel the world in search of two crosses that serve as a key to the mystery, all the while trying to stay one or two steps ahead of ruthless rich guy Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who has a personal connection to the gold, and his team of mercenaries.
“Uncharted” mixes and matches the adventure elements of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Tomb Raider” and “National Treasure” into a generic action movie that loses its way early on. Not even the combined charisma of its stars, Holland and Wahlberg, can put it back on track.
Both play thinly sketched versions of characters we’ve seen before and better. When he’s on-screen Wahlberg plays a riff on his trademarked sarcastic smart alecky character but this is a Where’s Waldo style role for him. He disappears for long sections as Holland takes center stage.
Holland plays Nathan as a cocky young man with a special set of skills. Sound familiar? It’s like watching Peter Parker do parkour without the webs but with an unnatural gift for figuring out puzzles that have confounded others for centuries. He’s fun on screen but he’s not doing anything here that feels new.
Together they banter in playful dialogue that often has the all the charm of an in-gown toenail.
Then there are the action scenes. The movie opens with a frenetic fight scene, heavy on the CGI, that sees Nathan flying through the air, battling bad guys. It’s high-flying action, but don’t worry if you are five minutes late getting to the cinema, the scene is repeated later in the movie. The large-scale action scenes are loud, frenzied but often feel like leftovers from Pierce Brosnan era 007. They fill the screen, but the movie’s flippant, light tone ensures there is very little jeopardy involved for any of the main characters.
“Uncharted” does have a pretty good villain, and no, it’s not Banderas who does little other than speak in a low whisper. Tati Gabrielle as the ruthless killer and schemer Braddock brings some spark to her scenes, but not enough to kickstart this inert action flick.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Angie Seth to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the latest from your friendly neighbourhood crimefighter in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the dark carnival of “Nightmare Alley” and the ex-porn star drama “Red Rocket.”
At the beginning of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the new two-and-a-half-hour-long superhero movie now playing in theatres, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) learns it’s hard to be a masked crime fighter when everybody knows who you are under your red and black suit.
Exposed by supervillain Mysterio at the end of “Spider-Man: Far from Home,” Parker’s life has been turned upside down. And not in a fun way as in 2002’s “Spider-Man” when Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst shared an upside-down smooch in the rain.
That was harmless good fun.
These days, the friendly neighborhood web-slinger’s newfound notoriety makes it impossible for him to balance his personal life and relationships with girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), best pal Ned (Jacob Batalon) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) with his role as a world saving crime fighter.
“People looked up to this boy and called him a hero,” squawks J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons), the conspiratorial host of TheDailyBugle.net. “Well, I’ll tell you what I call him, Public Enemy Number One!”
Some think he’s a hero, others regard him as a vigilante. As his identities become blurred, Parker turns to becaped neurosurgeon and Master of the Mystic Arts, Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), for help.
“When Mysterio revealed my identity, my entire life got screwed up,” Parker says to Strange. “I was wondering if you could make it so it never did.”
Parker wants Dr. Strange to conjure up a spell to brainwash the world and make people forget he is Spider-Man.
It’s a big ask. “Be careful what you wish for,” Strange says, warning Parker that casting such a spell will tamper with the stability of space and time.
Sure enough, the spell blows a hole in the multiverse, the collection of parallel universes with alternate realities, and unleashes “universal trespassers,” the most terrifying foes Spider-Man has ever faced in this or any other realm.
There’s more. Lots more. Big emotional moments, lotsa jokes, nostalgia and fan service, an orgy of CGI and Villains! Villains! Villains! The multiverse offers up a multitude of surprises but there will be no spoilers here. Your eyeballs will dance and, depending on your level of fandom, maybe even well up from time to time.
The trippiness of the story’s inter dimensional leaps, while entertaining, are secondary to the movie’s strongest feature, Spider-Man’s empathy. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a movie about second chances. Peter Parker doesn’t want to simply vanquish his enemies, he wants to understand them, to know why they behave as they do. By the time the end credits roll, the baddies may not be able to wreak havoc anymore, but not for the reasons you might imagine.
In real life the world is divided by ideology and opinion. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” asks us to examine those differences, look for their roots and try and heal them. It does so with plenty of trademarked Marvel action and overstuffed bombast, but the core message of empathy and understanding for others is the engine that keeps the movie chugging forward.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a mix of exhilaration and exhaustion. It is inconsistent in its storytelling, overblown at times and the finale is a drawn-out CGI fest but when it focusses on the characters, empathy and the chemistry between the actors, it soars, like Spider-Man slinging webs and effortlessly zooming between skyscrapers.
On paper “Chaos Walking,” a new dystopian movie starring Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland and now on PVOD, seems like a can’t fail for sci fi fans. In execution, however, the story of a world where men’s thoughts are manifested for all to see, is a letdown.
Based on “The Knife of Never Letting Go,” the first book of the Patrick Ness “Chaos Walking” trilogy, the story takes place in the year 2557 in a place called Prentisstown on the planet New World. Colonized by refugees from Earth, New World’s original inhabitants, the Spackle, fought back, slaughtering many of the male settlers and all the women. The surviving men contracted something called “The Noise.”
“It happened when we landed on the planet,” says Mayor Prentiss (Mads Mikkelsen). “Every thought in our heads is on display.”
Prentisstown residents, like Todd Hewitt (Holland), walk around with their thoughts exposed like wisps of multicolored cigarette smoke swirling around their heads.
When her spaceship crash lands on New World it leaves earth woman Viola (Ridley) stranded in this strange world. Todd, who has never seen a woman before, helps her navigate the dangers of her new home, as they both discover the deeply held secrets of New World.
“Chaos Walking” has ideas that feel ripe for satire, social commentary and drama but squanders them in favor of crafting a tepid young adult friendly dystopian story. Todd’s “Noise” reveals the kind of thoughts a teenager may have when first laying eyes on a girl, although in a g-rated fashion. His inner voice mumbles “Pretty” in Viola’s presence, but that’s about as deep into his psyche we get. It’s a shame because the “Noise” device could have been used to provide some much-needed humour into this earnest story. Or to more effectively drive the plot or the tension between the two characters. Instead, it is inert, a ploy to add some interest to a generic dystopian tale.
“Chaos Walking” was shot in 2017, deemed unreleasable, and has been fiddled with ever since. It hits PVOD as a film of unrealized potential, a minor footnote on the IMDB pages of its stars.
This is Spider-Man like you have never seen him before. “Cherry,” a new drug drama based on the novel of the same name by Nico Walker and now available on Apple TV +, features Tom Holland in his grittiest role to date.
The fresh-faced Holland is the unnamed title character, let’s call him Cherry for ease of explanation, an underachieving college freshman from an affluent family, head-over-heels for Emily (Ciara Bravo). Based on author Nico Walker, he’s a jittery collection of insecurities who finds a soul mate in Emily (Ciara Bravo), a young woman whose decision to move to Montreal to go to school sends him on a downward spiral. Impulsively, he quits school and joins the army.
Turns out Emily was bluffing, but it’s too late. They marry before he ships out, but he leaves the one good thing in his life behind for a tour of Iraq.
Woefully unprepared for the military, the death, despair and drugs take their toll and he returns to civilian life a hollow shell, riddled with PTSD. He finds comfort in drugs, and is soon swallowed up and spit out by Ohio’s opioid crisis. Financially drained and disenfranchised, he robs banks to support his heroin addiction, losing Emily and what was left of his self-respect.
It does not reveal a major plot point to let you know that “Cherry” was written while Walker was in jail, serving an eleven-year sentence. Negotiations for the film rights actually broke down when Walker, still behind bars, ran out of prison phone minutes. He’s out now, and is apparently using the money earned from the book to pay back some of the money he stole.
But back to the film.
Directed by the Russo brothers, the dynamic duo behind a good chunk of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—”Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Captain America: Civil War,” “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”—the movie is a departure for them. Like their other films it’s slick and stylish, but there’s a darkly humorous tone that’s been absent their best-known work. It’s the spoonful of sugar that makes the tragic events of the main character’s life palatable but make no mistake, this isn’t a comedy. While the Russos find the funny in some very bad situations, this is a bleak film. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve already seen everything that’s going to happen,” Holland’s character says, “and it’s a nightmare.”
It’s also a rather long film. At two-and-a-half hours it luxuriates in the ambitious set-up of the story, creating a vivid sense of the character’s search for purpose in a life that feels cut adrift. The early moments feel acutely observed, but as the movie gets grittier the visual flair overwhelms the story, engaging the eye but not the brain. Ideas of toxic masculinity, the destructive nature of opioids and he very nature of war are soon abandoned in favor of a more standard crime biopic approach.
Keeping us interested is Holland, who grounds the high-flying coming-of-age story with a career best performance that never loses sight of the film’s basic premise, that this is a young man, out of his depth in almost every way.
“Cherry” is ambitious and raw but the scope of the story is too wide to be truly effective.
In its first non-sequel since 2017’s “Coco” Pixar takes us to a whimsical world where strange winged creatures like The Manticore (voice of Octavia Spencer) run theme restaurants to tell a story with a human heart.
“Spider-Man’s” Tom Holland provides the voice of Ian Lightfoot, a flannel-shirt-wearing elf who, with his blue skin, bushy hair and Converse High Tops, looks like a cross between Krist Novoselic and a Troll. His boisterous older brother Barley (Chris Pratt in a role that once would have been played by Jack Black) is more Judas Priest than Nirvana, and spends his days absorbed in a fantasy role-playing game.
They lost their father to illness years ago when the boys were young. Barley has vague memories of him but Ian doesn’t remember him at all. Dear old dad left behind a present for the guys to be opened when they were both over sixteen. “No way!” says Barley. “It’s a wizard staff. Dad was a wizard!” “No,” corrects mom (voice of Julia Louis-Dreyfus), “Your dad was an accountant!”
Whether Dad was an accountant or wizard doesn’t matter, the staff does have magic powers. When mixed and matched with a Visitation Spell, the right Phoenix gem and a hint of mojo, Dad will appear for one whole day. Eager to meet the man they never knew Ian and Barley start the spell, but, as Dad starts to materialize, something goes wrong and the magic gem dissolves. “Aah!” Barley says. “He’s just legs! There’s no top part. I definitely remember having a top part!”
Hoping for a do-over they set off to find another Phoenix gem. “We’ve only got twenty-four hours to bring back the rest of dad,” says Barley.
A mix of the role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons” and Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life,” “Onward” mixes the journey genre with an absent-father story. The search for the gem is the McGuffin that keeps the action moving forward but ultimately, it’s not that important. It provides an excuse for director Dan Scanlon to stage large scale scenes involving winged fairies, giant gelatinous cubes and dragons but thematically this is more about a journey of self-discovery than search for a magic stone.
As such, “Onward” is at its best when it focusses on the relationships. Ian and Barley’s occasionally rocky but always loving bond lies at the heart of the film, but Pixar also remembers how to ratchet up the emotional content in other ways. The film’s most effective scenes are its simplest. Ian, listening to an audio tape of his late father and improvising a conversation he never got to have with the old man has the sprinkling of Pixar magic we expect from the folks that brought us stone cold classics like “Up” and “WALL-E.”
“Onward” doesn’t rank up with the very best of Pixar but few films, animated or otherwise, do. But what it lacks in storytelling innovation it makes up for in heart. The movie’s strength is in the way it handles the somber subject matter—the loss of Ian and Barley’s father—in the context of an exciting adventure filled with optimism.
Another franchise, another eccentric genius. Robert Downey Jr. laves Tony Stark behind to return to the big screen in a reboot of a remake of a classic story of a man who could talk to animals.
When we first meet Dr. John Dolittle (Downey) he’s at the Howard Hughes recluse stage of his life. The passing of his wife has left him despondent, unable to enjoy the company of humans so he lives in seclusion with only a menagerie of animals for company.
To pass the time he plays chess with a timid gorilla named Chee-Chee (voice of Rami Malek) and in conversation with the various animals who crowd his home, including his trusted macaw advisor Polynesia (voice of Emma Thompson) and Jip (voice of Tom Holland), a bespectacled dog.
“I don’t care about anyone, anywhere, anymore,” the doctor says.
Of course, that’s not true. When animal lover Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett) shows up at Dolittle’s gate with an injured squirrel (voice of Craig Robinson)—“I’m too beautiful to die,” the squirrel says.—on the same day the doctor is summoned to Buckingham Palace to see the ailing Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley), he is brought back into the human world. Her Majesty is gravely ill and if she dies the treasury will take the animal sanctuary Dr. Dolittle calls home. Worse, all his animals will be thrown out into the world during hunting season.
To save the Queen‘s life he must embark on a journey to find the Eden Tree and its magical, healing fruit. It’s trip fraught with danger and is the same journey that cost his beloved wife her life. Add to that some palace intrigue, an island of misfits and thieves, turbo boosting whales, a vengeful squirrel and even a dragon and you have a new chapter in the life of the man who can talk to animals.
Kids will likely find “Dolittle’s” chatty animals amusing but this isn’t simply a movie about wise cracking beasts. At its beating heart it is a movie about pain, but, as one character says, not the kind of hurt inflicted by a bullet or a knife. It’s about the agony of losing someone. Dolittle’s heart is broken by the death of his wife, and that ache is the engine that propels the entire movie. So, while the young’uns may giggle at the animals but the movie’s underlying downer vibe and generic approach suggests that Dolittle’s wife isn’t the only lifeless part of this movie.
Downey plays the character with a sense of bemused confusion, topped with a mealy-mouthed Billy Connolly impression that changes from scene to scene. It’s a pantomime performance that makes the best of his finely tuned comic timing but feels sloppy and needlessly mannered.
“Dolittle” contains some good pop psychology for children about working together—”Teamwork makes the dream work!”—and facing their fears but overall a movie featuring talking animals shouldn’t be this banal.
The animated “Spies in Disguise” features the voice of one of the biggest movie stars in the world and one of the strangest premises we’ve seen all year.
Will Smith voices Lance Sterling, the world’s greatest spy. “I’m out here saving the world,” he says. “That’s what I do.”
Back at HQ after a daring mission, he’s drinking from his #1 Spy mug when he’s taken into custody for stealing a secret weapon called the M9 Assassin. He claims he’s innocent, that a villain named Robot Hand (Ben Mendelsohn) stole his identity and made off the weapon. One daring escape later Sterling sets off to prove his innocence.
Trouble is, he’s easy to find so he tracks down the one person who can help him, MIT grad Walter (Tom Holland), a junior inventor in the agency’s Gadget Lab. “I need to disappear,” he tells the youngster.
Walter obliges, sharing his biodynamic concealment potion with Sterling. The spy disappears but not in the way he hoped. Instead of becoming invisible the next best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) thing happens. He turns into a pigeon. “There are pigeons in every major city,” Walter says. “It’s the perfect disguise.”
It’s a good way of going incognito perhaps but not practical in the hunt of Robot Hand. “I’ll come with you,” Walter says, “and show you all the advantages of being a pigeon. It might even make you a better spy.” Together they set off to find Robot Hand as Marcy (Rashida Jones), the agency’s head of security, tries to find and arrest them.
Featuring Pierce-Brosnan-era-007-style action and gadgets “Spies in Disguise” is frenetic, family friendly James Bond Lite. Directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane keep the pace brisk, pausing only to emphasize a gag but the movie works best not when it’s in action but when Sterling is adjusting to life as a pigeon. As his latent avian instincts come on strong, for instance, he finds he can’t resist eating garbage on the road. It’s goofy good fun that is more interesting than Sterling’s human form, which is all swagger.
The script, by Brad Copeland and Lloyd Taylor, also mines a considerable amount of humor from the odd couple pairing of Sterling and Walter. Sterling is a shoot first and ask questions later kind of spy while Walter favors unusual methods, like disarming the baddies with wild, glittery cat videos because, well, everyone loves a cat video. “You can do more by bringing people together than blowing them up,” he says.
“Spies in Disguise” is buoyant enough to entertain the eye but the messages for kids about the benefits of being part of a flock and celebrating our differences are expertly woven throughout.
