I sit with host Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to talk about the new Tragically Hip live album, “The Pitt” lawsuit, a new “Godfather” novel and I review the road trip revenge flick “Is God Is.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the hellish hallmark “Obsession,” the rowdy revenge of “Is God Is” and the secrets of “The Wizard of the Kremlin.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make your bed. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the hellish hallmark “Obsession,” the rowdy revenge of “Is God Is” and the secrets of “The Wizard of the Kremlin.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Is God Is,” a new thriller now playing in theatres, a dying mother sends her twin daughters on a mission of revenge.
CAST: Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Janelle Monáe, Vivica A. Fox, Sterling K. Brown. Written and directed by Aleshea Harris.
REVIEW: Revenge and reckoning lie at the heart of “Is God Is.” Fueled by rage and raw emotion, it’s a spellbinding Greek tragedy by way of Tennessee.
Based on director Aleshea Harris’ 2018 play of the same name, “Is God Is” stars Mallori Johnson and Kara Young as Anaia and Racine, twin sisters who were disfigured after their abusive father, known only as The Monster (Sterling K. Brown), deliberately lit a fire in their home. Inseparable, Racine, whose scars are hidden, is fiercely protective of Anaia whose face was burned. They share everything from a terrible legacy and twin telepathy to the burn scars that have come to define their lives.
They believed their mother, Ruby the God (Vivica A. Fox), perished in the blaze, but turns out, she’s alive, but just barely. On her deathbed, she has a request for her daughters. “Girls, I’m gonna make this real simple,” she says. “Make your daddy dead. Real dead.”
With mom’s marching orders, they set off to find the man who changed all their lives irrevocably.
“This seems a little crazy,” says Racine.
“Not as crazy as setting your wife on fire in front of your kids, then abandoning them.”
A potent mix of arthouse and grindhouse, “Is God Is” is an exciting feature film debut for writer and director Aleshea Harris. Infused with style, emotional weight and philosophical heft, it’s a bold big screen unveiling of a talent that put me in the mind of watching “Reservoir Dogs” for the first time.
It’s not just a debut, it’s an announcement. A declaration of Harris’s fundamental understanding of the film’s basic elements—neo-noir, Southern Gothic, revenge, buddy comedy road trips and spaghetti westerns—and her ability to take the various components and filter them through her own sensibility to create something that feels unique and alive in every frame.
The inciting incident, the fire that changed Anaia, Racine and Ruby’s lives, for instance, is horrifying, not because of what it shows but because of what it doesn’t show. Ditto a murder in the film’s final third. Harris is confident enough to allow the audience’s imagination to take over, to let us do the work, and those sequences have extra torque because of it.
Even though the situations are extreme, the top-line performances from two-time Tony winner Kara Young and Mallori Johnson keep the brutal story of retribution relatable.
Much of this material is heightened—particularly Erika Alexander as Divine the Healer and Vivica A. Fox as Ruby the God, who, despite being bedridden and covered with prosthetics, dominates her scene—but the central characters, Anaia and Racine, as they glide through the comedy, violence and moral dilemmas inherent to the story, remain eye level on their mission from Ruby the God.
Sterling K. Brown rates a mention for making a character who has very little screen time, but is talked about throughout, surprising and far more nuanced than expected. No spoilers here!
“Is God Is” is electrifying cinema, a pulpy movie that is in no way passive. Whether it makes you laugh, cringe and ponder cyclical violence, it demands a reaction.
In today’s world it’s not enough to simply be a hero. Now you must be a superhero. Unlike the old days when square-jawed movie stars rescued damsels in distress or battled cold-hearted landlords, today’s champions won’t get out of bed for anything less than the threat of complete world annihilation. Liberating a cat from a tree or performing the Heimlich Maneuver is considered HeroLite™, the work of lesser lifesavers.
Today it’s all about averting the apocalypse. In Captain America: Civil War the idea of how to police and ultimately save the world is at the heart of the action and X-Men: Apocalypse’s bad guy has grandiose plans to “cleanse mankind and create a new world order.”
This weekend the heroes of Independence Day: Resurgence join Mystique, Quicksilver, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello, Captain America and legendary do-gooders Batman and Superman in some good, old fashioned world saving.
The twenty-years-in-the-making sequel to Will Smith’s mega-hit sees aliens from outside the Solar System attack our planet. It’s life and death on a planetary scale, a premise that has become increasingly popular in recent years.
It’s not a surprise the stories are getting larger and louder. Audiences want a big bang for their buck and Hollywood is pleased to oblige with high stakes situations that provide frenetic action and happy endings (unless, of course you’re rooting for the bad guy). These days Hollywood also looks to overseas markets for mega-revenue and presenting globe-spanning stories helps to attract crowds in other countries.
Business aside, why have audiences embraced world-on-the-brink movies?
Films, says Dr. Norman Holland, Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Emeritus at the University of Florida, work on different parts of your brain.
“The parts that turn off are the parts that plan action because you’re not going to act on what you see on the screen in front of you,” he says. “You turn off the systems that plan, that look ahead that evaluate futures. That explains the phenomenon of the willing suspension of disbelief. You accept the most improbable things, like Stars Wars or Spider-Man or whatever. At the same time the lower centres of your brain are generating emotions like mad in response to what you’re seeing. This is the peculiar phenomenon that you can feel and care about these people on the screen while at the same time knowing they are nothing but a fiction.”
In other words, it’s what legendary purveyor of thrills Alfred Hitchcock said. “People like to be scared when they feel safe.”
We live in unsettling and troubled times and going to the movies can provide an escape. In these heroic tales good almost always wins out, a comforting antidote to the nightly news where stories often don’t have happy endings. It makes us feel good, but, as Dr. Holland notes, it’s also restful.
“As you know they are redesigning movie theatres with recliner chairs so you can sleep through the movie,” he says. “Yes, it is relaxing. This is the part of your brain that worries, that plans for the future, that is concerned about the state of your body. All that shuts down. It’s restful, no question.”
Going to the movies is restful? Good for us? Seems like in our busy, stressful world it’s the films that are the heroes, not the characters.
“That is definitely bigger than the last one,” says David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum).
He’s talking about the alien spaceship that puts our planet in peril in “Independence Day: Resurgence,” the twenty-years-in-the-making sequel to Will Smith’s 90s mega-hit, but he could also be talking about the movie itself. It’s certainly bigger and louder than the original, but is it better?
In the two decades since the first invasion the world has become a better place. “Our survival is only possible when we stand together,” says President Lanford (Sela Ward). The White House has been rebuilt, a woman is President and countries now work together. There’s a military installation on the moon and using the ET technology salvaged from the downed spaceships they have safe guarded the planet from another attack.
Or so almost everyone thought.
Ex-President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is plagued by bad dreams—or are they premonitions?—of another extra-terrestrial incursion and it turns out he’s right. A distress signal from the first wave of space invaders triggered another assault, this time with bigger, badder aliens from deep, deep, deep space.
“Make them pay,” says ex-first daughter Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe) to her boyfriend, warrior pilot Jake (Liam Hemsworth). “I’m not going out there to make friends,” he says. Look out aliens! Cue the computer generated carnage.
At their best big special effects movies like this should fill the viewer with wonder. Large-scale spectacle, like the world on the verge of collapse, should fill us with shock and awe but in “Independence Day: Resurgence” we have to settle for an unsettling sense of déjà vu. It’s a movie that exists as an excuse to showcase the special effects in a cynical attempt to recycle an idea that worked well enough the first time. Not only have we seen virtually everything here in the original film, we’ve seen similar images in every end-of-the-world movie from the last twenty years. Here they are bigger and louder, but not better.
Ditto the dialogue. It feels like a first draft to the original movie, updated for a new cast. Goldblum is always a welcome presence but he’s saddled with terrible, trite words and he gets most of the good lines. It’s the kind of movie were people ask questions instead of saying anything interesting. “How the hell did we miss this?” “What’s going on?” Or the classic, “What the…??!!,” delivered with mouth agape. It’s less a script than a series of catchphrases and questions cobbled together and sounds like it was all run through the Blandizer® before being handed over to the actors.
It’s the kind of movie where you root for the aliens, hoping they make quick work of humanity because that would be less painful than sitting through one more minute of this mess. You don’t watch “Independence Day: Resurgence,” you subject yourself to it because even though it could be the end of humanity there’s no real humanity here, just empty heroics.
The most alien thing about the movie is the presence of Lars Von Trier’s favourite actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. If anyone in the movie noticed she was there I’m sure they would say, “What the hell is she doing here?” Cashing a paycheque I imagine.
I really hated “Independence Day: Resurgence.” It’s a popcorn flick but this popcorn stale. “Independence Day”? More like “Groundhog Day.” We’ve seen it before and better.
