I join the CTV NewsChannel to talk about the big movies from the weekend, including Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value” and the animated “In Your Dreams.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CP24 to talk about Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value” and the animated “In Your Dreams.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I joined CTV NewsChannel to have a look at new movies coming to theatres including Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” and the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” and the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value.”
Watch 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 Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” the animated Netflix film “In Your Dreams” and the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: Based on the novel “The Running Man” by Stephen King, which was published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, the movie of the same name sees the unemployed Ben Richards (Glen Powell), desperate for cash to save his sick daughter, sign up for a “Squid Game” style show in which contestants must stay alive for 30 days while being pursued by “hunters” hired to kill them.
CAST: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Colman Domingo, and Josh Brolin. Directed by Edgar Wright.
REVIEW: A survival thriller that puts a human face on the story’s themes of economic coercion, personal sacrifice and class Inequality, “The Running Man” is slick, high-energy satire with grim messages about media manipulation, exploitation and the chasm between the haves and the have nots.
Set in the near future where the reality show features Runners hunted by Hunters, “The Running Man” sees Ben Richards (Glen Powell), a desperate father convinced by the show’s cartoonishly evil producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) to enter the game to win a cash jackpot. “Rules are simple,” says Killian. “Survive thirty days with the entire nation hunting you down and get your family out of slum-side for good.”
Like a bloodthirsty episode of “Survivor,” the chaotic show within the movie is television’s highest rated program, but instead of getting voted off the island, you get voted off the mortal coil. “HUNT. HIM. DOWN!” shouts show host Bobby Thompson (Colman Domingo).
With a mix of paternal love and sheer will, Richards becomes a fan favorite; a viral star turned folk hero.
“The Running Man” begins with a strong premise; a father pushed to extremes to do what’s best for his family. Richards is an everyman—except that most desperate dads don’t have Powell’s charisma, and a six-pack that would make Adonis envious—thrust into a life-or-death situation. The situation is extreme, but the motivation is relatable, grounding the movie in an all-too-real world of an under-employed family unable to afford medical attention.
It’s a potent starting point, a dystopian nightmare with real world resonance. It’s when the movie puts Richards at the end of a gun barrel, on the run for his life, that “The Running Man” loses its grounding by succumbing to bombast. As the title suggests, the film does laps around the movie’s motifs, for the most part preferring to entertain the eye with high octane visuals than engage the brain, before circling back to the sociopolitical issues that inspired the story in the movie’s rushed finale.
It’s frenetic and frantic but lacks the verve that Wright usually brings to his films.
Woven into the film’s fabric are some interesting diversions. As anti-government activist Elton, Michael Cera brings a sense of anarchy and awkwardness that gives “The Running Man” a jolt in the film’s mid-section. It’s an exhilarating segment that provides the mix of comedy and action we expect from Wright’s caffeinated filmmaking.
Less successful is the introduction of one percenter Amelia Williams (Emilia Jones). An avatar of wealth and privilege more than an actual character, she’s a living metaphor of elite detachment, and becomes the blunt instrument Wright uses to hammer home his commentary on the economic divide in the film’s final section.
When Stephen King wrote “The Running Man” in 1982 his musings on corporate control, media manipulation and the economic gap felt dystopian. Times have changed, and now the most upsettingly dystopian thing about the movie might be how it depicts the future popularity of reality television.
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including Sydney Sweeney’s “Christy,” the historical drama “Nuremberg” and Jennifer Lawrence in “Die My Love.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Train Dreams,” a new drama set in the early 20th century and now playing in theatres, Joel Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, a logger and railway construction worker who plays witness to the decline of the old frontier as the world as world is transformed by trains, automobiles and changing times. “It’s all going by so fast,” says Grainier’s wife Gladys (Felicity Jones).
CAST: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Clifton Collins Jr., Kerry Condon and William H. Macy. Directed by Clint Bentley, who co-wrote the screenplay with Greg Kwedar.
REVIEW: Based on the novella by Denis Johnson, “Train Dreams” is an elegiac look at nature, love, life and the passage of time.
Joel Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, an itinerant worker as a logger and on the railway in the Pacific Northwest. Orphaned at a young age, his life is changed forever when he meets and marries Gladys (Felicity Jones), who brings stability to his life. Despite long, money-making stints in the logging camps, he becomes a devoted father to daughter Kate.
When tragedy strikes, Robert is left alone, “waiting to see what we were left here for.”
“Train Dreams” moves at its own speed. The lovingly considered, deliberately paced story of a man of few words, it’s a quiet movie that speaks loudly on the connectedness of the earth and the people who live on it.
Edgerton hands in a career best performance as the stoic Robert. He’s a tough man, unambitious, but unafraid of hard work. Happy with simple pleasures, his innate understanding that life is a series of moments to be savored reveals the heart of a poet. It’s that spirit that gives the movie its soul as Robert navigates his journey of joy, sadness and healing.
Beautiful cinematography by Adolpho Veloso captures the land’s ruggedness, creating a lyrical backdrop for the story’s beauty and brutality. As Robert comes to understand his connection to the land, the forest he helped decimate as a logger becomes a character in this man’s life story of loss and love.
“Train Dreams” is a lovely, contemplative movie about the attempts to understand the ephemeral aspects of life. There’s no spectacle, no grandstanding, just intimate, poignant grace notes of one man’s existence.
Set three hundred years after the events of 2017’s “War for the Planet of the Apes,” the latest film in the Apes franchise continues many of the themes established in the earlier films. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” now playing in theatres, explores topics of power and prejudice, of control and culture clashes.
Generations after the rule of Caesar, the original ape potentate, humans have become feral, while apes, like young chimpanzee hunter Noa (Owen Teague), live in clans as the dominant society. When Noa’s village is destroyed and family displaced by the marauding gorilla warriors of the power mad Bonobo despot Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), he begins a journey of revenge.
Along the way, he encounters the intellectual orangutan Raka (Peter Macon), a disciple of the teachings of the original Caesar. From Raka the young ape learns the fundamental rules; ape shall not kill ape and as apes together, we are strong.
The journey continues with the addition of Mae (Freya Allan), a human Raka befriends—“She is smarter than most,” he says.—on the way to Proximus Caesar’s secret “kingdom,” an expedition that could determine the fate of both human and ape civilizations.
“In their time, humans were capable of many great things,” says Proximus Caesar. “They could fly, like eagles fly. They could speak across oceans. But now, it is our time. And it is my kingdom. We will learn. Apes will learn. I will learn. And I will conquer.”
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is jam packed with big ideas and even bigger action scenes, but feels intimate because of its emotional content. While I have nostalgia for the rubber “damn dirty apes” masks of the original film franchise (1968 – 1973), the motion-capture performances on display here allow the actors to display emotional nuances the Roddy McDowell-era masks simply could not. Small facial gestures of concern, anger and happiness go a long way to creating ape characters that don’t simply feel like anthropomorphic oddities. These new school apes have a wider range of expression and that brings with it an intimate feel to the epic story.
Director Wes Ball ensures the emotional content is never diminished by the action. Not exactly wall-to-wall with action scenes, Ball takes his time with the worldbuilding and introduction of new characters before staging the first of the film’s big set pieces. It makes for a slow start, which makes the whole thing seem over long at two-and-a-half hours. But when it really kicks into gear in the second act, it does so with great stakes and is punctuated by the kind of adrenaline rush finale you expect from a big summer blockbuster.
It is, I suppose, ironic that “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” succeeds because of its humanity, but science fiction works best when its ideas, though presented in a speculative fashion, are reflective of the world in which they exist. This is a big budget summer blockbuster, but has its DNA in Pierre Boulle’s original book, and the “Planet of the Apes” screenplay by Rod Serling and Michael Wilson, which value social commentary about abuse of power, prejudice and social divisions over spectacle. In our real world, a mixed-up, shook-up place, those themes resonate.
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” doesn’t have anything as memorable as the first film’s Statue of Liberty reveal, but is a worthy addition to the franchise, and sets up an interesting sequel.
