I appear on “CTV News at 6” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the weekend’s best movies, on streaming and in theatres. We have a look at the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons” and the drama “Eleanor the Great.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 36:46)
I join CTV Atlantic anchor Todd Battis to talk about the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons” and the horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 2.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CP24 to talk about the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons,” the drama “Eleanor the Great” and the horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 2.”
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 the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons,” the drama “Eleanor the Great” and the horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 2.”
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 the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons” and the horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 2.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: Loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” “One Battle After Another” is a story of rebellion and what happens when the tentacles of the past reach out to touch a new generation.
CAST: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
REVIEW: “One Battle After Another” begins as a story of The French 75, a revolutionary group on a mission to free hundreds of detainees at the US-Mexico border. Explosives expert Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and co-conspirator Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) are freedom fighters and lovers who stage daring raids that attract the attention of the aptly named Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn).
Cut to sixteen years later. With Perfidia no longer in the picture, Bob, now stoned and drunk much of the time, lives off the grid with their daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). Fearful his past will catch up to them, Willa isn’t allowed to have a cell phone and never leaves the house unless she has a special pager undetectable by everyone except French 75 members.
When Lockjaw reemerges, now working with a group of white supremacists, Bob is forced back into his old life, trouble is, all that lingers from his revolutionary days is a deep paranoia, the result of massive drug use. When Willa disappears, he must clear his addled brain long enough to track her down.
At almost three hours in length, “One Battle After Another” is an epic story that mixes and matches the political and the personal. A satirical look at the extremes of the left and right, and the resulting tribalism and polarization, when the film settles in after its first action packed hour it focusses on Bob, a revolutionary well past his best by date.
DiCaprio channels “The Big Lebowski’s” shambolic Dude. From his ever-present bathrobe and slightly bewildered facial expressions to his loyalty to friends and family and resilience the star’s take on Bob is a fun and funny homage to Jeff Bridges’s iconic performance. It allows DiCaprio the opportunity to display his comedic chops but also show emotional depth.
He’s at the center of a sprawling film, a movie about the ever-growing chasm between opposing political sides, but the movie succeeds because, at its heart, it’s a thrilling, redemptive family drama about what bonds us, not what divides us. Bob is a hot mess, a deeply flawed guy, but he steps up when his past actions put his daughter’s life in danger, and in the process finds reconciliation in that fractured relationship amid chaos he helped create.
Director Paul Thomas Anderson, who also wrote the script, has a lot on his mind. With its take on radical politics and domestic terrorism, the movie feels timely, while its portrayal of the connection between father and daughter is timeless.
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 the high kicking “Karate Kid: Legends,” the mannered “Phoenician Scheme” and the horrific (in a good way) “Bring Her Back.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Phoenician Scheme,” a new Wes Anderson film now playing in theatres, Benicio del Toro is Zsa-zsa Korda, a shady businessman who made his fortune through “unholy mischief.” On the verge of a new venture, he finds himself in the crosshairs, literally, of tycoons, foreign terrorists and determined assassins. “Why do you need to keep assassinating me all the time?” he asks.
CAST: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Imad Mardnli and Hope Davis. Directed by Wes Anderson.
REVIEW: There was a time when I loved Wes Anderson’s movies. His holy trinity, “Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore,” and “The Royal Tenenbaums,” were all unconventional gems; movies with a singular point-of-view that examined the lives of misfits and oddballs.
Then I stopped loving and stared merely liking Anderson’s movies as his signature whimsical style began to squeeze the life out of his stories of self-discovery and community. Still, his stop-motion “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” for example, was mannered but also hilarious and poignant.
These days, I long for the days of the relative restraint of “The Darjeeling Limited” and “Moonrise Kingdom.” Perhaps it’s a case of familiarity breeding contempt (although think that is too harsh a word), but to me Anderson’s films have lost the humanity of his earlier work. They still cover much of the same thematic ground, commenting on family dysfunction, failure and redemption, but they now feel as though they arrive covered in bubble wrap like precious museum pieces.
Such is the case with his latest, “The Phoenician Scheme,” a stylish story of big money, attempted assassinations and family, it features a topflight cast, who all seem to be having a swell time slotting themselves into Anderson’s carefully crafted, artisanal film. But there is an air of artificiality that settles over the movie like a shroud which sucks way much of the emotional depth.
“The Phoenician Scheme” is pretty, occasionally amusing and the commitment to deadpan performances is unparalleled, but even though I’ll watch anything with Benicio del Toro, it is more concerned with style than substance. As a result, its well-worn take on the evils of capitalism, as personified by del Toro, feels academic rather than authentic.
Benicio del Toro casts his line for red herrings and more in “Reptile,” a new crime drama now streaming on Netflix.
Set against the backdrop of a sleepy New England town, the action in “Reptile” begins after realtor Summer (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) is discovered murdered in the bedroom of one of her Scarborough, Maine show homes, with such force a knife was left embedded in her clavicle.
Found by her boyfriend, real estate bigwig Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), it is a gruesome scene described as “a nightmare” by grizzled Detective Tom Nichols (del Toro), the seasoned cop assigned to the case.
Nichols, a recent transplant from Philadelphia after an investigation into his former partner’s corruption, initially appears to be more interested in renovating the new house he owns with wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) as he is with the murder, but he soon puts together a list of the usual suspects.
“Am I a suspect?” Will asks.
“Everyone is a suspect,” Nichols replies.
Also raising suspicions are Summer’s almost ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman) and Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), an eccentric man who holds a grudge against the Grady family.
Along the way Nichols goes down a rabbit hole, bedeviled by jealousy, police skullduggery and enough red herrings—fake deaths, etc—to feed an army.
“Reptile” has style to burn. Director Grant Singer, best known for making music videos for The Weeknd, Sam Smith and many others, in his big screen debut, creates a bleak backdrop for the action to unfold against. Trouble is, the story is laid on just as thick as the atmosphere.
Despite some good performances from Eric Bogosian, Michael Pitt and Ato Essandoh, and a heroically quirky turn from del Toro, “Reptile” plays like a derivative pastiche of the standard good cop in a bad situation genre. The myriad plot devices, that borrow from “Law & Order” and “Cop Land” and everything in between, threaten to crush the whole thing under their weight.
“Reptile’s” main strength is del Toro. He shares great chemistry with Silverstone, his co-star in 1997’s “Excess Baggage,” but it is his combination of tenaciousness and eccentricity that are the movie’s most original components.
