Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Our reviews and thoughts on the latest releases, classics, and nostalgic favourites. Things we loved, things we hated, and worst of all, things we were ambivalent about.

The Art of the Steal

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Crunch and Nicky Calhoun are conman brothers, part of a merry little gang who steals art. Crunch (Kurt Russell) gets double-crossed by his own brother (Matt Dillon) when a heist goes wrong and winds up spending 7 years in a Romanian prison where he learns that trust, not cash, is the ultimate currency. When he gets out, he lives a semi-legit life with a new wife, a new sidekick (Jay Baruchel), and a second-rate motorcycle-daredevil career.

hero_artofthesteal-2014-1 But then Nicky comes calling. One last heist, he says (is there really such a thing?). And since Crunch is so low on funds, they assemble the old gang and pursue a tricky art swap, even with Interpol (Terence Stamp) breathing down their necks.

I found this movie recently added to Netflix, but not very generously reviewed. I gave it a chance because: Kurt Russell. He’s kind of a badass. And Jay Baruchel, who I have enormous love for. And you know what? It’s not a bad movie. It’s not overly great either, it’s just an easy-watch heist movie that borrows a little to heavily from better movies. But the cast is extremely watchable, and the writing’s not bad, it’s just formulaic. So if you have no time to waste, skip it. But if you like the genre, I think you’ll get along just fine with the film.

Bonus for Canadians: much of the film is not just filmed in Canada but takes place ADMITTEDLY in Canada, and stars a whole bunch of Canadians, aside from Baruchel, including Katheryn Winnick, Niagara Falls, Kenneth Walsh, Chris Diamantopoulous, Quebec City, Jason Jones, Devon Bostick, Tim Hortons, and piles of fluffy home-grown snow.

Toni Erdmann

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Ines Conradi is a successful businesswoman currently stationed in Bucharest but poised for promotion and transfer to Singapore when this next deal goes well. Winfried Conradi is her father, a lonely man, socially handicapped and prone to the dumbest, most trying “pranks” on the planet. There is no such person as Toni Erdmann. Toni Erdmann is just what Winfriend calls himself when he’s wearing ludicrous false teeth and an even worse wig, which is his go-to costume for “pranking.” His pranks, by the way, consist mainly of toni-erdmann-5-rcm0x1920u just showing up and being this weird alternate personality. He more or less stalks his daughter and endangers her career by showing up at her office and various work functions. If he was your father, you’d either die of embarrassment, or you’d kill him. No two people should survive a relationship like this.

Nothing happens in Toni Erdmann. It’s dull as shit. It’s 2h40min of fumbling through “comedy” that didn’t even induce me to crack a half-smile. What am I missing? This film has been a hit at festivals, including Cannes and TIFF, and was just nominated for a Golden Globe (best foreign film). But I didn’t get it. Sure Ines needed some unbuttoning, poor corporate stick i the mud that she’d become, but I don’t see the humour in a father constantly humiliating his daughter. I didn’t get the public nudity, or the unironic belting out of a Whitney Houston song. The whole thing missed me completely. What the father accomplishes, to my eyes, is not the unburdening of his daughter but rather her undoing – some of her choices seem unhinged and nervous-breakdownish, especially since they’re so often done at work or in front of colleagues. And it feels anti-feminist to say that because this woman is business-minded she’s also cold and in need of saving.

Toni Erdmann was agony for me, maybe more so because I’d actually been looking forward to it. But it was a chore, one that felt interminable for a time, a long time, a period of time that felt even longer than the nearly-three hour runtime.

Fences

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Denzel Washington says more in the first 5 minutes of Fences than Casey Affleck does in the entire 137 minutes of Manchester By The Sea. Fences was adapted from August Wilson’s brilliant play of the same name, a 2010 Broadway revival of which garnered Tony awards for both Washington and Viola Davis. Both reprise their roles for the movie, alongside Broadway costars Mykelti Williamson (as Gabe), Russell Hornsby (as Lyons) and Stephen Henderson (as Bono) also rejoining the cast. The performances are thus flawless: believe the hype. But as for the movie, I was less convinced.

The adaptation is a little too literal. A play will necessarily take place in the same few fences-640x427 locations, but a movie doesn’t have such limitations. This one sticks closely to its confines, however, and as director, Denzel Washington uses a series of tight shots to further the exposition. The characters, and Washington’s in particular, are talky, prone to excessively lengthy essays that explore 1950s racial tensions in relation to their lives.

After an arduous life, Troy Maxson has just been promoted and will be the first African-American garbage truck driver in Pittsburgh (despite not holding a license). But good news is never so simple in the neighbourhood where he lives, and frankly, neither is Troy. The most compelling thing about this movie is that Washington and Davis give such thorough, riveting performances. Their characters are complicated, interesting, complex. It’s an excellently crafted play, but its transfer to film was a little too minimal for my taste. I needed a little energy between the marathon monologues. Powerful as the sermons may be, too many in a row meant that I was dozing off, sometimes barely able to keep up with the rapid-fire speechifying. And the monotony of the locations and the lack of movement from the cameras made me very aware that Fences was and is a great play but that as it is, it is not a great movie. It’s a true testament to some of the greatest living actors today that they master the language and the rhythms of the dialogue, overcoming the verbosity if sometimes overreaching.

Fences is a bit bloated; at 138 minutes there was plenty of opportunity to lose some fat. Washington is not a strong director, and some of his choices flat-out confounded me, though he mostly is reverential of the work, which is a complaint rather than a compliment. To me this movie is dead in the water as far as the Best Picture race is concerned, but both Denzel and Viola will be in strong contention as far as their roles go. Viola Davis, however, has engaged in some category fraud in order to better her odds: she’s campaigning as a supporting actress when as a matter of fact she constantly steals thunder from Denzel. It’s still early to predict how Oscar will go, but Fences is an electrifying vehicle for some incendiary performances, even if it never reaches true cinematic scope.

Short: The Present

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What was the best present you got this year?

Did you ever get a dog for Christmas? Dogs are probably as close to the meaning of life as we’ll ever get, but a dog is also a responsibility more than a gift, so you should always think twice, and maybe even three times before you give a dog to someone. Like giving a cell phone, which saddles the recipient with a monthly bill, a dog is a mouth to feed and 4 paws to clean, and about 3\4 of your bed to kiss goodbye. But they fill your heart with joy.

That said, I present to you a 4-minute short that will likely pull on your heartstrings. A boy gets an unexpected gift from his mother – and he’s less than happy about it. With thanks to Mr. Bad Bloke Bob for turning us on to it, you can watch it here (and I recommend that you do):

Attractive animation and smart, succinct story-telling accomplished in near-silence. The Present is a 4-minute gift you should give yourself right now.

My Christmas Love

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Uh oh: two minutes in and this Christmas movie is already a Christmas breakup movie. She calls her “employee” (a guy who serves as a hunk on the Hallmark channel, I take it), who ditches his guy friends to console his heartbroken boss in her house on her bed on Christmas Eve.

So there’s also the following classic Christmas issues, compounded with some romantic movie cliches to keep them company: 1. her sister is getting married, and she needs to find mv5bota4ntnlzgmtogfkmy00mzhlltg5m2itzwe4mjk0ntgzngqzl2ltywdll2ltywdlxkeyxkfqcgdeqxvyodm4mjyxma-_v1_sy1000_cr006661000_al_ a +1 before the new year 2. her employee is going to be alone for the holidays so he gets invited along to her dad’s farm 3. her mother is recently deceased and it’s the first Christmas without her.

So now we’re 5 minutes into the movie, and I ask: is there a single person among us who CAN’T predict the agonizing ways in which this is about to unfold?

The rest of her family isn’t quite feeling the spirit, but she’s going to plod along, talking quickly and pooping Christmas as she goes. Her hometown is crawling with cheek-dimpled ex-boyfriends that make her “strictly platonic employee” not jealous at all. Oh, and every day a lady in an old-timey bonnet shows up to sing a verse of 12 Days of Christmas, and gifts her with the turtle doves or the partridge or whatever. So fun, right? And totally original. But she reframes it as a “romantic mystery” so basically she doesn’t get out much.

This movie aside, I’ve had a lovely little holiday, and now I’m passing time at work watching whatever crummy Christmas movie I can find on Youtube while wearing Christmassy dino socks and dreaming about leftover pie at home. Hope your day has been good too.

The Good Guy

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Bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. Bad bad. Bad bad bad. Bad very bad bad bad. Bad bad bad. Bad bad BAD. Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad badbad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad.

Alexis Bledel plays a protagonist you can’t help but hate because she has it all but still whines and complains and makes terrible decisions she’s too old to excuse away. She has a sexy Wallstreet boyfriend who’s willing to defer sex until she’s ready so of course she falls for his co-worker. And then to defend her actions we villainize the boyfriend so we can send him away without a wrinkle in our consciences. The whole thing is cheesy, badly acted, and an insult to bipedals everywhere. Honestly, folks, we’re better than this.

The Kid Who Loved Christmas

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A troubled kid is adopted by a family at long last. The husand is a musician who checks in by phone when he’s on the road; his wife (Vanessa Williams, circa 1990) is a doting mother at home. This could be little Reggie’s best Christmas ever.

But wait: tragedy strikes! Vanessa Williams dies in a vague car accident, which means the kid that just got a mommy now has a dead mommy. For a minute it feels like her death is just an excuse to have Della Reese belt out Amazing Grace in a church, but have a little faith, folks: Eddie Murphy wouldn’t have produced just any Christmas TV movie. Her death is also an excuse for evil family services to swoop in and revoke the adoption (a single father is unstable!), which in turn allows us to see a little boy penning this heartfelt letter to Santa:

Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is my Daddy.

Love, Reggie

Daddy does everything in his power to win back the kid (with a little help from Sammy Davis Jr., true story) but it’s going to take a little bit of Christmas magic for this kid’s holiday wish to come true.

Don’t you just feel vicariously all warm and fuzzy inside?

The Seventh Fire

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Rob Brown takes a moment to consider his beloved Ojibwe community, and pronounces its new tradition: booze and bingo. Director Jack Pettibone Riccobono gives us plenty of cut-away shots of the things that used to feature strongly in the aboriginal culture: water, trees, and sky, but those days are gone. Today Brown’s remote Minnesotan reserve is in the business of methamphetamine, and the meat of The Seventh Fire is in following gang leader Brown and the path of destruction he’s hewn within his own tribe.

Brown’s teenaged protégé Kevin is already a drug user and a drug pusher, well on his way to the life of crime exemplified by his idol. Brown is pretty blasé about his recent unlaw-abiding behavior until he’s confronted with his 5th stint in prison, a 58 month stretch that has him sweating but not quite with regret.

Riccobono and his crew are given startling access to this community, and it’s unreal how unconcerned his subjects are with being filmed at their worst. In fact, as time goes by, you realize how mundane the drug culture has become. Fathers manufacture drugs at the kitchen table, very young children are snorting openly, kids use their culture’s very sacred tradition of pow-wow to score drugs or to sell them.

Though the word is never spoken aloud, Riccobono gives us a real sense of hopelessness from the community. Parents dejectedly feel it’s too late for their kids, not yet of legal age but already parents themselves, sixteen and sadly indifferent about their own childhoods borne in violence and addictions, and about their own kids doomed to repeat the cycle.

Rob Brown has a mea culpa while in prison, words that sound right and true, but come a little too easily when one is behind bars and untested. Whether or not he owns up to his responsibility on the outside is a matter to be seen – although if one were to judged based on footage over the past hour of the documentary, it’s not a promising picture.

The documentary manages neither to judge nor to excuse, but provides an unflinching eye toward a people who seem lost and forgotten. The Seventh Fire is a heartbreaking work about loss: loss of culture, of identity, and ultimately, of freedom.

This review first appeared at Cinema Axis.

Don’t Blink – Robert Frank

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When Robert Frank put out a book of his photographs called The Americans in 1958, it was panned by critics. They called him an angry, joyless, outsider. Today that same series of photographs is considered before its time, influential, seminal. The photos haven’t changed at all, nor the man taking them. It is only that the world has finally caught up. Frank, of course, is leagues beyond once again. He doesn’t wait on the critics, he just keeps creating.

After conquering photography, he experimented with it, and was drawn to documentary and experimental film. One of his longtime collaborators, Laura Israel, points the lens at Frank in Don’t Blink, and he’s not entirely comfortable with it. “I don’t want to be pinned by the camera – I do that to people, I don’t want it done to me.” Sure he’s a man of contradictions, but that’s how Israel knows she’s got her camera pointed in the right direction. Not just an artist, Frank sees himself as a hunter, always searching for his perfect photo prey, and all Israel has to do is casually capture his encounters.

Israel does an excellent job of capturing the man via his images. Flipping through some of the most famous ones, it’s clear that Frank himself is still the most interesting subject of all. He’s spent a life-time gazing at others, at people, places, things, but also at his own navel, which he reveals in his work, and reluctantly, through interviews for this film. Don’t Blink is more of a living portrait than straight biography, befitting of a man who never worked within an expected framework in his life.

Whether you know him as an artist or not, Robert Frank is a fascinating man who lived and worked alongside the beat poets and The Rolling Stones, who worked outside of expectation and often inside of grief. Israel’s documentary includes clips of his rarely-seen movies and a soundtrack that includes Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, and Tom Waits. Structurally loose and rough around the edge, the film will surprise you with insight and unprecedented access.

This review first appeared at Cinema Axis.

Christmas Trade

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“You stand a better chance of winning the lottery and getting hit by lightning on the same day than you do of getting a new puppy” – said dad, to his motherless son, days before Christmas.

Anyone want to take a bet on this kid getting a puppy before this movie’s over?

Billy Baldwin plays the “hot widow guy” (not MY words, believe me) that all the other school moms covet. He’s a big fancy lawyer who works too hard, spends too little time with his son, and keeps his secret new girlfriend (Denise images Richards) at a distance. A weird teddy bear mysteriously shows up on his doorstep and is activated during a fight with this son. Before you can change the channel, the bear Freaky-Fridays them. Just a few short days before Christmas, “dad” has to go to school and confront the bullies and his nerves about starring in the big pageant and “son” has to take a witness’s deposition, throw the office Christmas party, and get tongued by more than one woman.

I haven’t even gotten to the best part: Tom Arnold plays the teddy bear’s “repair man,” the guy who orders the “sprocket” from Amazon in order to save Christmas or what have you (I may not have been paying the best attention).

I likely don’t have to tell you that this movie offers very little in the way of entertainment of even diversion. It milks the one joke it thinks it has until the joke’s teats are raw and bleeding. But it is kind of comforting to know how far the man who once gave me quite a thrill (Backdraft had my favourite sex scene for quite a long while running) can fall. Tom Arnold, however, has had a career that has operated AT BEST right in this very comfort zone. And Denise Richards may be trading up. Maybe that’s the only Christmas miracle we’re getting here folks. Hope it’s enough to keep you warm.