MOVIES: New from Wes Anderson, Al Pacino in an exorcism and an atypical shark tale
Ballerina may be the big film this week but not in here. It wasn't previewed where I am and seems to be riding on its connection with the very popular John Wick series. 'From the world of John Wick' has even been added to the official title. He, you might remember, is trying to stop working as a paid assassin. For some reason, the ballerina is trying to become one.
It arrives a year late after a torturous production history, disastrous test screenings, a director change and re-shoots.
Better bets might be two documentaries: Incandescence, about forest wildfires, extremely timely and free to watch on the NFB website and Fairy Creek about a fight to save an old growth forest from logging. After a festival run it's playing in a few theaters.
And there are other films that didn't get previewed but these did:
The Phoenician Scheme: 3 stars
Dangerous Animals: 3 ½
The Ritual: 2 ½
Dan Da Dan: 3
THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME: Both fans and detractor's of Wes Anderson's films get their bias supported here. The writing is nimble. There are ideas on a lot of modern issues flung about. The performers (including many big names) deliver well. But the film is also glib, overly quirky and ultimately without much to say, except how clever it is. That alone can make it involving but don't expect anything of the class of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr. Fox or The Royal Tenenbaums. Settle for a tale of international business only lightly observed.
Benicio Del Toro plays a hard-charging businessman (with a strange middle-European accent) who is promoting a huge dam project in his home country called Phoenicia. Two matters distract him. There are repeated assassination attempts, we don't know by whom but suspect rivals, maybe political rivals. At the same time he's trying to repair relations with his daughter (Mia Threapleton) who has become a nun and who he names as the heir to his business. Scarlett Johansson plays the woman he may marry and Benedict Cumberbatch plays a less-than-trustworthy relative. More names show up including Michael Cera as a Norwegian entomologist hired as a tutor, Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as American businessmen and Bill Murray (in a dream sequence) as God. So, there's a lot going on but it doesn't come together, stir much emotion or make a point. Except: how clever it is. (It's been in select theaters and is now country-wide.) 3 out of 5
DANGEROUS ANIMALS: Here's a twist on the serial killer story. Instead of shooting, choking or the usual method, feed them to the sharks. That happens in this Australian thriller as is gradually revealed to us and to a surfer girl (Hassie Harrison) when she's abducted by a sketchy ship operator (Jai Courtney). He's got a fixation on sharks, speaks of their fighting ability and even defends them against the reputation that's become attached to them. But he uses them; hangs his victims on a fish line out over the water and then dunks them under when a shark comes near.
Why? He's a serial killer. Who needs to know more? Well, there is more. He videotapes those shark attacks to watch later on his TV. He's a tourist boat operator who takes people out on the water where he lowers them under in a cage to watch sharks. That's what attracts a couple early in the film and later torments the surfer for the rest of the way.
She's tied up, lectured about the nobility of sharks and, after an escape attempt, suspended and lowered as expected. There's a party boat blaring music nearby but too far away to hear a scream for help. Can she possibly get out of this? The tension, the danger, the fear are stirred up nicely by director Sean Byrne who doesn't soften anything but firms up the thrills to shake your nerves. No apologies; no reaching for art, except to suggest a question: who is really the dangerous animal? (In theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
THE RITUAL: They come regularly but this season's exorcism movie is disappointing. It tries to depict and explain the procedure properly and respectfully and thereby has the effect of making the film bland and tepid. We're used to sturm and drang, ever since 1973 when The Exorcist gave us screaming, spitting up bile and grossly misusing a crucifix. This film gives us name stars, Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, et al and a true story. It happened in Iowa in 1928 and was written up in a pamphlet called 'Begone Satan!' by the two priests who attended based on notes taken by one of them. It's said to be the most documented case of demonic possession in American history. Still though, unconvincing, I'd say.
Dan Stevens plays the new and young parish priest. Al Pacino is the old priest called in because he has done exorcisms before. He ruefully recalls one that he mishandled and is determined that he won't fail again. The two priests soon show they have different ideas.
When a young woman named Emma Schmidt, played by Abigail Cowen, shows signs of possession by an evil spirit and an exorcism is prescribed do they restrain her, i.e. tie her down on the bed? The old priest insists, yes. And is it really demonic possession? The young priest says it could be a psychological affliction (interesting that because the director and co-writer David Midell worked as a therapist for young people with mental health problems before he became a filmmaker). Here he took a restrained approach. The lurid side is missing. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5
DAN DA DAN EVIL EYE: I wasn't previously aware of this hugely popular series which started in print as a manga in Japan, led to an anime series on TV and has reached the movie screens two times now. Actually both times were with re-edited material from TV. This film takes the 'evil eye' story line that emerged near the end of season one, adds three episodes from the up-coming season two and gives us in effect an elaborate preview episode. It's so well animated and delivered with such intense and dreamy feeling that you won't mind that. It'll be thrilling to see it on the big screen.
In the series we follow three characters: Momo, a high school girl, her classmate Okarun and her former boyfriend, Jiji. There's a teenage love story behind the supernatural main show. Momo believes in ghosts and not aliens. Okarun believes in aliens but not ghosts. So, of course, they encounter both, first in a hospital where UFOs have been seen and then in a tunnel said to be haunted.
The three try to clear up a mystery about Jiji's parents and go to his family's now empty house which is said to be controlled by some supernatural force. The parents are in hospital because of that force. The real cause involves the powerful Kito family which protects the town from an even more malevolent force. It appears to them as a giant snake and must be appeased by sacrificing a young person. If not, a volcano will erupt and kill all with lava. The evil eye uses Jiji, we're not sure for what. A Mongolian death worm shows up and a ghost too. It's hokum, sure, but there's power in the story telling and beautiful art in the animation. And adult content: a near rape and talk of suicide. But enough sci-fi horror to appease the fans. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
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Winnipeg Free Press
13 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Wes Anderson's Phoenician Scheme falls a little bit flat
Wes Anderson's cinematic obsessions and stylistic quirks are so distinctive, so immediately recognizable that when trailers for his movies are released, it can be hard to figure out whether it's an actual Anderson preview or just another YouTube pastiche. Devotees might see this latest project, his 12th feature film, as Peak Anderson. Doubters, meanwhile, might suggest the 56-year-old auteur has overshot the peak and fallen into self-parody. For those Anderson viewers who find his works alternately brilliant and exasperating — and sometimes both things simultaneously — The Phoenician Scheme will probably end up classified as minor Anderson. Mixing up a mid-20th-century international caper with family dysfunction, the story (co-written with Roman Coppola) is intermittently interesting, and it's underlaid — of course — with exquisite and elaborate visual tableaux. But the charm often feels forced and twee, the artifice frequently hardens into rigidity, and that tricky Andersonian balance of irony and sentiment is way, way off. The Phoenician Scheme seems destined to land near the bottom end of Anderson's up-and-down oeuvre, somewhere around The Darjeeling Limited and Isle of Dogs. Benicio del Toro (who worked with Anderson in The French Dispatch) plays Anatole (Zsa-zsa) Korda, a super-rich plutocrat who made his fortune from various nefarious sources (including but not limited to war profiteering, bribery, theft, tax evasion and possibly murder). Having survived repeated assassination attempts that have him pondering his mortality, Zsa-zsa decides to bequeath his empire to his estranged daughter Liesl (The Buccaneers' Mia Threapleton), a pious novitiate nun. First, Zsa-zsa takes Liesl to visit a massive infrastructure project involving a canal, a tunnel, a railway line and a dam, to be built in the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Phoenicia. Zsa-zsa is perhaps hoping to make up for years of paternal neglect, while Liesl wants to ameliorate her father's brand of rapacious capitalism (which includes engineered famines and the use of slave labour). TPS Productions/Focus Features/TNS Benicio del Toro (left) and Mia Threapleton play a formerly estranged father and daughter in Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme. The mismatched father-daughter pair, along with Dr. Bjorn (Michael Cera), a Norwegian tutor who's been drafted as Zsa-zsa's new private secretary after the last one was blown up, then visit the scheme's principal investors. These include two basketball-playing Americans (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston); Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), a canned fish aficionado and nightclub owner; Marty (Jeffrey Wright), an easygoing shipping magnate; and stern, uber-wealthy Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson). There are tussles with assassins, secret agents and amiable Marxist revolutionaries (led by Richard Ayoade), as well as conflicts with a consortium of besuited bureaucrats (led by Rupert Friend), who are attempting to scupper Zsa-zsa's business by driving up the price of 'Bashable Rivets.' Threapleton gives a grounded performance as one of Anderson's recurring types — the wise, grave young woman — and Cera is a constant daffy delight, whose pure enjoyment of Andersonian caprice spreads to the audience. Unfortunately, del Toro, who is in almost every scene, is flat — and not just Anderson flat, with that trademark deadpan delivery, but oddly empty. There are many of the usual Andersonian tropes — a distant parent attempting a late-life redemption, excellent luggage, obscure books (Fleas of the Americas), gorgeous tilework and wall coverings, and vintage modes of transport. TPS Productions/Focus Features (From left) Mathieu Amalric, Michael Cera, Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton and Jeffrey Wright get tangled up in The Phoenician Scheme. There's a magpie-like collection of cultural references, from the films of Orson Welles to Boys' Own adventure stories. There are starry cameos, including drop-ins by Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Bill Murray as God (or vice-versa). There is lots of symmetrical, head-on framing and a gorgeous pastel colour palette of sand, ochre and aqua (last seen in Asteroid City). But does this elegant, eccentric cinematic style add up to much? The film's themes ostensibly involve a socioeconomic look at unfettered capitalism, a philosophical examination of morality, and perhaps an allegory for the process of filmmaking and film financing, but Anderson's extension of these declared ideas feels perfunctory. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. The tone is uneven. There are scenes of slapstick violence that try for antic comedy but don't always come off. But the real problem is the dramatic hollowness. Even amidst their arch artifice, the best of Anderson's films, such as Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel, tend to be burnished with gentle melancholy, with laments for lost innocence. There is no affective undertow here, and the final scene, which celebrates the modest pleasures of work and family, doesn't have enough emotional heft to work. Even minor Wes Anderson is worth a look. The Phoenician Scheme is watchable, but it's also, sadly, forgettable. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
CTV News
a day ago
- CTV News
Reviews: Ballerina, The Ritual, Dangerous Animals, and the animated sci-fi film Predator: Killer of
Video Film critic Richard Crouse reviews Ballerina, The Ritual, Dangerous Animals, and the animated sci-fi film Predator: Killer of Killers.
National Observer
a day ago
- National Observer
MOVIES: New from Wes Anderson, Al Pacino in an exorcism and an atypical shark tale
Ballerina may be the big film this week but not in here. It wasn't previewed where I am and seems to be riding on its connection with the very popular John Wick series. 'From the world of John Wick' has even been added to the official title. He, you might remember, is trying to stop working as a paid assassin. For some reason, the ballerina is trying to become one. It arrives a year late after a torturous production history, disastrous test screenings, a director change and re-shoots. Better bets might be two documentaries: Incandescence, about forest wildfires, extremely timely and free to watch on the NFB website and Fairy Creek about a fight to save an old growth forest from logging. After a festival run it's playing in a few theaters. And there are other films that didn't get previewed but these did: The Phoenician Scheme: 3 stars Dangerous Animals: 3 ½ The Ritual: 2 ½ Dan Da Dan: 3 THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME: Both fans and detractor's of Wes Anderson's films get their bias supported here. The writing is nimble. There are ideas on a lot of modern issues flung about. The performers (including many big names) deliver well. But the film is also glib, overly quirky and ultimately without much to say, except how clever it is. That alone can make it involving but don't expect anything of the class of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr. Fox or The Royal Tenenbaums. Settle for a tale of international business only lightly observed. Benicio Del Toro plays a hard-charging businessman (with a strange middle-European accent) who is promoting a huge dam project in his home country called Phoenicia. Two matters distract him. There are repeated assassination attempts, we don't know by whom but suspect rivals, maybe political rivals. At the same time he's trying to repair relations with his daughter (Mia Threapleton) who has become a nun and who he names as the heir to his business. Scarlett Johansson plays the woman he may marry and Benedict Cumberbatch plays a less-than-trustworthy relative. More names show up including Michael Cera as a Norwegian entomologist hired as a tutor, Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as American businessmen and Bill Murray (in a dream sequence) as God. So, there's a lot going on but it doesn't come together, stir much emotion or make a point. Except: how clever it is. (It's been in select theaters and is now country-wide.) 3 out of 5 DANGEROUS ANIMALS: Here's a twist on the serial killer story. Instead of shooting, choking or the usual method, feed them to the sharks. That happens in this Australian thriller as is gradually revealed to us and to a surfer girl (Hassie Harrison) when she's abducted by a sketchy ship operator (Jai Courtney). He's got a fixation on sharks, speaks of their fighting ability and even defends them against the reputation that's become attached to them. But he uses them; hangs his victims on a fish line out over the water and then dunks them under when a shark comes near. Why? He's a serial killer. Who needs to know more? Well, there is more. He videotapes those shark attacks to watch later on his TV. He's a tourist boat operator who takes people out on the water where he lowers them under in a cage to watch sharks. That's what attracts a couple early in the film and later torments the surfer for the rest of the way. She's tied up, lectured about the nobility of sharks and, after an escape attempt, suspended and lowered as expected. There's a party boat blaring music nearby but too far away to hear a scream for help. Can she possibly get out of this? The tension, the danger, the fear are stirred up nicely by director Sean Byrne who doesn't soften anything but firms up the thrills to shake your nerves. No apologies; no reaching for art, except to suggest a question: who is really the dangerous animal? (In theaters) 3 ½ out of 5 THE RITUAL: They come regularly but this season's exorcism movie is disappointing. It tries to depict and explain the procedure properly and respectfully and thereby has the effect of making the film bland and tepid. We're used to sturm and drang, ever since 1973 when The Exorcist gave us screaming, spitting up bile and grossly misusing a crucifix. This film gives us name stars, Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, et al and a true story. It happened in Iowa in 1928 and was written up in a pamphlet called 'Begone Satan!' by the two priests who attended based on notes taken by one of them. It's said to be the most documented case of demonic possession in American history. Still though, unconvincing, I'd say. Dan Stevens plays the new and young parish priest. Al Pacino is the old priest called in because he has done exorcisms before. He ruefully recalls one that he mishandled and is determined that he won't fail again. The two priests soon show they have different ideas. When a young woman named Emma Schmidt, played by Abigail Cowen, shows signs of possession by an evil spirit and an exorcism is prescribed do they restrain her, i.e. tie her down on the bed? The old priest insists, yes. And is it really demonic possession? The young priest says it could be a psychological affliction (interesting that because the director and co-writer David Midell worked as a therapist for young people with mental health problems before he became a filmmaker). Here he took a restrained approach. The lurid side is missing. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5 DAN DA DAN EVIL EYE: I wasn't previously aware of this hugely popular series which started in print as a manga in Japan, led to an anime series on TV and has reached the movie screens two times now. Actually both times were with re-edited material from TV. This film takes the 'evil eye' story line that emerged near the end of season one, adds three episodes from the up-coming season two and gives us in effect an elaborate preview episode. It's so well animated and delivered with such intense and dreamy feeling that you won't mind that. It'll be thrilling to see it on the big screen. In the series we follow three characters: Momo, a high school girl, her classmate Okarun and her former boyfriend, Jiji. There's a teenage love story behind the supernatural main show. Momo believes in ghosts and not aliens. Okarun believes in aliens but not ghosts. So, of course, they encounter both, first in a hospital where UFOs have been seen and then in a tunnel said to be haunted. The three try to clear up a mystery about Jiji's parents and go to his family's now empty house which is said to be controlled by some supernatural force. The parents are in hospital because of that force. The real cause involves the powerful Kito family which protects the town from an even more malevolent force. It appears to them as a giant snake and must be appeased by sacrificing a young person. If not, a volcano will erupt and kill all with lava. The evil eye uses Jiji, we're not sure for what. A Mongolian death worm shows up and a ghost too. It's hokum, sure, but there's power in the story telling and beautiful art in the animation. And adult content: a near rape and talk of suicide. But enough sci-fi horror to appease the fans. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
