Latest news with #ContinentalHotel
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Ballerina' Is Not the ‘John Wick' Spinoff You're Looking For
So many of us stumbled blindly into that first John Wick movie, back in 2014 — how were we ever so young and innocent?! — and settled in for what seemed like a simple B-movie starring one half of the Point Break bromance duo/Bill and Ted team. From the moment that Keanu Reeves slapped a gold coin down on the Continental Hotel's check-in counter, however, audiences slowly realized that this kinetic revenge thriller was taking place in a unique ecosphere of its own. This was just one corner of a far larger sandbox, filled with bespoke hospitality services, crime-syndicate clans, mysterious cabals, weapons sommeliers, and networks of switchboard operators decked out in rockabilly couture. No one was necessarily asking for another cinematic universe. But the more you poked around the franchise's nooks and crannies, pored through its various customs and protocols, the deeper the series got its hooks into you. You don't world-build to this degree without a bigger world-conquering plan in your back pocket, especially once you've taken your king off the chessboard after four games. (Temporarily, but still.) Spinoffs and side missions were inevitable, as was the reality that, bereft of Reeves' deadpan charisma, these projects' returns might be diminishing; The Continental, a Peacock limited series devoted to the early years of the hotelier who caters to hit men, isn't as bad as you've heard and isn't exactly what you'd term 'good.' Further digging into the lore that's now a key part of the series, Ballerina both hopes to officially establish a new antihero to take up the reigns and double down on the mythology. At its best, this tale of a young female assassin seeking vengeance and wreaking havoc is one more chance to see expertly choreographed mayhem. At its worst, it plays like a Wick-ipedia sub-entry ambitiously pumped up to main-event status. Let's just say the balance tilts toward the latter more than you'd like. More from Rolling Stone 'Bring Her Back' Proves the 'Talk to Me' Guys Aren't One-Hit Wonders 'Karate Kid: Legends' Is a Kick for Hardcore Fans Only Keanu Reeves Is a 'Budget Guardian Angel' in Aziz Ansari-Directed Comedy Trailer So, remember that briefly glimpsed ballet academy in John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum? This is where Eve will learn the fine art of killing. Having watched her father killed by a criminal known as the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), the girl is found by Winston (Ian McShane), manager of the Continental. He brings her to the Tarkovsky Theater, home of New York's Ruska Roma and where the Director (Anjelica Huston) trains both prima ballerinas and professional assassins, not necessarily in that order. Cut to 12 years later, when the now-grown Eve (Ana de Armas) is still trying master her pirouettes. In terms of hand-to-hand combat and gun fu, however, she's an ace pupil. Eve must past two tests before she can become kikimora, a legendary mythic creature who protects the innocent and guts open the guilty. One involves a former ballerina gone rogue. The other involves keeping a magnate's daughter from being kidnapped. Both are passed. Welcome to the club! Several years and one massive Ruska Roma back tattoo later, Eve is dropping bodies on the regular. The Director's faith in her has paid off — she is good at this whole murder-for-hire thing. After being attacked by a mysterious gent post-hit one night, however, Eve clocks an X scar on his hand. No, it's not a straight-edge symbol or a body-mutilating ode to Elon Musk. This mark signals that her would-be executioner is part of a cult. The same cult, in fact, that killed Eve's father. A detour to Prague, where she meets up with a fellow killer (Norman Reedus) attempting to flee the Chancellor's stranglehold, leads her to a quaint hamlet in the snowy Bavarian hills and, unsurprisingly, ghosts from her past. The powers that be, who don't want Eve's presence there to upset a decades-long truce between clans, have hired someone to exterminate her. Guess what familiar face steps off the train to find her? Given that Reeves' presence in Ballerina is a big part of the trailers, it's not exactly a spoiler to say that, after a clever first-act cameo, Mr. Baba Yaga himself ends up being a substantial part of the third act. (The events depicted in this spinoff take place somewhere during the third, yet before the fourth John Wick movies, for those of you playing along at home.) The temptation is to think that the real powers that be — i.e., the folks in board rooms trying to hold on to a successful film series by any means necessary — assigned him the gig for both continuity and reassurance purposes. At one point, Wick tells Eve she can leave any time she wants. Why haven't you left, she asks him. 'I'm working on it,' the elder statesman replies, and you half-wonder if it's the character or the actor who's speaking at that moment. (To be fair, that line was likely recorded before Reeves signed on for John Wick 5; the presence of the late, great Lance Reddick, who passed away in 2023, in one key scene attests to how long this movie has been in various states of existence.) In the meantime: See Eve run. See Eve shoot, stab, and kick. Kick, Eve, Kick! These movies lie or die by their action sequences, and to its credit, this franchise expansion pack has a few good ones up its sleeve. The now-requisite visit to an elite firearms broker turns into an explosive free-for-all; this may be the introduction of a new fighting style called 'grenade fu.' Even better is Eve's stop at a touristy hoffbrau, in which everyone from the patrons to the kitchen staff are out for blood. This sequence is so ingeniously choreographed and proceeds with such precision timing that you can forgive it for feeling like one more video-game level to get through. Others skate by on sheer imagination, such as the one in which a flamethrower meets its elemental opposite, and you find yourself staring at the action-movie equivalent of the immovable object versus the irresistible force. Also, in terms of in-jokes: Keep an eye out for a fleeting glimpse of Anne Parillaud, who you may remember as the lead in 1990's La Femme Nikita — a classic that this movie clearly owes a huge debt to. For the most part, however, Ballerina feels less like an extension of the Wickiverse than simply another dogged attempt to replicate its winning formula. It's less 'from the world of John Wick,' as the clumsy subtitle before the title strives to remind you, and more like a movie that's John Wick-flavored. Ana de Armas has already proven her onscreen ass-kicking bona fides — her brief appearance as a daffy but deadly operative in No Time to Die was the highlight of that Bond swan song — but the movie merely gives her a lot of the same rinse-repeat emotional beats in between respectively receiving and dishing out beatings. Director Len Wiseman is an old hand at franchise filmmaking, having made the first two Underworld films and Live Free or Die Hard (2007), which doesn't stop everything from somehow feeling a tad chintzy. The Wick movies were stellar examples of how make lowbrow B-movie genre thrills feel like high-rush art. This just feels like a decent effort from the B team. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time Denzel Washington's Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century
Gulf Today
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Ana de Armas is better at killing than ballet in ‘Ballerina'
Watch a bunch of John Wick movies all in a row, and you can get pretty paranoid. You start to think everyone's an assassin. The guy at the newsstand, the street musician, the subway rider, that nice neighbour in the elevator — ruthless contract killers, all. So perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that in 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,' the latest installment in the Wickian world, we reach the logical endpoint: a town where every single inhabitant's a killer. Yes, it's a picture-perfect, snowy winterscape in Austria, where everyone wears wool beanies and very nice sweaters. But they also wield a mean flamethrower, and schoolkids have mandatory shooting practice. The early scenes in this wacky place high in the mountains are the best part of 'Ballerina' — they actually contain deft surprises and even a glimmer of humor, which is hardly something we expect in a John Wick film. (Have you ever see the guy smile?) Watching our energetic star, Ana de Armas, engage in a plate-smashing contest with a sweet waitress-turned-vicious-killer reminds us that action can be clever, even if most scenes in this series inevitably become numbing, as the body count rises stratospherically. Before we go further, some clarification on where this film fits into the timeline. Let's forget (for now) that there was a John Wick 4, because the events of 'Ballerina' take place during the third movie. So, erase from your mind whatever huge, life-altering thing may or may not have happened in the last film. OK? Eagle-eyed viewers may, in fact, remember a brief scene in the third movie where a ballerina is trying to do a series of fouettés, those whiplash turns on one leg that are a big attraction in 'Swan Lake.' The same scene returns in 'Ballerina,' where we see de Armas' character, Eve, doggedly trying to master them in training. Why she keeps falling — every time, after years and years of class — is a mystery. We don't aim for full realism in action films, guys, but may we suggest that falling flat on the floor in your pointe shoes every time you do a turn feels like much more difficult stunt work than anything else in 'Ballerina' — including obliterating a horde of townspeople. It also speaks to a troubling lack of coordination, a definite problem for an assassin. Anyway! We actually first meet Eve as a child, living alone with her cherished father in some wind-swept coastal abode. Suddenly, a crew of black-clad assassins arrives by sea, targeting the father. He manages to protect Eve, but dies from his wounds. Soon, now-orphaned Eve is approached by Winston (Ian McShane, returning) owner of the Continental Hotel. Winston says he can bring her to her father's family. He takes her to The Director (a haughty Anjelica Huston), who welcomes the budding dancer to what seems an elite ballet academy but is also the training ground of the Ruska Roma, the crime organization where Wick himself learned his trade. The years go by. Eve is now a young woman determined to strike out on her own, though she still has problems completing a fouetté turn. ('Tend to your wounds before you get sepsis and we have to cut off your feet,' the Director suggests helpfully.) Luckily she shows more aptitude with firearms. And that's important, because her overriding goal is to avenge the death of her father. So when Wick himself (Keanu Reeves, of course, appearing in a few key scenes) makes a crucial stop at the academy, Eve looks at him and asks, 'How do I get out of here?' 'The front door is unlocked,' Wick replies — a line that got applause at the screening I was at, but so did virtually everything Wick said or did. 'No, how do I start doing what YOU do?' Eve asks. Wick tells her she can still leave — she has the choice to reject a killer's life. The sad subtext: He does not. Associated Press
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The John Wick spinoff ‘Ballerina' slays with style, but its dialogue has two left feet
The ever-expanding John Wick franchise is founded on our suspension of disbelief. The first 2014 entry convinced the audience to buy that Keanu Reeves' assassin would go to pieces over a puppy. Subsequent installments have attested that assassins abide by strict rules of decorum, that they've founded their own assassins' AAA which allows access to fine hotels around the globe, that they coordinate their dastardly commerce through a switchboard of rockabilly phone operators. The series' bleak and stylish bravado has swept us along for four films thus far and mostly carries us through this spinoff prequel with a klutzy title, 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,' directed by Len Wiseman from a script by Shay Hatten. But I got tripped up by its opening sequence in which a death squad invades a family's home and the father (David Castañeda) doesn't mind that his young daughter, Eve (Victoria Comte), is lugging around a noisy music box. 'Stay quiet,' he whispers. But the darned toy has been blaring 'Swan Lake' since 'Ballerina' started and, to our annoyance, it'll tinkle a few more times. That sort of nitpicky critique — and trust me, 'Ballerina's' plot inspires plenty of them — can be parried by an obvious rebuttal. Of all the absurdity in these films, that's your issue? That comeback has a point. In John Wick's universe, you're in for a penny, in for a pound (of flesh). Each difficult decision leads to an even worse one, with no chance of escape. 'Did you think that you could just walk away?' Gabriel Byrne's new heavy, the Chancellor, hisses to Castañeda's doomed daddy as Eve watches in horror. If you've seen any of these movies (which, even at their flimsiest, are still better than most action fare), you don't need that question asked or answered. In 'Ballerina,' you don't really want anyone to talk at all. Several times during the course of watching the movie, I wrote in my notepad: This dialogue is going to kill me. All you really need to know is that 'Ballerina' is set before the events of 2023's 'John Wick: Chapter 4' and that adult Eve (Ana de Armas) wants vengeance. Her quest to get it will have her tangling with Norman Reedus and Catalina Sandino Moreno as scarred members of the Chancellor's tribe, as well as testing the trust of Ian McShane's Winston, who returns as the manager of the underworld's Continental Hotel, alongside Lance Reddick's concierge, Charon, in his final role. There's also a cameo from Reeves' John Wick himself, here functioning as Eve's fairy godmurderer. As an angry orphan, Eve was taken in by Anjelica Huston's Director, who runs a co-ed academy of fledgling mercenaries called the Ruska Roma. (Huston's character debuted in 'John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum,' in which she revealed that Wick himself was a pupil.) Resplendent in finery that makes her resemble a gilded black widow spider, the Director coaches kids to dance and brawl until they bleed. As maternal figures go, she doesn't get much warmer than advising Eve to take care of a toe injury 'before you get sepsis and we have to cut off your foot.' Eve is a good student and De Armas is a convincing killer. (An early fight-to-the-death against a spitfire Rila Fukushima is over too soon.) There's a scene where an instructor, Nogi (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), lectures Eve to 'fight like a girl' and she immediately hits her male opponent in the nads. A few scenes later, Eve shoots some other guy in the crotch and he bleats a funny little squeal. The Oscar nominee gives her physical all to the movie and, as a thank you, 'Ballerina' lets her stay mostly silent so its leaden lines don't weigh down her performance. Fortunately, De Armas has expressive eyes. A little over a decade ago, actresses in these kind of movies were handcuffed to the role of the damsel in distress. Hollywood transitioned out of that trope by letting women fight as long as they fought other women, conveniently inserting one bad girl for every heroine. Thankfully, that liminal stage is also now passé. But even by today's standards, it's impressive how often men get to kick De Armas in the kidneys. Her willowy frame takes a tremendous battering as brutes slam her into tables and through walls. In one rousing moment, she and her combatant greedily grab and smash plate after plate after plate on each other's heads. (Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard's percussive score pairs well with a soundscape of shattering glass.) I didn't tally Eve's corpses, but her body count appears to be roughly as high as Wick's and she wasn't even forced to do it in heels. She favors sensible boots accessorized with a grenade belt. Her ballerina background, however, is fairly extraneous, even with De Armas made to stare solemnly at that blasted music box during her rare moments of rest. Dance has simply given Eve a canny sense of timing that allows her to hand someone a grenade and duck before it explodes. As ever, the fight choreography is fantastic, especially when Eve arrives in a Stepford-esque ski chalet town where every husband, wife and child has been trained in combat. There in the snow, she's tasked to swing heavy steel hooks on slippery floors and wield an ice skate like a knife. With the plot such a snooze, we're grateful that each fracas is creatively staged, even one we witness only in its aftermath, as Eve ditches two fresh corpses in a men's room and retraces her steps to her car, following her trail of victims like breadcrumbs in a forest. As a capper, right when Eve starts to drive away, there's a neat crane move with a motivation I don't want to spoil. The franchise has always excelled at mixing symbolism into its bloodshed. I'm still swooning over the sequence in the last film in which John Wick's Sisyphean struggle to quit his job for good was channeled into an extended battle: fighting up six flights of stairs, tumbling down and punching his way back to the top. Verbally, 'Ballerina' repeats its themes ad nauseum. People are always going on about dualities: choice versus fate, protection versus destruction, stay versus go. But whether Eve's inner black swan will win out over her white one is never in question. Instead, that polarity motif is more thrillingly captured when Eve fends off a flamethrower with a fire hose. If you really care (and I never did), the Chancellor is fixated on adopting children he can mold into a militia. He'll apparently risk dozens of full-grown proteges for one unproven tot. Not being able to abduct grade-schoolers is an affront to his clan's heritage. You imagine him brandishing a Don't Tread on Me flag even before Eve's revenge crusade is likened to cutting the head off a snake. It doesn't matter if Eve succeeds, the Chancellor insists, claiming that 'the system will continue as it has for the last 1,000 years.' Sure, go ahead and ask us to believe that John Wick's lineage stretches back to Beowulf, the Battle of Hastings and the Great Schism. Sounds like the studio has another spinoff prequel in mind: 'John Wick: The First Crusade.'
Mint
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
Movie Review: Ana de Armas is better at killing than ballet in ‘Ballerina,' a John Wick spinoff
Watch a bunch of John Wick movies all in a row, and you can get pretty paranoid. You start to think everyone's an assassin. The guy at the newsstand, the street musician, the subway rider, that nice neighbor in the elevator — ruthless contract killers, all. So perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that in 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,' the latest installment in the Wickian world, we reach the logical endpoint: a town where every single inhabitant's a killer. Yes, it's a picture-perfect, snowy winterscape in Austria, where everyone wears wool beanies and very nice sweaters. But they also wield a mean flamethrower, and schoolkids have mandatory shooting practice. The early scenes in this wacky place high in the mountains are the best part of 'Ballerina' — they actually contain deft surprises and even a glimmer of humor, which is hardly something we expect in a John Wick film. (Have you ever see the guy smile?) Watching our energetic star, Ana de Armas, engage in a plate-smashing contest with a sweet waitress-turned-vicious-killer reminds us that action can be clever, even if most scenes in this series inevitably become numbing, as the body count rises stratospherically. Before we go further, some clarification on where this film fits into the timeline. Let's forget (for now) that there was a John Wick 4, because the events of 'Ballerina' take place during the third movie. So, erase from your mind whatever huge, life-altering thing may or may not have happened in the last film. OK? Eagle-eyed viewers may, in fact, remember a brief scene in the third movie where a ballerina is trying to do a series of fouettés, those whiplash turns on one leg that are a big attraction in 'Swan Lake.' The same scene returns in 'Ballerina,' where we see de Armas' character, Eve, doggedly trying to master them in training. Why she keeps falling — every time, after years and years of class — is a mystery. We don't aim for full realism in action films, guys, but may we suggest that falling flat on the floor in your pointe shoes every time you do a turn feels like much more difficult stunt work than anything else in 'Ballerina' — including obliterating a horde of townspeople. It also speaks to a troubling lack of coordination, a definite problem for an assassin. Anyway! We actually first meet Eve as a child, living alone with her cherished father in some wind-swept coastal abode. Suddenly, a crew of black-clad assassins arrives by sea, targeting the father. He manages to protect Eve, but dies from his wounds. Soon, now-orphaned Eve is approached by Winston (Ian McShane, returning) owner of the Continental Hotel. Winston says he can bring her to her father's family. He takes her to The Director (a haughty Anjelica Huston), who welcomes the budding dancer to what seems an elite ballet academy but is also the training ground of the Ruska Roma, the crime organization where Wick himself learned his trade. The years go by. Eve is now a young woman determined to strike out on her own, though she still has problems completing a fouetté turn. ('Tend to your wounds before you get sepsis and we have to cut off your feet,' the Director suggests helpfully.) Luckily she shows more aptitude with firearms. And that's important, because her overriding goal is to avenge the death of her father. So when Wick himself (Keanu Reeves, of course, appearing in a few key scenes) makes a crucial stop at the academy, Eve looks at him and asks, 'How do I get out of here?' 'The front door is unlocked,' Wick replies – a line that got applause at the screening I was at, but so did virtually everything Wick said or did. 'No, how do I start doing what YOU do?' Eve asks. Wick tells her she can still leave — she has the choice to reject a killer's life. The sad subtext: He does not. But while Wick wants out — always — Eve wants IN. Otherwise we wouldn't have a movie. And so, her quest for vengeance takes her, clue by dangerous clue (and against the Director's strict orders) to the snowy hamlet of Hallstatt. There, the fearsome Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne, duly chilly) leads a band of assassins — all of whom want to kill her. Oh, also: the Chancellor killed her dad. And so Eve has to fight, using all the training and ingenuity she has amassed. One lesson she must draw on, from a trusted teacher: 'Fight like a girl.' In this case, as you can imagine, that's not a derogatory phrase. What it means is to lean into your strengths — you won't beat a man by brute force, the teacher has told her, but with smarts and inventiveness. That means using ever more interesting weapons to kill an endless supply of people (it must be said, the cheers from moviegoers are, as ever, disconcerting.) And, by the end, getting pretty comfortable with a flamethrower. 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,' a Lionsgate release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association 'for strong/bloody violence throughout, and language. ' Running time: 125 minutes. Two stars out of four.
San Francisco Chronicle
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Movie Review: Ana de Armas is better at killing than ballet in ‘Ballerina,' a John Wick spinoff
Watch a bunch of John Wick movies all in a row, and you can get pretty paranoid. You start to think everyone's an assassin. The guy at the newsstand, the street musician, the subway rider, that nice neighbor in the elevator — ruthless contract killers, all. So perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that in 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,' the latest installment in the Wickian world, we reach the logical endpoint: a town where every single inhabitant's a killer. Yes, it's a picture-perfect, snowy winterscape in Austria, where everyone wears wool beanies and very nice sweaters. But they also wield a mean flamethrower, and schoolkids have mandatory shooting practice. The early scenes in this wacky place high in the mountains are the best part of 'Ballerina' — they actually contain deft surprises and even a glimmer of humor, which is hardly something we expect in a John Wick film. (Have you ever see the guy smile?) Watching our energetic star, Ana de Armas, engage in a plate-smashing contest with a sweet waitress-turned-vicious-killer reminds us that action can be clever, even if most scenes in this series inevitably become numbing, as the body count rises stratospherically. Before we go further, some clarification on where this film fits into the timeline. Let's forget (for now) that there was a John Wick 4, because the events of 'Ballerina' take place during the third movie. So, erase from your mind whatever huge, life-altering thing may or may not have happened in the last film. OK? Eagle-eyed viewers may, in fact, remember a brief scene in the third movie where a ballerina is trying to do a series of fouettés, those whiplash turns on one leg that are a big attraction in 'Swan Lake.' The same scene returns in 'Ballerina,' where we see de Armas' character, Eve, doggedly trying to master them in training. Why she keeps falling — every time, after years and years of class — is a mystery. We don't aim for full realism in action films, guys, but may we suggest that falling flat on the floor in your pointe shoes every time you do a turn feels like much more difficult stunt work than anything else in 'Ballerina' — including obliterating a horde of townspeople. It also speaks to a troubling lack of coordination, a definite problem for an assassin. Anyway! We actually first meet Eve as a child, living alone with her cherished father in some wind-swept coastal abode. Suddenly, a crew of black-clad assassins arrives by sea, targeting the father. He manages to protect Eve, but dies from his wounds. Soon, now-orphaned Eve is approached by Winston (Ian McShane, returning) owner of the Continental Hotel. Winston says he can bring her to her father's family. He takes her to The Director (a haughty Anjelica Huston), who welcomes the budding dancer to what seems an elite ballet academy but is also the training ground of the Ruska Roma, the crime organization where Wick himself learned his trade. The years go by. Eve is now a young woman determined to strike out on her own, though she still has problems completing a fouetté turn. ('Tend to your wounds before you get sepsis and we have to cut off your feet,' the Director suggests helpfully.) Luckily she shows more aptitude with firearms. And that's important, because her overriding goal is to avenge the death of her father. So when Wick himself (Keanu Reeves, of course, appearing in a few key scenes) makes a crucial stop at the academy, Eve looks at him and asks, 'How do I get out of here?' 'The front door is unlocked,' Wick replies – a line that got applause at the screening I was at, but so did virtually everything Wick said or did. 'No, how do I start doing what YOU do?' Eve asks. Wick tells her she can still leave — she has the choice to reject a killer's life. The sad subtext: He does not. But while Wick wants out — always — Eve wants IN. Otherwise we wouldn't have a movie. And so, her quest for vengeance takes her, clue by dangerous clue (and against the Director's strict orders) to the snowy hamlet of Hallstatt. There, the fearsome Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne, duly chilly) leads a band of assassins — all of whom want to kill her. Oh, also: the Chancellor killed her dad. And so Eve has to fight, using all the training and ingenuity she has amassed. One lesson she must draw on, from a trusted teacher: 'Fight like a girl.' In this case, as you can imagine, that's not a derogatory phrase. What it means is to lean into your strengths — you won't beat a man by brute force, the teacher has told her, but with smarts and inventiveness. That means using ever more interesting weapons to kill an endless supply of people (it must be said, the cheers from moviegoers are, as ever, disconcerting.) And, by the end, getting pretty comfortable with a flamethrower. 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,' a Lionsgate release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association 'for strong/bloody violence throughout, and language. ' Running time: 125 minutes. Two stars out of four.
