June 24, 2019

John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum is the latest sequel from the surprise hit from back in 2014 starring Keanu Reeves. This is the kind of movie where either you like the format, or don’t and there is very little in between. In many ways I liken this to the Kill Bill movies with Uma Thurman. Both have extreme violence, in quality and quantity, with increased complexity, moves, variations and number of bad guys. In both movies the main character is human, seeking revenge, and does sustain significant (and one would think) paralyzing injuries but manages to venture (and fight) on! John Wick likes the ensure his foes are actually dead by instituting the double head shot. I wish I had a dollar for every head shot that I saw within this movie. For me, that becomes the challenge. Eventually I am de-sensitized from it all. It’s too much, and more of the same. There are a couple striking and remarkable sequences, notably the one where there are numerous display cases filled with various historical knives and other such sharp weapons. Wick is attacked by I can’t remember how many people and it is an intense battle, where more than once I audibly cried out (like “Oooooh!” or “Owwwwww!”). I laugh at the graphic nature of it all, but it is uncomfortable.

All this action over three movies takes place because in the first movie his dog was killed. The ongoing joke is repeated here as well. But it is the truth. The movies are taking place almost in real time where one ends, then the next begins. Basically, because of what John Wick did in the second film, then he becomes a high priced target for all other assassins. There is a good supporting cast, now adding Halle Berry, to already strong Laurence Fishburne, and Ian McShane. A new intriguing character here is the Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon) who eventually you just want to see get punched in the face. That might be the aim, and clearly there will be more John Wick movies to come, but I am not sure if it is a really good thing to have that feeling. In this day and age, where one thinks that a gathering spot (like the NBA Championship Parade in the streets of Toronto) can be a dangerous place since terrorists and other freaks can see a million people in one place and salivate, perhaps we should be thinking about other means of issue resolution. I know some may say, “but Robbie, this is just entertainment, so just relax on that”, and I am sympathetic with the concept. Hell I have been a purveyor of the concept for years, especially in the context of 60s era cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Foghorn Leghorn and Road Runner, where I argued kids today should be able to see these cartoons which were very violent (Daffy Duck’s bill rotated around his head when he was shot numerous times) but we as kids were able to distinguish between cartoon and real life. Or entertainment versus reality. I may have become desensitized to the violence when I was in grade school by seeing Elmer Fudd end the Rabbit Season/Duck Season debate with a shotgun shell — but I still get squeamish and uncomfortable of seeing endless, senseless, graphic violence and kills because of one dog.

Back in 1976, Sylvester Stallone put on screen an unlikely hit about an over-the-hill down and out boxer who gets his shot for the heavyweight championship of the world, by a Champion (Apollo Creed) who wants to put on a bicentennial show in Philadelphia. He likes the poetry of having an Italian Stallion fighting against him in what is a showcase, charity match. Rocky went on to win Best Picture, as well as a Directing and Film Editing Oscar. Notably the film beat out Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver, which most would argue is the film that should have won that year (incidentally Peter Finch won for Network and NOT Robert De Niro too). But I digress. This film has spawned 6 Rocky films and then now tangentially Creed, and the latest Creed II. Rocky was greatly helped by fine supporting performances by Burgess Meredith (nominated for a Supporting Actor Award), Clarence Weathers as Creed, Burt Young as drunken friend Paulie and Talia Shire as Adrian. Meredith as Mickey was 71 years old back in 1976 and he looked every year of it, with his grey hair (what he had left of it) and his overall appearance. He looked frail, although he had a fiery spirit. Fast forward to 2019 and Creed II, where the son of Apollo Creed who just won the Heavyweight title himself is challenged by unknown Russian fighter Viktor Drago, son of Ivan Drago who killed Apollo Creed in the ring in Rocky III. Michael B Jordan (Black Panther) plays Adonis Johnson, Creed’s son who is getting his life together. He has the title, a girlfriend and his life is moving forward when the challenge comes through. Rocky is his trainer. He doesn’t believe that taking on a fighter with nothing to lose is a good match. All of this is reminiscent of what Apollo’s team said to him in the original Rocky. Rocky now is 73yo, and yet is still all buff, and has the hair weave going to still show how virile he is. Damn if he doesn’t look ready to throw a punch at Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago when they meet up. How trainers have changed and how trainers will look in their 70s!! I wonder if Stallon himself sees the irony in all of this? He actually has his former wife Brigitte Nielson show up as Drago’s former wife in the film to watch her son fight in Russia. In the end the question becomes, does the film work? And it does. The theme of fathers and sons is a strong one. From Stallone and Rocky acting as a father figure to Adonis, to Drago pushing his son ever forward to reclaim his own glory and status through him, to Rocky being estranged from his own son and grandson now that Adrian has since passed. It’s emotional. Rocky has always been that way. The ring provides a backdrop for what happens to these characters around them. Like Rocky, one cheers for Adonis, and wants him to do well (and not get killed). Michael B Jordan was the villian in Black Panther and you cheered to see him overthrown. He plays the hero now, and is good at making you sympathize with him and encourage him to get up when he gets knocked down by the much larger man Viktor Drago, who is a beast. I liked this better than I thought I would. Although the formula has remained much the same for all Rocky related pictures, this one is measured again in the characters and how well you care about them. They have motivations, and backstories and they are not just good and evil. So this is a story that is more uplifting than a John Wick as sequels go.

Finally on Crave I watched a film version of the Shakespearian play As You Like It, from back in 2006. It is directed by Kenneth Branaugh, and has an impressive list of stars including Alfred Molina, Kevin Kline, David Oyelowo, and Bryce Dallas Howard. Howard is likely one of the weaker elements to it. The UK cast members are seasoned and solid including Brian Blessed. I don’t recall the play being staged in Japan during trading times, but this is set there. I have always been drawn to Shakespeare and I wanted to seek out a more of those I have not seen. It was decent. It follows a familiar trail with an Uncle taking over a throne (or a family dynasty) and then there is a mixture of people not acting and behaving as themselves (women dressing and acting as men – however unbelievable it seems on screen) and various characters falling for one another. I had always thought that this was more of a comedy, but it really wasn’t all that funny. In the end, I am glad that I saw it, but I wouldn’t suggest that it needs to be sought out. I like other plays better from Shakespeare.

June 17, 2019

Back in 1990, Handmaid’s Tale was a movie with a good cast, including the late Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. It was 1:48 long and unseen by me. It was a film adaptation from the Canadian Margaret Atwood’s book (also unread by me). Then Elizabeth Moss of Mad Men fame came along and she decided to produce a new version of this book, in a mini series format. Season 3 has just been released, and I have only finished watching Season 1 this past week. Now while I am not sure about why an initial less than 2 hour movie had to become 10 episodes (Season 1), 13 episodes (Seasons 2 and now 3). In total, 36 episodes and close to 36 hours of viewing. Oh my goodness! This is a long time to spend in an otherwise dreary dystopian future where women have their right’s stripped away and become incubaters for the rich and wealthy with generally barren wives. Apparently the Future has a problem with fertility, and the solution in the greater Boston area (but really Cambridge Ontario and other areas around Southwestern Ontario) is to take women’s money and displace them from their jobs and imprison them to be raped and carry the children of the privileged. In short, that is the story and we follow Moss, and those like her, in this disturbing place. Margaret Atwood points out that nothing portrayed in her Future is something new that hasn’t been done before in human history. It is well acted. Moss is good. Her fellows actors are also good. Do I like it? Not sure. Not really sure that I am supposed to like it. It should be disturbing to see anyone’s rights taken away without recourse, and have them subjected to abhorrent treatment and in this case all in the name of The Lord! Yikes! Funny how The Lord’s will and judgement can be interpreted so directly by those who wish to justify their (very human) actions. Canada also comes out smelling like a rose as the country to the North who offers asylum, food, clothes, money and freedom to make choices to women who were slaves. In the end this is another series that I cannot put on the same level as Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones or Mad Men. I suppose I should really do a review for worthwhile, binge-worthy series and mini-series that can be viewed on various streaming services. I’ll think about it. Suffice it to say that if you look for something new to view and spend a good amount of time on, you can try here. Just know that you won’t come out of it with a smile on your face or feeling any better about the human condition (now or in The Future).

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was out last summer. It isn’t a remake of the original campy board game starring Robin Williams as a game comes to life, and puts a family in danger in 1995. But rather more of a reboot, where a video game (console looks like an old Atari vintage game) creates a new world that pops players into it. It also transforms them into characters in the game, which has the one ongoing joke of a female live character turning into a Jack Black character in the game. Oh, I was trying to control my laughter on that one! Not really. The Rock is a game character channeling a real life character who isn’t that way in real life. And then Karen Gillian of Guardians of the Galaxy fame, have to admit I needed to look that one up since she is not recognizable as the robot-sister of the Zoe Saldana character at all, but she does fill out a tank top and shorts well enough to keep it interesting. And that really is where the positiveness ends. And that really isn’t very much. In short what was the board game, became Breakfast Club meets weird version of Tropic Thunder. Four kids on detention come across this ancient video game console and take a journey into this game where they have three lives, and spawn by falling from the sky. Kevin Hart plays Kevin Hart and I don’t need to talk further about him. So buyer beware, this wasn’t for me, and I cannot recommend.

Finally, from one bad film film re-make to another completely bad film looking to profit off a mildly successful original product. Let me say, I am a sucker for shark movies, and most anything to deal with sharks. I think they are fascinating. I alos think that their slaughter for soup makes zero sense and is a punch to the balance on the planet. Jaws remains one of my favourite movies of all time. So movies like The Meg, or even The Shallows capture my attention. It even happened back in 1999 with Deep Blue Sea with a decent cast in Samuel L Jackson, Stellen Skarsgard and LL Cool J as a group trying to survive in an ocean lab looking to build brain size by in sharks so that it the brain fluid can be harvested to cure Alzheimer’s disease for humans. The challenge of course is altering sharks by adding more brains and they becoming the apex predator on the planet (well at least the oceans, so 2/3 of the planet). Obviously all goes wrong, and the humans have to find ways to survive. The CGI was decent, but really it is still very obvious that it is CGI. Deep Blue Sea 2 takes it a notch lower, and uses bull sharks and poor CGI to tell a story. No reference is made to the original film, and the actors are not in any way A-listers. Nor are the sets and production value. So the story is weak, focusing on a somewhat deranged scientist thinking he can boost the human brain by making smart sharks and that he will “just kill them” later on once he has shown the power of the human mind. You see, he is worried about A.I. (computers) taking over the world and eliminating the humans. He wants to avoid Skynet and the end of the world by making people smarter, instead of going all Sarah Connor on the computers and blowing them up before they get a chance to wipe us out. Utilizing sharks, and inviting a busty shark preservationist for really no reason out to his little lab just sets the stage for a movie that doesn’t cut it on any level. It borrows cliches and stereotypes and overall doesn’t add anything to our knowledge of sharks or the world. I cannot recommend this either. I feel pained at the lack of decent films in the theatre but my son suggested Booksmart and also John Wick 3 and so I should get out at some point.

June 10th, 2019

This past week I finished watching the gripping and educational 5-part drama Chernobyl, based upon the book by Svetlana Alexievich titled “Voices from Chernobyl”. It stars Jared Harris, who was previously in Mad Men and also played King George VI in The Crown as Elizabeth’s chain-smoking and stuttering father (of The King’s Speech fame played memorably by Colin Firth). It also stars Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson. Harris plays real-life person and nuclear physicist Valery Legasov, who along with many others was part of the clean up project that became the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in April 1986. In a few ways I see parallels with the story of Kursk, the Russian nuclear sub that had an accident and the seamen were put in a perilous position with their lives at stake due to no fault of their own. It poses the question, what would you do if your government denies the level of severity of an accident to keep up appearances, while putting others as risk while looking to fix the problem. The Kursk had the challenge of a sub being down, and the mini-sub that could connect to it to remove the trapped sailors being old and incapable of docking and locking onto it. The UK offered to help but was denied. In Chernobyl, there was highly radioactive materials sitting strewn about on the plant rooftop, and no capping measures of the radioactive steam could take place without that material being moved back into the core. Robots from Germany that were ordered to remove it were sent incorrect specs on the level of radiation that the robots would be exposed to, and they subsequently (and inevitably) failed. What results is part of the most heartbraking and painful aspects of watching what unfolds; the human toll of ordinary people who are doing their duty. Sometimes these real life heroes knew what they were doing and went in with eyes wide open. Others, sadly did not and they were told nothing. They were mostly young men, doing their mandatory military service and they ended up getting the short end of the stick as far as perilous duty. Little did they know about the risks that they were facing, that their superiors who made decisions did. Could this happen in the West? Absolutely. Pride is not limited to the Russians. Nor is human error and other everyday failings (like wanting to get a promotion and looking to push ahead with a procedure that might be called risky). It’s disturbing moreso because it has all-to-familiar human failings, and can’t be dismissed as just a Russian problem.

The series jumps around in timeline somewhat from later in the story initially and then back to the evening itself when the accident occurred. My heart goes out to every one of those first responders who did their duty (fire fighters, medical staff, those brave souls working inside the power plant). Then there is the aftermath shortly thereafter with some individual stories, and others that are longer. The political side kicks in as this issue goes up to Gorbachev and his leaders in the Kremlin. The global impact can be felt shortly thereafter as neighbouring countries begin to notice higher than normal levels of radiation. All the while one thinks about the people on site, doing clean up, and the impacts that are being done across the board (people, animals, environment etc). The final episode pulls it all together as you see what was driving the humans in charge of the test. You see the chain of events which scientifically lead to the result. And the results are devastating as you see an area surrounding the city that is cordoned off, and uninhabitable. The area covers 2600 square kilometres. People were told their leaving would be a “temporary measure”, which was 33 years ago. The official Soviet death toll of the event, unchanged to this day, is 31. In the end this series does what television and movies can do best; teach, inform, and open up communication on how things can change and be different. It also gives a glimpse into the lives of people and places you wouldn’t have been exposed to before. There are villains, there are many heroes and plenty of people that we can identify with. A show worth finding and catching if you can.

June 3rd, 2019

The Front Runner was a TIFF movie starring Hugh Jackman as the 1984 and 1988 Democratic Presidential nominee, Colorado resident Gary Hart. Early on Hart was the front runner as the State primaries were beginning. The film is directed by Canadian Jason Reitman, who also directed Up in the Air, Juno and Thank You for Smoking. Gary Hart was to be the first successful Democratic nominee to win the Presidency from a western State. Think about who was before him. Hart was a smart, policy-focused candidate who believed in the “three Es – Economy, Education and Environment”. He gained wide support as a surprise upcoming nominee in 1984, when Walter Mondale won the nomination (and defeated soundly by Ronald Reagan) and then became the favourite fours years later. His campaign, and how it ended in scandal, became a turning point in Presidential politics. Hart was involved in an affair with Donna Rice, a pretty blonde and infamously was on a yacht called “Monkey Business” where pictures of them circulated. The press hid out after being challenged by Hart to follow him, and found him in a flat in Washington with Rice.

Before this candidacy, the press and the American public seemed to be not all that concerned with the personal lives of their candidates. The seedy underside of background was not as important as the policies and charisma of the leader. America looked the other way on Kennedy’s indiscretions, and pasts of others, but not always as we saw with Chappaquiddik. Hart was a married man, but the relationship was a complicated one. Married since 1958 to Lee (played by Vera Farmiga) and also in Up in the Air, they were separated in 1988 at the time of the apparent indiscretion.

Hart took the high road as the scandal broke focusing on his platform. He felt that it was “not relevant” nor anyone’s business and revealed little about his ability to be the President. His staff felt that the known newspapers (like the NY Times or Washington Post) would avoid the gossip and report on the issues. But we see Ben Bradlee and Bob Woodward in the offices of the Washington Post (who broke Watergate in the early 1970s) debating this story, and how they didn’t want to be accused of sitting on the sidelines when the story broke. So what began as two guys from The Florida Herald lurking in the bushes became covered broadly. And even though Americans on news TV felt that Hart didn’t do anything wrong, it still took him down. But how far have we come? From losing a nomination and the support of constituents because of this relationship, to becoming President despite paying off porn stars after having sex with them or talking about grabbing women in the [soft areas] during sponsored beauty pageants. Hart’s position was that this type of reporting kept the potential quality candidates from coming forward because of the intense scrutiny it takes on every aspect of their personal lives. You are no longer a private citizen. You become public property, and with the endless debate of the talking heads on 24 hour TV.

The movie is an interesting one, and doesn’t touch upon the life of Donna Rice after her name becomes public. Her life, as she knew it, was over. She has later talked about her sympathy for Monica Lewinsky. Both women have become leaders in the women’s rights movements and bringing forth the horrors of what happens to people thrown into the spotlight by dealing with powerful political men.

Meanwhile Gary Hart and his wife are still married. They are out of the public eye for the most part. He talks periodically about issues as they arise. But this was the turning point in following candidates and shows the flaws in a system where not every quality leader (or candidate) can be able to survive the public scrutiny and holier-than-thou attitudes of those digging. And paradoxically we have a sitting President seemingly impervious to real life flaws (three times married and endlessly philandering it seems). So this movie reflects the times then, and shows the differences of where we are today. There is part of me that thinks that the Trump years will be long forgotten and looked upon bleakly by those 100 years from now, in the same way that Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) or Herbert Hoover (1929-1933). At least one can always hope.