MARRY ME: 3 ½ STARS
If falling in love was simple, there’d be no need for romantic comedies. Relationships are complicated, and rom coms can teach us the importance of confessing love to someone who’s about to board a plane or train, how burning hatred can morph into red hot passion, and how to make out in the rain.
All are valuable lessons for the romantically challenged. Thanks to lovey-dovey pioneers like Drew Barrymore, Kathryn Heigl and Jennifer Lopez, the movies taught us how to hurdle any romantic roadblock.
Lopez returns with more life and love lessons after a twelve-year rom com sabbatical in "Marry Me," a musical riff on "Notting Hill," in theatres just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Lopez plays her fictionalized doppelgänger, a pop superstar named Kat Valdez. She’s a chart-topper, a fashion plate, a staple on social media and advertising campaigns.
In other words, she’s Jennifer Lopez, except that everyone calls her Kat.
Kat is engaged to singer Bastian (Maluma), because who is one pop star supposed to marry except another pop star? Their nuptials will happen on-stage and online in front of an estimated 20 million people. Seconds before they are to sing their new hit single "Marry Me" and exchange "I dos," Kat discovers Bastian has been having an affair with her assistant.
Cue the tearful, mascara-smearing speech about true love and living the "truth behind the headlines." The wedding is off. Or is it? In the audience is Charlie (Owen Wilson), single father and math teacher. He’s a fish out of water who doesn’t know Kat’s music and is only there because his co-worker Parker (a wisecracking Sarah Silverman) had extra tickets for him and his daughter (Chloe Coleman).
From the stage Kat notices the square-peg Charlie because he’s holding a giant sign Parker brought along that reads "Marry Me." In what could be the ultimate "meet cute" in rom com history, she takes the message literally, invites Charlie to the stage and before you can say "Holy Publicity Stunt Batman!" they are pronounced husband and wife.
"I was impulsive. Without a plan," Kat later says at a press conference. "But look where my plans got me."
You know the rest.
Rom coms are not about the destination, they are all about the journey, the happily ever after and "Marry Me" is a good ride. It would be easy to see this as a cynical package of story and product placement for the soundtrack album, but there is nothing cynical about the movie. Lopez embraces the form, especially the fantasy, 21st century fairy tale aspect, to create a romance so light and frothy it threatens to float away into the clouds. It’s an old school rom com that works because of the chemistry between Lopez and Wilson. The spark between them and the sheer weight of the silly premise keeps the movie earthbound.
"Marry Me" works because it understands what it is, an old-fashioned rom com with a 21st century gloss. It’s a fashion show with a few laughs. An issue of "Architectural Digest" style life-style porn with romance and a musical with love lessons about not judging a book by its cover, of female empowerment and the grand gesture of renting out the entirety of Coney Island for a birthday celebration. As Parker says, "This is the most unbelievable thing that could happen in life," but this isn’t life, it’s a rom com.
DEATH ON THE NILE: 3 STARS
In the whodunnit genre, few names loom larger than Agatha Christie. The author of 66 novels and 14 short story collections was known as the Mistress of Mystery and holds a Guinness World Record as the best-selling fiction writer of all time.
Her books are the fuel for countless stage plays, television shows and movies, but the spark that make the novels so entertaining often goes missing in translation.
It speaks volumes that the best Christie movie of late, “Knives Out,” isn’t an adaptation of her work. It borrows from the mechanics of her best stories, including the climatic singling out of the murderer in a roomful of suspects, to make the most enjoyable movie tribute to her style in years and that includes Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 thriller “Murder on the Orient Express,” which is actually based on a Christie classic.
The director takes a second kick at the Christie can with “Death on the Nile,” an adaptation of the writer’s best-selling 1937 mystery of jealousy, wealth and death.
The film begins with a flashback to the First World War and the origin of Belgian soldier Hercule Poirot’s (Branagh) flamboyant moustache.
Cut to 1937. Poirot, now a world-renowned detective, is on vacation in Egypt aboard the lavishly appointed ship S.S. Karnak. Also aboard are heiress Linnet (Gal Gadot) and her new husband Simon (Armie Hammer), a glamourous, honeymooning couple cruising the Nile in an effort to hide from the jealous Jacqueline (Emma Mackey), who happens to be Linnet’s jealous former friend and Simon’s ex-lover. Jacqueline has other plans, however, and comes along for the ride. “It’s indecent,” says Simon. “She’s making a fool of herself.”
Linnet fears that Jacqueline is up to no good and reaches out to Poirot to look out for her safety on the ship. “Maybe Jacqueline hasn’t committed a crime yet,” she says, “but she will. She always settles her scores.”
When Linnet turns up dead, Jacqueline is the obvious suspect, but she has a rock-solid alibi.
So, who could the killer be? Is it Linnet’s former fiancé Linus Windlesham (a very subdued Russell Brand)? Jazz singer Salome Otterbourne (Sophie Okonedo)? Maybe it’s Marie Van Schuyler (Jennifer Saunders), Linnet’s communist godmother, or Rosalie Otterbourne (Letitia Wright) Linnet’s old classmate.
Only one person can get to the bottom of the matter. “I am Detective Hercule Poirot and I will deliver your killer.”
“He’s a bloodhound,” says Rosalie, “so let him sniff.”
“Death on the Nile” has an old-fashioned Hollywood epic feel to it. There’s glamour, beautiful costumes worn by even more beautiful people set against an exotic backdrop shot with sweeping, expensive-looking crane shots over CGI pyramids. There are, as they used to say, more stars than there are in the heavens populating the screen and a knotty mystery that only Poirot can untie.
It also feels old fashioned in its storytelling. Branagh takes his time setting the scene, adding in two prologues before landing in Egypt. It takes almost an hour to get to the sleuthing and the weaving together of the clues and the characters. The leisurely pace sucks much of the immediacy out of the story, and despite all the moving parts, the mystery isn’t particularly intriguing.
More intriguing is Branagh’s take on Poirot. On film the detective has often been played as the object of fun, and while the character’s ego, persnickety personality and quirky moustache are very much on display, here he is a serious man, heartbroken and brimming with regret. We learn how the death of a loved one changed him, turning him into the man we see today. It’s a new take on the crime solver that breathes some new life into the character’s lungs.
Then there is the pyramid in the room. Yes, Armie Hammer, the bland slab of a leading man, has a large role in the action. He is so interwoven into the movie that he couldn’t be cut out, à la Kevin Spacey in “All the Money in the World,” despite his recent scandals. At any rate, despite having one of the larger roles, he doesn’t make much of an impression.
“Death on the Nile’s” high style and all-star murder mystery may please Agatha Christie aficionados, but it could use a little more of the “Knives Out” vibe to make it feel less old fashioned and conventional.
I WANT YOU BACK: 4 STARS
“I Want You Back,” a new rom com starring Jenny Slate and Charlie Day and now streaming on Amazon, begins with dueling break-ups.
Noah (Scott Eastwood) and Emma (Slate) have been together for 18 months. She’s comfortable and content. He’s an A-Type on the hunt for the next thing in life, who happens to appear in the form of Ginny (Clark Backo), the statuesque owner of a local pie shop.
Peter (Day) and Anne (Gina Rodriguez) are six years in when she blindsides him. He’s too complacent, she says as she dumps him. She wants a bigger life, one filled with excitement, and she thinks she’ll find that with local theatre director Logan (Manny Jacinto).
Emma and Peter are dumped and devastated.
This is a rom com, so it is inevitable that the grieving Emma and Peter will meet cute. Turns out, they work in the same office tower and spend time in the same stairwell, crying and longing for their exes. When they finally meet, she is smeared with mascara, he has the toilet paper he used to wipe away his tears stuck to his face. They respond to each other’s pain and begin a platonic friendship.
They sing “You Oughta Know” at karaoke, get drunk and attempt to make one another feel better. “Dying alone is not so bad,” Emma says. “Having someone to watch you die is embarrassing.” They go to the movies, have lunch, lurk on their exes’ Instagrams and hatch a plan. Emma will infiltrate Anne and Logan’s relationship as Peter makes friends with Noah and Ginny, both trying to drive a wedge in the new relationships. “They might not know they should be with us,” Emma says, “with all these new shiny people around.”
“It’s like ‘Cruel Intentions,” Peter says, “but sexier.”
“How is it sexier?”
“It isn’t.”
The chemistry Slate and Day share, as actors and characters, (NOT A SPOILER, JUST THE WAY ROM COMS WORK) make it clear who should be partnered with who by the time the end credits roll. This is, after all, a rom com so the outcome isn’t a secret. It’s all about the journey, how the two most likable characters in the movie will finally find their happily ever after. “I Want You Back” offers up a fun journey that travels ground most rom coms have voyaged before but does so with laughs and heart.
There are hijinks and farce – a proposed three-way tryst, a very uncomfortable hiding spot and unrequited love – but the clichés of Katherine Heigl-style rom coms are blunted with edgy humor topped off with a helping of romance. The movie allows Slate and Day to bring their unique comic gifts to the material while keeping it on the rom com straight and narrow.
“I Want You Back” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but the eager cast keeps the predictable parts of the story interesting and very funny.
BLACKLIGHT: 2 STARS
At this point, it is just a given that if you are related to Liam Neeson in a movie, you’re likely going to end up in a bad way. Most famously, the “Taken” movies saw his wife and kids get abducted and in “Cold Pursuit” his son was killed by drug dealers.
Neeson and his special set of skills are back with the release of “Blacklight,” a kidnapping flick that breathes the same air as the franchise that made him an action star.
The Irish actor plays Travis Block, an “off the books” FBI agent who fixes sticky situations by any means necessary. “Breaking and entering, physical coercion,” he says, “you name it, I’ve probably done it.”
He specializes in rescuing operatives whose covers have been blown but, late in his career, he develops doubts about his life’s work. He wants to be more involved with his granddaughter Natalie’s (Gabriella Sengos) upbringing than he was with his daughter Amanda (Claire van der Boom).
He’s serious about changing his ways, so when his granddaughter Natalie asks, “Grandpa, are you a good guy?” he truthfully replies, “I want to be.”
His plan for being a retired grandpa, however, are kicked to the curb when an unstable deep cover agent (Taylor John Smith) goes rogue and tells Block about a special FBI operation that targets and kills innocent U.S. citizens under the guise of protecting democracy.
“One day you wake up,” he says, “and realize you’re not sure who the good guys are anymore.”
Journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman), who has been sniffing around the story for some time, fills him in on the details, including a link between the conspiracy and FBI director Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn). “How many have to die for you to look the other way?” she asks.
Looking the other way isn’t an option when Block’s daughter and granddaughter go missing. He suspects Robinson had something to do with their disappearance and vows to do something about it. “If I find out you had anything to do with my granddaughter going missing,” he warns the FBI head honcho, “you’re going to need more men.”
And the plot, such that it is, thickens.
With none of the fun Eurotrash panache of “Taken,” too many movie-of-the-week characters and a plot with all the suspense of a Tim Horton’s commercial, “Blacklist” doesn’t belong on the same shelf with Neeson’s best action flicks. Inert and stodgy, it never gets to lift-off.
Still, there is no denying Neeson’s screen presence. Even in cut rate fare like this he’s watchable. It’s just that he has visited this well too many times. Once again, he’s the tough guy cliché, a loner fighting against impossible odds, using his special set of skills to even scores and, in doing so, invites comparisons to other, better movies.
DRIVE MY CAR: 4 STARS
Despite a title that sounds like it could be a reboot of Jason Statham’s wild ‘n wooly “Transporter” series, “Drive My Car,” the Japanese Oscar entry for best international feature and now playing in theatres, is not an action film. It is a slow, meditative film about self-acceptance and regret whose only action comes in the form of emotional reckoning and keenly observed human behaviour.
Based on a short story by Murakami Haruki, the three-hour “Drive My Car” centres on Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), an actor-director grieving the sudden passing of his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima). Even though he walked in on his wife and her lover shortly before she died, he is devastated by her death. After a two-year break from work, during which he tried to piece his life back together, he accepts a job directing a production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” at a theatre festival in Hiroshima.
He drives solo to Hiroshima in his vintage Talladega Red Saab 900 Aero coupe but is told that during his stay he’ll have to have a chauffeur named Misaki Watari (Toko Miura) drive him from place to place. Although his car has been a welcome isolation chamber for him during his bereavement, he reluctantly agrees to allow the 23-year-old woman control of the car.
Meanwhile, at work, Kafuku makes some odd choices. He casts the role of Sonya with an actress who uses Korean sign language anxjmtzywd hires a scandal-ridden TV star, Koji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada) in “Uncle Vanya’s” lead role.
The show’s rehearsals are difficult but outside the theatre, in the Saab, Kafuku and Watari become close, sharing stories about the most troubled aspects of their lives. Ultimately, lessons about moving forward are learned as the unlikely pair get to know one another.
“Drive My Car” is a quiet, introspective, odd-couple movie. Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi is unafraid to set his own pace as his characters search for answers to the questions that have rooted themselves in their psyches. It is slow but not listless. Patient viewers will be rewarded with a deeply felt relationship movie that sees two characters working through their personal recoveries to find a path forward in life.
The performances by Nishijima and Miura are understated, but as they connect there is an undeniable sense of growth and, by the end of their time together, a sense of freedom from the memories and events that have dented their spirit.
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This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Gal Gadot in a scene from “Death on the Nile.” (20th Century Studios via AP)
