We first meet Will Sharpe’s version of Louis Wain, painter and eccentric in the early 20th century, as an old man (a well-aged Benedict Cumberbatch) gazing into space as images of a somewhat younger Wain walks solemnly through the street in funereal attire with a group of women.
Every few months a new Marvel film emerges and every few months critics write critiques of the individual movies that dovetail as critiques of the entire Marvel collection.
If the unhinged earnestness of Tom Hardy’s central performance was the hook that necessitated a sequel to the 2018 “Venom”, it’s a bit surprising that the recently released sequel – titled “Let There Be Carnage” begins with someone other than Eddie Brock and his faithful symbiote friend.
The newly released comedy-drama “The Starling” is the second underwhelming Netflix release starring Melissa McCarthy this year, which is a disappointing fact for such an engaging actor.
To compelling, if varied, results, three films screened at the recently concluded TIFF2021 explored similar themes of women in crisis struggling to acclimate to the systems around them – Canadian family-drama “All My Puny Sorrows”, the Brazilian horror film “Medusa”, and the Danish drama “As In Heaven”.
Biopics tend to get a bad rep, mostly due to a swathe of listless interrogations of real-life figures, but it’s instructive to remember that a biopic is not really a genre of film.
One of my favourite creative moments in any medium is the beginning of the finale of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Sunday in the Park with George”.
There’s a lot happening in the computer-animated musical comedy “Vivo”. At its centre, it’s about the power of music, and seeking to prove that a single song can change a life.
How might things have been different if Marvel had decided to produce a “Black Widow” film that opened in 2017 to explore the past of Natasha Romanoff?