Steve Stebbing

New Releases:

Priscilla – When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy, and fame.

Expectations: I was bummed out to have to miss this film at the Vancouver International Film Festival as it was one of the closing ones but I really didn’t have to wait long to see it. Following up on last year’s Baz Luhrman-made Elvis biopic, this one has Sofia Coppola focusing on the woman behind the King. The estate didn’t allow her to use Elvis’s music so French pop group Phoenix, led by Coppola’s husband, has stepped in to score it, giving me the Marie Antoinette feeling, a film I appreciated more in retrospect. I have no real history with either of the lead actors, Cailee Spaeny or Jacob Elordi, so I’m not sure what to expect but I’ve generally enjoyed all of Sofia’s works.

Nyad – A riveting chapter in the life of world-class athlete Diana Nyad. Three decades after giving up marathon swimming in exchange for a prominent career as a sports journalist, at the age of 60, Diana becomes obsessed with completing an epic swim that always eluded her: the 110-mile trek from Cuba to Florida, often referred to as the “Mount Everest” of swims. Determined to become the first person to finish the swim without a shark cage, Diana goes on a thrilling, four-year journey with her best friend and coach Bonnie Stoll and a dedicated sailing team.

Expectations: I’m an easy sell for anything starring Annette Bening as she will forever be one of my favourite actresses on the planet and this one has a bonus as it also stars Jodie Foster in an increasingly rarer appearance on camera in the co-leading role. I’m really intrigued by this swimmer’s biopic film as well as it comes from the directing duo of Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi who almost gave me a heart attack with their Nat Geo documentary Free Solo. Lots of good words about his movie are being bandied around right now so I doubt my recommendation is really needed on this one.

Quiz Lady – Anne, a tightly wound game-show-obsessed woman, must team up with her chaotic sister Jenny to help pay off their mother’s gambling debts. When Anne’s beloved dog is kidnapped, they set off on a cross-country journey to get the money they need; to do so, they must tap into Anne’s skill set by turning her into the game-show champion she was always meant to be.

Review: Goofy, fun and with a real sweetheart to it, this is the kind of uplifting comedy you watch when you don’t want something heavy. The viewing public maybe getting sick of Awkwafina and Sandra Oh becoming the clear face of mainstream Hollywood films featuring Chinese leads but they work really well here as very different sisters. I also really loved Will Ferrell’s Mr. Rogers meets Alex Trebek approach to his quiz show host character which made it really endearing.

Sly – For nearly 50 years, Sylvester Stallone has entertained millions with iconic characters and blockbuster franchises, from Rocky to Rambo to The Expendables. This retrospective documentary offers an intimate look at the Oscar-nominated actor-writer-director-producer, paralleling his inspirational underdog story with the indelible characters he has brought to life.

Review: This biopic documentary was close to my heart as I was an eighties action kid and Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris were my guys. Stallone provides a deep and personal reflection of his life which includes his battle through some serious family issues to carve out his own piece of a Hollywood that tries its best to keep him on the outside. It really makes you appreciate the fact that we even got the Rocky and Rambo franchises as we see them today. A really fascinating watch about a person who carries a lot of misconceptions on his shoulders.

Fingernails – Anna (Jessie Buckley) increasingly suspects that her relationship with her longtime partner may not actually be the real thing. In an attempt to improve things, she secretly embarks on a new assignment working at a mysterious institute designed to incite and test the presence of romantic love in increasingly desperate couples.

Expectations: This movie has everything going for it for a movie fan like me, starting with the main cast of Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed and Jeremy Alan White. These are three stars that can do no wrong on the big screen at this point and the fact that Apples director Christos Nikou wrote and directed this sci-fi romance only sweetens the deal. AppleTV+ has really lucked out with this acquisition I think and hopefully, it catches on with an audience on there looking for something different.

Wingwomen – Alex and Carole, friends since childhood, are now (literal) partners in crime. But the heist to steal the Ingres painting The Grande Odalisque from the Louvre in Paris is too much for the duo to handle, so they bring in Clarence, a bureaucrat’s son with a price on his head by a Mexican drug cartel and, more importantly, an arms dealer. Next is Sam, a stunt motorcyclist and boxer by trade, who proves trigger-happy with tranquillizer darts. Using soda can smoke bombs, rocket launchers, and hang gliders, Alex, Carole, and Sam set off a set of circumstances that results in a battle with the French Special Forces and their partnership, which was on the rocks, will never be the same again.

Expectations: On the outside, this French actioner looks a little cliched, following a ragtag group of thieves planning a big game-changer heist but just on the surface there are three reasons to watch it immediately. The film stars Possession’s Isabelle Adjani, Blue Is The Warmest Color’s Adele Exarchopoulos and Inglourious Basterds actress Melanie Laurent who pulls double duty by directing the film as well. Shot by Antoine Roch, the cinematographer on one of my favourite romantic dramas of all time, Love Me If You Dare, this is a hidden treasure to be discovered in my opinion.

The Delinquents – Bank employee Morán schemes to steal enough money to never work again, then confesses and serves prison time while his colleague hides the cash. Soon under investigative pressure, accomplice Román meets a woman who transforms him forever.

Review: Argentinian writer and director Rodrigo Moreno has been making films since 1998 but it took this heist comedy twenty-five years later that got my attention. The film plays so off-kilter and subversive that it never feels predictable and leaves a lot on the table to suss out in the end. The film is tight and deadpan in its execution and it hits me in the weak spot of being a heist flick, I just love those.

Blu-Ray:

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One – Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, and dark forces from Ethan’s past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission — not even the lives of those he cares about most.

Review: It bums me out a lot that Sound Of Freedom stole Tom Cruise’s thunder at the box office after Top Gun: Maverik’s success last year because this fantastic film is now considered a bomb, the first in the franchise. This movie is incredible intrigue and action from the start as Tom and company throw everything at you in a spy story that just seems to get better and better. I love these movies so much and for me, the momentum isn’t slowing anytime soon.

Blue Beetle – Recent college grad Jaime Reyes returns home full of aspirations for his future, only to find that home is not quite as he left it. As he searches to find his purpose in the world, fate intervenes when Jaime unexpectedly finds himself possessing an ancient relic of alien biotechnology: the Scarab. When the Scarab suddenly chooses Jaime to be its symbiotic host, he is bestowed with an incredible suit of armour capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero, the Blue Beetle.

Review: This is the projected start of James Gunn’s reboot of the DC cinematic universe so of course the internet threw all of its bile behind a smear campaign but I will say that this movie surprised me. Xolo does a great job of giving us a fresh and almost Peter Parker-like character to get behind and the atmosphere around his first outing is really fun and colourful. The Latin flavor is all over the feel of the film and it works really well to engage with the audience. Now that it has landed on streaming and home release I hope that viewers really give it a chance because it’s worth your time.

Strays – They say a dog is a man’s best friend, but what if the man is a total dirtbag? In that case, it might be time for some sweet revenge, doggy style. When Reggie (Will Ferrell), a naïve, relentlessly optimistic Border Terrier, is abandoned on the mean city streets by his lowlife owner, Doug (Will Forte; The Last Man on Earth, Nebraska), Reggie is certain that his beloved owner would never leave him on purpose. But once Reggie falls in with a fast-talking, foul-mouthed Boston Terrier named Bug (Oscar® winner Jamie Foxx), a stray who loves his freedom and believes that owners are for suckers, Reggie finally realizes he was in a toxic relationship and begins to see Doug for the heartless sleazeball that he is. Determined to seek revenge, Reggie, Bug and Bug’s pals–Maggie (Isla Fisher; Now You See Me, Wedding Crashers), an intelligent Australian Shepherd who has been sidelined by her owner’s new puppy, and Hunter (Randall Park; Always Be My Maybe, Aquaman), an anxious Great Dane who’s stressed out by his work as an emotional support animal–together hatch a plan and embark on an epic adventure to help Reggie find his way home… and make Doug pay by biting off the appendage he loves the most. (Hint: It’s not his foot.)

Review: After seeing the trailer for this R-rated comedy for months and then a few months delay due to industry strikes, I was quasi-looking forward to what looked like a take on Superbad but from the point of view of some dogs. What we got instead was something that may have been better off as a YouTube short and not a stretched-out feature-length film will the odd chuckle here and there that didn’t pad up the trailer. All the voices are likeable but everything about this film really feels like it’s overstaying its welcome.

The Good Mother – From the three-time Academy Award®-nominated producer of The Wolf of Wall Street, The Good Mother follows journalist Marissa Bennings who, after the murder of her estranged son, forms an unlikely alliance with his pregnant girlfriend Paige to track down the killers. Together they confront a world of corruption and drugs in the seedy underbelly of a small city in upstate New York. As they get closer to the truth, they unearth an even darker secret. Starring two-time Academy Award®-winner Hilary Swank, Olivia Cooke and Jack Reynor.

Expectations: I can’t say I’m a massive fan of Hilary Swank’s work but there are a few movies that come through here and there that make me take notice of the actress and having Cooke and Reynor in the cast gives me more desire to check this one out. The film comes from writer and director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte in his follow-up to Dreamland, a dusty depression-era thriller starring Margot Robbie that deserves some attention. As far as it looks, the movie has some great burgeoning talent as it was shot by Charlotte Hornsby who did the Prime Video chiller With Regina Hall, Master. This one could be pretty solid.

Steve’s Blu-Ray Geekouts:

The Broadway Melody – Hank and Queenie Mahoney, a vaudeville act, come to Broadway, where their friend Eddie Kerns needs them for his number in one of Francis Zanfield’s shows. Eddie was in love with Hank, but when he meets Queenie, he falls in love with her, but she is courted by Jock Warriner, a member of the New Yorker high society. It takes a while till Queenie recognizes, that she is for Jock nothing more than a toy, and it also takes a while till Hank recognizes that Eddie is in love with Queenie.

Review: Going way back in time for this Warner Archive recent Blu-ray release as this film is almost one hundred years old. Let’s put it this way, this movie was MGM’s first all-talking picture, and the first sound film to win the Best Picture Academy Award. All of that aside, this isn’t exactly a film but more of a showcasing of the glitz and glam represented by the stage musicals and that kind of pales on a first time watching close to a century later. The advertisement feel of it got old with me pretty quickly.

Cimarron – When the government opens up the Oklahoma territory for settlement, restless Yancey Cravat claims a plot of the free land for himself and moves his family there from Wichita. A newspaperman, lawyer, and just about everything else, Cravat soon becomes a leading citizen of the boom town of Osage. Once the town is established, though, he feels confined again and heads for the Cherokee Strip, leaving his family behind. During this and other absences, his wife Sabra must learn to take care of herself and soon becomes prominent in her own right.

Review: Moving ahead just two years, we hit a more concrete genre of the Western adventure and a film that would be the first of its kind to win the Best Picture Academy Award. This film was lauded for a massive land rush sequence which took a week to film, using five thousand extras, almost sixty cameramen and assistants and six still photographers. The scene is so iconic that, three decades later, when MGM remade the film, the camera angles for the land rush sequence remained almost identical to the original. Speaking of the remake, that film held my interest more than this original piece did, a Glenn Ford starter that got two Academy Award nominations itself. Granted, the remake I saw first so I may be biased.

Du Barry Was A Lady – Hat-check man Louis Blore is in love with nightclub star May Daly; she is in love with a poor dancer, but she really wants to marry for money. When Louis wins the Irish Sweepstakes, he asks May to marry him and she accepts although she doesn’t love him. Soon after, Louis has an accident and gets knocked on the head, where he dreams that he’s King Louis XV pursuing the infamous Madame Du Barry.

Review: We finish off this week during wartimes with this Lucille Ball and Red Skelton period comedy musical which was the creation of Ball’s signature redhead look and a role that she only got because the original actress Ann Southern had to drop out after getting pregnant. Lucille’s singing voice was dubbed for the film but it was a big stepping stone for her career. From my point of view, the film is a bit boring and tedious but I can certainly see the star qualities of its star as it kind of felt built for a launching point. Would Southern have become a sitcom star if she had been able to do this film? It’s an interesting question.

Television:

All The Light We Cannot See (Netflix) – Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them, they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Expectations: With a showrunner team of Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and Shawn Levy, this new World War II set drama would have some substance to it, especially with Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie in supporting roles, but it’s just.. so… corny. Every character seems to be painted in broad strokes in tropes that feel recycled and I feel like I can see what’s coming next in this very paint-by-numbers plot. I will disclose that I’m only two episodes deep but it’s not going great.

Black Cake (Disney+) – Set aside their differences to deal with their mother’s death and her hidden past a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake. In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking journey Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child, challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their family, and themselves.

Expectations: This series debuted on Hulu a few weeks back and now Canada is receiving it but I have to admit that I really haven’t seen any buzz around it. The show is hugging the line between period pieces and modern mystery which is intriguing if they do it well but it won’t rely on star power unless there are big Rupert Evans fans out there. I will say that I loved lead actress Stephanie Jacob when I saw her in Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers but that was over a decade ago and I haven’t seen her in much since. Maybe this series will gain some momentum through word of mouth but given that the Americans weren’t doing backflips over it, the jury’s kind of out on that.

Invincible: Season 2 (Prime Video) – The son of Earth’s most powerful superhero is about to become something greater than himself: something bold, something universal, something – Invincible. From the comics to the screen, Invincible follows Mark Grayson’s journey of becoming Earth’s next great defender after his father, Nolan Grayson: also known as Omni-Man.

Expectations: I have been waiting not so patiently for this new season to show up and, look, I know animation takes its time to be processed so my gripes were quiet. You can’t really blame me as the ending of last season was absolutely insane and I was dying to see what the fallout was between Mark and his father, Omni-Man. I will say that the first episode relishes in swerving the viewer quite a bit but it all plays into riveting action and story that will keep the fans drooling for more.

The Gilded Age: Season 2 (Crave) – Old New York in the 1880’s. Old Money and New Money are the opposites that create a post-Civil War-era New York society. The Who’s Who of society is carefully orchestrated by the Old Money folks who can’t help but be fascinated and seduced by the “nouveau riche” folk. The lives of the characters are also merged with people from all walks of life.

Expectations: For anyone who wanted to love Downton Abbey but felt the stuffiness of it a little too unbearable, I implore you to try this HBO series as it has so many good things going for it but Carrie Coon is an absolute revelation every time she is on screen. A varied cast of some of the best character actresses including Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski keep the drama flowing and I’m so happy to see that the film isn’t a limited series like I thought it would be. It’s also really unpredictable in its scope of story so I can’t even gauge where this show will go but I will be veraciously waiting for every episode.