Our site is based in Canada, and our primary attention today is focused on the Toronto International Film Festival, yet it's also the 25th anniversary of a shocking, sobering terrorist attack upon the U.S. that left thousands dead and thousands more wounded.
I know that relations between Canada and the U.S. are fraught with tension and mistrust nowadays, which is why I am more than happy to return my focus to movies that have opened in theaters earlier this week, as well as several that are opening today.
It's more than ironic that a South Korean movie titled Hope leads our selection, in a week that also includes a fascinating documentary about zombies, an indie comedy that paints a modern portrait of New York City, the third feature film by a Hong Kong legend, a Hollywood sequel helmed by a Danish director, the latest from the British director of United 93 (2006), and a military thriller turned heist movie from a former soldier turned filmmaker.
I hope you can see one or more movies in a theater this weekend. Enjoying the experience would be a bonus.
Hope
The film is now playing, only in movie theaters, via Neon.
Our review by Lou Cai: "Overall, Hope is a sci-fi blockbuster that may meet mainstream expectations, but offers little of interest beyond its rather routine action sequences. ... Yet after sitting through this year's Competition lineup, which skewed heavily introspective, I found myself appreciating Hope for at least bringing a moment of pure entertainment to the festival."
Official synopsis: "In the remote South Korea village of Hope Harbor, police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung- min) and officer Sung-ae (Hoyeon) are called to find a mysterious creature that has wreaked havoc on the village. In the nearby forest, a coterie of hunters, including Sung- ki (Zo In-Sung) set out to track the beast and find themselves hunted instead. But all is not as it seems, and perceptions can be misleading. What begins as ignorance plants the seed of disaster, escalating through human conflict into a tragedy of cosmic proportions."
Black Zombie
The film is now playing, only in movie theaters, via Kino Lorber.
Our review by Kyle Logan: "If Xavier Burgin's Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror is the equivalent of a survey course you might take freshman year at college, Maya Annik Bedward's Black Zombie is the kind of class you take junior year that makes you consider going to grad school for this stuff."
Official synopsis: "Black Zombie digs beneath the blood-soaked spectacle of modern horror to uncover the zombie's buried and unsettling origins. Long before it became associated with flesh-eating ghouls, the zombie was a living metaphor for slavery: not a monster, but the ultimate victim of colonial power. A symbol of stolen agency was recast as an object of fear, while Black spiritual traditions were distorted, sensationalized, and erased.
"Director Maya Annik Bedward traces the evolution of the zombie from colonial Haiti to contemporary Hollywood, reconsidering iconic films like White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, and The Serpent and the Rainbow alongside archival footage, vérité scenes, and interviews with cultural historians, artists, and genre legends including Yves-Grégory Francois, Mambo Labelle Déesse, Slash, Tom Savini, and Zandashé Brown.
"Part cultural reckoning, part horror remix, Black Zombie exposes how a figure born from enslavement, spiritual belief, and resistance was transformed into one of pop culture's most profitable monsters."
On a String
The film is now playing, only in movie theaters, via via Joke Zero.
Our review by Daniel Eagan: "A man on his knees proposes to a woman in a park while someone plays Chopin in the background. It's a classic romantic movie moment, only On a String will carefully and calmly subvert every expectation it raises."
Official synopsis: "A Juilliard-trained musician navigates the New York City freelance classical musician scene, playing gigs that often draw her into the personal lives of strangers, all while living in her oddball family's NYC apartment."
Don't Play With Fire (1980)
The film is now playing, only at Metrograph NYC, for a special limited engagement.
Tsai Hark's third feature film has been restored and it's absolutely terrific, as I raved in my review: "A ferociously entertaining picture. ... An angry, urgent, vividly-realized social thriller, Don't Play With Fire is an absolute must-see."
The Uprising
The film is now playing, only in movie theaters, via Focus Features.
Our review by Mel Valentin: "Typical for Greengrass's multi-decade filmography, the camera stays resolutely rooted to ground level, only occasionally giving moviegoers a top-down, hawk's-eye view of the peasants' procession through a mud- and muck-caked countryside, their entry into various towns, and eventually, London itself and the infamous tower. Just as typically, Greengrass employs a constantly moving, twitchy camerawork, rapid-fire, nausea-inducing editing, and all-too-infrequent moments of stasis, usually saved for explanatory scenes, to depict the Peasants' Revolt from its first promising salvos at a cruel, exploitative socio-economic structure (contemporary relevance alert), through to the historically mandated end."
Official synopsis: "Andrew Garfield stars as the leader of a ferocious rebellion against the tyranny of King Richard II. Set against the true events of the Uprising that helped inspire the legend of Robin Hood, he forms an army of the people to face the King's might in a fight for justice."
Practical Magic 2
The film is now playing, only in movie theaters, via Warner Bros..
Our review by Olga Artemyeva: "The incessant nostalgia can be survived, though, even if it's being ridden harder than the horse in Na Hong-jin's Hope. What's lethal for any hope of this film making a lasting impression, along with wasting some serious talent ... is the same sin The Devil Wears Prada 2 committed: Butchering everything that might have felt special before."
Official synopsis: "Starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, Practical Magic 2 returns to a world steeped in moonlit mischief and powerful ancestral magic, as the Owens sisters must confront the dark curse that threatens to unravel their family once and for all in a must-see cinematic event of fun, magic and mayhem."
The Fix
The film is now playing, only in movie theaters, via Inaugural Entertainment and Briarcliff Entertainment.
Zachary Levi, known for his likable action-comedy characters in TV's Chuck and comic book adaptation Shazam!, straps on weapons, leads a squad of men into battle in Afghanistan on behalf of the CIA, and drains his character of any personality so that he can manifest strength, regret, and sorrow.
Then an apparently dementia-addled Liam Neeson, his former CIA handler, tells him of a secret cache of cash ($25 million!) buried in a wall, somewhere in Iran. Levi rounds up his old squad to recover the cash, but to find the buried cash, he agrees to rescue someone ... oh, and it goes on from there. He's meant to resolve his guilt, but the message becomes muddled, and we just have a lot of shooting and fighting and Chuck Levi falls for a civilian who's posing as his wife, and it's a mess.
Official synopsis: "The Fix follows a group of war-torn CIA operators mentored by 'Larry' (Liam Neeson) and led by 'Tucker' (Zachary Levi) who, after their mission in Afghanistan goes tragically wrong, enter the heart of Tehran to earn redemption by pulling off a daring rescue."
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