It’s his Third World Premiere. He’s the…
Vidiot
Week of March 9, 2018
Scalping tickets to a Redskins’ game is
double racist. First up…
Thor: Ragnarok
Norse gods only answer prays containing key
words, like, mead, wench or beheading.
But if this action movie is to be believed,
there may not be many deities left to worship.
Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his adopted
brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) must prevent their newly freed sister Hela (Cate
Blanchett) from destroying the Nine Realms. In the process Thor is captured by
an intergalactic slave trader (Tessa Thompson) and sold to the ruler (Jeff
Goldblum) of a battle planet for gladiatorial games.
Powerless without his hammer, the god of
thunder must learn to rely on others, including Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), if he
hopes to save Asgard.
Better than both of its predecessors by
leaps and bounds, especially in terms of action, acting and humour, director
Taika Waititi manages to bring levity to what is essentially Thor’s darkest
saga yet.
Incidentally, the only people who’d mourn
Asgard’s ruin are white supremacists.
Green Light
Lady Bird
The best thing about Catholic school is
that it accepts pregnant virgins as students.
However, it’ll be awhile before the pupil
in this dramedy even gets a miraculous kiss.
Quirky Catholic high school senior Lady
Bird (Saoirse Ronan) struggles to find her place amongst her straight-laced
peers as she waits to live out her Ivy League College fantasy far away from her
overbearing mother (Laurie Metcalf). It’s not until she joins the school play
that she finds her calling, and her new boyfriend.
But her affluent new friends begin to
affect how Ladybird perceives her status, her family and her old friends.
Although it comes with all the angst,
awkwardness and senseless rebellion you’d expect, it’s the hilarious and
touching mother-daughter dynamic that elevates writer/director Greta Gerwig’s
vision, and sets it apart from your standard coming-of-age account.
Moreover, teenage girls hate their mothers
up until they need them to babysit.
Green Light
I, Tonya
Watching girls perform vertical splits in
their panties is only allowed during Olympic figure skating.
Sadly, the skater in this dramedy has been
banned from ever flashing audiences again.
From an early age, Tonya Harding (Margot
Robbie) had been pushed by her abusive mother (Allison Janney) to be the best
on the ice. Despite the cruelty, she grew into a talented skater.
Her abusive boyfriend Jeff Gillooly
(Sebastian Stan) sees that Olympic potential, but also a threat in her main
rival, so he hires Tonya’s bungling bodyguard and his dimwitted crew to assault
Nancy Kerrigan at the ice rink.
A bizarre true story made even stranger by
turning the violent event and its participants into a comical situation
executed by white trash caricatures. While the cast is impeccable, the
directing, especially the green-screen work, is terrible.
And while the Winter Olympics frowns on
clubbing competitor’s kneecaps, Disney On Ice doesn’t. Yellow Light
***Succor Mom***
Terms of Endearment
Being your child’s best friend is better
than being their parent because you can always ditch them for cooler friends.
Mind you, the mother and daughter duo in
this dramedy is connected at the hip.
Overbearing Aurora (Shirley MacLaine)
becomes even more domineering when her husband dies and she’s left to raise
Emma (Debra Winger) alone. While the pair share a special bound, when Emma’s
husband (Jeff Daniels) is relocated that bond is strained.
To cope with loneliness Aurora courts her
neighbour (Jack Nicholson). But when Emma’s health takes a dramatic turn she
heads home to her mother.
James L. Brooks’ seminal tearjerker, this
Oscar winner based on Larry McMurtry’s best-seller was an emotional powerhouse
when it was released in 1983. However, overtime its weepy ending and its
mother-daughter dynamic have lost a lot of their initial impact.
Incidentally, the one thing that always
reunites daughters with mothers is a bad husband.
He's a Mother's Milkman. He's the...
Vidiot
