I guess it’s a good thing that a week that produces a new Divergent movie also brings us the new Terrence Malick. It would be even better if I’d seen the Malick instead of Allegiant, but such is the price of going on vacation.
Allegiant: The least essential young-adult franchise (yeah, even less so than those stupid Maze Runner movies) coughs up a third chapter that is almost exactly the same as the last one. Ugh.
Boris Sans Beatrice: Denis Cote feints in the direction of conventional drama — or does he? — with this tale of an industrialist (James Hyndman) given an unexpected opportunity to break his wife out of her depression.
The Bronze: If you only know Melissa Rauch as the squeaky Bernadette on The Big Bang Theory, you really need to see her as a self-destructive gymnast in this spiky comedy. Susan makes with the respect.
Chi-Raq: I haven’t seen Spike Lee’s latest, which reimagines Lysistrata in present-day Chicago, but Susan is crazy about it. So you should probably go.
Coconut Hero: Rad is decidedly not crazy about this quirky indie about a teenager who discovers that his suicidal impulses are the result of a brain tumor. I cannot say I blame him.
Happily Ever After: Janet Montgomery, Sara Paxton and half a dozen other talented actors are sorely wasted in Joan Carr-Wiggin’s messy dramedy, which is very long and has no point at all.
The Infinite Happiness: Architectural documentaries can take many forms, but “insufferably twee” might be one tone best left on the shelf in future. Trust me on this. (Opens Monday at the Bloor.)
Knight of Cups: Terrence Malick’s all-star Los Angeles drama has been getting mixed reviews, but Rad is on the “love” side of the equation. Me, I still have to catch up to the damn thing.
The Program: I didn’t much care for Stephen Frears’ Lance Armstrong movie at TIFF, and six months later I’m just as disinclined to recommend it. Any film starring Chris O’Dowd as an indignant hero should be so much better than this, you know?
Oh, and Miracles from Heaven opened on Wednesday. Rad was not swayed.
I’m going to give the Divergent series (and its author) a little bit of credit for not shoehorning in a love triangle a la Peeta/Gale or Edward/Jacob. Tris and Four are attracted to each other right away and that’s that. (The Hunger Games had some good psychological reasons for the triangle and I appreciated how it resolved, but it shouldn’t be an obligatory thing in every ya series.) I also appreciated that rather than the heavy-handed premarital-sex-is-bad subtext of Twilight that Divergent presented that Tris might be somewhat apprehensive of having sex with Four (it shows up in one of her what-are-you-scared-of mind-probes), which was realistic given it would be her first experience, but it didn’t come across as presenting the idea of them having sex as bad-dirty-don’t-do-it. Baby steps. (It does seem like we’ve regressed since Buffy and Angel, or Buffy and Spike, or Kaylee and whomever she feels like, but Joss Whedon can’t do everything.) It’s that kind of thing that would have stood out when my daughter was the right age for these series.
But yeah, despite that minor positive, this series definitely hits the wait-for-Netflix spot.