Movie reviews: 'The Dark Tower' disappoints in Stephen King book series adaptation

THE DARK TOWER: 1 STAR

The eight “Dark Tower” novels by Stephen King make up an award winning fantasy series that has spawned a comic, a videogame and now a movie starring Idris Elba. Spread over 4,000-plus-pages King wove the story of Roland Deschain, gunslinger and relation of Arthur Eld, an alternative universe King Arthur.

The film, directed and co-written by Nikolaj Arcel, sidesteps King’s series, presenting instead a sequel to the book series. Fans, he says, will recognize the world and the characters while newcomers will have no trouble figuring out the story.

As the film begins we meet teenage Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor). Troubled by disturbing apocalyptic dreams—are they dreams orr are they omens?—he can’t sleep and is getting into trouble at school. Concerned, his mom (Katheryn Winnick) makes arrangements for him to be sent to a psychiatric facility for tests. Before he can be taken away he makes a run for it and discovers a creepy old New York City mansion, abandoned, its covered in graffiti that reads, "all hail the Crimson King."

It also contains a portal into Roland’s world. He jumps through the glittering gateway only to find himself stranded in a desolate New World. He walks, talking to himself. “It's good.” he says, "It's not real." But it is real and dangerous. He’s in the universe he's been dreaming about, Roland’s realm.

Deschain (Elba) is the last gunslinger, a 300-year-old descendant from a long line of peacekeepers and diplomats from the Mid-World land of Gilead. Decked out in head-to-toe leather, he’s a mysterious presence, a throwback to the Man with No Name. His nemesis is demonic sorcerer and emissary of the Crimson King, Walter O'Dim (Matthew McConaughey), a.k.a. the Man in Black a.k.a. Walter Padick. “His name is Walter?” Jake asks incredulously. Mortal enemies, Roland and Walter are at odds over the Dark Tower, the centre of all creation. It is a classic battle of good and evil with the fate of the universe in the balance. “All that matters to me is that I find and kill Walter,” says Walter. “That's it.”

You can smell the wannabe franchise sauce all over “The Dark Tower” but something tells me there won’t be a “Darker Tower,” or whatever clever name they might come up with for a sequel.

Director Arcel, working from King’s template, creates a world with its own villains and nasty creatures. Unfortunately it's not a very interesting world. It feels like it might have been better served by a multi-part television serial, a series that could fully explore the complicated world of the novels. Then take the references to “The Shining” and other Stephen King books plus an unexpected turn to comedy when the action moves to “Keystone Earth” and you’re left with just another end of the world story where elements from the books appear but feel distilled down to a thick syrupy mush that moves like molasses.

McConaughey has the film’s best lines—“Have a great apocalypse!”—and can kill just by uttering the words "stop breathing" but he hands in a disengaged yet campy performance. Also, and this is a small thing, but it was the small things—and some big things too—that took me out of the story, but it bugged me whenever he referred to his powers. “Roland has an annoying resistance to my magics.” Plural. Not magic. Magics. It’s annoyings.

Taylor is an appealing enough juvenile lead but he’s held back by some strange story decisions. Why allow the villain to mostly work remotely—from his evil headquarters—and showcase a hero who means well but is largely hobbled by an injury? These two should be mano-a-mano 24-7 instead of sporadically throughout the film. By the time their inevitable bullet ballet comes—Roland is a gunslinger after all—it's too little too late.

Aside from being dull “The Dark Tower” feels like a missed opportunity. The books are rich source material but have been let down by a film that feels like it was once an ambitious project but was neutered in the editing room.

AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER: 2 ½ STARS

A decade after the glorified PowerPoint presentation “An Inconvenient Truth” won the Best Documentary Oscar and opened a lot of eyes to the effects of climate change comes a follow-up, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power.”

For better and for worse the new film feels more like a movie than it predecessor. The slide show hasn’t completely disappeared but it is enhanced by the addition of on-the-ground footage, extensive interviews with Al Gore and news reports.

The film begins with Gore’s critics. Labelled everything from a con man to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels the audio clips remind us of the polarizing reaction to the first film. They are also the last voices of dissent we hear in the film. From here on in it’s the Al Gore Show—someone even gushes, “I wish I could call you Mr. President!”—as he tells rapt crowds about the Biblical threat of melting ice caps and the link between Zika and climate change, travels the world spreading his gospel and do media interviews. We get to know the man behind the PowerPoint through footage of him at his ancestral home, some family photographs and several revealing moments where he expresses doubt that his crusade is working quickly enough.

Gore is a friendly figure, a slow talking baritone with a bit of a drawl, but don't let the Will Rogers persona fool you, he's a canny spokesman. His language is filled with highly charged catchphrases about “rain bombs,” or how climate change is “a movement that will advance mankind” and how and why the world is under an “existential threat.” He’s a skilled speaker, ramping up the message through carefully chosen words and rational, although frequently impassioned, assessment of scientific facts.

To bolster Gore’s words the film relies on pie charts, graphs and facts and figures galore but it is the images that resonate. Footage of streets melting in Valsad, India in 128° weather or anticipatory mass graves dug in Asia in preparation of deaths from extreme weather are powerful images that once seen won’t be soon forgotten.

Gore’s verbiage may employ hyperbole but by-and-large the film doesn’t. In terms of traditional drama, a conflict to move you further ahead in your seat, the best the movie can do follows the Prime minister of Indian’s announcement that it would be morally wrong not to use fossil fuel to bring energy to 300 of his people who currently are without power. Gore jumps into action, trying to negotiate lower interest rates so India can cheaply invest in solar rather than coal and oil. It’s not exactly Hitchcock, but it does add some real life tension to the facts and figures.

“An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power” works better as a timely call to action than a movie entertainment. Canadians will note footage of the fires at Fort McMurray and a cameo from Justin Trudeau while all viewers worldwide are urged to “Fight Like Your World Depends On It” and become environmentally aware citizens.

DETROIT: 4 STARS

There is a disclaimer at the end of “Detroit,” Kathryn Bigelow’s latest look back at our recent history. Before the final credits roll a title card reads something to the effect that the details of the bloody Algiers Motel Incident, the most infamous episode of the Detroit riots of the summer of 1967, were pieced together from available sources and eye witness accounts.

It reminds us that what we have just seen is an interpretation of history and not a strict, unequivocal statement of fact. The title card may be a reaction to the backlash that followed Bigelow last film “Zero Dark Thirty.” She called that film, a look at the decade long hunt for Osama bin Laden, a “reported film,” suggesting it existed somewhere in the murky middle between drama and documentary. Despite her claim the film drew fire from critics (including the CIA) who felt it exaggerated the enhanced interrogation techniques allegedly used in the search for Bin Laden.

Her new film is every bit as provocative but whereas “Zero Dark Thirty” felt of its time, “Detroit,” despite its 1967 setting, feels ripped from the headlines. It uses historical fact and dramatization as an urgent plea for further study and conversation into the systemic racism that enabled Detroit police to murder three young African American men and why so little has changed in the intervening years.

The film begins with a police raid of an unlicensed nightclub filled with African American men and women enjoying a drink, some music and each other’s company. Manhandling men and women alike the raid attracts the attention of the entire neighbourhood. As club goers are forced into paddy wagons for the crime of congregating and having a drink, cries of "You can't do that," erupt into rage and the frustrated shouts change to “Burn it down.” A riot breaks out leading to looting, curfews and mass arrests.

The story splinters to introduce Philip Krauss (Will Poulter), a racist trigger-happy Detroit cop who justifies gunning down a man who stole a bag of groceries because, “They're destroying the city.”

Nearby are Larry Cleveland Reed (Algee Smith) and Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore), a wannabe Motown singer and his best friend respectively. When Larry’s big debut at the Fox Theatre is scuttled because of the riot outside the theatre’s doors he Fred head to the Algiers, a nearby hotel, “until all this slows down.”

The laid back vibe at the Algiers seems a million miles away from the violence on the street, which by this point has seen 3200 people arrested and blocks of Detroit burned to the ground. Larry and Fred meet some girls (Hannah Murray and Kaitlyn Dever), listen to John Coltrane and feel safe until another resident, Carl Cooper (Jason Mitchell), shoots a starter’s pistol out the window. "We should teach those pigs a lesson,” he says. The police below, including Krauss, think a sniper is shooting at them and invade the building, guns drawn. By the time their “investigation” is done three young African-America men lay dead, shot at close range.

The lone uniformed voice of reason comes from Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), a

security guard in a grocery store down the street from the Algiers who tries his best to prevent bloodshed.

“Detroit” is an uncomfortable, gruelling watch. The physical intimidation, racially based violence, murders utilized against Reed, Temple and others as they plead innocence, is sickening. “I will kill you one by one until I find out what's happening here,” says Krauss. Using psychological games and hard-core interrogation tactics he (and a handful of others) terrorizes his suspects and it is gut wrenching. Bigelow has a historical POV setting up the story and in the subsequent court case but her handling of the interrogation sequences is pure psychological horror. Claustrophobic and violent, it is as compelling as it is abhorrent.

Bigelow uses archival footage and stills to set the stage but it is a combo of her kinetic, muscular filmmaking and strong performances that make an impression. Boyega channels a young Denzel Washington, radiating decency while Poulter is a snarling ogre who revels in the powerlessness and dehumanization of his victims. As a paratrooper recently returned from Vietnam Anthony Mackie is a stoic presence amid the chaos.

Best of the bunch is Algee Smith as the young singer whose dreams are crushed when the Fox Theatre is evacuated just before his debut. While the dirty cops assert that “one bad minute shouldn't define their lives,” it is through Smith’s performance that the long term effects of the Algiers event are the most tangible. The repercussions of that vicious, lawless night echo throughout his psyche, changing him forever.

The story in “Detroit” is fifty years old but the names of Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Michael Brown Jr., Ezell Ford, Dante Parker or any number of others who have been killed at the hands of the police in recent times, echo throughout.

THE TRIP TO SPAIN: 3 STARS

It’s hard to know exactly how to categorize “The Trip” movies. Since 2010 Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have co-starred in a series of British television travel shows, later cut down to feature length movies for North America.

The first saw the dynamic duo do a restaurant tour of northern England, then came “The trip to Italy” where they followed in the footsteps of early 19th century English poets on the Grand Tour. This time around trade plates of pasta for pintxos and paella in “The trip to Spain.”

The films are semi-fictional adlibbed culinary road trip adventures that have become increasingly melancholy as the odometer clocks each passing mile. They aren’t documentaries nor are they Food Network style travel shows. They are funny, although the laughs are fewer and further a part in the new, but they also contain moments of profound despondency. Sometimes they seem to be little more than a showcase for Coogan and Brydon’s prodigious gifts of celebrity mimicry, other times they are pathos dipped examinations of aging.

The third course on their culinary trip sees these two—imagine an intellectual version of The Two Ronnies—sample the best of Spain’s New Traditional restaurants, take in the sights but they spend most of their time not appreciating the beautiful coastal scenery but hilariously poking fun at a who’s who of Hollywood, including Al Pacino, Sean Connery and Woody Allen.

Wedged between the jokes and Michael Caine impressions is Coogan’s dissatisfaction, both personal and professional. Contrasted with Brydon’s happy family life and career, Coogan’s fear of becoming last week’s news as he enters his fifties gives the film an edge the others haven’t had. That means “The Trip to Spain” isn’t nearly all-out funny as the others, but it does have more substance. The others weren’t exactly empty calories but this one feels weightier.

“The Trip to Spain” features much of the stuff fans expect—Brydon’s “small man in a box” voice makes an appearance and Coogan’s way with words gives us culinary descriptions like, “life affirming butter”—but director Michael Winterbottom is clearly in a Cervantes state of mind as he sets his Don Quixote and Sancho Panza off on a new Spanish adventure.

BRIGSBY BEAR: 4 STARS

Against all odds “Brigsby Bear,” a new film starring “Saturday Night Live’s” Kyle Mooney, manages to be an inspirational story about child abduction.

Mooney is James, a man-child with a head of curly hair and 173 episodes of his favourite show, “The Adventures of Brigsby Bear” on VHS. Sort of like Paddington in outer space, the adventure series stars a man in a bear mascot suit saving the universe for the evil SunSnatcher and doling out advice like, “Prophecy is meaningless, only trust your familial units.”

“Brigsby” super fan James lives with his parents Ted and April Mitchum (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams) in an underground bunker, shut off from the rest of the world save for a weekly delivery of a new “Brigsby” tape and a dodgy internet connection. His parents have kept him separated from the world, a world, he was told, where the air was toxic. He’s never been off the property or outside without a gas mask.

One night the FBI raids the bunker arresting Ted and April for abducting James when he was a baby before returning James to his real parents Louise and Greg (Michaela Watkins and Matt Walsh) and sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins). Leaving Ted, April and Brigsby behind is a tough adjustment for the naïve man. “Everybody says they're trying to help me,” he says, “but nobody can get me the new episode of Brigsby Bear.”

Turns out Ted had been making Brigsby episodes like, “Making Friends with the Wizzels,” for an audience of one, James. Filled with good life lessons the shows taught James about loyalty, fairness and perseverance. With no new episodes to study and learn from James, and his new acquaintances Aubrey, Meredith (Alexa Demie, Spencer (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) and Detective Vogel (Greg Kinnear)—comes up with a plan to share his favourite character with the world. “Brigsby never gives up and I won't either,” he says.

James is a Chance the Gardener type character. Like the famous “Being There” he is sweetly unsophisticated with knowledge derived mostly from television. Mooney could have played James as an alien, a fish out of water for whom everything is new—first party, first time with a girl, first bad drug trip—but, Like Peter Sellers’ Chance, he keeps it real, imbuing the odd character with real humanity. “It's a different reality than I thought,” he says of world outside the bunker and he has trouble fitting into it but he never falls into caricature.

I kept waiting for “Brigsby Bear” to develop an edge or to get ugly or to collapse under the weight of its quirkiness, but it doesn’t. It’s a sweetheart of a film about loyalty, the power of art as a coping device and a source of inspiration, the line between passion and obsession, but most importantly, it’s about accepting people for who they are.

BRAVE NEW JERSEY: 3 STARS

“Brave New Jersey” takes place in Lullaby, NJ, population 506, a sleepy little town where, “where strangers are friends and no one is a stranger.” It is, however, where some very strange things happen on Halloween, 1938.

The panic Orson Welles’ legendary “War of the Worlds” hoax broadcast inspired has inspired several movies. His radio tale, complete with simulated news bulletins suggesting an alien invasion, is the stuff of legend. “Brave New Jersey” is a soft-hearted take on the story. Nothing much ever happens in Lullaby. It’s only claim to fame is that it is the home of the world’s only automated milking machine, the Rotolactor. Located just hours away from the Grover’s Mills, the very heart of Welles’ fictional invasion, the news of aliens hit the town hard.

As panic spreads lovesick mayor Clark Hill (Tony Hale) tries to maintain calm but sees his efforts undone by Captain Collins (Raymond J. Barry) who whips up the townsfolk, preparing them for extra-terrestrial warfare. As they wait for the ETs on what they think may be their last night on earth, their true natures are exposed. Hidden courage is revealed, secret love may be professed and faith will be rekindled.

“Brave New Jersey” is jam packed with actors you know from television—Hale is instantly recognizable from “Arrested Development” and “Veep,” local loud mouth Paul is played by “Parenthood’s” Sam Jaeger and "The Last Man on Earth’s" Mel Rodriguez turns up as the timid sheriff—in an ensemble that gives them all a chance to shine. And shine they do in a small-scale movie that skids by on equal parts charm and art direction. The recreation of this slice of 1930s Americana is bolstered by beautiful production design and authentic Norman Rockwell touches.

The actors smooth over the rough middle patch, keeping things interesting until the storylines criss-cross and come to their respective and satisfying resolutions.

“Brave New Jersey” is a sleeper, a small film with small ambitions whose charisma will win you over.

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