FILM REVIEWS:
BLACK BAG (USA 2025) ****
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Espionage was a favourite premise in films from the 60s to beyond, fuelled by the ever-popular James Bond 007 action films. More serious films like THE SPY WHO CAM IN FROM THE COLD, THE IPCRESS FILE as well as a lot of cheapies like the Matt Helm films also entertained moviegoers. The genre is largely missing these days but up comes an espionage thriller that feels like a chamber piece though the action takes place in and around London with two key scenes taking place at a dinner table.
The film is called black bag as an actual black bag contains tools of the espionage. A Black bag operation aka a covert burglary, is an espionage technique, referring to the black bag of equipment that a burglar would carry.
The film’s impressive cast includes:
Cate Blanchett as Kathryn St. Jean
Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse
Marisa Abela as Clarissa Dubose
Tom Burke as Freddie Smalls
Naomie Harris as Dr. Zoe Vaughan
Regé-Jean Page as Col. James Stokes
Pierce Brosnan as Arthur Steiglitz
Gustaf Skarsgård as Meacham
Kae Alexander as Anna Ko
When his wife (Blanchett), intelligence agent Kathryn, is suspected of committing treason, her husband, intelligence agent George Woodhouse (Fassbender) is assigned to investigate her. He faces the ultimate test - faithfulness to his marriage or loyalty to his country. George is tasked too, of finding the traitor, ins which he does by means of clever parlour games during a dinner in which suspects are forced to attend - and play. At times, the espionage thriller plays like a murder whodunnit.
Soderbergh alternates between small and big-budget movies. His small-budget PRESENCE, a haunted house ghost story, quote good, opened two months ago. BLACK BAG is a small film but boasts an impressive cast, shot entirely in London. It is brilliantly written and executed, with touches of humour amidst thrills and almost perfectly performed by its apt cast.
Trailer:
CAN I GET A WITNESS? (Canada 2024) ***
Directed by Ann Marie Fleming
At the beginning of the film, a title indicates that the film is a ‘fable’. ‘Fable’ is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or lead to a particular moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly as a concise maxim or saying. There are no animals, talking or otherwise featured in the film, so what is expected from the film after the complete viewing is a moral to the story.
How much time is enough? Sandra Oh stars and asks alongside up-and-comers Keira Jang and Joel Oulette in Ann Marie Fleming’s CAN I GET A WITNESS?, a fable set in the near future, when humans are supposed to have solved all the world’s problems, from climate change to poverty to inequality. But there is just one catch. Humans have to end life at 50 and teen artists have to document it. It does not take a genius to figure out the moral of the story. The story shares similarity to the story of LOGAN’S RUN, in which humans are terminated at the age of 30 believing that they are reincarnated into a better life. Where Michael Anderson’s LOGAN’S RUN looks futuristic CAN I GET A WITNESS? surprisingly looks like a vintage film. The key topics of why humans believe will happen to them after termination at 50 as well as how the world got the way it had become are omitted in the film.
The film is set on Kiah's (Jang) first day on the job. She is supposed to have the govcrnment job of witnessing the culminating of life for individuals approaching or reaching the age of termination. Without cameras or electronic devices that use chemicals that are currently forbidden, Kiah has to draw the EOL (end-of-life) protocols, her illustrations coming to life through animation that’s sprinkled throughout the film. The animation appears often, not always from her drawing and whether these serve their purpose or a distraction is arguable. Her mentor (Oulette) is a young man whose personal history (heart problems as a child losing his mother in the birth process) makes him wise beyond his years. Meanwhile, Kiah’s mother (Oh), is getting her own things in order.
Canadian Sandra Oh has proven herself in both drama and comedy. Oh puts on a serious side as the mother of Kiah. Oh is always great to watch, she has been bypassed for her talent ever so many times. One wishes for the script to have included more humour for Oh’s character, For example in Alexander Payne’s 2004 SIDEWAYS, she was snubbed for an Academy Award nomination while Virginia Madsen won one, despite her performance being equal if not better than Madsen’s.
As the subject of the story is the environment and eco-friendliness above all, including human life, the filming also supports the issue. The film is hot among the lush foliage and waterways of BC’s eco-conscious Powell River. While shooting, it is reported that production used real dishes and reusable water bottles, which helped keep over 180,000 items out of the landfill.
CAN I GET A WITNESS? is intriguing enough though it suffers from a monotonous pacing that assumes the audience will keep getting more and more mesmerized as the story unfolds.
CAN I GET A WITNESS? has made it to this year’s TIFF “Canada’s Top Ten” as well as winning 5 Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards CAN I GET A WITNESS? opens March 14 in Toronto (TIFF Lightbox), Vancouver and Montreal! The film opens throughout the spring in other Canadian cities.
Trailer:
THE ELECTRIC STATE (USA 2025) **
Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo
THE ELECTRIC STATE is touted as Netflix’s and on record (over $300 million in change), of one of the most expensive films made.
The film is based on The Electric State, a 2018 dystopian science fiction illustrated novel by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag. Set in an alternate technologically ravaged 1990s, it follows a teenage girl and her robot on a journey to the West Coast of the United States in search of her long-lost brother. (In 2017, the Russo brothers acquired film rights to the book. They directed and produced this Netflix film of the same title, starring Millie Bobby Brown.)
The widely acclaimed book is told through a series of paragraphs, linked to large artworks. The principal plot line follows Michelle (Brown), a teenage orphan travelling to the West Coast with a robot companion, Skip, to find her long-lost brother. Flashbacks gradually reveal Michelle's past and the reason for her separation, while a secondary plot line follows a federal agent tracking down her brother.
The film pretty much follows the book. But credibility appears to be in jeopardy in the film with Michelle running around with the bot (now called Kid Cosmo instead of Skip) running around trying to locate her real brother in a journey that is both tedious, hard to believe and impossible to achieve. In the meantime, there is the end of the world as one knows it with Stanley Tucci playing the main villain Skate, accompanied by his nasty partner and Bot hunter Colonel Marshall (Giancarlo Esposito). They meet with Keats (Chris Pratt) and Herman (Anthony Mackie). It is an all-sorry affair with special effects and unexciting action pieces. The film is not helped by what might be deemed at many points corny or bad dialogue with jokes no one wishes to report. Chris Pratt is largely wasted in a role, in which he overacts calling him to have feelings for his robot companion. Most of the humour, that comes from his character falls flat as well.
Instead of animated characters, there are robot characters with many stars credited for the voices. These include:
Woody Harrelson as Mr. Peanut
Anthony Mackie as Herman
Brian Cox as Popfly
Jenny Slate as Penny Pal
Alan Tudyk as Cosmo
Hank Azaria as Perplexo
Colman Domingo as Wolfe
Oscar and Golden Globe Winner Ke Huy Quan plays Dr. Amherst, the bespectacled doctor the team is searching for. Nothing is impressive here either.
THE ELECTRIC STATE lacks spark and credibility and a story that will connect the audience to the characters or its events. The result is a huge mess of special effects and high production costs in a film no one rally cares for.
THE ELECTRIC STATE had its world premiere on February 24, 2025, at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, in Los Angeles, California, and is scheduled to be released by Netflix on March 14. The film received negative reviews from critics.
Trailer:
OPUS (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Mark Anthony Green
The meaning of OPUS as in the Cambridge English Dictionary is a piece of music written by a particular musician and given a number relating to the order in which it was published. The new thriller film OPUS is less about the music of a musician than his comeback after a long absence while having a hidden agenda for what the intended interview he wishes to give to the world. But the film features original music written by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream.
A writer, Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri) travels to the compound of a pop icon, Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich) who disappeared years ago. surrounded by his cult of sycophants, as well as a group of fellow journalists, she soon discovers his twisted plans for the gathering.
OPUS benefits from the zany, crazed performance from John Malkovich as the musician with a secret mission. There are similar tones in the thriller BLINK TWICE in which unsuspecting guests are invited to a villa, just as reporters are invited to the musician’s villa, in which things are not what they seem. “Are you having a good time?” is BLINKnTWICE’s tagline which could also be applied to OPUS as to whether the reporters are having a good time As in both films, guests mysteriously disappear.
The film is writer/director Mark Anthony Green’s film debut and it is a worthy one, despite a few rough edges. One thing the film has is that it is a compulsive watch.
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2025, and it will be theatrically released by A24 on March 14, 2025.
Trailer:
THE WORLD WILL TREMBLE (UK/USA /Bulgaria/Israel 2025) ***½
Directed by Lior Geller
In September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, annexing its western regions. The film follows this historical event and is based on a true story, the audience is informed at the beginning of what seems like a serious film. Jews are moved to ghettos before transporting to the east. The story commenced in Chelmno, Poland in 1942.
The World Will Tremble is the first film to uncover the true story of the first escape from a Nazi death camp—an event that led to the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust. Despite its profound historical significance, this story has remained largely untold.
Between 1941 and 1945, over 300,000 Jews were sent to Chełmno, the first German extermination camp, where they were murdered in gas vans. Only four people survived. Among them were Michael Podchlebnik and Solomon Wiener, who were forced to work as gravediggers, burying victims who had been suffocated by carbon monoxide from the gas vans’ engines.
The magic question that has been asked many times about the Holocaust is why the Jews, the often number their captors never rebelled. They just suffered and eventually perished. This film supplies one answer.
“We must stop being afraid if we want to live.” says one prisoner about to rebel.
On the afternoon of January 19, 1942, in the very first Nazi death camp secretly built in Poland, a group of Polish Jewish prisoners attempted the unthinkable. Held captive as gravediggers, forced to bury the bodies of men, women and children murdered in gas vans, they decide to launch a daring escape. Even after having lost their families, burying them with their own hands, they are determined to flee, not for themselves, but to alert the world of what is happening. Using a stolen shard of glass, prisoners Solomon Wiener and Michael Podchlebnik tear through a transport truck and bolt into the forest. Fleeing gunfire and pursuing Nazi guards, Solomon and Michael brave a raging river, German soldiers and the Polish police before they become the first men to ever escape from a Nazi death camp, creating the world’s first eyewitness account of the Holocaust. Taking place in real-time and based on a never-before-told harrowing true story, “The World Will Tremble” is a nail-biting triumph of the human spirit, demonstrating that even under the most indescribable of human conditions, man’s determination and will—not only to survive but to tell others—can overcome the most insurmountable of odds.
` As the subject implies. the film is a dead serious and often depressing affair - as observed from the mistreatment of the Jews, the abuse of power, the suffering to the suspenseful escape. Not a comfortable watch, this story that needs tone told is revealed in an equally authentic and depressing tone.
The Germans are all, particularly the higher-ranking ones all portrayed as despicable. The one that tends out is the smiling commander who lies through his teeth that all will be good if not better for the Jews, while knowing that they will soon be based to death,
An important film concerning the need of humans to fight back, THE WORLD WILL TREMBLE will be released in select theatres on Friday, March 14
Trailer:
