Movie reviews: 'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' is a breath of fresh fantasy air
Share
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES: 4 STARS
You don't have to know or understand the role-playing game D&D to get the movie "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves." Those who know that the acronym BBEG stands for Big Bad Evil Guy (or Gal) or that Monty Hall doesn't refer to the game show host, but to a type of campaign based on accumulating as much wealth/magic items as possible, will have a better chance at deciphering the in-jokes and Easter eggs, but for non-players, it still works as a fantasy action-comedy, complete with sorcerers, trolls and dragons.
The story begins with impish single father Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) and barbarian Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), making a daring escape from prison. They wound up behind bars when their planned robbery to steal the Tablet of Reawakening, an artefact with the power to resurrect the dead, went sideways. Their cohorts, Edgin's daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman), conman Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant), Sofina (Daisy Head) and sorcerer Simon Aumar (Justice Smith), escaped justice, disappearing into the wind.
Upon their "release" they discover that Fitzwilliam double-crossed them, has taken custody of Kira and is now living the high life as the wealthy Lord of Neverwinter. When it becomes clear Fitzwilliam is no longer an ally, Edgin and Holga go on a quest to find the Tablet of Reawakening, resurrect Edgin's dead wife, bring Kira back to the family and settle a score with Fitzwilliam.
But first they must find the Enchanted Helmut, a sideline aided by Sophia Lillis as Doric, a tiefling druid and shapeshifter and the heroic Xenk Yendar (Regé-Jean Page).
There's more, like Red Wizards and necromancy and talking corpses, but for all the fantasy on board the movie, this is really a very earth-bound story of friendship and family. With dragons and magic.
What could have been another dull game adaption transcends the nasty reputation left behind by bombs that were not nearly as fun as the games that inspired them, like "Battleship" and "Candy Land: The Great Lollipop Adventure."
Co-directors Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley roll their twenty-sided dice (look it up) that audiences will value a fantasy story that uses humour as the backbone of the movie, the same way the "Lord of the Rings" flicks used allegories on the human condition to fuel theirs.
Luckily, mostly thanks to Pine's nimble touch, it works really well. His performance sets a lighthearted tone followed by fun work from Rodriguez et al. Page also impresses as a handsome hero who feels like a combo of Dudley Do-Right and Errol Flynn.
We are so used to serious, heavy fantasy that the rambunctious "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" feels like a breath of fresh air. It is old-fashioned; an old-school action adventure that aims to entertain above all else. It doesn't take itself seriously — although it is respectful to the world that inspired it — but does handle the action scenes, the world building, the characters, and the story with care.
SPINNING GOLD: 3 ½ STARS
Chances are, if you came of age in the 1970s, you helped make Casablanca Records the most successful independent record label of all time. With artists like Donna Summer, Parliament, Gladys Knight, the Isley Brothers, the Village People, Bill Withers and KISS on the roster, founder Neil Bogart sold millions of records and helped define the sound of the 1970s.
"Spinning Gold," a new biopic now playing in theatres, written, produced and directed by Bogart's eldest son Tim, is the story of how it happened. Kind of.
"If what you're after is the truth," Bogart says, "and not just what happened, but how it happened, then you are just going to have to believe all of it, because every single bit of it is true. Even the parts that weren't."
The story of Casablanca Records begins in Los Angeles, 1974. In the late 1960s the former singer and one-hit-wonder Bogart was a successful music executive. His ear for talent accelerated the rise of bubblegum pop, but it was a shock rock band from New York City, with face paint and futuristic stage outfits, that inspired Bogart to start his own label.
Refusing to ever take no for an answer, even after a disastrous label launch featuring KISS, whose pyrotechnics set off the sprinklers, leaving all the music biz big shots in attendance soaked and unimpressed, Bogart took risks no other executive could. Or would.
Flashbacks to his youth detail how the son of a poor Brooklyn postman rose to become a record industry mover-and-shaker. A charming combo of talent and nerve, with a healthy (and occasionally unhealthy) disregard for money, he cut a path through popular culture, following his personal motto: "Why head for the mountaintop when you're reaching for the sky?"
A kind of "What Makes Sammy Run" set in the music business, "Spinning Gold" is a fast-paced portrait of an old-school show business mogul — a high school drop-out who gambled as big as he dreamed. It is the stuff of dreams and, as such, plays like a kind of fantasy, with Bogart cast as a rock 'n roll fairy godfather. As played with great energy by Broadway star Jeremy Jordan, he grants people's wishes and his belief in his own ability to cast a spell over artists and executives alike, is almost supernatural. "We were in the business of making dreams come true," he says.
It all feels heightened, like a look at the era through a telescope, enlarged to the point where the image is so big it doesn't feel real anymore. But, unlike other music biopics — think "Bohemian Rhapsody" for instance — "Spinning Gold" has a meta self-awareness, and even breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge, "This never happened!" It's a fun stylistic choice, but later, the fictional hagiographic elements are tempered by the drugs, money issues and organized crime that enter the story midway through and give the movie a slightly grittier feel.
"Spinning Gold" relies too heavily on voice over—sometimes it feels like there's more VO than actual dialogue — but, like the man and the music it is based on, the movie is unapologetically large 'n loud in its need to entertain the audience and it mostly works with an appealing combo of performances and lots of ear-wormy music.
Most of all, as a portrait of a more free-wheeling time — "I'm not saying it wasn't sex, drugs and rock and roll, because it was," Bogart says. "But it was sex before it was deadly."
"Spinning Gold" succeeds not because it gets the details exactly right but because it captures the spirit of a time in the music industry when it was run by dreamers who had passion for the music, not MBA diplomas hanging on the wall.
TETRIS: 3 STARS
The addictive puzzle video game "Tetris," created by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov, couldn’t be simpler. Stack differently shaped pieces to form a whole and win points.
The story behind its success isn't.
A new movie starring Taron Egerton and now playing on Apple TV+, tells the story of how Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers fit the differently shaped pieces of international intrigue and video game creation together to secure the intellectual property rights to the popular game.
"The Soviet Union has worldwide rights," says Rogers. "Nothing gets out easily."
And how. In what is essentially a big business ticking clock story, Egerton is Rogers, an aggressive entrepreneur who discovers an early version of the simple game at the Consumer Electronics Show in the mid-1980s. An early adopter of video game technology, Rogers knows Tetris can be a hit.
"It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen," he says. "I played for five minutes, and I still see falling blocks in my dreams. It is poetry. It is the perfect game."
Developed by a Russian government software engineer Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov) in 1984, the game was an underground hit in the U.S.S.R., and starting to attract attention from other big players. The underdog Rogers finds himself up against Nintendo, media mogul Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam) and the Russian government.
"You want to play with the big boys?" threatens Maxwell. "This is how the world works."
"Tetris" is a convoluted tale of how Rogers navigates dubious agreements, business backstabbing and the very real threat of Russian prison, to secure the rights to the game and a future for his family. Unlike the game, the movie's pieces don't fit together easily. Part business story, part spy thriller, it piles a great deal of information into every scene, beginning with an unloading of exposition off the top that sets the scene, but may try the patience.
Once past the initial mound of info, screenwriter Noah Pink keeps up the pace, piling double-crosses on top of political scheming on top of jet setting skullduggery. It zips along at the speed of level 10 gameplay, and while it is sometimes hard to keep track of who is zooming who, Pink keeps it fairly linear, mostly focusing on how the various deals affect Rogers. Told from this point of view, the complicated story of contract law and how the negotiations for a video game became a Cold War concern is marginally easier to follow.
At the centre of it all is the elaborately mustachioed Egerton. As Rogers he brings an energizer bunny approach to the entrepreneur's unrelenting belief in the game and himself. As the story gets bigger and bigger — Henk against the world — it is Egerton that provides the human element, particularly in his friendship with Pajitnov. The surrounding performances are rather broad, but Egerton keeps it real.
Although it does feature 8-bit animation, "Tetris" isn’t a video game movie. Instead, it is a John Le Carre Lite political thriller, which could have used some of the simplicity of the game whose story it tells.
SPACE ODDITY: 2 ½ STARS
"Space Oddity," a new overstuffed feature directed by actor Kyra Sedgwick and now playing on VOD, flits around between space travel, trauma, ecology, family dynamics, and romance without ever settling on any one of them.
When we meet the McAllister family, Rhode Island flower farmers Jeff (Kevin Bacon) and Jane (Carrie Preston), daughter Liz (Madeline Brewer) and son Alex (Kyle Allen), they are dealing with great trauma. The death of their middle son has left the parents and sister lost, throwing themselves into work to cope with their loss.
Alex, however, has an out-of-this-world plan to escape his pain. He joins Mission to Mars, a private company — think Bezos and Musk — with plans to colonize Mars. It's not a one-way trip either. Earth is dying, Alex says, so why hang around?
His family goes along with his pipe dream until he gets serious, and applies for insurance to help finance the journey. At the insurance office, however, he meets Daisy (Alexandra Shipp), a broker who just might give the rocket man a reason to come down to Earth.
The subject of space travel is the method by which "Space Oddity" conveys its real message, about the state of our planet and what needs to be done to save our environment, but the addition of family drama and romance makes it feel like it is madly running off in several directions all at once.
It has the feel of an after school special. The lead, Alex, isn't a teenager, but he behaves like one, and Allen's wishy-washy performance doesn't do much to hold our interest at the centre of the film. He isn't aided by a script that telegraphs every plot twist in advance. If the film's journey had been more interesting, the predictable destination wouldn't be as bland.
"Space Oddity" simply bites off more than it can chew. The environmental messages are heavy-handed with no new ideas and, as a study of grief, it is far too lightweight.
The 2024 federal budget released last week includes numerous big spending promises that have garnered headlines. But, tucked into the 416-page document are also series of smaller items, such as promising to amend the law regarding infant formula and to force banks to label government rebates, that you may have missed.
'How much plastic will you have for dinner, sir? And you, ma'am?' While that may seem like a line from a satirical skit on Saturday Night Live, research is showing it's much too close to reality.
Joey Jackson, a criminal defence attorney and a legal analyst for CNN, outlines what he thinks about the criminal case against Donald Trump in the 'hush money trial.'
A home in B.C.'s Okanagan that features a weathering steel shell designed to provide some protection against wildfires has been listed for sale at $3.8 million.
An alligator attacked a diver on April 15 as he surfaced from his dive, nearly out of air. His tank emptied with the gator's jaws crushing the arm he put up in defence.
A Peruvian psychologist who suffered from an incurable disease that weakened her muscles and had her confined to her bed for several years, died by euthanasia, her lawyer said Monday, becoming the first person in the country to obtain the right to die with medical assistance.
A leading fashion designer whose accessories were used by celebrities from Britney Spears to the cast of the 'Sex and the City' TV series was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in Miami federal court on charges of smuggling crocodile handbags from her native Colombia.
A Toronto cop who was driving to a break-and-enter call last year when he crashed into a civilian vehicle and seriously injured two people has been cleared by the province’s police watchdog, but concerns are being raised about the speed at which they were travelling on the way to the scene.
Authorities on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border resumed search efforts Monday to find two men who went missing while kayaking off Vancouver Island over the weekend.
Susanne Langan first noticed the Burgess Creek wildfire from her home in British Columbia's Cariboo region on Saturday afternoon as a distant, thin column of smoke.
An Indian national has been sentenced in the United States to five years in prison in connection with a dark web drug enterprise that stretched as far as Canada, an American Department of Justice release says.
A Peruvian psychologist who suffered from an incurable disease that weakened her muscles and had her confined to her bed for several years, died by euthanasia, her lawyer said Monday, becoming the first person in the country to obtain the right to die with medical assistance.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is dropping a request for a Seattle hospital to hand over records regarding gender-affirming treatment potentially given to children from Texas as part of a lawsuit settlement announced Monday.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak 's latest effort to send some migrants to Rwanda finally won approval from Parliament early Tuesday, hours after he pledged deportation flights would begin in July.
Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a suburban Seattle police officer charged with murder in the death of a 26-year-old man outside a convenience store in 2019 — the third person the officer had killed in the past eight years.
An Arizona judge declares a mistrial Monday in the case of a rancher accused of fatally shooting a Mexican man on his property near the U.S.-Mexico border.
The 2024 federal budget released last week includes numerous big spending promises that have garnered headlines. But, tucked into the 416-page document are also series of smaller items, such as promising to amend the law regarding infant formula and to force banks to label government rebates, that you may have missed.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is raising eyebrows anew over his carbon pricing stance, refusing to say today whether or not he would keep scheduled increases in place if he becomes prime minister.
Canada is seeking to get a better handle on how much plastic is being produced in the country by forcing companies that make it to report annually on what they produce.
First Nations patients are more likely to leave Alberta emergency departments before receiving care than other patients, and anti-Indigenous racism is a significant reason why, a new study says.
Whether you’re shedding pounds with the help of effective new medicines, slimming down after weight loss surgery or cutting calories and adding exercise, there will come a day when the numbers on the scale stop going down, and you hit the dreaded weight loss plateau.
Quebec's Health Department says it has received 28 reports of eye damage related to the April 8 total solar eclipse that passed over southern parts of the province.
For the first time in five months, NASA engineers have received decipherable data from Voyager 1 after crafting a creative solution to fix a communication problem aboard humanity’s most distant spacecraft in the cosmos.
Biologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers across the globe say there is a reasonable possibility the vast majority of creatures on Earth are sentient in some way.
Taylor Swift's latest album, 'The Tortured Poets Department,' which dropped on Friday, became the most-streamed album on its first day across Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.
Victoria Beckham, the fashion designer once known best as Posh Spice, celebrated her 50th birthday this weekend in London, where she was joined by her former Spice Girls bandmates.
North Korean animators may have helped create popular television cartoons for big Western firms, including Amazon and HBO Max, despite international sanctions on North Korea, a research report has found.
Federal Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan says he has appointed an Industrial Inquiry Commission to dig deeper into the underlying causes of B.C.'s port strike last summer.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Monday sued to block Coach parent Tapestry's US$8.5 billion deal to buy Michael Kors owner Capri, saying it would eliminate 'direct head-to-head competition' between the flagship brands of the two luxury handbag makers.
The gap between the highest earners and lowest income groups last year was at its widest since 2015 as the wealthiest households saw income grow much faster than lower-income Canadians.
A home in B.C.'s Okanagan that features a weathering steel shell designed to provide some protection against wildfires has been listed for sale at $3.8 million.
When Kema Ward-Hopper and her then-fiance Nicholas Hopper, both from the U.S., decided to get married in Costa Rica, they had no idea that they’d end up relocating there a few years later.
Connor Hellebuyck made sure he did one important thing while winding down Sunday after the Winnipeg Jets beat the Colorado Avalanche 7-6 in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series. The favourite to win this season's Vezina Trophy as the NHL's top goalie made sure his recovery included replenishing his fluids.
Honda Canada is set to build an electric vehicle battery plant near its auto manufacturing facility in Alliston, Ont., where it also plans to produce fully electric vehicles.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
As the wildfire season ramps up and a pair of evacuation alerts are now in place, one of British Columbia’s top fire officials is making a personal appeal to the public to take some simple steps that could safeguard their homes.
Backlash to decriminalization dominated question period Monday in the B.C. legislature, with the Official Opposition BC United and BC Conservatives calling for the province to end the three-year pilot project.
Auston Matthews scored the winner in the third period and added two assists as the Toronto Maple Leafs topped the Boston Bruins 3-2 on Monday to even their first-round playoff series 1-1.
Toronto’s police chief has ordered a “full internal review of all aspects of plainclothes policing” following an acquittal in the first-degree murder trial of Umar Zameer.
At least some of the gold bars stolen during the heist at Pearson Airport one year ago was likely melted down in the basement of a Toronto area jewelry store, Peel police tell CP24.com.
Monday, a judge ruled a proposed class-action lawsuit can go forward despite efforts from lawyers representing the archdiocese of Edmonton and a religious order to have it struck down.
The Ottawa Police Service is investigating comments made at a pro-Palestinian rally on Saturday that have received condemnation by federal leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Kevin Willington, 53, of Ottawa has been identified as the victim of a shooting at a home on Birch Avenue on Friday night. Ottawa police said officers responded to a call for a shooting, and the victim died from his injuries at the scene.
Quebec's Health Department says it has received 28 reports of eye damage related to the April 8 total solar eclipse that passed over southern parts of the province.
Marion Street Eatery is set to close its doors for good after over a decade serving up steaming plates of eggs benedict, grilled cheese and brisket hash.
The Saskatchewan NDP are calling for the resignation or firing of Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill, saying he lied about apologizing for comments he made to a mother whose daughter died.
A Saskatoon mortgage broker says the federal government’s move to help Muslim Canadians get into the housing market by promoting halal mortgages is not such a radical idea — it’s helping families buy their first home without breaking their faith.
The Saskatchewan Rush are absent from the National Lacrosse League playoffs for a third straight season, a difficult end to an postseason push born out of a rocky start.
It was a sad scene at Tom Davies Square in Sudbury on Monday morning, where a man was being sentenced for a crash that killed a North Bay woman who was driving to her wedding shower.
The investigation into how a train moving through the City of London caught fire has been turned over to the CP Rail police. Just before 11 p.m. on Sunday, London fire received multiple 911 calls about an eastbound train on fire, crossing over Oxford Street.
Police officials in Sudbury say they received a complaint that a youth was approached by an individual asking for sexual favours and exposing himself on a city walking trail.
The investigation into how a train moving through the City of London caught fire has been turned over to the CP Rail police. Just before 11 p.m. on Sunday, London fire received multiple 911 calls about an eastbound train on fire, crossing over Oxford Street.
A pair of city councillors want a feasibility study completed before deciding the location and parameters of a pilot project to provide free bus passes to high school students.
The City of Windsor Parks Department will be working on improvements to a couple of Windsor parks over the next few weeks, including more lights on the riverfront.
City employees are not being compensated fairly and want more flexibility to work from home, according to the head of the union representing more than 1,300 City of Windsor workers.
The City of Windsor is moving into the third phase of its truck route study in an ongoing effort to help modernize and update the truck route network to adapt to changing city requirements.
Authorities on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border resumed search efforts Monday to find two men who went missing while kayaking off Vancouver Island over the weekend.
The B.C. government says legislation formally recognizing the Haida Nation's Aboriginal title over Haida Gwaii was introduced in the legislature Monday.
Major crime detectives in British Columbia are investigating a suspected homicide after a body was found in a remote area southeast Kelowna over the weekend.
Nurses held a rally Wednesday at a hospital in the B.C. Interior that closed its emergency department more than a dozen times last year due to insufficient staff.
An agreement to protect a sprawling ranch in southern Alberta from development is the largest of its kind in the country, the Nature Conservancy of Canada says, and will allow the family that owns it to continue raising cattle there.
Hundreds of drivers were charged in a recent three-day commercial motor vehicle blitz conducted by the Ontario Provincial Police and Ministry of Transportation.
The United Chiefs and Councils of Manitoulin Anishnaabe Police announced Monday it is creating its first full-time drug enforcement unit on the island.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans says two people were found dead and four others survived after a boat capsized off the west coast of Newfoundland.
Technology from the 19th century has been brought out of retirement at a Newfoundland gardening store, as staff look for all the help they can get to fill orders during a busy season.
A Celebrity Apex cruise to the Caribbean this month turned into a rocking Newfoundland kitchen party when hundreds of people from Canada's easternmost province happened to be booked on the same ship.