Movie reviews: 'The Creator' is a strikingly original, soulful sci-fi film

'Wicked': 4 out of 5 stars Film critic Richard Crouse shares his take on newly-released movies including 'Wicked', 'Gladiator II' and more.

THE CREATOR: 3 ½ STARS

Despite citing everything from “Apocalypse Now” and “Blade Runner” to “District 9” and “Paper Moon” as influences for his new sci-fi epic “The Creator,” director Gareth Edwards has made a strikingly original film that doesn’t feel derivative.

Set in 2065, a decade long war between humans and artificial intelligence continues unabated.

“Ten years ago today, the artificial intelligence, created to protect us, detonated a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles. For as long as AI is a threat, we will never stop hunting them. This is a fight for our very existence.”

When the architect of AI, The Creator, builds an unstoppable weapon that could control all technology, recently widowed special forces agent Joshua (John David Washington) and his team are brought in to find and retrieve the weapon.

“Our mission is to find the weapon designated Alpha O,” says Colonel Howell (Allison Janney). “You are authorized to kill on sight.”

Behind enemy lines on occupied AI territory, they discover the deadly weapon is actually an AI in the form of a small child named Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).

“We are close to winning the war,” says General Williams. “Execute her, or we go extinct.”

There is a lot happening in “The Creator.” It is an ambitious allegory for oppressed minorities and American imperialism, but above all it is soulful sci fi.

Visually, director Edwards looks to “District 9” and “Apocalypse Now” for inspiration to create a unique looking slice of speculative fiction. Shot in Thailand, the film takes advantage of that country’s other-worldly, old-world locations, juxtaposed against the high-tech AI robots and sleek, futuristic aircraft and weapons. The mix of old and new, of nature and technology, make for a grand backdrop to a story that thrives on intimate moments.

Big action scenes do light up the screen, but Edwards appears to value emotional fireworks more than spectacle.

At its heart, “The Creator” is a love story. Joshua, still hurting from the disappearance of his wife (Gemma Chan), is driven by heartache. The discovery of Alphie, played with heartrending innocence by Voyles, shifts the story to a father-daughter dynamic, à la “Paper Moon,” but maintains the film’s emotional core as the young robot looks at humanity filtered through AI eyes.

“The Creator” builds a dystopian world that feels unique, and it is certainly nice to have a new sci-fi tale not based on existing IP, even if it feels like a pastiche. But for all the admirable ambition and emotion, Edwards occasionally runs off in all directions all at once, leaving nuance and subtlety behind.

FLORA AND SON: 4 STARS

The musical dramedy “Flora and Son,” now streaming on Apple TV+, is a tribute to the power of music as an emotional salve, and hits all the right chords with a breakout performance from Eve Hewson as a single mom trying to connect with her rebellious son.

Hewson is the title character, a party girl and part-time nanny, raising her rebellious 14-year-old son Max (Orén Kinlan) in a tiny Dublin apartment. Their relationship is so fraught, she wonders aloud what it would be like if he wasn’t around.

After forgetting his birthday, she plucks an abandoned acoustic guitar from a dumpster, has it repaired and gifts it to him. “Don’t want to play,” he says dismissively. “Since when am I a guitarist?”

Instead of returning the guitar to the dumpster, Flora decides to take online lessons and learn how to play the instrument. She comes across Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a charming 1970s singer-songwriter throwback, who teaches from his sun-dappled studio in Los Angeles.

“What are you hoping to get out of this?” he asks.

“I thought this guitar might make my son think I’m cool,” she replies.

As Flora studies the guitar, Max is in the small flat’s other room creating rap beats on his laptop.

“How did you make that?” Flora asks. “That sounded epic.”

They’re coming from different corners of the room—she’s Joni Mitchell to Max’s Dr. Dre—but music just might be their middle ground.

“Flora and Son” is a small movie with a big performance that provides its beating heart. As Flora, Hewson is tender and terrible, delightful and disagreeable. She’s made mistakes, and has a hard shell, but in Hewson’s capable hands, her innate goodness shines through. It is, simply put, a star-making performance, chock full of soul.

Gordon-Levitt, Kinlan and Jack Reynor, as Flora’s ex, complete the picture with strong performances, each representing a piece of the puzzle that is Flora’s life.

At its core, “Flora and Son” is a love story, but it’s not a rom-com. This is about the love of family, music and self and is a rousing crowd-pleaser that breathes the same air as director John Carney’s other films, “Sing Street” and “Once.”

PAW PATROL: THE MIGHTY MOVIE: 3 STARS

As the “PAW Patrol” franchise enters its 66th year—that’s in dog years—it shows no signs of slowing down. A new film, “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie,” based on the canine first responder characters from the wildly successful Canadian kids' show, now playing in theatres, is a big story about a small pup.

Featuring an all-star voice cast, the movie begins with a meteor crash in Adventure City.

“It's giving off some kind of energy,” says Ryder (Finn Lee-Epp), the leader of the PAW Patrol. The mysterious meteor imbues the PAW Patrol pups with superpowers, like super strength, elasticity, super speed and the ability to manifest fireballs. “Great, now the clumsy pup shoots fireballs out of his paws.”

For seven-year-old cockapoo Skye (Mckenna Grace), the smallest member of the newly dubbed Mighty Pups, the new powers finally levels the playing field, giving her the chance to make up in super strength what she has always lacked in confidence and size.

When Humdinger (Ron Pardo), the ex-mayor of Adventure City, and his Kitten Catastrophe Crew escapes from prison and teams with meteor expert and supervillain Victoria "Vee" Vance (Taraji P. Henson) to steal the superpowers, the Mighty Pups must fight back to save their city and possibly, the world.

"When you go up against one of us, you go up against all of us," Ryder tells Vance.

“PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” is bigger and louder than 2021’s “PAW Patrol” or the television show. Returning director Cal Brunker pumps up the action, creating a sort of Marvel movie for the preschool set. Colourful action scenes will grab kids' attention, but the spirit of co-operation, and messages of over-coming obstacles and never judging a book by its cover, that lie at the heart of the “PAW Patrol” franchise are never far away.

Voice work from Kim Kardashian, Chris Rock, Lil Rel Howery, Kristen Bell and James Marsden is solid, but Henson is having all the fun here. Her villain—don’t call her a “mad scientist”—is a blast, funny and fearless, she steals every scene she’s in.

“PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” maintains what made the TV show so appealing for kids, but also has enough gags aimed at parents to round out the experience for the whole family.

SAW X: 2 STARS

In the world of franchises, when a character dies, they’re not really dead until people stop buying tickets to see the movies. Such is the case with “Saw X,” the latest instalment of the 19-year-old torture horror franchise.

Serial killer John "Jigsaw" Kramer, played by Tobin Bell, is the main antagonist of the “Saw” flicks. He’s the mastermind behind the ingenious traps, like the elaborate Laser Collar, the aptly named Knife Chair or the self-explanatory Shotgun Carousel, designed to inflict maximum physical and psychological trauma on his victims.

He is a bad man who communicates the bad news to his quarries through the creepy Billy the Puppet, a nightmarish ventriloquist’s dummy with garish red swirls on his cheeks.

Or I should say was a bad man. They killed the character off in “Saw III,” but in the “Saw” Universe, death isn’t enough to keep a good sadistic serial killer down, so he appears via flashback in subsequent instalments, and was the inspiration for a new killer in 2021’s “Spiral.”

Now through the magic of prequels, he’s back in the flesh, picking up the story where the 2004’s “Saw” left off.

The new film begins with Kramer, riddled with cancer, decamping to Mexico in the hopes of a miracle cure. The procedure is risky and experimental but, “The results have been stunning,” says Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund).

When it turns out the whole thing is a scam, designed to provide hope, but no actual medical benefit to patients, Kramer gets even in his own, terrible way.

“You all pretended to cure me,” he says, “but what I have planned for each of you is very real.”

The “Saw” movies pretend to have a moral, a manifesto driven by Kramer’s twisted sense of finding atonement through pain via deadly games of “Truth or Consequences.” That high minded philosophy is given lip service in “Saw X,” but takes a backseat to the graphic kills.

Put it this way: “Saw X” is less about the moral code and more about using a person’s intestines as a rope or sucking someone’s eyeballs right out of their sockets.

After a drawn out first hour of set up, the ick factor is notched up, making this the juiciest and goriest “Saw” film to date. Trouble is, it’s stomach-turning with very few scares. It’s unpleasant by design, but the dopamine hit you’re looking for, the rush of feeling scared in a theatre where you are safe, is replaced by a queasy feeling.

Each test is timed, and there are countdown clocks galore, ticking away to the end of the games, but there isn’t much tension, just an uneasy sensation that something terrible is coming.

It might be different if there was some kind of inventive symbolism in the games, a sense that there is something happening to stimulate the brain, not just the gag reflex.

For a movie that is all about games—Kramer refers to each of his tests as “games”—the R-rated “Saw X” is all gory games but very little fun.

REPTILE: 2 ½ STARS

Benicio del Toro casts his line for red herrings and more in “Reptile,” a new crime drama now streaming on Netflix.

Set against the backdrop of a sleepy New England town, the action in “Reptile” begins after realtor Summer (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) is discovered murdered in the bedroom of one of her Scarborough, Maine show homes, with such force a knife was left embedded in her clavicle.

Found by her boyfriend, real estate bigwig Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), it is a gruesome scene described as “a nightmare” by grizzled Detective Tom Nichols (del Toro), the seasoned cop assigned to the case.

Nichols, a recent transfer from Philadelphia after an investigation into his former partner’s corruption, initially appears to be more interested in renovating the new house he owns with wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) than he is with the murder, but he soon puts together a list of the usual suspects.

“Am I a suspect?” Will asks.

“Everyone is a suspect,” Nichols replies.

Also raising suspicions are Summer’s almost ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman) and Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), an eccentric man who holds a grudge against the Grady family.

Along the way, Nichols goes down a rabbit hole, bedeviled by jealousy, police skullduggery and enough red herrings—fake deaths, etc—to feed an army.

“Reptile” has style to burn. Director Grant Singer, best known for making music videos for The Weeknd, Sam Smith and many others, in his big screen debut, creates a bleak backdrop for the action to unfold against. Trouble is, the story is laid on just as thick as the atmosphere.

Despite some good performances from Eric Bogosian, Michael Pitt and Ato Essandoh, and a heroically quirky turn from del Toro, “Reptile” plays like a derivative pastiche of the standard good cop in a bad situation genre. The myriad plot devices, that borrow from “Law & Order” and “Cop Land” and everything in between, threaten to crush the whole thing under their weight.

“Reptile’s” main strength is del Toro. He shares great chemistry with Silverstone, his co-star in 1997’s “Excess Baggage,” but it is his combination of tenaciousness and eccentricity that are the movie’s most original components.