Movie reviews: 'Thor: Love and Thunder' sets itself apart from the Marvel Cinematic Universe

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

THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER: 4 STARS

Despite featuring the most Guns N' Roses music this side of a headbanger’s ball, thematically, “Thor: Love and Thunder” owes more to the frilly pop of 10cc’s “The Things We Do for Love.” Love, not thunder, is at the very heart of this Taika Waititi directed take on the Marvel Space Viking.

The film opens with Gorr (Christian Bale), a simple man praying for the survival of his beloved daughter. His planet is barren. Life is unsustainable, but his blind faith in the gods and an “eternal reward” keeps him going. When things take a turn for the worse, his god rejects him, offering ridicule instead of help.

“Suffering for the gods is your only purpose.”

In that moment, Gorr obtains the Necrosword, the legendary, god-slaying weapon, and vows to kill all gods, starting there and then. Now called Gorr the God Butcher, he travels through the shadows, seeking vengeance.

Meanwhile, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is in isolation. He has lost everyone he’s ever loved, including Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), an astrophysicist and ex-girlfriend. He has had some adventures and gone from “Dad Bod to God Bod, but underneath all that he was still Sad Bod.”

His midlife crisis has hit hard, and since Jane dumped him, he has kept everyone at arm’s length. He now lives a life of lonely, quiet contemplation, emerging only when needed for battle. “After thousands of years of living,” “Guardian of the Galaxy’s” Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) says to him, “You don’t seem to know who you are.”

Elsewhere, Jane is being treated for stage four cancer. Chemo treatments aren’t working so she takes matters into her own hands. “If science doesn’t work, maybe viking space magic will," she says. The result is a transformation into Mighty Thor, a warrior who wields a reconstructed version of Thor’s magic Asgardian hammer, Mjolnir. “Excuse me,” Thor says to her. “That’s my hammer you have there. And my look.”

When Gorr the God Butcher and his creepy crawlers come to New Asgard, the Norwegian tourist town and refuge for the surviving Asgardians, and kidnap all the town’s children, it sets off a battle that will see Thor and sidekick Korg (Waititi), alongside Mighty Thor and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), travel to the Shadow Realm on a rescue mission.

“Thor: Love and Thunder” has all the usual Marvel moves. There are action set pieces writ large, loads of characters with complicated backstories, and enough CGI to keep a rendering farm in business from now until eternity.

What it also has, and the thing that makes it feel fresh, is Taika Waititi. As director, writer and co-star, he infuses the proceedings with a certain kind of silliness, and panache that sets it apart from other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.

The action scenes deliver in carnage, but also provide some eye candy. An early fight has overtones of 1970s air bushed van art, while the choreography includes little jokes, like an homage to flexible kickboxer Jean-Claude Van Damme. Later, in the Shadow Realm, Waititi evokes German expressionism in his use of stark black-and-white to create a world of horror, while still maintaining a Marvel feel to the action.

With these large franchises, the action scenes are where the money is, I suppose, but above all else, “Thor: Love and Thunder” is a story about the power of love to hurt and heal. In the face of unimaginable losses—his daughter and his devotion to the gods—Gorr abandons love and embraces vengeance. Thor, still smarting from being dumped by Jane, learns the power of deep feelings when she suddenly shows up again.

Thor’s new weapon, Stormbreaker, might have the heft to do battle with Gorr the God Butcher, but it is love that wields the true power in this story.

“Thor: Love and Thunder” isn’t an all-out action-comedy like “Ragnarok.” It juggles several life-and-death scenarios, and much of the plot is rooted in heartache and pain, but Waititi’s singular style, Hemsworth’s charm and a heartfelt examination of the pain and pleasure of love is a winning combo.

THE SEA BEAST: 4 STARS

Taking a lead from “How to Train Your Dragon,“ and other movies where fearsome creatures reveal their kinder, gentler selves, “The Sea Beast,” a new animated movie now streaming on Netflix, gives the old “never judge a book by its cover” platitude a nautical twist.

Monster hunter Jacob Holland (Karl Urban) come by his job honestly. As a child, his parents were killed in a sea monster attack, one that left him adrift, alone in the ocean. After his rescue by the fearsome Captain Crow (Jared Harris), he devoted his life to the eradication of the sea beasts. “I swore I would do everything I could to keep people safe,” he says.

The worst of the worst, the King Kong of sea beasts is the Red Bluster, a giant lobster-red creature, rumoured to be a menace to seafaring society. When Holland and his crew set off in their ship, the Inevitable, to hunt down and kill the menace, they discover a stowaway. Young orphan named Maisie (Zaris-Angel Hator) lost her parents on a sea beast expedition, and she wants in on the action.

There is a lot at stake on this mission. The king and queen have threatened the monster hunters with dire punishment unless the beast is tamed. Maisie, Holland and the crew set off to vanquish the creature, but soon learn that there is more to the story than they could ever have imagined.

“The Sea Beast” has spectacular action sequences with well-crafted computer animation, a compelling story about finding family, and the usual kid movie messages about loyalty and the importance of role models, but what sets it apart is a more subversive idea.

At its heart, this is a cautionary tale, a warning to never take things at face value or blindly put your trust into accepted versions of history. History can be subjective, the movie suggests, depending the source. Are the sea beasts dangerous troublemakers, as the king and queen claim? Or are they misunderstood creatures used by the rulers to instill fear and exert control over their subjects? Co-writers Chris Williams (who also directs) and Nell Benjamin have woven big ideas throughout the fabric of the story, encouraging kids to figure out things for themselves and not accept the conventional wisdom.

But don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some anti-imperialist, rebellious screed. It’s an action adventure with a conscience and some very cool “monsters” that kids will fall for at first sight. It slows down in the second half, but the combination of smarts and seafaring fun is a winner.

STANLEYVILLE: 3 STARS

Imagine if Samuel Beckett wrote “Squid Game,” minus the giant Kewpie doll, and you’ll understand “Stanleyville,” a new darkly humorous social satire now on VOD.

The ennui of a dead-end job and unsatisfying relationship with her husband and daughter has draped over apathetic suburbanite Maria Barbizan (Susanne Wuest) like a shroud. One day, tired of… well, everything, she rids herself of her money and purse in a mall trashcan and wanders aimlessly.

Numb.

Into this fugue state walks the smartly dressed Homunculus (Julian Richings), a mysterious figure with an intriguing offer. She, he tells her, has been chosen, alongside a group of other idiosyncratic characters— spoiled brat Andrew Frisbee Jr (Christian Serritiello), Felice Arkady (Cara Rickets), Manny Jumpcannon (Adam Brown) and muscle-head Bofill Pancreas (George Tchortov)—to take part in a “platinum level contest” to “probe the very essence of mind/body articulation.” She doesn’t understand what that means, and the prize of a used habanero-orange compact sport utility vehicle doesn’t interest her either, but the promise of true enlightenment or an “authentic personal transcendence” lures her in.

The promised so-called “platinum level contest” is actually a “Lord of the Flies” style reality show competition with Homunculus as host and referee. A series of strange games—at one point they are challenged to “write a national anthem for everybody everywhere through all time”—with escalating consequences pits the players against one another. Along the way they earn points and gain insight into their deepest held beliefs, “every man for himself” ethos and worst inclinations.

Actor-turned-director Maxwell McCabe-Lokos paints his characters in very broad strokes. Each one is an archetype that ranges from nihilist to failed performer to a business type, with easy-to-read characteristics that speak to one element of the human condition.

That, however, is the only easy-to-read aspect of “Stanleyville.”

Willfully weird, the movie is all journey. The strange situation doesn’t really go anywhere and, given Homunculus’s ambiguous motivations, the movie doesn’t offer any closure to the characters or many questions it presents. It’s about the competition, the win-at-any-cost vibe so often evident in competition shows. This is an absurdist take on the same, but as the situation begins to unravel so does the story. The social commentary remains, but viewers hoping to for enlightenment, may enjoy the story’s oddball yet thought-provoking themes, but like Maria, leave the movie still in search of life-changing spiritual illumination.

DREAMING WALLS: INSIDE THE CHELSEA HOTEL: 3 ½ STARS

Hotel Chelsea, on West 23rd Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea, is the stuff of legend. Playwright Arthur Miller lived here for six years and said, “This hotel does not belong to America; there are no vacuum cleaners, no rules and no shame.”

An elderly tenant, seen in the new documentary “Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel,” now playing in theatres, says, “It’s a fantasy land where people go to get away from reality.”

Opening in 1884, for more than a century it was a stand-alone example of bohemianism, immortalized in songs by Bob Dylan (“Sara”), Jefferson Airplane ("Third Week in the Chelsea”) and most famously, Leonard Cohen’s "Chelsea Hotel #2.” It’s featured in films like Andy Warhol’s “Chelsea Girls” and the sensual “9½ Weeks.”

Punk goddess Patti Smith lived there with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Abstract painter Mark Rothko had a studio in the dining room. Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick almost accidentally burned it down and Nancy Spungen died there, allegedly (but probably not) at the hand of her boyfriend, Sex Pistol’s bass player Sid Vicious. Arthur C. Clarke wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” while in residence and Jack Kerouac had a one-night stand there with Gore Vidal.

It is legendary, but the days of wild abandon, avant garde art and artists who traded apartments for paintings are long gone, a victim of changing times and gentrification. “Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel” is a document of the dying days of a cultural legend and the birth of another boho-chic New York City hotel.

Directed by Belgian filmmakers Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdiert, this is a fly-on-the-wall, impressionistic film that ignores the Chelsea’s rock 'n' roll legacy, the scandals and notable sex acts. Instead, it contemplatively documents the (mostly) elderly residents of the Chelsea, who, in the words of Dylan Thomas, another former resident, refuse to “go gentle into that good night.”

A look at the hotel through the eyes of the people who lived there, who created their art there and raised their families there, paints a different picture of the storied building than we usually see. Strip away the sensationalism and a melancholy portrait of a bygone era emerges, framed by architect Philip Hubert's ornate Victorian Gothic stained glass and wrought iron stairway designs. As construction tears away at the memories of the remaining residents, they recollect the heart and soul of a place that, for decades, gave shelter to dreamers of all sorts.

Those days are gone now. The few remaining old timers, those who didn’t take the buyouts offered by developers, now must use service elevators to avoid upsetting the upscale, paying hotel guests. However, in this film at least, they keep the bohemian flame alive, even as the winds of change try to extinguish it.