Movie reviews: 'Wonder Woman 1984' fills the superhero pandemic gap, but isn't wonderous

A look at movies being released over the holidays CTV movie critic Rad reviews Wonder Woman 1984, Soul and News of the World.

WONDER WOMAN 1984: 3 STARS

The release of “Wonder Woman 1984,” now available in theatres and as a 48-hour rental on digital movie stores for $29.99, comes as an answer to one of the worst dad jokes of all time.

Do you know why Diana Prince was called Wonder Woman? Because we all wondered what she was going to do next.

I know, it’s a terrible joke, but there was a great deal of talk about what was next for the character and, in pandemic times, when and how we’d be seeing the finished film.

Now that we know what Diana Prince’s next moves are, I’m wondering about something else. Where did the wonder go?

Set seven decades after the events of the first film, “Wonder Woman 1984” sees Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) living the life of a part-time superhero. During the day she works in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian. Occasionally, she transforms into her alter ego and solves a crime, help humanity or, in the film’s most fun action scene, use her Golden Lasso to hogtie some bad guys at a local mall.

Still mourning the love of her life, Second World War flyboy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), she leads a quiet life until one of her Smithsonian co-workers, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), is tasked with identifying a slew of recently recovered ancient artifacts. Among them is the dream stone, a mystical crystal rumoured to grant wishes.

The insecure Barbara is reeled in by Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a flamboyant Gordon Gekko wannabe who charms her to lay his hands on the magical relic.

Turns out, the stories are true; the artifact can change lives, granting wishes and making the impossible, possible. But there are unforeseen, global consequences.

Diana’s wants to be reunited with Steve, but as their loves grows, her powers diminish. Barbara’s dream of having confidence comes true in spades, and she morphs into the villainous Cheetah. “I want to be an apex predator,” she says. Lord’s greed-by-the-way-of-wishes makes him the most powerful person on the planet, and with Cheetah at his side, his thirst for influence and authority may also be unstoppable.

“Wonder Woman 1984” has flashes of the vibrancy that made the original film so much fun, but it isn’t as nimble.

A fifteen-minute opening Themyscira-set flashback to Diana’s youth starts things with an extended thud. The youngster competes against a bevy of older Amazons, learning an important life lesson in the process. It’s a blend of action and the film’s core message of honesty above all, but we’ve already seen Diana’s original story done better. As it is, it feels like a stall before we get to the main action.

Once there, things get off to a promising start as Wonder Woman does what she does best, help people in need. A quick montage of do-gooding introduces an inventive and action-packed sequence that sees Wonder Woman thwart crime in a way that could have been ripped from the comic books. Shot in vivid 1980s Day Glo, it’s the sequence that promises the rollicking good time to come. Except that the good times are few and are between.

There are some exciting moments. A car chase, expertly shot and executed, brings the closest thing to the kind of action established in the first film. It’s no run across No Man’s Land, but it gets the pulse racing. More aesthetic is a trip through the clouds, illuminated by fireworks down below. It’s a dreamy bit of aerial work that sets the stage for a lovely learning-to-fly sequence that is part metaphor for Diana’s life and part movie magic.

Those moments work and work well, but get lost in the film’s extended running time.

Gadot brings the same understatement and restraint that shaped her character in the original movie and she still shares great chemistry with Pine, but as far as messaging goes, why does Wonder Woman need a man to come to her rescue? Together they’re fun in the 1980s-fish-out-of-water scenes but his presence in the action scenes feels counter to Wonder Woman’s message of empowerment.

And I loved Wiig’s dig at a colleague who refers to her as Miss. “It’s Doctor,” she corrects, channeling her best Dr. Jill Biden, but the film also suggests that Minerva is only interesting when she dolls herself up with tight dresses and superpowers.

“Wonder Woman 1984” adequately fills the superhero pandemic gap, but it isn’t wonderous. Where the first film pointed the way to where superhero movies could go, this one feels like a follower, not a leader.

SOUL: 4 STARS

Like life itself, “Soul,” the new Pixar film now streaming on Disney+, is a messy and chaotic affair; a big bang where the physical and metaphysical collide.

“Soul’s” afterlife adventures begin on an earthbound plane. Joe Gardener (Jamie Foxx) is a seventh-grade music teacher who gets the big break he’s always dreamt of when he aces an audition to play piano in the band of a legendary jazz saxophonist (Angela Bassett).

“Music is all I think about,” he says. “From the moment I wake up in the morning. To the moment I fall asleep at night. I was born to play. It’s my reason for living.”

He leaves the club on cloud nine, not knowing that he would soon, literally, be on cloud nine. On his way home he falls in a manhole. Knocked out, his soul separated from his body, he enters The Great Before, a strange and serene place where his spectral being—imagine Casper the Friendly ghost with a fedora and glasses—is greeted by The Counselors. They run the joint, and assign Joe to mentor a rambunctious yet-to-be-born soul called 22 (Tina Fey).

“I’ve had thousands of mentors who have failed,” 22 says, “and now hate me.”

Joe’s job is to find the spark, the missing part of 22’s personality, that will complete her as a person.

“You can’t crush a soul here,” 22 tells Joe. “That’s what life on earth is for.”

The next step is a big one. The odd couple dive into the astral plane, plummet toward earth where 22 winds up in Joe’s body as Joe takes the form of the therapy cat assigned to his comatose body by the hospital. Trapped in the wrong bodies, the pair set off to discover the meaning of life.

Like the jazz music that dots the score, “Soul” is free-form, inventive and sometimes just a little hard to understand. It’s an existential riff on a buddy comedy. Or maybe “Freaky Friday” as directed by Frank Capra. Either way, it has a lot on its mind although it never digs too deep. Ultimately the ethereal action boils down to a simple message of mindfulness, of being aware of the simple joy life offers.

Along the way you have an imaginatively animated movie, earnest in its storytelling, laden with interesting details and nice voice work from Foxx, Pixar’s first African-American lead and Fey, who gives 22 a sardonic but philosophical edge.

Despite typical cartoony touches, like a toffee-nosed accountant soul and some feline slapstick, “Soul” is a life-affirming, poignant look at what it means to be human.

THE MIDNIGHT SKY: 3 ½ STARS

Although “The Midnight Sky,” a new apocalyptic thriller from George Clooney and now streaming on Netflix, was written and filmed before the pandemic, timely themes of isolation and the importance of human connection resonate loudly throughout.

Set in the near future, Clooney, who directed, produced and resembles post “Late Show” David Letterman here, stars as Augustine, an astronomer battling cancer and loneliness at the Barbeau Observatory, a remote Arctic research station. Some sort of global nuclear catastrophe has devastated life on earth, leaving him isolated and alone until Iris, a wide-eyed, silent girl (Caoilinn Springall) mysteriously turns up at the station.

While tending to his new charge, Augustine is duty bound to contact and warn the Aether, a NASA space station returning home after a two-year mission exploring a newly discovered moon of Jupiter.

Led by husband-and-wife Adewole and Sully (David Oyelowo and Felicity Jones), the crew (Kyle Chandler, Demian Bichir, Tiffany Boone), hurtle toward the barren planet, unaware that life as they knew it on earth has ceased.

“Are you receiving this?” Augustine, says, fruitlessly trying to communicate with the Aether. “Is anyone out there?”

To reach them Augustine and Iris take on a dangerous mission, a trek through kilometres of deadly ice, snow and 80-kilometre-per-hour winds.

“There is an antenna that’s stronger than ours,” he says. “If we can get to that antenna, they’ll hear us.”

“The Midnight Sky” is a multi-hyphenate, a dystopian-sci-fi-outer-space-thriller. While that’s accurate, that’s also six too many words to correctly describe what Clooney has created. All those elements exist in the film, but the unwieldy list leaves out the film’s humanity. Sure, there’s some wild blue yonder action with people floating through space capsules and a barren planet, but this is a story of regret and redemption, handled with subtlety and grace.

The story has two distinct halves. Clooney says “half of it is “Gravity” and the other half of it is “The Revenant,” and sometimes they feel too distinct; disconnected.

Augustine’s journey to redemption as he nears death is heavy-hearted and austere. The crew’s situation is different. Although they are cut loose in space, they represent the future of humankind, in whatever form that may take. The two halves sit side-by-side, but don’t always fit together like puzzle pieces.

The thing that binds the story threads is a search for salvation. Augustine and Iris and Sully, who is expecting a child, are among the last of human life, and face an uncertain future. Each is doing what they can to determine whether mankind has a chance or not. And while the film offers hope and a chance of recovery, both personally for the characters and for the world as a whole, it does so without pandering to easy plot points.

Based on the 2016 Lily Brooks-Dalton novel “Good Morning, Midnight” with a screenplay by Mark L. Smith (screenwriter of “The Revenant”), “The Midnight Sky” is deliberately paced, humanistic sci-fi that values ideas over action. It has epic scenes—particularly the snow storm trek—but feels more like an intimate drama than high action film. Clooney uses silence to speak loudly about the film’s most timely and important theme, the need for connection. It’s the lesson of the film and, these days, in real life.

NEWS OF THE WORLD: 3 STARS

Although “News of the World,” the new Tom Hanks western, now playing in theatres, is set almost 150 years ago, its themes feel very contemporary. Racism, fake news and even fear of a pandemic are all essayed in this film based on Paulette Jiles' bestselling 2016 novel of the same name.

Set five years after the end of the American Civil War, Hanks plays the elaborately named Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a veteran of three wars who now makes a living travelling from town to town doing theatrical live readings of the news of the day.

On one stop he’s offered money to return orphan Johanna (Helena Zengel) to relatives in San Antonio, a four-hundred-mile journey, fraught with danger.

"She needs to laugh and dream," Kidd says. "She needs new memories."

Both are alone in the world; their families gone. He’s a widower, the 10-year-old was kidnapped years earlier, raised by the Kiowa people as one of their own and recently rescued by the U.S. army.

“An orphan twice over.” She doesn’t speak English and, after being torn from the only two places she’s ever known as home, doesn’t trust anyone, especially her new guardian.

As they travel across the country, still divided by the recent war, Johanna comes to trust Kidd as challenges, both natural and human, present themselves. Along the way the trip evolves into something more than a job for Kidd or simple survival, it becomes a journey to personal salvation for them both.

“News of the World” is a big, handsome period piece in the style of “True Grit” and “The Searchers” but without the suspense of either of those road movies. The odd couple pairing of Kidd and Johanna may seem strange at first, but it soon becomes clear, despite her unruly behavior, that they belong together. There is some nicely directed peril, courtesy of Paul Greengrass, but the likability Hanks brings to the role is reassuring… perhaps too reassuring.

Kidd is a man battered by war and personal trauma. He’s an imperfect man trying to be a good one in a broken and divided land. But he’s also Mister Rogers, so despite the character’s world weariness, there is never a feeling that he will do anything less than the right thing. It’s noble, but it is not the stuff of great drama.

The thing that does set “News of the World” from the pack is the prescient nature of the story. The world Kidd and Johanna exist in is a lawless one, and one that echoes many of today’s concerns.

From human traffickers and a wannabe-small-town fascist to a horrifying lynching and fake news, the film makes it clear that venality and social ills that are part of our contemporary newscasts are a result of a long history of bitter division. The movie fights to find optimism in the story, and it is here that Hanks earns his money. It ends on notes of healing and redemption but the payoff, while satisfying, doesn’t feel worth the long journey.

WILD MOUNTAIN THYME: 2 STARS

One hopes that there was a national strike of Irish Accent Coaches during the production of “Wild Mountain Thyme,” a new romance starring Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan and now on premium digital and on-demand. It’s the only explanation why a movie, set in Ireland's County Mayo and starring an actual Irish movie star—Dornan was born in Belfast, about 200 kilometres from where the movie takes place—could feature some of the un-ear-friendly Irish accents this side of St. Patrick’s Day party at your local Applebee’s.

Blunt plays the headstrong Rosemary Muldoon, a farmer who has been in love with the eccentric Anthony (Jamie Dornan) since they were kids. Their family farms are side-by-side, and all is harmonious, except for one thing. Rosemary’s family owns a thin ribbon of land between the road and Anthony’s farm. Every time he goes in or out, he has to unlatch and latch two sets of gates. It’s a little thing, but it’s the small stuff that grates.

Anthony’s father, Tony Reilly (Christopher Walken)—who blows a story point in his opening, "Welcome to Ireland. My name's Tony Reilly. I'm dead," narration—is considering selling the farm to his American money-manager nephew Adam (Jon Hamm). Not only does Anthony not want dear old dad to sell the farm, but he’d also prefer Adam to keep his eyes, and hands, off Rosemary.

“Wild Mountain Thyme” is a kind-hearted movie about love finding its way no matter how long and twisty the road. Unfortunately, a kind heart doesn’t mean it’s a good movie. I love a good misfit love story as much as the next guy, but director John Patrick Shanley spends so much time creating a quirky atmosphere for his characters to inhabit, he misses the chance to make us really care about them.

Blunt, Dornan and Walken are all engaging actors and make the most of the material, but they’re stymied by a story in search of a dash of magic to make it work. And not even Dornan can make proposing to a donkey seem authentic.

Then there’s the accents. Irish accents worldwide should take out a restraining order on Walken. No question. Blunt fairs better, but only by a diphthong.

Accents aside, the movie works best in an extended two-handed scene between the leads. Shanley based the screenplay on his 2014 Broadway play "Outside Mullingar,” and a long exchange between Rosemary and Anthony as they play cat and mouse over a half bottle of Guinness, reveals the film’s theatrical roots. It’s not cinematic, but it bristles with energy and humour and emits the passion the rest of the movie lacks.

Unfortunately, it leads up to one of the most wackadoodle twists in rom-com history. It’s so odd, you may forget Walken’s massacre of the accent.

“Wild Mountain Thyme” has wonderful messages about acceptance and the love of rural life—and photography that must surely have the Irish Tourist Board’s Stamp of Approval—but it is undone by its own blarney.

CHICAGO 10: 3 ½ STARS

“Chicago 10,” a documentary that echoes the events detailed in the recent Netflix drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” brings a sense of immediacy and even anarchy to an often-told story.

Director Brett Morgen uses mixed media, an amalgamate of archival footage and animation set to a soundtrack of edgy protest music, to tell the tale of one of the defining events of 1968.

In an unsettled and unsettling year, a trial saw 60s counterculture icons Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the Youth International Party, and assorted radicals David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot stemming from their actions at the anti-Vietnam War protests in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Black Panther Bobby Seale had his case severed from the others but earns considerable coverage here.

The story, based on transcripts and rediscovered audio recordings, is familiar but Morgen’s film is as much an experience as it is a straightforward documentary. His mix and match of styles brings with it an energy that captures the wild ‘n woolly climate of the times, from the hippies and the Yippies to the general atmosphere in Chicago. It’s trippy with a vibrant social awareness that side steps many of the cliches used in portraying the times.

“Chicago 10” is a digital release as part of the Impact Series.