Your Weekend Preview: What To See (And What To Skip) In The Theatres This Weekend
By Original-Cin Staff
“Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” said Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean writer-director of the Oscar-winning Parasite. Or, if that’s too hard, you could watch the remake: Parasite is now being developed as an HBO limited English-language series with Adam McKay and Bong Joon Ho.
A scene from Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
Which brings us to Downhill (Rating: C), the new black comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell as a couple on an Austrian family ski vacation who have a encounter with an avalanche that’s a revealing moment in their relationship This is a loose redo of Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s 2014’s satire Force Majeure — sort of. But our reviewer Karen Gordon says the film “pulls its punches and glosses over the very questions the set-up is raising.”
Not much danger of a remake of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady On Fire (Rating: B+) an historical slow-burn drama (set in 1770 France) about the relationship between a woman painter and her subject, which has won a slew of awards and nominations. The film, writes Karen Gordon, is a study in a relationship between the two women that is both sensual and spiritual. You can think of it as this year’s atypical Valentine movie.
Remade and reviled? Jim Slotek ponders the Blumhouse Productions horror-style reimaging of campy 70s TV drama Fantasy Island (Rating: C-). “De-PLANE,” “TaTTOO” and the peculiar pronunciation of “FUNtasy.” All these references will be lost on the Gen-Z horror crowd to whom the movie is pitched. All the premise they will absorb will be that this is an evil island that kills people one by one (and not fast enough in some cases).
And, finally, a movie about another kind of artist: first-time Canadian filmmaker Jesse Zigelstein and actor Aaron Abrams combine to create this darkly funny portrait of an obsessive chef on the edge of personal and career collapse in Nose To Tail. Liam Lacey, who reviews the film (Rating: A) sat down with director and actor to talk about micro-budgets, the connections between films and restaurants, and the art of playing an onscreen jerk.
Have a great weekend.