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Film Friday: Malcolm Jamal-Warner’s Rastafarian Rap Battle
Hello, and welcome to another installment of everyone’s favourite film column in which the writer makes up their opinions on the weeks films largely based on what trailers they’ve seen on TV.
This week we didn’t watch much (busy watching our IT Crowd Series 2 and Metalocalypse DVDs) so the only one which managed to break our consciousness was the three seconds or so we caught of a trailer for In Bruges, a Belgium-set hitman flick starring Colin Farrell. According to the Star’s Peter Howell in a middling review, “In Bruges (above) is loaded with profanity and dialogue that polite company would deem sexist, racist and cruel,” which reminds us that the most brutally extreme and distasteful film we saw last year was actually Belgian—the tremendously disturbing Ex-Drummer. We hope that In Bruges doesn’t live up to the precedent.
We’re sure that Fool’s Gold has been getting pushed enough, though––we just shut it out. Kate Hudson’s ability to be instantly irritating in any film she appears is her only remarkable feature, and even the Globe and Mail’s Liam Lacey’s enjoyable description of a supporting cast “losing wrestling matches with their accents” (“Donald Sutherland as an epicene British billionaire…Scottish actor Ewen Bremner as Finn’s Ukrainian sidekick; Englishman Ray Winstone as a rival treasure hunter with a mile-wide Southern drawl; former Cosby kid Malcolm Jamal-Warner as a Rastafarian hoodlum working for a gangsta rapper”) isn’t enough to make this worth very much thought at all.
Neither, to be honest, are Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (Martin Lawrence = instant fail, even with a surprisingly positive review from Jason Anderson in the Globe and Mail), or Normal (“A terrible, mawkish and derivative film,” says Metro’s Norm Wilner). Comedy fans might want to check out Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, though.
Looking at the listings, easily the most exciting selection this week is at that stalwart the Bloor, with screenings of Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (you may have missed it first time around) and The Orphanage.
Cinematheque Ontario’s selection, well! Even being screened for free, your interest in the showings of R. Bruce Elder’s The Book Of All The Dead is really going to depend on your patience for 40+ hours of experimental filmmaking. It is not a patience for which we would profess to have.
And finally, in festivals, the Reel Politik Film Festival continues.