This month’s films include a breathtaking reimagining of a classic children’s tale, a quirky Christmas horror-comedy and Sir Patrick Stewart as you’ve never seen him before.
In Theatres
Iron Man and Elf director Jon Favreau brings this classic Rudyard Kipling story/Disney cartoon to exhilarating new life. Young Neel Sethi stars as Mowgli, a “man-cub” raised in the wild, where he gets caught up in an epic battle between an assortment of noble and nefarious CGI beasts. It’s being hailed as a heart-pounding, breathtakingly rendered family adventure, thanks in no small part to an all-star voice cast includes Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o, Ben Kingsley and Scarlett Johansson.
Four years after summer blockbuster Snow White and the Huntsman, comes this time-jumping sequel that, as you can probably tell by the title, sidelines Snow White (originally played by Kristen Stewart) in favour of delving deeper into the saga of Eric the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) and vanquished queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron). As it turns out, Eric was originally trained to be a remorseless killer by Ravenna’s sister, Freya the Ice Queen (Emily Blunt), but was banished from her realm for falling in love with fellow warrior Sara (Jessica Chastain).
Flash forward to today — in the aftermath of the final battle with Ravenna, Eric is ordered to track down her Magic Mirror, which has mysteriously vanished. Setting off with a couple of dwarves, it soon becomes clear that the Ice Queen is seeking her sister’s all-seeing artifact as well, leading Eric to reunite with Sara in a mad dash to keep the Mirror from falling into Freya’s frosty hands.
After another gig falls through, a struggling young punk-rock band (including Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin and Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat) reluctantly takes a gig at a remote Oregon white supremacist bar. The show goes fine, but when they witness something they shouldn’t backstage, they find themselves barricaded in their dressing room, fending for their lives against an army of bigots led by the one and only Sir Patrick Stewart (X-Men), in a deliciously expectations-subverting turn.
Debuting this past fall at TIFF, director Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to his breakout indie revenge saga Blue Ruin is a tense, gory, peak-through-your-fingers affair — the rare horror movie where you’re rooting for every one of the 20-somethings-in-peril, making it all the more shocking and gut-wrenching when they’re inevitably butchered.
On DVD
Hailed as one of the most visually striking, inventive supernatural shockers in recent memory, this U.K. film follows a man who moves from the bustling metropolis of London to a wood-side home in Ireland. Surveying the nearby forest for work, he’s warned by the locals to not disturb the horrifying mythical creatures that reside in the woods. As you might expect, he ignores the advice, and it may just cost him and his young family their lives.
Krampus (April 26, Universal)
One of the sleeper hits of 2015, this throwback comedy-horror flick follows young Max Engel (Emjay Anthony) who, amidst all the fighting and cynicism that accompanies the holidays, loses his faith in the Christmas season. Tearing up his letter to Santa, he inadvertently summons the jolly old elf’s evil opposite: the demonic Krampus. Arriving with a neighbourhood-freezing blizzard in tow, the terrifying beast and his army of evil elves and possessed toys set to stalking and picking off the boy and his bewildered family (including Adam Scott, Toni Collette and Fargo’s Allison Tolman) one by one.
After electrifying the festival circuit last year, this Hungarian Holocaust drama arrives on home video. Set in 1944, it tells the brutal, heartrending tale of Saul (Géza Röhrig), a Jewish prisoner at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp in Germany. Tasked with burning the bodies of his fellow prisoners, one day he comes across a corpse he believes to be his son. Secretly setting the boy aside, he searches for a rabbi to perform a proper burial ceremony.
Main Image Photo Credit: Disney/wikia.com
Adam Scott, Alia Shawkat, Allison Tolman, Anton Yelchin, Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Corin Hardy, Emily Blunt, Geza Rohrig, Green Room Movie, Idris Elba, Jessica Chastain, Jon Favreau, Krampus Movie, Lupita Nyong'o, Neel Sethi, Patrick Stewart, Scarlett Johansson, Son Of Saul, The Hallow Movie, The Huntsman: Winter's War, The Jungle Book Movie, Toni Collette
Matthew Currie
Author
A long-standing entertainment journalist, Currie is a graduate of the Professional Writing program at Toronto’s York University. He has spent the past number of years working as a freelancer for ANOKHI and for diverse publications such as Sharp, TV Week, CAA’s Westworld and BC Business. Currie ...
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