Allan Harco falls for Sarah Greene’s would-be nun in the Canadian-Irish romance, Love and Savagery.

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MOVIE REVIEWS (Week of Feb. 12)

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LOVE AND SAVAGERY
Starring Allan Hawco, Sarah Greene
Directed by John N. Smith
Many films have used Ireland as Romance Central, a place where lonely North Americans come to find their soulmate. Love and Savagery is one of them, but don’t worry. This one, in its quiet and simple way, is unique.

Michael (Allan Hawco), a geologist-cum-poet from Newfoundland, has come to the Emerald Isle to learn about… rocks (not to find his family’s roots, thank goodness). It’s not too long before he meets Cathleen (Sarah Greene), who has already promised herself to God and is — yes — becoming a nun. The usual overtures ensue, and, since this is set in 1969, the tiny Catholic village Cathleen calls home looks on with suspicion at her and Michael’s burgeoning attraction. Eventually, things get violent.

Here, the film gets airborne: Michael, beaten to a pulp and told to “fack” off, keeps at it, his determination stupid, dangerous, and obsessive. But he doesn’t give up, and his need for Cathleen feels real. Unlike many romantic movies, where wishy-washy people flit around one another until they give in, Love and Savagery makes love a fight, and one worth having. This is largely due to Hawco (the writer-star of CBC’s excellent Republic of Doyle), but Irish newcomer Greene is no less lovely. Honour-bound but torn, she’s ripe with intelligent self-determination. What’s additionally wonderful, thanks to the script and the sure hand of director John N. Smith, is that we’re never sure what decision Cathleen will make. It’s so rare to have a film in which the lovers seem truly at odds.

Love and Savagery is a rousing success, which is all the more satisfying given that it’s a Canadian-Irish coproduction. See it in a theatre, so that more like it will be made. ★★★★—Kaitlin Fontana

THE WOLFMAN
Starring Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt

Directed by Joe Johnston
With pop culture still saturated by the ridiculous proliferation of Twilight's glittery abstinence vampires versus juiced-up, muscled teens-cum-werewolves, the idea of an old fashioned, grown-up, Gothic horror flick tackling lycanthropy mythology seemed promising. Instead, we're offered Wolfman, a limp retread of every tired werewolf cliché, relying on only a spindle-thin father-son conflict as its central source of tension.

After a lengthy absence, Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro, struggling with an American accent) is summoned home by his brother's fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt), who confesses that his brother, Ben, has been missing for weeks. When Ben’s body is found, Lawrence promises the grieving Gwen he'll stay until he discovers what happened. To do so, he must confront his father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), an eccentric who speaks in vague threats and pseudo-loving warnings, and with whom he shares a mysterious past. As the townsfolk's whispers grow louder about "a curse" and "the gypsies" and "stocking up on silver bullets," the film unfolds as one would expect: Lawrence ends up bearing the mark of the beast and repeatedly, viciously morphs into a snarling, hairy monster under the glow of the full moon. The mystery  (scarcely a mystery at all) is who cursed Lawrence and how can it be stopped?

During production, the film was hampered by numerous difficulties (two directors, studio rewrites, different endings) and multiple, disconnected visions abound. Straight-up horror? Cheesy gore with taut, self-aware humour? A bodice-busting, romantic mystery with a hint of terror? A psychological thriller about redemption? Any one of these directions could have worked, but Wolfman instead offers a disorienting and diluted blend of all four — with some truly terrible acting from established Oscar winners thrown in for good measure.

All that aside, the film's biggest disappointment comes in flatly refusing to build up the all-important suspense. Unforgivably, the film  reveals what the werewolf looks like before the opening credits, making Wolfman the cinematic equivalent of premature ejaculation. ★—Andrea Warner

PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF
Starring Logan Lerman, Pierce Brosnan
Directed by Chris Columbus
Lifting equal parts from Harry Potter and public domain, this tale of Poseidon’s demigod son delivers a decidedly watered-down ‘tween fantasy.

Accused of stealing Zeus’ prized lightning bolt, Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) is whisked away to Camp Half Blood (think Hogwarts re-imagined as a wilderness retreat) where his true destiny is revealed. After a crash course in adventuring courtesy of a centaur (a mortified Pierce Brosnan, never quite able to wipe the “I can’t believe I went from Bond to this.” look off of his face), Percy and his two compatriots – Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) – head straight to hell in order to save his mom (Catherine Keener) from Hades (Steve Coogan). Well, actually, they take the scenic route to the Underworld so that they can first tangle with the likes of Medusa (Uma Thurman) and a hydra (but one of many dubious CGI creations).

Indeed, the film operates under the assumption that if it throws enough outrageous situations (there’s also an excursion to Mount Olympus in the offing), tepid action, and mid-level stars at us, we may not notice its glaring deficiencies. For instance: The fact that Percy lacks any trace of a personality. The remaining characters are also poorly rendered and under-utilised. Despite incessant quipping, Grover manages one funny line. Meanwhile, we’re assured that Annabeth is an accomplished warrior, yet she spends the entirety of the film waiting for Percy to do something.

Director Chris Columbus (who also helmed the first two Harry Potter films) and screenwriter Craig Titley (working from Rick Riordan’s novel) leave a lot to be desired in terms of both world-building and formulating a cohesive plot with tangible stakes. Columbus’ greatest directorial accomplishments are establishing some narrative momentum and shoehorning in enough crass product placement (an iPhone is used to dispatch Medusa) to keep the studio happy. Alas, that’s hardly the stuff movie magic is made of. ★★—Curtis Woloschuk

VALENTINE’S DAY

Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel, Topher Grace, Jessica Alba, Taylor Lautner, Taylor Smith
Directed by: Garry Marshall
Worthy of neither praise nor condemnation, Garry Marshall’s latest is more or less what you’d expect: a flashy, star-studded, shallow distraction. It’s only fitting, in a way, for a film celebrating the quintessential Hallmark holiday to have the truth and depth of a greeting card.

The film, set across a single Valentine’s Day, features a half-dozen intertwining plotlines that mine only the most familiar rom-com staples. Two friends realize they love each other. A woman unwittingly dates a married man. Two disillusioned cynics fall in love. A school-aged boy experiences his first crush.

Of course, originality is not the film’s major selling point, the cast is. And most of the big names deliver. Sadly, a few of the most talented actors, including Kathy Bates and Shirley MacLaine, are given too little to do, and a few others (most notably the two Taylors: Lautner and Swift) are too bland and uncharismatic to justify their mercifully minor presence. And haters be warned: professional punker Ashton Kutcher takes the lion’s share of the split-up screen time.

The film benefits greatly from its brisk pace and the few scant surprises that spare it from complete predictability. It is, if nothing else, a consistently entertaining and polished holiday present from Marshall, a Tinseltown veteran: shiny as a diamond, sweet as a box of candy, and dispensable as week-old roses. ★★—Andrew Weichel

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