Artemisia at the heart of Empire

Speciality Theatre

300: Rise of an Empire

***

Stars: Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Lena Headey

Directors: Noam Murro. 

Rated: R

Showing: (3D until Monday) Fri 2:30pm, 6:30pm, 9:30pm; Sat 3pm, 6pm;  9:30pm; Sun 2pm, 4:45pm,  7:30pm; Mon-Tues 2:30pm, 6pm, 8:30pm; Wed-Thurs 2:30pm, 6pm, 8:30pm.

Runtime: 102 minutes

Action, drama, war.

The first 300, director Zack Snyder’s 2006 take on the legendary showdown between Persians and Spartans at Thermopylae in 480 B.C., was all about the guys and their abs.

The sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire, is more about the women. Specifically, seafaring Greek-born Persian warrior Artemisia, a figure who — if this movie is to be believed — ruled the ancient world through a combination of cunning, cruelty and the ability to look great while waging war on the high seas.

It’s Artemisia, played with a mixure of cool and camp by Eva Green (Dark Shadows, Casino Royale), who gives this CGI-saturated sequel a jolt of energy, as her male Athenian adversaries are as flavourless as week-old hummus. If not for Artemesia, Empire would be just a retread of its predecessor.

Set at the same time as the first film, when a brave force of 300 men valiantly tried to hold off an invading Persian army led by Xerxes, Empire details the sea war between Artemisia and Greek leader Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton). He spends much of his time trying to unite the Greek city-states to thwart the threat. He even travels to Sparta to try to convince Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey, reprising her role from the first film) to help him, but she wants to handle things on her own. 

Non-Stop

**

Stars: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra. 

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri 2:15pm, 6pm, 9pm; Sat 2:30pm, 6:30pm; Sun 2:30pm, 5pm, 7:15pm; Mon-Tues 2:20pm, 6:15pm, 8:45pm; Wed-Thurs 2:15pm, 6:15pm, 8:50pm.

Runtime: 106 minutes

Action, mystery, thriller.

OK, Liam Neeson, we get it.

You’re a 61-year-old guy who can bust heads and snap arms with the best of them. And, yes, it worked like a charm in Taken —  which packed the punch of surprise because who knew the guy from Schindler’s List was such a brawler? But the halo of goodwill from that film is starting to tarnish. How many of these types of movies is Neeson going to make?

Which brings us to his latest, Non-Stop, an efficiently made exercise in airplane claustrophobia that takes off well enough but then crash lands in the third act under the weight of its red herrings, improbability and plot twists.

It’s not a complete waste of time, but it is a waste of an extremely talented cast including Julianne Moore, Scoot McNairy (Argo), Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey), Corey Stoll (House of Cards), Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave), and, of course, Neeson.

For all of its flaws, though, Non-Stop does generate more scares and suspense than another recent Neeson skull-knocker, the abysmal Taken 2. But the really terrifying thing is what’s on the list of Neeson’s upcoming projects: Taken 3. It looks like “non-stop” is also the phrase that sums up the trajectory of Neeson’s career these days. 

Liberty Theatre

Mr Peabody & Sherman

****

Stars: Ty Burrell, Max Charles, Stephen Colbert.  

Director: Rob Minkoff

Rated: PG

Showing: Fri 2pm, 6pm, 8:15pm; Sat-Sun 1:30pm, 4pm, 6:30pm; Mon-Thurs 2:30pm, 6pm.

Runtime: 92 minutes

Animation, adventure,
comedy.

With Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Dreamworks Animation sets its “Wayback Machine” to the early 1960s and charmingly revives one of the most popular features of the old Rocky & Bullwinkle Show — the one about a dog, and his boy.

This winning, witty and warm cartoon captures the flavour, the tone and some of the snappy pace of the TV shorts that began with the droll voice of Bill Scott intoning, “Peabody here, my boy, Sherman ...”

Mr. Peabody is a Nobel Prize-winning pooch who “invented the fist-bump, auto-tune and Zumba”, and then adopted Sherman. He’s given the boy, now seven, a head-start on school by taking the kid time-travelling. The Wayback Machine has, we can see from the photos decorating their apartment walls, allowed Sherman to meet everyone from Gandhi to Einstein, Leonardo to the Wright Brothers. He’s given Van Gogh painting suggestions, caught a Jackie Robinson home run and short-circuited Ben Franklin.

“Where are we going today, Mr. Peabody?”

“Not where, Sherman. When.”

As long as Sherman keeps this a secret, nobody will be the wiser as to why he knows, for a fact, that George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree. Of course, Sherman can’t keep a secret — not even from the mean girl, Penny, who bullies him.

And that’s when the trouble starts. Actually, the first “when” is ancient Egypt. Then they check in on Leonardo Da Vinci and try to make Mona Lisa crack a smile. The movie drops in on The Trojan War.

Fans of the old Jay Ward TV show may take longer in adjusting to the new voices — Ty Burrell of Modern Family is a droll-enough Peabody, Max Charles (The Neighbors) is Sherman. But the witty word play and the pull-out-all-stops supporting cast start to pay off.

The movie takes a while to find its footing, but then the laughs come fast and furious. 

Neptune Theatre

Son of God

***

Stars: Diogo Morgado, Amber Rose Revah, Sebastian Knapp.  

Director: Christopher Spencer.

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri-Sat 7:30pm; Sun 5:30pm; Mon-Thurs 7pm.

Runtime: 138 minutes

Drama.

Blame Mel Gibson for it if you like, but no Jesus movie these days is worth its salt without an utterly unflinching treatment of his torture and crucifixion. And Son of God has stretches where the agony we watch this poor man endure is avert-your-eyes awful. 

If history ever produced a more excruciating form of punishment, it probably included lions at dinner time.

But Son of God, a big-screen version of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey’s History Channel TV series The Bible, has a redemptive optimism about it that makes the brutality go down easier. 

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