Wilnervision!

It’s a deadline day, so I’m digging out the six-word-review game again. Let’s get to it!

The ABCs of Death: 26 short films make one weak.

Bruce Cockburn: Pacing the Cage: Canadian legend gets the kid gloves. [Susan]

Epic: FernGully meets Avatar and everybody loses.

Fast & Furious 6: Does it go VROOM VROOM VROOM? Cool. [Rad]

The Hangover Part III: You know, it’s kind of interesting.

Love Is All You Need: Susanne Bier makes a romantic comedy? [Susan]

Picture Day: Great Maslany performance; movie’s just okay. [Susan]

Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story: Canadian legend gets the kid gloves. [Glenn]

The Rep: I discussed this the other day. [Rad]

Something in the Air: Olivier Assayas looks back, feels languid.

Oh, and here’s my TIFF capsule of Peaches Does Herself, which is playing at the Inside Out festival tonight.  It’s … something.

Three more interviews today, all in the new issue of NOW — and with very different people.

I bag my first Community cast member, Ken Jeong, under the guise of discussing The Hangover Part III; I have a Q&A with Epic producer-director Chris Wedge, even though I didn’t like his movie very much.

And I was similarly cool towards Something in the Air at TIFF last fall, but when Olivier Assayas bounced through town earlier this month I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk to him again. He’s swell.

I will admit it’s been difficult to keep my mind on my work as the Rob Ford crack scandal continues to eat its way through the city. Just hours after his brother Doug tried to shame the media into leaving his poor baby brother alone (because, you know, it’s totally mean and unfair to investigate allegations of wrongdoing, abuse of office and smoking fucking crack leveled at the city’s chief magistrate), Rob was booted from his position as football coach at Don Bosco, which was clearly the only thing that brought the poor dumb bastard any pleasure.

If he really does have a drug problem, this could be the thing that sends him on a major binge. I truly hope his family and his handlers are working to counter this. I don’t want the guy to be mayor — he’s awful at it — but I don’t want him dead, either. Here’s hoping for the healthiest possible outcome.

So Star Trek Into Darkness made $70.6 million this weekend — with a total domestic gross of $84.1 million if you fold in the take from its early IMAX runs on Wednesday and Thursday. And somehow that’s not terribly impressive, if you’re the Associated Press.

J.J. Abrams’ sequel — which I caught for the second time Friday night, and enjoyed mightily all over again — easily won the weekend, with Iron Man Three coming in second with $35.2 million and The Great Gatsby landing in third with $23.4 million. Pain & Gain, which took fourth place, earned just $3.1 million, which nicely indicates the yawning gap between the new, shiny breadwinners — all three of which are available in 3D — and the April titles still limping through release.

And that gap will get even wider when The Hangover Part III and Fast & Furious 6 face off against one another next week …

Obviously we’re all a little distracted right now, but if you find yourself needing a break and Star Trek Into Darkness doesn’t do it for you, there’s plenty of other stuff playing in Toronto’s cinemas.

The Angels’ Share: And now, the comedy stylings of Ken Loach! No, wait; this turns out to be a really charming change of pace from the godfather of dour social-realist drama as an angry young man (Paul Brannigan) discovers the joys of high-stakes whisky tasting. Sure, there’s the odd head-butting and the occasional knife to the throat, but it’s all in good fun.

Fight Like Soldiers Die Like Children: Authentic Canadian hero Romeo Dallaire’s work with former child soldiers in Congo is celebrated in a documentary that doesn’t quite trust its audience to understand the narrative without some really condescending animated sequences. Cut those out and it’d be a lot more effective.

Greetings from Tim Buckley: I like Jeff Buckley’s music. I’m okay with Tim Buckley’s music, too. But I had absolutely no patience — like, not an iota — for Dan Algrant’s superficial, slapdash snapshot of both men’s lives, which leaves us nothing but the memory of Penn Badgely wearing a series of T-shirts.

The Iceman: Ariel Vroman’s true-crime picture has a conceptual and formal dullness that just screams “straight to DVD”, but Michael Shannon’s take on the contract killer Richard Kuklinski is a master class in playing a brick wall and still being interesting. But you can wait for the DVD.

Mud: Jeff Nichols follows Take Shelter with a simple coming-of-age drama about a 14-year-old boy (Tye Sheridan) who befriends a self-described “hobo” (Matthew McConaughey) and edges into a world of potential hurt. Michael Shannon’s in this, too, bless him.

Please Kill Mr. Know-It-All: Colin Carter and Sandra Feldman’s romantic comedy about an advice columnist (Lara Jean Chorostecki) who accidentally identifies a hitman (Jefferson Brown) as the writer of her column is basically a ten-minute sketch inflated into a feature film. And the jokes fell out along the way.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist: I missed Mira Nair’s political drama at TIFF — it had Kate Hudson in it, so I figured that was a red flag — but Susan really liked it.

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s: Glenn is not terribly impressed with Matthew Miele’s all-star celebration of the illustrious Manhattan department store. But it’s narrated by William Fichtner! Wait, what?

The We and the I: Michel Gondry’s tale of a busload of Bronx teens stuck together for one last ride home was one of the more contentious titles at Cannes last year, but Rad thinks it’s a winner. I may actually have to watch the damn thing now.

That’s everything, right? No more surprises? Good. Carry on.

Oh, boy, is Star Trek Into Darkness fun. Never mind the “into darkness” thing; J.J. Abrams is still connected to the joy and hope at the core of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision. And see it in IMAX if you can.

My review appears in today’s NOW, along with my interview with John Cho; you’ll also find me chatting with Michael Shannon about The Iceman. (Sadly, the interview took place last fall at TIFF, months before his career-defining work at Funny or Die. I will try to follow up when Man of Steel comes around.)

I’ve also got a few words about the Chris Marker retrospective down at the Lightbox this week. It’s brilliant stuff; please go see as many of those as you can.

Despite being an utterly facile and wrong-headed interpretation of the novel on which it’s based, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby pulled in $51.1 million this weekend.

It still placed second to the behemoth that is Iron Man Three, which stayed in first with $72.5 million domestic and $89.3 internationally — and a cumulative global total of $949 million, which I believe puts it second only to The Avengers in Marvel Universe success stories.

I hear Warner’s retooling Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to be the story of the twin brother Tony Stark never knew he had. Which means Val Kilmer could one day play Moon Knight.

Actually, now that I’m thinking of it …

Boy, there’s a lot of stuff opening this week. It’s almost as though the other distributors have decided that Gatsby movie might not appeal to everyone after all.

At Any Price:  Rad is one of the few people who had any patience for Ramin Bahrani’s generational drama at TIFF, though he still has reservations. Apparently Dennis Quaid is quite good. I dunno, I’ll catch up to it on disc.

Blackbird: On the other hand, Rad did not much like Jason Buxton’s broody drama about a teenager (Connor Jessup) whose idle threats lead him into a Kafkaesque nightmare of persecution and shame … but neither did I, for that matter. And yes, I know it won Best First Feature at TIFF last year, but so did Antiviral, so come on.

The Good Lie: Nobody director Shawn Linden is back with another ensemble thriller about buried secrets and old grudges. Susan took it, for which I am grateful.

Graceland: Susan found more to love in Ron Morales’ Filipino thriller, which sounds an awful lot like High & Low from the chauffeur’s point of view. And that sounds interesting, if you ask me.

The Great Gatsby: Leonardo DiCaprio glares, Carey Mulligan stares, Tobey Maguire shares and nobody — nobody – cares. I wish I’d thought of “Baz Luhrmann beats off ceaselessly” last week instead of yesterday, because NOW would totally have let me use it.

I Declare War: Another Canadian film about kids and violence, Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson’s surreal action exercise was frequently discussed in tandem with Blackbird at TIFF, and now it’s opening in Toronto on the same day. Rad finds a little more to like in this one.

The Manor: After its triumphant premiere at Hot Docs, Shawney Cohen’s documentary gets a commercial run at the Bloor. You probably haven’t seen it yet, so get on that.

Room 237: John insists that Rodney Ascher’s study of Shining analysis is a documentary, but I’m not so sure — there are points when it feels like a subversive attempt to blow up the very art of cinema from the inside. And it feels like a pretty worthy goal, in the moment.

Skull World: Justin McConnell’s doc about an eccentric Ontario metalhead’s quest to become a TV star on the back of a truly ridiculous idea might find favor with the same audience that loves FUBAR and Beauty Day, but I’m really tired of people shouting into a handheld camera.  Something has to happen for me to care, man.

Slaughter Nick for President: There are few things stranger than the star of a syndicated ’90s detective series finding out he helped topple an Eastern European regime. But that’s the story Rob Stewart is telling, and it’s surprisingly credible.

Tyler Perry Presents Peeples: Kiva holds this meet-the-parents comedy — starring David Alan Grier and Craig Robinson as De Niro and Stiller, respectively — in more contempt than most critics hold the movies Perry actually directs. Ouch.

There, that’s everything. Or you could just see Iron Man Three again.