Superstar comedian Chris Rock, fresh off his highly publicized altercation with Will Smith at the Academy Awards, is extending his "Ego Death World Tour." It now will include a stop in Sugar Land at Smart Financial Centre on November 5.
The tour, which is currently ongoing, is scheduled for venues across the United States, Canada, and Australia. In addition to the date in Irving, Rock will perform in in Irving on Thursday, November 3 and San Antonio on November 10.
One of the strongest comedic voices working today, Rock has a career that has spanned more than three decades, enjoying success in both film, television, and stage as a comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director. Though he got his break on Saturday Night Live, his career has gone on to include plenty of dramatic roles, including in the FX series Fargo, in the horror film Spiral, and in the upcoming biopic Rustin.
Of course, comedy has always been Rock's primary way of entertaining the masses, whether as a stand-up comedian, acting in Adam Sandler movies, or directing his own projects like 2014's Top Five.
It was his comedy that earned the wrath of Smith at the Oscars on March 27, with the soon-to-be Best Actor slapping Rock in one of the most shocking moments in Oscar history (an incident which now has its own Wikipedia page). Rock has said he won't talk about the incident until he "gets paid."
The horrors of World War II are 80-plus years in the past, yet they remain a fascination for many filmmakers. The latest film to tackle the era, Blitz, is centered around the German Blitzkrieg air raids on London in September 1940, but uses a more personal story to illustrate its impact.
Rita (Saoirse Ronan) lives with her 9-year-old son George (Elliott Heffernan) and her father Gerald (Paul Weller) in the lower class neighborhood of Stepney, but no one in the city is immune from the bombs being dropped by the Germans. The government has opened up some of the Underground (aka subway) tunnels for residents to use as bomb shelters, but the haphazard nature of their availability leads Rita to send George to safety in the countryside to protect him.
George, who is biracial, experiences racist abuse on the train, and instead of remaining with the other children to their destination, he jumps off and tries to make his way back to London. Meanwhile, Rita is doing her best to keep her mind off of George’s absence, working at a munition factory and volunteering at a bomb shelter, not knowing that George has put himself back in danger.
Written and directed by Steve McQueen, the film should be one that elicits emotions relatively easily, with ordinary people dealing with the effects of war and a mother separated from her only child. And while all the elements are present, there’s that certain something missing that leaves the story somewhat uninvolving. McQueen makes you want to see George make it back safely and for Rita to be reunited with him, but there is a degree of sentimentality that’s missing from the film as a whole.
Instead of going down that road, McQueen puts a big focus on the racism and bigotry experienced by various people in the film. Flashbacks give a sense of what George and his dad, Marcus (CJ Beckford), went through prior to the war, and Ife (Benjamin Clementine), a warden who tries to help George find his way home, encounters it multiple times while just doing his duty. While McQueen’s point that people of color still had to endure acts of hatred in a time when people should have been coming together, his methods of showing it are often heavy-handed.
Still, the film is well-made and remains visually engaging throughout. The combination of practical sets and CGI put the viewer right in the middle of the bombed-out London, and there are few missteps with how the city is presented. And even though the main mother-son story is only lightly effective, the trials and tribulations that each go through individually are interesting and occasionally suspenseful.
Ronan is a fantastic actor who might get nominated for an Oscar yet again for her other recent film, The Outrun, but this role pales in comparison. Whether it’s because the 30-year-old is a bit young to be fully believable in a mother role or because of the storytelling missteps, she’s merely good instead of great here. Heffernan does a solid job in his film debut, reacting ably to McQueen putting him through his paces.
Blitz joins the seemingly never-ending well of stories from World War II, and while it doesn’t succeed as mightily as other notable war films, it never becomes anything less than watchable. The family story at its center could have been more heartfelt, but McQueen is still a great filmmaker with a flair for visual composition.
