Archive for September, 2022

HOCUS POCUS 2: 3 STARS. “not nearly as bewitching as the original 1993 film.”

“Lock up your children,” says Winifred in “Hocus Pocus 2.” “Yes Salem. We are back!”

Twenty-nine years ago, the original “Hocus Pocus,” a comedic fantasy about the Sanderson sisters, a trio of witches played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy, was a middling hit in theatres, and labelled “dreadful” by Gene Siskel.

But despite critical lashings and a current score of 39 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, over the years, the Sanderson sisters have become Halloween favorites, so much so, that the town of Salem, Massachusetts threw a celebration in honor of the film’s 25th anniversary.

Disney+ gives fans another wave of the wand with “Hocus Pocus 2,” a sequel that gives new life to the Sanderson sisters.

The new film begins with a flashback to hundreds of years ago in Salem. The Sanderson sisters, played as teens by Taylor Paige, Nina Kitchen and Juju Journey Brener, become outcasts, sowing the seeds of the rage that will consume them for hundreds of years.

Cut to present day. Salem teens three teens are Becca (Whitney Peak), Cassie (Lilia Buckingham), and Izzy (Belissa Escobedo) are best friends, who hang out at the local magic shop run by Gilbert (Sam Richardson). With the help of a special Black Flame Candle, supplied by Gilbert, the teen trio resurrect the sister witches, just as Max (Omri Katz), Allison (Vinessa Shaw), and Dani (Thora Birch) did decades before in the original film.

But Salem is a much different place since the sisters last visited. In the midst of a Halloween celebration, the sisters don’t inspire fear as much as admiration. So many revelers are dressed as the Sandersons, that the city hosts a look-alike contest.

But it’s not all fun and games. The sisters are looking to gather up some tasty teen life-forces and get vengeance for the mistreatment they suffered years before. It’s up to the high schoolers to stop them.

Part horror comedy, part musical (the sisters don’t understand modern day traditions, but somehow are able to belt out Blonde’s “One Way or Another” at the drop of a witch’s hat) and all nostalgia. The spectre of the 1993 haunts the new film as it pays homage to the original to the point where the new stars—Peak, Buckingham and Escobedo—get lost in the shuffle once the original sisters show up.

As fans of the first movie might expect, Midler, Najimy and Parker chew the scenery, offering up larger-than-life performances, heavy on the whimsy. They are campy—particularly when singing a revamp of Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back,” reworked as “The Witch Is Back”—and often funny in an outrageous but family-friendly way.

“Hocus Pocus 2” is fan service. It expands the Sanderson sister’s story, providing an origin story (probably the best part of the movie) and gives Parker and Najimy more to do than the original. Mix in some modern sensibility about accepting people’s differences and you have an hour and forty minutes of forgettable fun. It’s not nearly as bewitching as the 1993 film, but may cast a spell over longtime fans.

BROS: 3 ½ STARS. “a subversive, new, crowd-pleasing take on a Hollywood staple.”

“I’m not the person to write a romcom,” says Billy Eichner as the acerbic Bobby in “Bros,” the first major studio LGBTQ+ rom-com to play exclusively in theatres.

It’s a meta line in a movie that is both subversive and cliched. Star, co-writer and producer Eichner has melded frank sexuality with rom con conventions to create a funny, sincere movie that kicks the celluloid closet door wide open.

Eichner, the former host of the guerilla-style talk show “Billy on the Street,” plays Bobby, a gay, commitment-adverse podcaster. “I’m like whatever happened to Evan Hanson,” he says.

For Bobby random and anonymous Grindr hook-ups are a way of life until he spots handsome Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) in a club. At first, they appear to be polar opposites. “I don’t think he’s my type,” says Bobby. “He’s like a gay Tom Brady.”

But soon their mutual fear of commitment brings is the glue that bonds them. “Maybe we can be emotionally unavailable together,” Bobby says.

The confirmed bachelor who meets his partner is a standard rom com set-up. “My whole life, I prided myself on being self-reliant,” says Bobby, “but this *bleeper* has gotten into my head.”

But this story about the difficulty of dating is given a facelift by a meta joke about writing a gay rom com and the addition of steroids, thruples, a hat shaped like the Stonewall Inn and extensive use of Grindr.

“Bros” has echoes of “When Harry Met Sally” and “You’ve Got Mail” throughout. It’s a pure rom com from the nice apartments, New York City backdrop and the trademarked Drew Barrymore Misunderstanding That Leads to a Temporary Break-up©. You know where the story is going, but rom coms are not about the destination, they’re about the journey and, “Bros” is a fun trip.

Eichner layers this story of self-acceptance and love-at-first-sight with laugh-out-loud jokes, an unexpectedly caustic cameo from Debra Messing and heartfelt observational humor. It embraces the innate vulnerability and complexity of Aaron and Bobby’s exploration of masculinity and queerness without forgetting the funny.

But just as it makes you laugh, Eichner subverts the form with some more introspective moments. As a gay man with aspirations to chronicle his community, Bobby has a long, earnest monologue about waiting for the world to catch up with him.

“Bros” is a queer rom com; a subversive, new, crowd-pleasing take on a Hollywood staple.

SMILE: 2 ½ STARS. “a slowly paced finale that doesn’t deliver anything new.”

We’ve all heard it. “You should smile more.” But what if there is nothing to smile about?

Sosie Bacon, daughter of actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, stars as Rose Cotter, an emergency room psychiatric doctor. A traumatic incident from her past is brought to the fore when she meets a patient named Laura (Caitlin Stasey). In distress after witnessing someone take their own life, the woman is convinced she is being tormented by an entity who “wears people’s faces like masks.”

“It’s smiling at me,” she says. “But not a friendly smile. It’s the worst smile I’ve ever seen in my life.”

As if that wasn’t unnerving enough, the grinning, shape-shifting spirit utters death threats that only the frantic Laura can hear.

Rose, who, as a child, saw her mother die by suicide, has empathy for Laura, but the young woman’s torment is too much to bear and she kills herself in front of her doctor. Shaken to the core, Rose takes a paid week off, but is soon overwhelmed by the same kind of visions that besieged Laura. “I’m really afraid something bad is going to happen,” she says. Is it PTSD from trauma or has the Laura’s evil been transmitted into Rose’s psyche?

As her relationships with her sister (Gillian Zinser) and fiancée (Jessie T. Usher) crumble, she turns to Joel (Kyle Gallner), an ex, who happens to be a police officer, for help, but time is running out.

“How long between each victim’s death?” Rose asks Joel. “None of them lasted longer than a week,” he replies. “Today’s my fourth day,” she says ominously.

“Smile” has an intriguing premise—although the idea of a transmittable evil has been done before, and better, in movies like “It Follows”—an anxiety inducing soundtrack and some unsettling imagery, but as far as real scares go, they’re as rare as smiles in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

Director Parker Finn, whose short film “Laura Hasn’t Slept” was the basis for this movie, creates a palpable atmosphere of dread, and knows his way around a “jump” scare, but is unable to hold that tension all the way through the movie’s too-long running time. At 115 minutes, “Smile” stretches the already thin premise to its breaking point. What could have been a tight 90-minute thriller, with compact thrills, outstays its welcome with a slowly paced finale that doesn’t deliver anything new.

There are some nicely staged scenes in “Smile.” A child’s birthday party scene brings the creep factor and the wide smiles of the infected will make you think twice the next time someone flashes a grin your way on the street, but the nitty gritty, the examination of trauma as a source of evil, does not turn that frown upside down.

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THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER: 3 STARS. “a Vietnam War movie with a twist.”

Heartwarming is not a word often used to describe movies based on the Vietnam War, but “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is no “The Deer Hunter,” “Platoon” or “Apocalypse Now.” It’s an occasionally glib, often naïve movie that studies the timely issue of the gap between the press and the public, and the horrors of war.

“Green Book” director Peter Farrelly presents another hard-to-believe-it’s-true story set during the height of the Vietnam War in 1967.

Zac Efron plays an aimless, but well-meaning Merchant Marine named John “Chickie” Donohue, a playful patriot who accepts a dare from the guys at his local NYC bar to track down his army buddies in Vietnam and deliver good old American beer to them as a thanks for their service.

“It’s not going to be easy,” he says, “but I’m going to show them that this country is still behind them.”

With a duffle bag full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, he makes his way into the heart of the conflict, hanging out with hardnosed war correspondents like Arthur Coates (Russell Crowe) and getting in over his head, but nonetheless, handing out “sudsy thank you cards” to soldiers on the front lines.

At the heart of the film is Efron in his meatiest role in years. His eager performances matches the tone of the film. He’s a charismatic actor who plays up Chickie’s good-natured, guileless side. Even as the weight of the war bears down on him, he’s still tossing chilly PBRs to his buds with a grin. He’s fine, but his trip to Vietnam feels more like a goofy—but dangerous— adventure and not a serious journey of self-discovery. He does find his way to a new understanding of the world, but the movie meanders along the way to revealing his enlightenment.

“The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is a Vietnam War movie with a twist. A story of loyalty and friendship, it comes with good intentions, even if it leans into its crowd-pleasing aspects a little too heavily.

JFL IN TORONTO: RICHARD ONSTAGE WITH ‘LOS ESPOOKYS” AND CRAIG ROBINSON!

September 23, 2022 at the Jane Mallet Theatre! Join us for an advance screening of episode 2 and more sneak peeks from Season 2 of the highly anticipated, critically-acclaimed HBO comedy series, Los Espookys, hailed by Vanity Fair as “bilingual genius.” The series follows a group of friends who turn their shared passion for horror into a peculiar business, providing horror to clients who need it, in a dreamy Latin American country where the strange and eerie are just a part of daily life.

Following the screening, we’ll hang out with the co-creators, writers, executive producers and stars of the show, Fred ArmisenAna Fabrega and Julio Torres as they discuss the upcoming season, reveal behind-the-scenes stories and answer your questions about what “espookys” them the most.

The series returns to HBO & HBO Max in the U.S. and CRAVE in Canada on Sept. 16.

Season two of LOS ESPOOKYS is created by Fred Armisen & Ana Fabrega & Julio Torres; executive produced by Lorne Michaels, Fred Armisen, Ana Fabrega and Julio Torres along with Broadway Video’s Andrew Singer and Alice Mathias; co-executive produced by Nate Young; produced by Sharon Lopez and Andy Garland. Produced by Broadway Video, Antigravico and Oscar®-winning Chilean production company Fabula. Written by Julio Torres, Ana Fabrega, Bernardo Britto and Mara Vargas Jackson. Directed by Ana Fabrega and Sebastian Silva.

Moderated by Richard Crouse

 

September 25 at the Jane Mallet Theatre! Beginning as a stand-up comedian, Robinson first made his mark in the comedy circuit at the 1998 Montreal “Just For Laughs” Festival. Now headlining venues and festivals across the country, he does both solo acts as well as full-band sets with his band “The Nasty Delicious.” Before deciding to pursue his comedy career full time, Robinson was a K-8 teacher in the Chicago Public School System. He earned his undergraduate degree from Illinois State University and his Masters of Education from St. Xavier University. It was while Craig was studying education in Chicago that he also discovered his love of acting and comedy when he joined the famed Second City Theatre. Craig is best known for his portrayal of Daryl Philban in NBC’s “The Office” but has also starred in such movies as KNOCKED UP, THIS IS THE END, HOT TUB TIME MACHINE, HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2, MORRIS FROM AMERICA, TRAGEDY GIRLS, DOLEMITE IS MY NAME! with Eddie Murphy, TIMMY FAILURE, and MONA LISA AND THE BOOD MOON with Kate Hudson. Craig also starred in his very own sitcom, MR. ROBINSON on NBC, as well as GHOSTED on FOX.

NEWSTALK 1010: IN-DEPTH WITH BONNIE STERN + ACTOR AND AUTHOR JIM PIDDOCK!

On this episode of the Richard Crouse Show we get to know Bonnie Stern. If you are a foodie, or even if you aren’t, you already know Bonnie. She has studied and taught cooking around the world, hosted three national cooking shows, and for 17 years, wrote a weekly column for the National Post. Her latest cookbook, “Don’t Worry, Just Cook,” co-written with her daughter Anna Rupert, aims to take the intimidation factor that some people feel every time they step into the kitchen. Filled with delicious, widely appealing, and timeless recipes, the book is perfect, not only for home cooks but anyone who loves food.

Then we meet actor and writer Jim Piddock. For four decades he has appeared on Broadway and on the big and small screen in movies like “Independence Day,” “Lethal Weapon 2,” “A Mighty Wind,” “Austin Powers in Goldmember” and shows like “Modern Family,” “Mom,” “Two and a Half Men,” “Lost,” Monk,” “Friends”… the list goes on. Jim looks back at his career in a funny and frank new memoir called “Caught With My Pants Down & Other Tales From A Life In Hollywood.” It is available now wherever fine books are sold.

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!

Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!

Listen to the show live here:

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DON’T WORRY DARLING: 3 STARS. “has style and an intriguing performance from Pugh.”

There is more to “Don’t Worry Darling,” the new science fiction mystery starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, and now playing in theatres, than “Spitgate.” That’s the unfortunate viral video that made it appear that Styles dropped a loogie into co-star Chris Pine’s lap at the film’s Venice Film Festival premiere.

Put that out of your mind, or at least don’t watch it again and again on TikTok until you’ve visited the film’s setting, the suburban Southern California company town of Victory. A picture- perfect place that makes Pleasantville seem edgy, it’s a manicured paradise where it’s always sunny, there is a classic car in every driveway and everyone has a pool in the backyard.

But something seems slightly off. It’s like Rob and Laura Petrie through a looking glass.

All the men in town, like Alice Chambers’s (Pugh) husband Jack (Styles), work for the Victory Project, run by Frank (Chris Pine), a visionary in the field of the “development of progressive materials” for a chaos free world.

“Frank has built something truly special,” says Frank’s wife Shelly (Gemma Chan), “What he’s created out here, it’s a different way. A better way.” He’s a mid-century modern Tony Robbins, a slick talker who says he sees greatness in all his “intrepid explorers,” i.e. the residents of Victory.

His “better way” is also a top-secret way. The business conducted at the Victory Project Headquarters is known only to the men=, an arrangement that seems to suit most of the women just fine, but when Margaret (Kiki Layne) challenges the status quo, claiming that something sinister is happening in their town, Alice opens her eyes and has a hard look around. “I need you to listen to me,” she says. “They’re lying about everything.”

Are they living in Victory or the Twilight Zone?

“Don’t Worry Darling” has style to burn, an intriguing performance from Pugh, whose malleable face reveals wide arcs of emotions with simple, subtle movements. There’s a completely credible turn from pop star Styles, some very cool cars and impressive world building in the first half.

Director Olivia Wilde, who also produces and has a meaty supporting role, creates an uneasy utopia, a welcoming, but too-good-to-be-true place.

That’s the good stuff.

When the film turns into something that feels like an overly long episode of “Black Box,” it begins to show its wear and tear. The twist (no spoilers here) is handled clumsily. One can’t wonder if Rod Serling could have handled this in a more elegant and succinct way.

Unfortunately, “Don’t Worry Darling” will likely spur more gossip (re: “Spitgate” et al) than conversations about its themes. It does raise interesting questions about what constitutes a perfect life and the importance of having agency over one’s existence, but the bungled ending sucks whatever subtextual profundity may lie buried in Katie Silberman’s script.

BANDIT: 3 STARS. “slick, although not very deep, crime story.”

Based on the novel “The Flying Bandit” by Robert Knuckle, “Bandit” is the story of a charming thief who says he robbed fifty Canadian banks because “that’s where the money is.”

Josh Duhamel plays Gilbert Galvan Jr, a career criminal who escapes from a Michigan prison in 1985, changes his name to Robert Whiteman and high tails it over the border to Ontario. “When things go south,” he says, “sometimes you gotta go north.”

Whiteman, when he isn’t romancing social worker Andrea (Elisha Cuthbert), is scoping out banks as a source of fast, ready cash. “No one’s born bad,” he says. “Like anything, it takes practice.”

Posing as a security analyst, he identifies security weaknesses at several local institutions, and concocts a wild plan. Wearing a series of outlandish disguises, he flies around Canada robbing banks, sometimes at a rate of two or three a day. “In the states they have armed guards at every bank around the country,” he says, “but in Canada it’s like stealing candy with a mace.”

With the money rolling in, he looks for bigger opportunities with the help of mobster Tommy Kay (Mel Gibson as an Ottawa baddie).

Whiteman’s high-flying antics attract the attention of the media, who dub him the Flying Bandit, and Detective Snydes (Nestor Carbonell), a hard-nosed cop who vows to bring the travelling thief to justice.

With its light and breezy first half, “Bandit” takes a turn for the dramatic as Whiteman begins to feel the consequences of his life choices in the last half.

Like a CanCon “Catch Me If You Can,” “Bandit” is the story of a charismatic criminal whose non-violent antics are meant to entertain not outrage. To that end Duhamel hands in a likeable, witty performance as a guy who does the wrong thing, but for the right reasons. He wants a family and a regular life, but circumstance and his predilection for breaking the law always seem to get the best of him. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at,” he says of bank robbing.

Duhamel’s congeniality shaves off any rough edges the film might have developed in a more realistic portrayal of criminal life. Even Gibson, as the heavy, seems like Scorsese Lite.

Clocking in at just under two hours, “Bandit” sags in the middle. The disguises grow more and more eccentric, the robberies begin to blur into one another, but buoyed by enjoyable performances, the movie emerges as a slick, although not very deep, crime story.

SIDNEY: 4 STARS. “entertaining and informative doc about an extraordinary life.”

Sidney Poitier, who passed away in January 2022, led a remarkable life, one vividly portrayed in the Oprah Winfrey-produced documentary “Sidney,” now steaming on Apple TV+. “He doesn’t make movies, he makes milestones,” says U.S. President Barack Obama in the film, “milestones of America’s progress.”

In an interview shot with Winfrey in 2012, the “To Sir with Love” actor, staring directly into the camera, tells of his childhood in Nassau. A master storyteller, he recalls how he almost died as a baby, shares wonderful stories about his loving parents, recalls seeing a car for the first time, and marvels at his first glance into a mirror.

His move to the United States from a predominantly Black community in the Bahamas, is fraught with racism and threats of violence from the Ku Klux Klan, but tempered by kindness from a waiter who helps him learn to read, using the newspaper as a textbook.

Landing in Harlem, he is introduced to the world of acting, and has the good fortune to go on as an understudy in a New York City stage production on the same night a big-time Broadway producer is in the house. That leg up set on a path that would see him become the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor (for 1963’s Lilies of the Field), a civil right activist and diplomat.

It is a comprehensive, linear look at Poitier’s life, one that brings Winfrey to tears, and in the retelling of a pivotal scene in “In the Heat of the Night,” where Poitier, as detective Virgil Tibbs responds to being slapped by a white redneck, by slapping him back, brings a delightful response from Morgan Freeman.

Director Reginald Hudlin assembles a mix of archival footage, new interviews with Halle Berry, Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Winfrey and others, and plenty of film clips, to present a well told story of a well lived and influential life. The result is an entertaining and informative doc about an extraordinary life. “When I die,” Poitier said, “I will not be afraid of having lived.”