“I Like Movies,” a coming-of-age story set against a background of angst, anxiety and Paul Thomas Anderson, is a period piece set in a time when local Blockbusters were shrines for suburban film lovers.
Set in 2003, in Burlington, Ontario, a small city midway between Toronto and Niagara Falls, the film centers around teenage film bro and wannabe moviemaker Lawrence Kweller (Isaiah Lehtinen). Arrogant and insecure, he allows his love of film, dream of attending NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and anxiety alienate the most important people in his life.
His life is changed when he gets a job at Sequels, a cheekily-named video store in his hometown. He’s there for the ten free weekly rentals available to employees and to recommend obscure art films to folks who would rather watch “Shrek.”
The job, of course, isn’t exactly what Lawrence hoped it would be. At the insistence of his manager Alana (Romina D’Ugo) he is forced to wear a sash, emblazed with the titles of movies he thinks are beneath him. And, let’s face it, learning to rotate stock in the drink cooler is about as far from movie making as you can get.
As the summer ends so does the dream of attending NYU, forcing Lawrence, with the help of his frazzled mother (Krista Bridges) and some tough love from Alana, to rethink his movie dreams and confront reality.
Part work-place comedy—think “High Fidelity” only set in a video store—part character study, “I Like Movies” is sweet-natured, funny film that digs deep to make us feel empathy for Lawrence, a socially awkward character who hides his real feelings behind a facade of bluster and pretension.
Lawrence is not a likable character, at least not when we first meet him, and yet director and screenwriter Chandler Levack—who worked in at a Blockbuster Video as a teen—inspires empathy for him. His arrogant bluster stems from insecurity, and the more we get to know about him, the more we feel for him even as he drones on about Paul Thomas Anderson or Stanley Kubrick. As Alana pushes him to reevaluate his attitudes and look at life beyond the screen, Lehtinen allows us to see the wheels turning inside the character’s head as his redemption looms.
Strong performances, particularly from Lehtinen and D’Ugo, and a genuinely heartfelt script make this take on adolescent angst (and film bros) a winning debut for Levack.
In Hollywood he last name Farrelly comes with expectations. As a duo, the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, were mainstays of big-screen gross-out comedies with titles like “Me, Myself & Irene” and “There’s Something About Mary” decorating their IMDB page.
On his own, eldest brother Peter scored big with “Green Book,” an earnest film whose depiction of race relations in 1960s America won three Oscars, but was a step away from the kind of work that made him famous.
This weekend, younger brother Bobby strikes out on his own with “Champions.” A remake of a 2018 Goya Award winning Spanish film, the new version starring Woody Harrelson, now playing in theatres, is neither as funny as his early work or as Oscar-baity as his brother’s solo debut.
The action begins at a J League, Iowa Stallions basketball game. The clock is counting down when Coach Phil (Ernie Hudson) makes a call that irks assistant coach, and basketball know-it-all Marcus (Harrelson).
“He knows the game better than anyone I’ve ever known or played with,” says Phil, “but he doesn’t know the players.”
As usual, the hot-headed Marcus lets his temper gets the best of him and he pushes Phil to the ground. Fired, he drowns his sorrows at a bar, gets arrested and is sentenced to ninety days Community Service coaching the “Friends,” a b’ball team of adults with intellectual disabilities at a local rec center.
With an eye toward competing in the Special Olympics, Marcus teaches the team as they teach him to see the players for who they really are, and not just for their skill set on the court.
“Champions” is a very specific story about Marcus’s redemption via a team that teaches him the true meaning of what it means to be a team, but in its specificity, it becomes an open-hearted, universal tale of the power of respect and acceptance. And fart and barf gags because, this is, after all, a Farrelly movie.
It is also a Farrelly movie in the way it treats its characters. The film was shot in Manitoba and cast through St. Amant, a non-profit organization that works with Manitobans who live with developmental disabilities and autism. Echoing past movies like “Stuck on You” and “There’s Something About Mary,” Farrelly wisely makes the young actors who make up the team the film’s beating heart. He treats them with respect while allowing them to carry a large part of the story.
Even though the story was inspired by the Aderes team in Burjassot who won twelve Spanish championships between 1999 and 2014, “Champions” is predictable. You can guess that, win or lose, Marcus will be as affected by the team as they are by him, so it’s about the journey, not the destination, and Farrelly has cast well, choosing actors we get invested in. Harrelson brings edge and warmth, and Kaitlin Olson, as Marcus’s sorta-kinda love interest has edge and compassion. Everyone in the film is a champion in their own way but it is the Friends who make this a winning film.
We’ve all seen boy and his dog movies about the deep relationship between humans and animals like “White Fang” and the simply named “Dog,” with Channing Tatum and a Belgian Malinois.
“Blueback,” a new Australian family picture starting Mia Wasikowska and now playing in theatres, mines similar territory, but this time it’s the story of a girl, her blue groper and the love of the ocean.
Wasikowska Is marine biologist Abby who grew up exploring the ocean around the coast of her Western Australian childhood home. “We were born in the water,” says her mother Dora (Elizabeth Alexander).
When Dora suffers a debilitating stroke that leaves her unable to speak, Abby returns home. Hoping a return to the sea will aid in Dora’s recovery, they travel to the coast.
From here, the story toggles between Abby’s childhood and the discovery of a rare blue groper—the Blueback of the title—that inspired the eco-activism that shaped her life, and the present day.
“Blueback” is a well-intentioned but heavy-handed film that mixes-and-matches mother and daughter dynamics with messages about the fragility of marine environments and the importance of conservationism. The movie’s main thrusts are intertwined and, unfortunately, over explained. Repetition and excessive exposition blunt the movie’s mission somewhat, despite fine performances from Wasikowska and Radha Mitchell, who plays Dora in the flashbacks.
The film’s storytelling deficiencies, however, are alleviated somewhat by beautiful underwater photography and the urgency of the conservation messaging.
I join NewsTalk 1010’s Jim Richards on the coast to coast “NewsTalk Tonight” to have a look at Chris Rock’s much delayed response to the Will Smith slap heard ’round the world.
I’ll join host Steven Skurka and Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday to discuss the Academy Awards, the nominations and their relevance in the pandemic world.
I join Canada’s number one mid-morning show “The Marilyn Denis Show” to help you fill out your Oscar ballots. On Ma=rch 6 tune in to see which movies and actor I think will take home the gold on March 12!
Meridian Hall in Toronto celebrates the 30th anniversary of “Jurassic Park” with the TO Live Orchestra performing John Williams’ iconic score on Friday March 3 and Saturday March 4.
Before the show, from 7 to 7:30 pm, I’ll host a preshow chat, located in the lower lobby at Meridian Hall, with orchestra member, trombonist Robert Conquer. We’ll talk about the movie, the score and reveal what it is like to play along to one of the most famous movies of the 1990s!
On this edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet director Chandler Levack, whose debut feature film, “I Like Movies,” will be in theatres on March 10. The film festival hit is based on her experiences working at a Blockbuster Video in Burlington, Ontario in the early 2000s. It’s the story of how movie obsessive Lawrence Kweller (Isaiah Lehtinen) allows his love of film, dream of attending NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and anxiety, alienate the most important people in his life. Part work-place comedy—think “High Fidelity” only set in a video store—part character study, “I Like Movies” is sweet-natured, funny film that digs deep to make us feel empathy for Lawrence, a socially awkward character who hides his real feelings behind a facade of bluster and pretension. Strong performances and a genuinely heartfelt script make this take on adolescent angst a winning debut for Levack.
Then, C. J. Tudor, bestselling author of “The Burning Girls,” “The Other People,” “The Hiding Place” and “The Chalk Man,” which won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, stops by. Over the years she has worked as a copywriter, television presenter, who asked Tim Robbins an embarrassing questions, a voice-over artist, and dog walker. Today we’ll talk about some of those jobs and her new novel, “The Drift,” a heart-pounding new novel about three ordinary people who risk everything for a chance at redemption.
And finally, we spend time with “In the Key of Dale” author Benjamin Lefebvre. He is a writer based in Kitchener, Ont. His edited books include the anthology “The L.M. Montgomery Reader,” which won the 2016 PROSE Award for Literature from the Association of American Publishers, and an edition of L.M. Montgomery’s rediscovered final book, “The Blythes Are Quoted.”
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!
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I join NewsTalk 1010’s Jim Richards to tell the story of the first time I heard Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” which turns 50 years old this week.
