SYNOPSIS: In “You, Me & Tuscany,” a new rom com starring Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page now playing in theatres, a directionless twenty-something woman crashes at an empty Italian villa and is mistaken for the owner’s fiancée.
CAST: Halle Bailey, Regé-Jean Page, Lorenzo de Moor, Isabella Ferrari, Aziza Scott, Marco Calvani, Nia Vardalos. Directed by Kat Coiro.
REVIEW: Coming hot on the heels of subversive romantic comedies like “The Drama,” “Anora,” “Materialists” and “Pillion” comes an old-school rom com that, for better and for worse, embraces the genres tropes.
“The Little Mermaid’s” Halle Bailey stars as Anna, an aimless twenty-something who gave up on her dream of becoming a chef after her mother died. When she loses her house-sitting job, and finds herself with nowhere to live, she impulsively decides to change her life after a chance encounter with Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), handsome Italian man with a villa in sun-drenched Tuscany.
“It’s not about him,” she tells BFF Claire (Aziza Scott). “He doesn’t even live there anymore, but he told me about his big old villa just sitting there… Empty.”
Uninvited, she plans on spending one night in the empty villa, but the plan is thrown into chaos when Matteo’s mother Gabriella (Isabella Ferrari) drops by without warning. Panicked, she poses as Matteo’s fiancée.
“You can pretend to be his fiancée or you go to prison,” says cab driver Lorenzo (Marco Calvani). “Either way, it’s very romantic.”
The situation gets even more complicated when Matteo’s cousin, Michael (Regé-Jean Page) arrives. As he encourages her to rediscover her passion for food and life, romance blossoms. “You belong here,” he tells her.
Pure escapism, “You, Me & Tuscany” is a glossy return to the formulaic rom com that offers no surprises, just cheesy, sweet-natured feel-good laughs tinged with romance.
It’s comfort food that doesn’t ask much of the audience. It’s enough to sit back and watch the rom com clichés as they fly to the air.
There are both the standard rom com New York setting and loads of HGTV Tuscan lifestyle porn, a brash best friend, a meet cute, misunderstandings and appealing leads who (A SPOILER BUT ONLY IF YOU’VE NEVER SEEN A ROM COM BEFORE!) you know will eventually end up together. These movies aren’t about the destination, one glance at the movie poster on the way into the theatre will let you know how the story ends, they are about the journey.
The key element is the cast and here both leads, Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page, exude enough warmth and charm to keep things interesting despite the familiarity of the story. They’re the story’s heart and are surrounded by a cast of wacky characters
The beauty of “You, Me & Tuscany” is that it is, loudly and proudly, a slick and frothy, relentlessly upbeat rom com with all that entails. It’s a story of forgiveness, family, and food for fans of the genre. All others needn’t apply.
SYNOPSIS: In “Outcome,” a new dark comedy now streaming on Apple TV+, Keanu Reeves stars as an a-lister amid a public relations crisis that just may change his life forever.
CAST: Keanu Reeves, Hill, Matt Bomer, Cameron Diaz, David Spade, Laverne Cox, Roy Wood Jr., Susan Lucci. Directed by Jonah Hill.
REVIEW: A set-up that suggests broad comedy soon finds a more reflective tone as it delves into themes of accountability, authenticity and the TMZification of celebrity culture. “You don’t have to do anything to be famous,” says damage control expert Virginia Allen Green (Laverne Cox). “You just have to be.”
When we first meet Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves) he’s stepping back into public life after a five-year break to get sober and get his life in order. One of the biggest stars in Hollywood, he was a child actor who went on to win two Oscars, star in three blockbuster franchises and become “the most beloved movie star in the world.”
As he plots his comeback a PR crisis threatens to derail everything he’s worked for. Someone has uncovered a video of… something. Something unsavory and they will make public unless Hawk coughs up big bucks to bury the tape.
Crisis lawyer Ira Slitz (Jonah Hill)—whose bumper sticker reads: “Honk if you can separate the art from the artist”—suggests Hawk make up an inventory of everyone who hates him. It’s a long list that includes his mother (Susan Lucci), his first manager (Martin Scorsese), an old flame (Welker White) and a laundry list of former employees and acquaintances.
“We need to go see them and apologize,” Ira says, hoping that face to face contact will reveal who is behind the extortion. “You don’t have to mean it you just have to go through the motions.”
What begins as a manufactured apology tour soon becomes a journey of personal growth.
An emotional road trip, “Outcome” is funny, but not ha ha funny à la “The Studio,” the blistering Hollywood satire from Hill’s former co-star Seth Rogen. Hill brings a manic energy to his scenes that raise a few chuckles, but this is an oddly melancholic satire that feels more like an extended therapy session as it ping pongs between heartfelt scenes of raw humanity to Hill’s occasionally R-rated riffs.
The tonal shifts can be jarring, but this is a movie with a lot on its mind and acres of ground to cover in a brief 80 minutes. A bittersweet look at the behind the scenes of stardom, it dives deep into the personal toll fame takes, but also takes pointed jabs at attention culture, victim capitalism and being famous in the age of sex videos. The speed at which Hill jumps between topics and tones is occasionally whip lash inducing, but with its desaturated color pallet and introspective moments the movie finds a thoughtful tone that allows Reef to find happiness in his life despite, not because, of his fame.
SYNOPSIS: A study of anxiety and the endless loop of modern life, “Exit 8,” a new Japanese film now playing in theatres, takes inspiration from a videogame of the same name and adds existential horror into the mix.
REVIEW: After discovering his girlfriend is pregnant, The Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya) is plunged into a psychological hell of endless, looping subway corridors. The only way out is Exit 8, but to find it he must follow a very simple, but specific set of rules.
As he roams the halls, if he sees an anomaly, something out of place in the white tiled, sterile corridors, like a doorknob appearing on the wrong place or a small boy, a.k.a. The Lost Boy (Naru Asanuma), he must turn back. Make a mistake, miss something, and he’ll have to restart the journey at Exit 0. If there’s no anomaly, he can move forward.
The Kafka-esque nightmare of paranoia and frustration, turns the story’s monotonous repetition into urgent horror. What begins as a simple concept of a Möbius strip style purgatory becomes a study of disassociation, the anxiety of modern life, responsibility and redemption. The monster here is emotional, a manifestation of The Lost Man’s psyche, not an unnatural creature. He’s grappling with scary ideas of fatherhood, accountability and commitment.
Director Genki Kawamura keeps the visuals minimalist, playing against preconceived notions of dark and dank horror with stark, brightly lit tiled corridors that shine a light on the growing dismay and frustration. The asceticism allows the audience to keep an eye open for anomalies, but more importantly, keeps the focus on Ninomiya’s subtle performance. Timid and nervous, with a growing sense of fear, his everyman work grounds the surreal situation with a sense of humanity.
“Exit 8’s” repetition becomes unsettlingly disorienting without the use of jump scares or other horror tropes. Instead, it’s an immersive film that plays on repetition to hypnotic effect.
SYNOPSIS: In “The Yeti,” a new low budget monster movie now on VOD, a rescue team sets out to find an oil tycoon and a famous adventurer whovanished in Yeti territory.
CAST: Brittany Allen, Eric Nelsen, Jim Cummings, William Sadler, Corbin Bernsen. Directed and written by Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta.
REVIEW: A return to “a guy in a furry suit” monster movies, “The Yeti” is a lo fi survival flick with practical effects that harken back to the heyday of drive-in creature feature nights.
First-time directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta clearly have a love for the direct-to-video/DVD genre. They were the movies you rented when you had either seen everything else at least twice, or you wanted something to watch with a few beers, or something stronger.
Populated with fading and/or emerging stars, they were generally formulaic, genre driven grindhouse style movies that generally made up in fun what they lacked in production value.
Such is the case with “The Yeti.”
The marquee comes decorated with names like “L.A. Law” star Corben Bernsen and genre favorite William Sadler, in addition to an eager cast of players, including the entertainingly named Elizabeth Cappuccino.
The story itself is pure b-movie hokum.
Set in 1947, it picks up after a famed adventurer (Sadler) and an oil tycoon (Bernsen) vanished without a trace in the wilds of Alaska. Curious to know their father’s fates, the missing men’s kids (Brittany Allen and Eric Nelsen) assemble a ragtag team, with nicknames like Watchdog—“Watchdog doesn’t fetch… he hunts.”—Doctor, Radio and Demolition, to bundle up and travel to snowy Alaska to retrace their father’s footsteps. The worst part of the adventure? It’s not the unforgiving weather or the isolation. It’s the ferocious Yeti, a giant, hairy beast, the result, we’re told, of “20,000 years of primal evolution.”
This trip to Yeti territory is actually a journey down memory lane to a time when movie monsters lurked in the shadows to create suspense and disguise any shortcomings in the creature’s makeup. In this case the Yeti, a kind of man-shaped polar bear, is more fun than terrifying, but Gallerano and Pisciotta take their time, working up to the Yeti’s bloody on-screen debut, building tension up to the reveal. That the practical effects bring more of an organic feel to “The Yeti” than actual scares is OK because they are delivered with old-school b-movie exuberance and buckets of blood.
SYNOPSIS: A bold, modern version of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, “Hamlet” stars Riz Ahmed on the title character’s quest for revenge and justice.
CAST: Riz Ahmed, Morfydd Clark, Joe Alwyn, Sheeba Chaddha, Avijit Dutt, Art Malik, Timothy Spall, Aneil Karia,
REVIEW: Riz Ahmed brings an electrifying energy to an adaptation of “Hamlet” that maintains Shakespeare’s archaic words and inverted syntax, but thrillingly modernizes the story’s themes of vengeance, madness and mortality.
Set against a backdrop of London’s South Asian community, the film begins with Riz Ahmed as Hamlet, heir to his family’s property development empire Elsinore Construction, returning home from abroad to attend his father’s funeral.
From the ghost of his late father, he learns his uncle Claudius (Art Malik) is responsible for the death, knocking off the elder to take control of his business and marry his widow Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha). “My uncle is the cause of all this,” Hamlet rages. “There is a villain dwelling in our home.”
Overcome with anger, Hamlet embarks on a journey of manufactured madness and moral torment fueled by bloody revenge. “It’s common, my son,” says Gertrude. “All that lives must die.”
There are a few omissions in this new telling of the tale—poor Yorik doesn’t make the cut—but Shakespeare’s greatest hits are, by and large, used to good effect. Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy, the “To be, or not to be” speech, is highlighted, delivered as the Prince aggressively careens through London traffic.
Most importantly, the spirit of the Bard remains, even if the screenplay by British playwright Michael Lesslie embellishes the language with Hindi/Urdu words and phrases. The result is a psychological thriller, harsh and intense, that honors its literary roots but brings an immediacy and excitement to the story.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, or, in this case London, and it’s the vivid thematic stench of treachery and corporate and personal greed that is infused into every frame.
“Hamlet” benefits from director Aneil Karia’s streamlining of the story—down to 114 minutes from the original 4-5 hours—the performances and the vibrant visuals and music derived from the film’s South Asian influences.
Unlike Joel Coen’s 2001 “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” which leaned into a theatrical look and feel, Karia embraces the realism of “Hamlet’s” themes and big city setting, highlighting the film’s urgency with an energetic cinematic vibe.
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make your bed. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the uncom rom com “The Drama,” the outer space antics of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and the singular “Dead Lover.”
The Junos came and went… but where were Canada’s biggest stars?
In this episode of Entertainment Is Broken, Sarah Hanlon and I dig into the growing debate around Canadian identity in entertainment… and whether artists like Justin Bieber, Drake, and Tate McRae are still “Canadian” when it counts.
Is it about where you’re born… or where your career is built?
They break down:
Why so many major artists skipped the Juno Awards
Whether success in the U.S. changes an artist’s identity
The idea of being “Canadian when convenient”
Why artists like Joni Mitchell and Rush still feel deeply connected to Canada
And whether Canada needs to rethink how it supports its own talent
It’s a funny, sharp, and surprisingly real conversation about culture, success, and what we actually mean when we say “Canadian.”
If you’ve ever wondered why Canada’s biggest stars don’t always come home… this one’s for you.
I join CTV NewsChannel’s Scott Hirsch to talk about the uncom rom com “The Drama,” the outer space antics of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and the singular “Dead Lover.”
I review “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” for ctvnews.ca, the #1 digital news publisher in reach!
“I wasn’t expecting a kid-friendly “Super Mario’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but the film’s emphasis on eye candy and Easter eggs over detailed storytelling or character arcs lessens the movie’s impact…” Read the whole thing HERE!
