“Saturday Night Live” is chaotic, it’s high-stakes, and it shouldn’t work… but for 50 years it has. From the ‘Killer Bees’ to the gritty edge of the new UK reboot, we’re dissecting the house that Lorne built. Is Saturday Night Live the last gasp of ‘Old Showbiz,’ or is it the only thing keeping live performance alive? Today, we’re talking the new Lorne Michaels documentary, the Canadian comedy mafia, and the time I ended up at an after-party with Paul McCartney and Allen Ginsberg. Everything is broken, but the red light is on. Let’s go.
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Scott Hirsch to talk about the recently announced “Top Gun 3” and new releases in theatres, including the dark comedy “The Christophers,” the east coast crime drama “Little Lorraine,” the documentary “Lorne” and the Montreal coming-of-age “Mile End Kicks.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Lorne,” a new documentary now playing in theatres, Oscar winning filmmaker Morgan Neville goes behind the scenes to details the career and influence of “Saturday Night Live” creator and producer Lorne Michaels.
CAST: Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey, Chris Rock, Conan O’Brien, Maya Rudolph, Andy Samberg, John Mulaney, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Kristen Wiig, Mike Myers, Paul Simon. Directed by Morgan Neville.
REVIEW: “Lorne” attempts to peel away the shroud of mystery that surrounds the most powerful, but also most elusive, man in television. For nearly half a century—he took five years off after the show’s fifth season—the Toronto born Michaels created the template for what makes us laugh.
His influence on popular culture is immeasurable, but don’t buy a ticket for “Lorne” looking for insight into his process. Michaels is, as presented in the film, a reluctant subject. Like the Wizard of Oz, he’s the enigmatic man behind the curtain.
As a result, director Morgan Neville frames the film as a kind of comedy, an irreverent look at a serious comedic virtuoso.
Off the top Neville asks him a direct question. “What is funny?”
“It’s one of those things like pornography,” Michaels replies. “You know it when you see it.”
It’s a dryly witty line, cerebral and cryptic, and it is about as close as Michaels comes to explaining his craft.
“SNL” cast members like Tina Fey, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, John Mulaney, Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Wiig and Mike Myers reverentially chime in with stories about their time working with the producer.
Among the tales told is John Mulaney’s story about having dinner with Michaels when a random person approached their table with a script. Michaels takes the script with the assurance that he’d have a look. Why? To avoid a repeat of what happened in 1968 when record producer Terry Melcher declined to sign aspiring musician Charles Manson to a contract. Manson got his revenge with the infamous murders on Cielo Drive, so Michaels isn’t taking any chances.
The story has a mythological edge to it, as do many of the accounts of Michaels’s life.
Anecdotes of his calm amid the chaos of “SNL,” his resilience in the high stakes world of network television—” People come in every year and they leave,” Michaels says, “but I’m still here.”—of navigating cultural challenges, and his vampiric hours (goes to bed at 4 am, up at noon, at work by 4 pm), take on a folkloric tone.
In keeping with that fabled tone, Mike Myers uses a pastoral metaphor to explain Michaels and his knack for finding talent. On a trip through the country Michaels spots a pumpkin patch. Free pumpkins as far as the eye can see. In the middle of it is a guy selling pumpkins.
Why should I buy from you when I could just take the free pumpkins? “Because I have the eye,” the seller says, “I know the good pumpkins.”
“Lorne knows the good pumpkins,” says Myers.
The film never quite nails its subject, but it entertainingly portrays a show biz survivor whose legacy is his work; fifty years of “SNL” and countless films as a producer. By the time the end credits roll Michaels remains a mystery, but by his own choice. “All of life is reinvention,” he says. “To be understood? Not gonna happen.”
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make a smoothie! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the desert island drama of “Send Help,” the déjà vu of “Shelter” and the awesome animation of “ARCO.”
SYNOPSIS: In the Oscar nominated animated film “Arco,” now playing in theatres, a ten-year-old from a utopian society time travels to the dystopian world of the year 2075. “Arco, why have you come to our time? This period, it’s the worst of humanity.”
CAST: Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, Will Ferrell, America Ferrera, Andy Samberg, Flea. Written and directed by Ugo Bienvenu. Produced by Natalie Portman.
REVIEW: A family-friendly sci fi story, the animated “Arco” is an adventure film that shuns spectacle, in favor of ideas and introspection.
The action begins in 2932 with ten-year-old Arco (Juliano Krue Valdi) living a nice life in a picturesque tree city with his family. Like all preteens, he’s curious about everything, including why his family time travels on the weekends. Turns out, they go back in time to harvest extinct plants and bring them back to their world. He wants to go too, in hopes of seeing a dinosaur, but is too young.
Taking matters into his own hands, he steals his sister’s time travel suit and careens fifty years into the past. Instead of dinosaurs he finds a dystopian world, ravaged by storms, fires and other ecological disasters, where robots raise families for absent parents who only appear to tuck the kids via hologram.
There he meets Iris (Romy fay), a young girl who wants change her damaged world.
Together, with the help of Iris’s robot caretaker Mikki (Mark Ruffalo), they try and find a path home for Arco and a path forward away for Iris’s doomed world.
A story of connection and hope, “Arco” is a colorful, whimsical adventure that balances the melancholy of a world falling apart with some humor—mostly courtesy of three conspiracy theorists, Dougie, Stewie, and Frankie, voiced by Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg and Flea—and the hopeful, sweet relationship between Arco and Iris. If Steven Spielberg dabbled in animation after watching a bunch of Studio Ghibli films, this is possibly the kind of tone he’d hit.
The English version (dubbed from the original French) is a little slow in its midsection, but lively voice work and beautiful, organic looking 2D animation pick up the slack.
As it winds toward an optimistic conclusion “Arco” regains its momentum, finishing off the climate change tale on a hopeful, humanistic note. It’s a coming-of-age story, not just for Arco and Iris, but for the idealistic notion that the future lies in the hands of today’s youth.
I review the number one film in the world, “Zootopia 2” for CTVNews.ca.
“It makes for a densely packed, candy-coloured confection that lacks the cleverness of the original film, but still delivers a fun, although sometimes repetitive, experience for all ages…” Read the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Zootopia 2,” the decade-in-the-making-sequel to the 2016 Oscar winner, Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman voice odd couple, undercover police partners on the most important case of their lives.
CAST: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Shakira, Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Patrick Warburton, and Quinta Brunson. Directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard.
REVIEW: Picking up immediately after the event of the first film, the 2016 Oscar-winning animated hit “Zootopia,” the action takes place in the titular city, a big bustling metropolis run by the mammal descendants of the city’s founder, Ebeneezer Lynxley.
Fresh off solving a career making conspiracy case, the eager police officer rabbit Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and con-artist-turned-cop Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), are stumbling all over themselves to convince Chief Bogo (Idris Elba), their cape buffalo chief of police, that they aren’t one-trick-ponies, or foxes or rabbits.
“Some are questioning whether you should be partners in the first place,” Bogo tells them.
When Judy finds a piece of snakeskin, a rarity in a place where mammals don’t trust reptiles, she’s thinks it’s the first clue in her next big case.
With a reluctant Nick by her side, Judy tries to discover why pit viper Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan) is back in town, why there’s no snakes in Zootopia and why everyone wants to get their paws on a mysterious old book that predates the town.
A mishmash of puns, old-school movie references and action delivered at supersonic speed, “Zootopia 2” threatens to careen out of control but strays on track to deliver a family friendly crime caper with plenty of laughs and heart.
Directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard, working from a script by Bush, lay it on thick for all members of the family. It’s probably the first kid’s flick about gentrification, which will likely fly over the heads of the younger set, but the vibrant animation and frenetic action should keep kids entertained while adults will catch the endless puns—Gnu Jersey anyone?—and call backs to “Ratatouille,” “The Godfather,” “Silence of the Lambs” and the original movie among others.
It makes for a densely packed, candy coloured confection that lacks the cleverness of the original film but still delivers a fun, although sometimes repetitive, experience for all ages.
SYNOPSIS: Inspired by the 1981 novel “The War of the Roses” by Warren Adler, and the 1989 film with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, “The Roses” sees Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as married couple Theo and Ivy. Their picture-perfect relationship dissolves into resentment when Theo’s career takes a dip while Ivy’s own ambitions take off.
CAST: Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Andy Samberg, and Kate McKinnon. Directed by Jay Roach.
REVIEW: This story of the thin line between love and hate begins with love at first sight. British architect Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) and chef Ivy (Olivia Colman) have instant chemistry and soon find themselves living in San Francisco with their two kids, Hattie and Roy.
Life is good.
Even though Ivy’s restaurant, I Got Crabs and I Loved It is struggling, Theo’s bold design for a new maritime museum is just about to celebrate its grand opening. “We want to be the couple who supports one another completely,” she says.
When a storm hits their coastal town, closing off the main road, traffic is diverted to her failing restaurant. For the first time ever, the place is packed. On the other side of town, the same storm tears the roof off Theo’s latest design, collapsing the building and his self-worth.
The next morning, he is unemployable, crushed and embarrassed. “It was everything to me,” he says. Her business, however, is bolstered by a rave review in the paper from a food critic who was stranded by the storm.
As Ivy’s culinary empire blossoms, Theo’s jealousy and resentment grows.
Unemployable, he stays home with the kids as Ivy buzzes around in private jets, consumed with growing her restaurant empire.
When he designs a beautiful home for them—which she pays for—their discontent ripens, pushing them to extremes. “Someone has to sacrifice themselves on the altar of our marriage,” she says. “But who is it going to be?”
“The Roses” is top loaded with laughs. In the film’s first minutes Cumberbatch and Colman set the tone with their edgy back and forth—”In England we call that repartee,” Theo says—tossing off one-liners in response to a therapist’s suggestion that they list ten things they love about one another.
“I would rather be with her than a wolf,” he says.
“He has arms,” she says.
The scene is fast, funny and establishes their tetchy, witty banter as the couple’s love language. In a departure from the original film, Ivy and Theo actually seem to like one another, even when they don’t.
Theo’s treatment of their children—he weans them off Ivy’s homemade sweets in favor of hardcore exercise—is a major source of tension in the couple, but it’s the kids who are also, in many ways, the glue that holds them together.
That dynamic makes for a more realistic look at a couple near the breaking point, but it also slows down the “endlessly whirring machine” the couple finds themselves trapped in. The propulsive vibe of the film’s first act fades as the story sits at a slow simmer for much of its latter half.
Still, even though this iteration of the story doesn’t lean into the farcical elements, or much of the nastiness of the original, it’s a pleasure to watch Cumberbatch and Colman effortlessly cut through this material like a hot knife through butter.
