I join CTV Atlantic’s Bruce Frisco to talk about the playful “Toy Story 5,” the grim historical drama “The Death of Robin Hood” and the supernatural horrors of “Leviticus.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join “CP24 Breakfast” hosts Nick Dixon and Jennifer Hsiung to talk about the playful “Toy Story 5” and the grim historical drama “The Death of Robin Hood.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I review “Toy Story 5” for ctvnews.ca: “By the time a franchise gets to the fifth instalment it’s usually a case of diminishing returns. The further you get from the source, the worse the movie. Luckily, “Toy Story 5” defies traditional wisdom, delivering a movie for the whole family that brims with heart and humour…” Read the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the playful “Toy Story 5,” the grim historical drama “The Death of Robin Hood” and the supernatural horrors of “Leviticus.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Toy Story 5,” the new Pixar animated film now in theatres, eight-year-old Bonnie shifts from tradition toys to a newfangled tablet.
CAST: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Tony Hale, Annie Potts, John Ratzenberger, Wallace Shawn, Blake Clark, Keanu Reeves, Bonnie Hunt, Kristen Schaal, Ernie Hudson, Melissa Villaseñor, Greta Lee, Conan O’Brien, Craig Robinson, Shelby Rabara, Matty Matheson, Bad Bunny. Directed by Andrew Stanton.
REVIEW: By the time a franchise gets to the fifth instalment it is usually a case of diminishing returns. The further you get from the source, the worse the movie. Luckily, “Toy Story 5” defies traditional wisdom, delivering a movie for the whole family that brims with heart and humor.
The story revolves around lonely eight-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the only kid on the block who still plays with toys, like the cowgirl rag doll Jessie (Joan Cusack) and superhero action hero Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). The other kids spend their time on their screens and don’t have time for a girl who still plays with dolls.
Hoping to help her fit in, Bonnie’s parents (Lori Alan and Jay Hernandez) buy her a Lilypad (Greta Lee), a frog-shaped smart tablet that comes complete with games, chat rooms, social media and a very assertive attitude.
“Once tech enters your home,” says tech-phobic toy Dr. Nutcase (voiced by Matty Matheson), “it’s over.”
As Bonnie plays games and joins chat rooms on the device she spends less and less time with Jessie and the other toys.
“Extinction!” yelps Rex the dinosaur (Wallace Shawn). “Not again!”
With the help of a team of Buzz Lightyears and cowboy ragdoll Woody (Tom Hanks), who returns from rescuing abandoned toys, Jessie sets off to make sure Bonnie makes new friends, without forgetting about her toy pals.
“Playing games isn’t play,” Woody says.
“Toy Story 5” isn’t the old man of the franchise, yelling at tech to get off their lawn. Nor is it a story about the evils of tech. Instead, it’s a testament to the power of imagination.
It’s about screens vs. imagination and the joys that come when an unstructured young mind is allowed to run wild, to create and learn. But the screenplay, by Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris, doesn’t dismiss the place of passive tech in the modern world, it simply favors playtime over screen time.
As a movie, “Toy Story 5” has a sense of play about itself. Like the best of Pixar, it tackles real world issues like on-line bullying, insecurity (“What if am I just no good at being a toy?” asks Jessie.), the value of childhood memories and what true friends are but does so in a way that never feels maudlin. Director Stanton keeps things lively, pulling fun voice work from the returning cast, plus new additions like Conan O’Brien who has a blast voicing Smarty Pants, a toilet training tablet, and inserting some self-aware jokes, like depicting Woody, presumably the oldest of the toys, with a bald spot.
Add to that, beautiful cinematic visuals, with state-of-the-art 3D computer animation embellished with a lovely, handcrafted look for the imagination scenes, and you have a fine addition to the “Toy Story” franchise, rich in timely themes of the effects of tech on blossoming minds but never preachy or pedantic.
I join CHUM-FM’s Marilyn Denis and David Corey to talk about “Toy Story 5,” “The Odyssey” and why people are going back to the movies!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
See video HERE!
After a quick detour to Summerville, Oklahoma, the fifth movie in the Ghostbusters Universe sees the Spengler family back where the story began. “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” now playing in theatres, grafts a proton blast of nostalgia to a new supernatural story of tiny Stay Puft Marshmallow Men, Spenglers and an iconic New York City firehouse.
In 2021’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” OG (Original Ghostbuster) Egon Spengler’s daughter Callie (Carrie Coon), her two teenage kids, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), move to Egon’s abandoned Oklahoma farmhouse. When apocalyptic entity Gozer the Gozerian enters the scene, the family, along with mentor Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd) and some familiar faces—Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson)—team to keep the world safe.
The new film sees Callie, the kids and Grooberson, now Callie’s boyfriend, bustin’ ghosts in New York City. Using Egon’s tools, they zoom through the streets in the classic Ectomobile, and operate out of the firehouse made famous in the first film. Zeddemore now owns the building, which has become dangerously overstuffed with trapped ghosts.
On top of that, when the fast-talking Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) sells Stantz an ancient orb, it releases Garraka, an ice demon with the power to harness an army of escaped ghosts and trigger a new Ice Age. “The Death Chill,” says Stanz. “Your veins turn onto rivers of ice. Your bones crack. And the last thing you see is your own tear ducts freezing up.”
To stop this “unimaginable evil” the Ghostbusters, old and new, must once again band together.
Another face from the past also resurfaces. Forty years after their first run in, former EPA inspector Walter Peck (William Atherton), is now NYC’s mayor, and still holds a grudge. “The Ghostbusters are finished,” he says.
“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” is busting at the seams, and not just with ghosts. A jumble of old and new characters, mythology and fan service, it’s overstuffed and yet feels lacking.
Aside from Mckenna, Aykroyd and Emily Alyn Lind as Melody, a lonely ghost who befriends Phoebe, none of the other characters make much of an impression, other than looking cool while posing with proton packs. It’s fun to see Hudson in an expanded role, but Murray doesn’t really appear, it’s more like he arrives, leaving a trail of Venkmanesque one-liners in his wake.
Rudd, Potts and most of the new proton pack slingers, however, all take a backseat to the busy story.
Fans will get a kick out of Slimer’s return, a haunted pizza is funny and the new Ice Demon, for the brief time they occupy the screen, is a creepy and cool addition to the Ghostbusters menagerie of meanies, but the script, penned by director Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, doesn’t deliver the laughs. There are amusing moments, but the broadly comedic tone established by the classic “Ghostbusters” movies has been replaced by an earnest, nostalgic flavor.
“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” isn’t exactly a bust, but there isn’t as much life left in the franchise as die-hard fans may have hoped.
With the release of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the supernatural comedy now playing in theatres, the Reitman family proves they ain’t afraid of no sequels. The fourth film in the franchise sees Jason Reitman, son of the original director Ivan, reinvent the series, this time for a younger audience.
The reboot begins with single mother Callie (Carrie Coon) inheriting a rundown old house from her estranged OG (Original Ghostbuster) father Egon Spengler. Located just outside the tiny town of Summerville, Oklahoma, it’s “worthless aside from the sentimental value,” but Callie is desperate. She’s been evicted from her city apartment and sees the move as a way to start a new life for her two teenage kids, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace).
“We’re completely broke,” Trevor tells a friend. “And the only thing that’s left in our name is this creepy old farmhouse my grandfather left us in the middle of nowhere.”
Summerville is far from New York City, the original epicenter of Ghostbuster’s supernatural activity, “human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria,” but it turns out the sleepy little town is also haunted. Phoebe, who takes after the grandfather she never met, is sensitive to the ghostly goings-on and with the help of her grandad’s old ghost traps, new mentor Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd) and some familiar faces, she will attempt to get to the bottom of the paranormal problem.
Despite the Reitman name front and center, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” doesn’t really feel like a “Ghostbusters” film. There is plenty of fan service and call backs to the original movie but the humor is muted and the anarchy of the first film is replaced by family drama. Modelled after the kid led adventure movies of the 1980s, it feels more like a coming-of-age indie grafted onto a big studio premise.
Reitman populates the film with likable characters. Grace nails the nebbish Phoebe, creating a deadpan wise-beyond-her-years character that blends seamlessly into the “Ghostbusters” world and as her sidekick Podcast, Logan Kim is a scene stealer. The adults, Coon and Rudd, acquit themselves well, and Dan Ackroyd’s first scene is the best role he’s had in years.
But despite the characters the story takes too long to get to the ghostly stuff. Once there, it delivers a proton blast of nostalgia and an epic CGI supernatural showdown, but at twenty minutes longer than the original it feels stretched.
“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” attempts to pay tribute to the franchise while moving it forward in a different direction but despite a couple stand out performances, it is a ghost of the original.
“Toy Story 3” seemed like the end of the line for Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Company. Andy, the young boy who loved and cared for them (just as much as they loved and cared for him) put away childish things and headed off for college, leaving his toys on the curb. As it turns out the end of their time with Andy was the beginning of a new life with spunky five-year-old Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw).
These days Woody (Tom Hanks), the gangly pull-string cowboy doll who was Andy’s favourite, sits, unloved and unused in Bonnie’s closet. He may be gathering dust bunnies but he takes his job very seriously. Woody passionately believes that he and the other toys play a crucial part in the upbringing of their child, so when it comes time for Bonnie to go to orientation day at kindergarten he tags along. When a boy bullies her, taking away her arts-and-craft supplies, Woody leaps into action, rescuing some crayons and odds and ends from the garbage for her. Brushing aside her tears she makes a toy out of a spork, a pipe cleaner, some googly eyes and a wooden ice cream spoon. She names it Forky (Tony Hale) and soon they are inseparable. Trouble is, Forky is in the midst of an existential crisis. ”I am not a toy,” he says, “I belong in the trash.” When Forky gets loose during a family road trip, Woody sees it as his duty to track him down and return him to Bonnie. With the help of pals Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack), goofy T-Rex (Wallace Shawn) and others including a doll with a broken voice box (Christina Hendricks), Woody goes on an adventure and learns what it really means to be a toy.
Like the other entries in the “Toy Story” franchise, “4” doubles down on themes that other recent kid’s films have taken pains to avoid. Loss, moving on, unrequited love (yup, toys can fall in love) and good vs evil sit alongside the more traditional leitmotifs of friendship and loyalty. The movie can’t really be described as dark, although the ventriloquist dummies are the stuff of nightmares, but it has a level of emotional maturity that is part of Pixar’s trademark.
Part of that is likely due to the investment we have in these characters. Adult members of the audience have been watching these films for twenty-five years, literally growing up with Woody and Buzz and the kindly voicework that comes along with them, particularly from Hanks whose voice has the same effect as a cuddly warm blanket. As animated characters they are free to explore deeper emotional troughs, I think, because they look like toys. If this wasn’t animated, if the characters weren’t made of rubber and plastic, their travails may not be lessened but they might be less palatable for kids.
The main story focusses on Woody and his self-realization but he’s supported by a raft of new characters. Keanu Reeves plays Duke Caboom, a small plastic motorcycle daredevil from Canada (Who’s the Canuck with all the luck? Who’s the greatest of the Great White North?). He’s heroic in his own way, a wannabe champion with a funny and (here’s that word again) poignant backstory.
Forky’s journey is McGuffin that drives the plot forward. The story isn’t really about him but his search for purpose is a good fit for the “Toy Story” universe. Hale’s voicework brings a fun sense of confusion—Forky is a Frankenstein character, a child discovering the world—that keeps his character interesting and amusing.
Best of all is Hendricks as Gabby Gabby, the vintage doll who was “defective out of the box.” She has the widest arc of any of the characters, (MILD SPOILER) from villainous to sympathetic, and the tone of Hendricks’ voice is both menacing and doll-like.
“Toy Story 4” doesn’t feel like a classic in the same way the original did (and still does) but the laughs and the heart-tugging moments feel earned because Pixar place story and character ahead of the frenetic action so often showcased in other films for children. It is essentially an action/adventure movie, less complex than “1,” “2” and “3,” but there is an undeniable poignancy and yes, adult fans may even shed a tear or two as the long running story comes to a conclusion.
