Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch:” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I joined CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to have a look at new movies coming to theatres, including Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres including “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch:” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I review the Hawaiian-set “Lilo & Stitch” and tell you about the legend of the Hawaiian cocktail so popular, it created a rum shortage.
Click HERE to hear Shane and I tell you how to get to Sesame Street (again), why George Clooney will be on CNN and how JIm Morrison lost his head (don’t worry, it’s been found).
Click HERE to listen to a tropical Booze & Reviews as I review “Lilo & Stitch” and tell you about some tasty tropical cocktails.
SYNOPSIS: This live-action animated remake of Disney’s 2002 animated film, “Lilo & Stitch” tells the story of Lilo, a lonely girl who befriends a mischievous, koala-like alien named Stitch. Despite Stitch’s genetic disposition to causing chaos, Lilo’s belief in ohana, the Hawaiian concept of family, helps Stitch com e to believe in love.
CAST: Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders, Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Hannah Waddingham, Billy Magnussen, Zach Galifianakis, and Courtney B. Vance, Tia Carrere, Amy Hill, Jason Scott Lee. Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp.
REVIEW: The latest live-action remake from Disney is an entertaining family film that may give fans of the 2002 movie déjà vu, but there’s just enough new stuff here to please older, nostalgic fans and win over new converts.
The new version, directed by “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” helmer Dean Fleischer Camp, follows the template set by the 2002 animated movie.
When we first meet Stitch he is known as Experiment 626. He’s the brilliant, but destructive creation of mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis). Born in a lab to be an agent of chaos, he is deemed too dangerous to stay on his home planet. As he is about to be exiled, 626 makes a run for it, hijacking a space craft and ultimately crash landing in Hawaii, where he is adopted by a lonely six-year-old named Lilo (Maia Kealoha) who thinks he is a dog.
In reality, he’s more of a cross between Keith Moon and Wile E. Coyote.
Since the death of her parents Lilo has been taken care of by her older sister Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong) who struggles to make ends meet and is now under the watchful eye of a social worker played by Tia Carrere.
With agents from his home planet and a determined CIA agent with the unlikely name of Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance) on the search for him, Stitch remains a troublemaker but soon learns the importance of feeling safe with Lilo and Nani, his new, adopted family.
The heightened family relationships give this otherwise run-of-the-mill alien tale a great deal of heart. It unapologetically slips into sentimentality, but the bond between Lilo and Nani, and later with Stitch, is the stuff of good kid’s cinema. The story doesn’t have the depth that Camp was able to infuse into every frame of “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” but he does a good job with the simple message of finding family in whatever form they appear.
Add to that Stitch’s hijinks, which are gently chaotic and likely to appeal to kids more than adults, and you get an entertaining kid’s flick that doesn’t improve on the 2002 film—it lacks the visual beauty of the original’s mix of hand drawn and watercolor animation and adds about twenty minutes of story that feels like padding—but reshapes the original with high-spirited humour and heart.
“Road House,” the 2024 Prime Video riff on the much-loved 1989 cult classic of the same name, isn’t so much a remake of the Patrick Swayze flick, but a modern tribute to the cartoon violence of 1980s movies.
Jake Gyllenhaal is Elwood Dalton, a disgraced UFC fighter with a troubled past and an even more troubling left hook. A one-man army, he is a soft-spoken bruiser who usually gives his victims the chance to turn tail and run before he pummels the hell out of them. “Before we start,” he asks, “do you have insurance? Is your coverage good? Like, you have dental?”
After a self-inflicted near-death experience, he finds himself working as a bouncer at the Road House in the picturesque Glass Key, Florida. Brought in by second generation owner Frankie (Jessica Williams), it’s his job to bring order back to the place, even if that means busting a few heads.
As the fists fly, Dalton finds himself caught up in a turf war between Frankie and a rich, mobbed up local family who want to turn the Road House into a resort. When the family brings in a walking, talking wrecking crew (Conor McGregor) to seal the deal, Dalton becomes afraid… “Afraid of what happens when someone pushes me too far.”
Other than bars, bouncers and brawls, “Road House” doesn’t have much in common with the original. The previous film wasn’t exactly nuanced, but at least they took the time to give the bar, the Double Deuce, a name. Here it’s just called Road House. It’s a small detail, and they joke about it in a self-aware way in the film, but it signals a simplicity that permeates the entire, bloody affair.
Not that we can reasonably expect much depth in a movie about a bare-knuckle brawler. What you can expect is the dichotomy of Dalton as aa violent man who hates violence. Gyllenhaal plays him as an affable guy who’ll break your arm, but take the time to drive you to the hospital after the fight is done. The Tai Chi, philosophy and Ph.D. that defined Swayze’s take on the character are gone, replaced by Gyllenhaal’s wide smile and fists of fury.
His Dalton is interesting when the fists are flying—director Doug Liman has a way with staging big, fun fight scenes that mix MMA with slapstick and Russian car rash videos—but less so when he’s not in action. That is emphasized with the introduction of McGregor. With a maniacal grin, a skip to his step and an unstoppable Terminator approach to fisticuffs, his ridiculous performance is the blast of energy the movie needs after a saggy middle section.
“Road House” may disregard the original movie, but it doesn’t disregard its audience. The fight scenes, and let’s face it, that’s why we’re here, are high-octane, old-school battles that punch above their weight.
Richard joins Ryan Doyle of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush for Booze and Reviews! Today he talks about the return of James Bond in “No Time to Die,” and the OTHER drinks, not shaken or stirred, that Bond enjoyed in the books and the movies.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Will James Bond (Daniel Craig) ever be happy? The dour superspy looks great in a tux, has saved the planet a dozen or more times and piloted invisible planes but despite his list of achievements, true happiness always seems to have eluded him.
In “No Time to Die,” however, it looks like Bond may have found a sweet spot in his life with his pretty love interest, Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux). But Craig’s fifth and final time as 007 isn’t all sunshine and roses as much as it is a requiem for a character who was shaped by trauma.
“No Time to Die,” now only playing in theatres, kicks off with a cold open unlike any other Bond beginning. Two decades ago, against a remote, icy Norwegian backdrop, the young daughter of a Spectre agent is orphaned when a masked murderer invades her home. “Your father killed my entire family,” he says between bullets. She survives, and twenty or so years later grows up to be Dr. Swann, psychotherapist and the only woman who can make James Bond smile.
On holiday in Materna, Italy, she encourages him to visit the grave of heartbreaker Vesper Lynd, and put her memory to rest. He does, and soon the idyll with his new girlfriend ends, literally blowing up in his face.
Convinced Swann has betrayed him, the superspy cuts her loose, vowing to never lay eyes on her again.
Cut to five years later. Bond is retired from MI6, but lured back into the game of international espionage when his friend and CIA field officer Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) and associate Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen) ask him to help locate Valdo Obruche (David Dencik), a missing scientist working on a deadly DNA Nanobots weapon.
The job sees Bond square off with one of his greatest foes, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) and revenge-thirsty terrorist Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), a master in the art of asymmetric warfare.
“No Time to Die” shakes up the Bond formula while still offering most of what fans pay to see. There are exotic locations, some high-flying action and the odd 007 one-liner. They are embedded into the DNA of the franchise; character traits that have not been genetically edited out of the movie.
The womanizing, which was so much a part of the Bond folklore, is still there, but trimmed, and played for comic effect. In one instance Ana de Armas, whose appearance as CIA agent Paloma amounts to an extended cameo, charmingly closes the door on that aspect of the Bond legend. In a short but eventful scene, she almost steals the show, and leaves the audience wanting more.
What director Cary Joji Fukunaga, who co-wrote the script alongside Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Scott Z. Burns, has done is add in a ponderous reevaluation of Craig’s years as Bond. Call backs abound to “Casino Royale,” “Quantum of Solace,” “Skyfall,” and “Spectre” and loose ends are tied into bows in in the film’s many Easter eggs. Much of that material is fan service as the fifteen-year Craig reign comes to a close. A shot of M’s (Judi Dench) portrait nods to Bond’s connection to her and Fukunaga reaches back to “Casino Royale” for a tribute to Felix “Brother from Langley” Leiter (Jeffrey Wright). It feels like a nice, respectful way to usher out one era and bring in the next, in whatever form that may take.
But “No Time to Die” is not simply a tip of the hat to the past. With an eye to the future, Fukunaga and Craig have fundamentally changed what a Bond movie is. As the only Bond actor to have an arc for his character, Craig didn’t simply put on Pierce Brosnan’s tux and carry on as so many of the previous actors have done. He took Bond to places he’s never been before, amping up the emotionality of the character as a person born out of trauma. He talks about having everything taken from him as a child, “before I was even in the fight.” For the first time in Bond history, 007 is feeling the ticking of the clock, and not the timer on a bomb he’s trying to diffuse, but the metaphorical hands of time tightening around him.
This approach effectively changes “No Time to Die’s” dynamic, from action film to soul-searching character drama. The 163-minute running time allows the characters to explore why and how they landed where they did in life, but it also sucks much of the urgency from the storytelling. Add to that Malek’s Safin, a clichéd villain who really should make a larger impact, and the drama necessary to shake that martini is lessened.
There is #NoTimeForSpoilers in this review but suffice to say, “No Time to Die” is a Bond film unlike any other. Craig leaves the franchise having made the biggest impact on the character since Sean Connery set the rules more than half a century ago. His finale is drawn out and may rely too heavily on pop psychologically but it’s an important film in the Bond canon. It may even be the most important and exciting since “Dr. No.” Why? Because, as an on-screen card promises, “James Bond will return,” but the movie gives us no hint as to what that re-invented future will entail and that, after almost sixty years of a steady diet of 007isms, is “No Time to Die’s” most exciting achievement.
