I appear on “CTV News at 11:30” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the return of Ghostface in “Scream 7,” the erotic thriller “56 Days” and the pirate action movie “The Bluff.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 37:46)
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about new movies in theatres including the return of Ghostface in “Scream 7,” the music doc “Paul McCartneyt: Man on the Run,” the northern noir of “In Cold Light” and the zombie flick “This is Not a Test.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 14:21)
I join “CP24 Breakfast” host Nick Dixon to talk about the return of Ghostface in “Scream 7,” the music doc “Paul McCartneyt: Man on the Run” and the Paramount+ docuseries “Wild Boys: Strangers in Town.”
Watch 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 the return of Sidney Prescott in “Scream 7,” the northern noir of “In Cold Light,” the zombie flick “This is Not a Test” and the music doc “Paul McCartney: Man on the Run.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to scream seven times. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the return of Sidney Prescott in “Scream 7,” the northern noir of “In Cold Light” and the music doc “Paul McCartney: Man on the Run.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: “Scream 7,” now playing in theatres, once again says “Hello, Sidney” as Neve Campbell returns to the thirty-year-old horror franchise as iconic “final girl” Sidney Prescott.
CAST: Neve Campbell, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, Courteney Cox, Isabel May, Anna Camp, Michelle Randolph, Jimmy Tatro, Mckenna Grace, Asa Germann, Celeste O’Connor, Sam Rechner, Mark Consuelos, Tim Simons, Joel McHale. Directed by Kevin Williamson.
REVIEW: The labyrinthine world of the “Scream” franchise continues in a bloody movie that delivers the gore but gets lost in a mishmash of nostalgia, legacy characters and tired tropes.
A story about past trauma revisiting the present, “Scream 7” begins with Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) starting a new life in a new town. Settling in Pine Grove, Indiana, far from the suburban Northern California town of Woodsboro and the reach of serial killer Ghostface.
Or so she thought until her phone rang.
“I’m going to make everyone you love suffer,” says a familiar voice on the other end of the line. “Including your pretty daughter.”
Could it be her nemesis Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) or an elaborate deepfake?
Either way, determined to protect daughter Tatum (Isabel May) and husband Mark (Joel McHale), Sidney swings into action in a final showdown with her greatest adversary.
Directed by Kevin Williamson (who wrote the original “Scream”) “Scream 7” is a collision of old and new elements that end up feeling almost as lifeless as one of Ghostface’s victims.
What was once a clever meta commentary on slasher movies that deconstructed the tropes of 80s and 90s horror, and later, remakes, toxic fandom and franchise fatigue, now feels rudderless as it takes on deep fakes and AI. The previous “Scream” films would have taken time to formulate a comment on the dangers of technology or at least take a position on it. Instead, here it’s simply a plot device, nothing more or less.
That lack of curiosity extends throughout. Even though “Scream 7” contains the most gratuitous kill of the entire series—and, to be fair, one of the funniest as one unfortunate victim is turned into a human beer tap—it doesn’t invest much into making the new characters compelling or, most importantly, making the Ghostface unmasking shocking or at the very least interesting.
The result is a movie with enough bloody stuff to entertain slasher fans, but it feels like the kind of film the franchise has spent thirty years analyzing.
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.
For better and for worse, “A Good Person,” the new drama, written and directed by Zach Braff, starring Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman, and now playing in theatres, is a portrait of the messiness of addiction.
Pharmaceutical rep—and part time jazz singer—Allison’s (Pugh) happy, carefree life falls apart when the car she is driving veers off the road, leaving two relatives dead, her future sister-in-law Molly (Nichelle Hines), and Molly’s husband Jesse (Toby Onwumere). Allison survives, but to combat residual pain, is prescribed OxyContin painkillers.
Now, a year later, consumed with guilt, she is unemployed, living at home with her mother Diane (Molly Shannon), estranged from fiancé Nathan (Chinaza Uche) and addicted to the opioids.
Allison’s life shifts when she bumps into Daniel (Morgan), the father of her ex-fiancé and Molly, who perished in the crash, at an AA meeting. The stern, ex-cop—who leans into pronouncements like, “Better to be half-an-hour early, than one minute late.”—blames Allison for the accident, but attempts to find common ground with her and possibly chart a course through their shared grief.
“Neither of us chose this fate,” he says, “but perhaps we can find a way to love it.”
“A Good Person” features fine performances from Pugh and Freeman, but, despite its heavy subject matter, defaults to a feel-good vibe in scene after scene.
Pugh, even with her movie star glow, convinces as a person drained of the will to live and Morgan’s mix of grandpa and Dirty Harry is entertaining and occasionally moving, but they are undone by a script laced with platitudes. Written by Braff, the story brushes up against the edges of the emotionality required to give us all the feels, but every time it begins to feel authentic, it takes a turn to the artificial. Braff never met a manipulative moment he couldn’t exploit, and it blunts the effectiveness of the storytelling.
“A Good Person’s” set-up suggests a deep dive into survivor’s guilt, addiction and, ultimately, forgiveness, but the lack of jagged edges and grit feels more Hallmark than harrowing.
A more accurate title for “Freaky,” the new Vince Vaughn slasher comedy now playing in theatres, might have been “Freaky Friday the 13th.” A mix and match of the classic body swapping kid’s comedy and the Jason Voorhees horror movies, it has laughs and a surprisingly high body count.
The film opens with a killer on the rampage. The Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn), part urban legend, part serial killer, is doing what he does best, finding interesting ways to murder young, attractive people. In an attempt to gain supernatural powers he stabs teenage outcast Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) with a ceremonial knife called the La Dola Dagger. Something mystical happens, alright, but not the transformation the Butcher hoped for. As he stabs the high school senior, they switch bodies. The hulking serial killer’s body is now inhabited by Millie’s essence and vice versa. According to the legend of the dagger they have just twenty-four hours to reverse the curse or they will be trapped in the wrong bodies forever. “Look, I know I look like The Butcher. But it’s Millie.”
Part of the built-in fun of director Christopher Landon’s “Freaky” is Vaughn’s performance. His change from menacing killer to teenager is as ridiculous as it sounds, but it takes advantage of the actor’s comedy chops. He adopts Millie’s mannerisms in subtle ways and adds in other touches, like constantly bumping his head because her new body is a foot or so taller than the old one. He even brings a genuine lightness to a budding romance between his alter ego and her crush Booker (Uriah Shelton). By the time he proves that he’s actually Millie in the Butcher’s body by answering questions—“I tell people my favorite movie is Eternal Sunshine but it’s actually Pitch Perfect 2.”—the transformation is complete. It’s fun work from an actor whose recent resume doesn’t contain many laughs.
“Freaky” rides the line between slasher movie, dark comedy and satire. As it has fun with high-school stereotypes it delivers some genuinely creepy moments even if Landon has some trouble calibrating the humour and the horror. After a strong start, and some engaging moments, it gets trapped trying to reinvent the movies that inspired it.
