I join CTV Atlantic’s Todd Battis to talk about the web slinging antics of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” the R-rated comedy “I Want Your Sex” and the android dreams of “Sheep in the Box.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Renée Rodgers to talk about the new releases in theatres including the web slinging antics of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” the R-rated comedy “I Want Your Sex” and the android dreams of “Sheep in the Box.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with guest host Andrew Pinsent to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the web slinging antics of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” the R-rated comedy “I Want Your Sex” and the android dreams of “Sheep in the Box.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
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 the web slinging antics of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” the R-rated comedy “I Want Your Sex” and the android dreams of “Sheep in the Box.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “I Want Your Sex,” a new comedy thriller starring Olivia Wilde and now playing in theatres, a naïve young man becomes an intern and muse to a provocative conceptual artist.
CAST: Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Johnny Knoxville, Margaret Cho, Roxane Mesquida, Charli XCX, Daveed Diggs. Directed by Gregg Araki.
REVIEW: Christopher Nolan may be the bold face name of the cinema summer, but, in a lower-case way, Olivia Wilde is giving him a run for this money. A potential Oscar nominee for both director and star of “The Invite,” she hands in another memorable performance in Gregg Araki’s erotic comedy “I Want Your Sex.”
The film opens with a nod to “Sunset Boulevard.” A woman floats face down in the pool of an opulent mansion.
But she is no Joe Gillis, or Norma Desmond for that matter. She’s Erika Tracy (Wilde), world famous neo-pop artist and self-described “outlaw against a puritanical world.” In other words, she’s a conceptual artist whose work surveys various fetishes and straight up kinky behavior.
A job opening for an intern in the weeks leading up to her next big gallery show brings fresh-faced art student Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) into her orbit. He’s broke—his roommate Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) has been paying their rent—trapped in a deeply unsatisfying relationship with disinterested med student Minerva (Charli XCX), and looking for new adventures.
Which is exactly what he finds with his “work” with Erika as his intern role shifts from joe jobs like chewing endless wads of gum for an art piece to sexual muse to something more explicit. “The more I hung out with Erika,” he says, “the more under her control I became.”
As Erika makes Elliot her, “sexual astronaut exploring the outer reaches of experience,” he soon comes to learns to never play it safe.
Gregg Araki’s first film since 2014’s “White Bird in a Blizzard,” “I Want Your Sex” isn’t as subversive as his other works, but his frisky indie edge is still very much in play. A lighthearted rejection of repression, particularly sexual, it embraces the Brat doctrine (although Charli XCX, the Queen of Brat, is the film’s tamest character) of embracing the messiness of life.
The sharp script, co-written by Araki and Karley Sciortino, allows Hoffman’s laidback way with a line to shine. When asked what the difference between Erika’s work and porn is, his response—“Lighting, context.”—is perfect and deadpan hilarious.
His commitment to the role is obvious, from the sexual vulnerability to his sincerity, but it’s Wilde’s performance that rules. She’s fearless physically and steals every scene with a charismatic presence and a natural-yet-heightened line delivery.
“I Want Your Sex” is a peep show that provides a satirical look at the art world, and attitudes about sex and desire, but it wouldn’t work nearly as well without the funny, dedicated performances from the leads.
SYNOPSIS: Set in the coastal town of Southport, North Carolina “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” the rebooted slasher film now playing in theatres, sees a group of friends menaced by a serial killer a year after they accidentally killed a man and covered up the crime. When they realize the killer is imitating the deadly hook-wielding fisherman who plagued the town in 1997, they ask Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.), the two survivors of the 1997 Southport massacre for help. “Nothing holds people accountable like a good old fashioned Fisherman murder spree.”
CAST: Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Billy Campbell, Gabbriette Bechtel, Austin Nichols, Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt. Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson.
REVIEW: You can’t keep a good serial killer down. “Scream’s” Ghostface and “Halloween’s” Michael Myers both recently made bloody comebacks and later this year “Saw’s” Jigsaw will be up to his ole tricks once again. Its’s nostalgia for the colourful villains of days past, but sometimes, as Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) declares in “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Nostalgia is overrated.”
She’s right.
There’s never been that much going on in the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies.
From the 1997 original through its sequels and the 2006 reboot, (“I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” and the reboot “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer”), the films have consistently seemed like lesser versions of “Scream,” lacking its self-aware tone, meta commentary, and compelling characters.
The new trip down memory lane, a legacy sequel that unites new characters with returning members of the original cast, stays true to the franchise. There’s a new spin on the death that kicks off the action, a fresh crop of young victims and a deadly fisherman who is certainly nobody’s friend.
But none of it adds up to much.
The new characters are essentially bait for the serial killer without enough personality to make the audience care about what happens to them. In an effort to avoid the hook they scurry around the screen, with concerned looks on their good-looking faces, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that the movie values nostalgia over actual thrills. The kills, and let’s face it, that’s why we watch movies like this, aren’t grisly enough to be memorable, and neither are the characters.
When Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) says, “This whole experience has been, like, zero out of five stars,” it’s hard not to agree with her.
Strangely, the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” mid-credit scene (NO SPOILERS HERE) sets up the movie for a sequel, and, in two or three minutes, is more entertaining than the movie that came before it.
