I joined CTV NewsChannel to have a look at new movies coming to theatres including the eye-candy of “TRON: Ares,” the crime drama “Roofman” and the touching documentary “John Candy: I Like Me.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CTV Atlantic to talk about the eye-candy of “TRON: Ares,” the crime drama “Roofman” and the touching documentary “John Candy: I Like Me.”
Watch 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 eye-candy of “TRON: Ares,” the crime drama “Roofman” and the touching documentary “John Candy: I Like Me.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: A likeable documentary about a likeable subject, “John Candy: I Like Me” is a straightforward look at a comedian whose work is still entertaining audiences three decades after his passing.
CAST: John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and Macaulay Culkin. Directed by Colin Hanks.
REVIEW: Martin Short told “John Candy: I Like Me” documentary producer Ryan Reynolds and director Colin Hanks (whose famous father co-starred with Candy in “Splash”), they would not be able to find anyone with anything bad to say about John Candy. Short was right. Everyone in the doc speaks glowingly of Candy, his generosity of spirit and luminous talent, but this isn’t a straight up hagiography.
Those nearest and dearest to the late comic actor, like his children Jennifer and Chris, widow Rose, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Macaulay Culkin, Dan Aykroyd and Catherine O’Hara, paint a colorful portrait of a larger-than-life character who battled weight issues and an anxiety disorder.
Thirty years after his passing on a film shoot in Durango, Mexico, Candy’s work remains as funny and endearing as it was when first released. Hanks’s film offers up copious evidence in the form of clips from “SCTV,” “Uncle Buck,” “Splash,” “Spaceballs,” “Home Alone,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” (it’s a line in the latter that gives this movie its name: “I like me,” Candy says as Del Griffith. “My wife likes me.”) and many others, and while it’s lovey to revisit those moments, it’s the picture of Candy off screen that compels.
New interviews with school friends, family and colleagues like Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short and Steve Martin tell the tale. From growing up in a working-class Toronto family, to his father’s passing of heart disease at age 35 when John was four years old, to putting his dreams of football stardom aside after a knee injury to discovering acting in college, we learn how each of these events shaped the trajectory of his life and career from the people who were there with him.
Everyone describes him as a charismatic character, the first one to pick up the tab in the early days, even though they were all making the same money. He was a people pleaser, but as Conan O’Brien points out, “The hazard of this business is that it’s very unhealthy for people pleasers.”
More up-close-and-personal are the remembrances of his Chris, Jennifer and Rose. They provide an intimate, behind-the-scenes glimpse of a man who, as his daughter says, “took care of people” but didn’t necessarily take care of himself. He liked a drink, a cigarette and, as anxiety entered his life, became convinced he would die early, just as his father had.
Ultimately, “John Candy: I Like Me” is a straightforward, heartfelt documentary with a bittersweet ending. Candy passed at age 43, but the wealth of material he left behind, the TV shows and movies, still entertains, three decades after his passing.
SYNOPSIS: A likeable documentary about a likeable subject, “John Candy: I Like Me” is a straightforward look at a comedian whose work is still entertaining audiences three decades after his passing.
CAST: John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and Macaulay Culkin. Directed by Colin Hanks.
REVIEW: Martin Short told “John Candy: I Like Me” documentary producer Ryan Reynolds and director Colin Hanks (whose famous father co-starred with Candy in “Splash”), they would not be able to find anyone with anything bad to say about John Candy. Short was right. Everyone in the doc speaks glowingly of Candy, his generosity of spirit and luminous talent, but this isn’t a straight up hagiography.
Those nearest and dearest to the late comic actor, like his children Jennifer and Chris, widow Rose, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Macaulay Culkin, Dan Aykroyd and Catherine O’Hara, paint a colorful portrait of a larger-than-life character who battled weight issues and an anxiety disorder.
Thirty years after his passing on a film shoot in Durango, Mexico, Candy’s work remains as funny and endearing as it was when first released. Hanks’s film offers up copious evidence in the form of clips from “SCTV,” “Uncle Buck,” “Splash,” “Spaceballs,” “Home Alone,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” (it’s a line in the latter that gives this movie its name: “I like me,” Candy says as Del Griffith. “My wife likes me.”) and many others, and while it’s lovey to revisit those moments, it’s the picture of Candy off screen that compels.
New interviews with school friends, family and colleagues like Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short and Steve Martin tell the tale. From growing up in a working-class Toronto family, to his father’s passing of heart disease at age 35 when John was four years old, to putting his dreams of football stardom aside after a knee injury to discovering acting in college, we learn how each of these events shaped the trajectory of his life and career from the people who were there with him.
Everyone describes him as a charismatic character, the first one to pick up the tab in the early days, even though they were all making the same money. He was a people pleaser, but as Conan O’Brien points out, “The hazard of this business is that it’s very unhealthy for people pleasers.”
More up-close-and-personal are the remembrances of his Chris, Jennifer and Rose. They provide an intimate, behind-the-scenes glimpse of a man who, as his daughter says, “took care of people” but didn’t necessarily take care of himself. He liked a drink, a cigarette and, as anxiety entered his life, became convinced he would die early, just as his father had.
Ultimately, “John Candy: I Like Me” is a straightforward, heartfelt documentary with a bittersweet ending. Candy passed at age 43, but the wealth of material he left behind, the TV shows and movies, still entertains, three decades after his passing.
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.
Sometimes called the “Stephen King of children’s literature,” R.L. Stine has inspired bad dreams for decades. The author of hundreds of horror fiction novels for youngsters, including the classic “Goosebumps” series, returns to the big screen this week with “Zombie Town,” a teen horror comedy based on his 2012 novel of the same name.
The action takes place on one eventful night in Carverville, a small town named after legendary b-movie horror director Len Carver (Dan Aykroyd). “This whole town is just a bunch of zombie following idiots,” grumbles Mike (Marlon Kazadi), the only guy in town who doesn’t like zombie movies.
It’s the eve of the premier of Carver’s latest “flesh drenched extravaganza,” his first film in decades. “You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll kiss your five bucks goodbye!” screams the film’s trailer. Everyone in town is excited except for Mike, who works at the theatre, and will have to watch the film whether he likes it or not.
When Carver takes ill before the show, the screening is cancelled, but Mike’s friend Amy (Madi Monroe) convinces him to give her a private screening. As white light bounces off the blank screen, strange things begin happening. Mike and Amy protect themselves from the weird glow with film cannister lids embossed with an ancient symbol.
The symbol’s mystical power protects them from the film’s magical spell, but outside the theatre, all over town, the good folks of Carverville have been transformed into the living dead. “You have to get over your fear of zombies,” Amy says. “It is just us and them now.”
Mike and Amy realize that if they are to save themselves and their town, they must track down Carver and put an end to his film’s zombie curse.
The zombies in “Zombie Town” may amble around with George A. Romero style menace, but this is no “Night of the Living Dead.” Thrills and chills are few and far between, pitched toward the younger end of the YA scares of “Goosebumps.”
Director Peter Lepeniotis aims for an Amblin PG-13 feel, that mix of plucky young people and the supernatural, but falls just short because the film has no real menace. Sure, the town has been zombified, but the peril and the frights are kept to a minimum. Raising the stakes and ramping up the horror may have given the movie more edge, without risking the alienation of the core audience.
It’s a bit of fun to see Aykroyd ham it up as the tormented filmmaker in “Zombie Town,” and cameos from Chevy Chase, Henry Czerny and “Kids in the Hall” alums Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch add some texture, but overall it doesn’t bring quite enough life to the undead.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Lois Lee to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the rebooted “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the fourth film in “Ghostbusters” franchise, the inspirational new Will Smith movie “King Richard” and Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Power of the Dog.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
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.
