I join the CTV NewsChannel to talk about the big movies from the weekend, including Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value” and the animated “In Your Dreams.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CP24 to talk about Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value” and the animated “In Your Dreams.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to go over some of the week’s biggest entertainment stories and let you know what’s happening in theatres. We talk about Pope Leo’s favorite movies, Adele’s movie debut and I review the the heist film “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I joined CTV NewsChannel to have a look at new movies coming to theatres including Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” and the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value.”
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 Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” and the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value.”
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 Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” rhe magical thieves of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” the animated Netflix film “In Your Dreams” and the Oscar worthy “Sentimental Value.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” a new comedy heist flick, now playing in theatres, illusionist thieves The Four Horsemen—think Robin Hood types who use magic instead of bows and arrows—recruit three young magicians to stage their biggest heist yet. “I’m talking about a trick that is bigger and better than anything you have ever seen,” say head Horseman Danny Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg).
CAST: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, and Morgan Freeman, alongside new cast members Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt, Rosamund Pike. Directed by Ruben Fleischer.
REVIEW: Midway through “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) tells the assembled magicians that in the magical house they’ve just entered, “Up is down. Left is right.” He‘s right about the house, it’s a topsy turvy place, but everything else about this movie is pretty much the same from the previous entries in the franchise, 2013s “Now You See Me” and “Now You See Me 2” from 2016.
That means loads of movie magic, but not the good kind. The magic word in this story of the world’s greatest magicians isn’t “Abracadabra,” it’s “CGI.” Because the magic is mostly computer-generated-imagery at its best it feels inorganic, at its worst, dull. There’s no childlike wonder, no astonishment on display, just cold pixels, polygons and texture maps.
I wasn’t expecting the cast to all become David Copperfield, but if Margot Robbie can learn to land triple axels for “I, Tonya,” and Tom Cruise can learn to fly a helicopter through a 360° death-spiral at 8,000 feet, Eisenberg and company can at least learn convincing sleight of hand.
When director Ruben Fleischer isn’t staging big CGI spectacles, he moves the story along with less than magical exposition that over describes the film’s most obvious details. Now you see it, now it is explained for you. The endless chatter slows the momentum and blunts some of the story’s thrills and surprises right up until the film’s sequel ready ending.
There is a generation gap spark between the younger magicians Charlie (Justice Smith), Bosco Leroy (Dominic Sessa) and June (Ariana Greenblatt) and the returning cast—Danny Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) and Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher)—but the twelve-year-old franchise’s magic has disappeared.
“The Holdovers,” a new drama starring Paul Giamatti and now playing in theatres, does such a good job of transporting the audience back to when a pint of Jim Bean only set you back $2 and it was still OK to smoke a pipe at a movie theatre, you’ll swear it’s a long-lost artefact from the Nixon era.
The setting is Barton Academy, a New England old-money stop over for wealthy boys on their way to the Ivy League school of their choice. They are the future, or, as Ancient Civilizations professor Paul Hunham (Giamatti) calls them, “entitled little degenerates.”
Universally disliked by staff and students alike, Hunham is by-the-book, the kind of teacher who assigns heavy reading over the Christmas break, with the promise of an exam on the first day back. “Our one purpose,” he says, “is to produce young men of character.”
Every year there are a handful of students who stay on campus over the two-week Christmas holiday, which means a teacher has to stay behind as chaperone. This year the duty falls to Hunham, who plans an intensive fortnight of studying, physical fitness and discipline for five boys abandoned by their parents.
“You should go easy on them,” says the school’s cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).
“Oh please,” Hunham snorts. “They’ve had it easy their whole lives.”
When four of the five get a last-minute invite courtesy of a rich dad with a helicopter, the impromptu Breakfast Club is narrowed down to one, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a smart but troubled young man whose mom chose Christmas break to run off on a honeymoon with her new husband.
As the days pass, and Christmas approaches, the odd couple find common ground, and discover they aren’t as different as they thought.
“The Holdovers” has a fairly simple set-up—a Scroogey character discovers his humanity by making a connection with a younger person, just in time for Christmas—but it’s the film’s warmth, once you scratch through its icy facade, that’ll win you over.
When he is referring to his students as “hormonal vulgarians,” Giamatti is at his curmudgeonly best but there is more to him than fancy insults (although his put-down, “you are penis cancer in human form” is rather memorable) and walleyed glare. He’s a man deeply damaged by life, who now finds himself waging class warfare on the privileged kids he teaches at what is, essentially, a depository for rich boys.
A man out of time—“The world doesn’t make sense anymore,” he says.—he’s quick to anger, with a bubbling rage roiling just under the surface at all times, and even when he tries to be charming, he comes off as awkward at best. His idea of light, Christmas party conversation? “Aeneas carried mistletoe when he went into Hades,” he says to blank stares.
Giamatti keeps him watchable by making sure to access the character’s brokenness. His bluster is a mask for his heartache, and as he gradually makes connections with Angus and Mary, his defenses lower, revealing his true self. It’s a touching and warm, and Oscar worthy, performance hidden beneath an inch or two of insolence.
He is ably supported by newcomer Sessa, whose character’s actions lead to emotional growth as he forms an unlikely family as one third of a trio of misfits. It’s a touching performance, part swagger, part shattered, that hints at more great thing to come from the young actor.
As Mary, a woman traumatized by the death of her only son in Vietnam, Randolph, who displays her comedic chops on “Only Murders in the Building,” brings a poignant edge to the story as the glue that binds this impromptu family together.
“The Holdovers” is a warmhearted coming-of-all-ages movie, but never succumbs to cheap melodrama or saccharine sentimentality. It’s an uplifting tale of, as Armistead Maupin put it, embracing your logical family instead of your biological one, that avoids the pitfalls of so many other movies about broken people.
