I join CTV Atlantic’s Stephanie Tsicos to talk about the biopic “Tony,” the dino drama “The End of Oak Street,” the kid’s flick “PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie” and the stoner comedy “The Wrong Girls.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about the biopic “Tony,” the dino drama “The End of Oak Street,” the kid’s flick “PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie” and the stoner comedy “The Wrong Girls.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 15:06)
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 biopic “Tony,” the dino drama “The End of Oak Street,” the kid’s flick “PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie” and the stoner comedy “The Wrong Girls.”Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” to talk about the blues and Morgan Freeman, Judge Judy and the passing of the gavel, more “Hacks” and on Booze & Reviews I review “Tony” and suggest a cocktail Anthony Bourdain noted will make you wonder what happened to your pants after drink number three!
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 a sandwich. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the biopic “Tony,” the dino drama “The End of Oak Street” and the slasher flick “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.”Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Tony,” a new biopic of late author, television star and chef Anthony Bourdain, a nineteen-year-old Bourdain spends one life-changing summer working at a restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
CAST: Dominic Sessa, Emilia Jones, Dagmara Domińczyk, Rich Sommer, Stavros Halkias, Leo Woodall, Antonio Banderas. Directed by Matt Johnson.
REVIEW: Long before Anthony Bourdain was Anthony with a capital “A,” author of the bestselling memoir “Kitchen Confidential” and host of “Parts Unknown,” he was a self-described, “a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking,” who preferred to be called Tony (“The Holdovers” star Dominic Sessa).
It’s 1975, he’s a nineteen-year-old Vassar student convinced he’s about to be awarded a writing fellowship for a novel he admits is more of an “idea for an idea” than an actual book. When the fellowship falls through, he licks his wounds with a trip to Provincetown, Massachusetts to track down his high school crush Nancy (Emilia Jones) who’s working there at a pizza joint for the summer.
Still trying to pass himself off as a writer, he ends up broke, with a black eye and no prospects until he takes a job as a dishwasher in a seaside restaurant called The Flagship in return for a place to stay with the Chef (Antonio Banderas).
In the kitchen he finds a community of misfits, like the reckless Sal (Leo Woodal), who show him the ropes, as in how to shuck oysters and chase away hangovers with a morning beer or a line or two of cocaine.
A coming-of-age story with a little Sex, Drugs and Oyster Shucking mixed in for good measure, “Tony” is not an imitation of Bourdain’s worldly television persona. As played by Sessa, he’s a self-absorbed hothead, with a loose relationship with the truth, still trying to make his way. Sessa captures Bourdain on the rough edge of adulthood. Out of his depth, personally and professionally, he’s a teenager desperate to be a grown up in the face of one humbling experience after another.
He’s a complex character, equal parts intellect, hubris and underdog energy, a lump of clay not yet molded into the man he would become. Sessa captures him in a soulful performance that doesn’t shy away from the unsavory or obsessive parts of Bourdain’s personality, one that run parallel to the film’s opening quote—”spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout,” etc—but adds in just enough charm to make us care about what happens to him.
Unsurprisingly, he is the movie’s beating heart—it is a biopic after all—but director Matt Johnson populates his world with interesting characters to add color to the tale. From the chaos and camaraderie of the kitchen, provided by Woodall, Stavros Halkias as the big-mouthed Stavros, Michael Jibrin as the steady-handed Tyrone and Antonio Banderas as the Chef who changes Bourdain’s life with tough love and buckets of water (you’ll know what I mean when you see the film) to the love interest Nancy, played by Emilia Jones, the film creates an interesting community with a nice dollop of Ptown’s 1970s boho vibe thrown in.
Johnson’s trademark energy and play fulness are fully on display, particularly in the kitchen scenes.
This isn’t like five-star vibe of “The Bear.” With no hope of ever getting reviewed or being awarded a Michelin Star, this kitchen is a home for odd ducks cranking out food for tourists. Johnson’s intimate style paints a vivid picture of the controlled chaos that goes into a lunch or dinner service. He even stages an oyster shucking scene that, for anyone who’s ever been handed a sharp knife and an oyster, will play like a scene from a horror movie.
Given Bourdain’s exalted stature in popular culture, “Tony” could easily have slipped into hagiography. Public sentiment for his unique brand of exploration and pop cultural philosophy still burns bright eight years after his death, but like the man himself, the movie rejects mythology and goes for authenticity over artifice to serve as both a reminder and eulogy of a fascinatingly confounding character.
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!
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.
