I join CTV Atlantic’s Bruce Frisco to talk about the playful “Toy Story 5,” the grim historical drama “The Death of Robin Hood” and the supernatural horrors of “Leviticus.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join “CP24 Breakfast” hosts Nick Dixon and Jennifer Hsiung to talk about the playful “Toy Story 5” and the grim historical drama “The Death of Robin Hood.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I review “Toy Story 5” for ctvnews.ca: “By the time a franchise gets to the fifth instalment it’s usually a case of diminishing returns. The further you get from the source, the worse the movie. Luckily, “Toy Story 5” defies traditional wisdom, delivering a movie for the whole family that brims with heart and humour…” Read the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the playful “Toy Story 5,” the grim historical drama “The Death of Robin Hood” and the supernatural horrors of “Leviticus.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Toy Story 5,” the new Pixar animated film now in theatres, eight-year-old Bonnie shifts from tradition toys to a newfangled tablet.
CAST: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Tony Hale, Annie Potts, John Ratzenberger, Wallace Shawn, Blake Clark, Keanu Reeves, Bonnie Hunt, Kristen Schaal, Ernie Hudson, Melissa Villaseñor, Greta Lee, Conan O’Brien, Craig Robinson, Shelby Rabara, Matty Matheson, Bad Bunny. Directed by Andrew Stanton.
REVIEW: By the time a franchise gets to the fifth instalment it is usually a case of diminishing returns. The further you get from the source, the worse the movie. Luckily, “Toy Story 5” defies traditional wisdom, delivering a movie for the whole family that brims with heart and humor.
The story revolves around lonely eight-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the only kid on the block who still plays with toys, like the cowgirl rag doll Jessie (Joan Cusack) and superhero action hero Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). The other kids spend their time on their screens and don’t have time for a girl who still plays with dolls.
Hoping to help her fit in, Bonnie’s parents (Lori Alan and Jay Hernandez) buy her a Lilypad (Greta Lee), a frog-shaped smart tablet that comes complete with games, chat rooms, social media and a very assertive attitude.
“Once tech enters your home,” says tech-phobic toy Dr. Nutcase (voiced by Matty Matheson), “it’s over.”
As Bonnie plays games and joins chat rooms on the device she spends less and less time with Jessie and the other toys.
“Extinction!” yelps Rex the dinosaur (Wallace Shawn). “Not again!”
With the help of a team of Buzz Lightyears and cowboy ragdoll Woody (Tom Hanks), who returns from rescuing abandoned toys, Jessie sets off to make sure Bonnie makes new friends, without forgetting about her toy pals.
“Playing games isn’t play,” Woody says.
“Toy Story 5” isn’t the old man of the franchise, yelling at tech to get off their lawn. Nor is it a story about the evils of tech. Instead, it’s a testament to the power of imagination.
It’s about screens vs. imagination and the joys that come when an unstructured young mind is allowed to run wild, to create and learn. But the screenplay, by Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris, doesn’t dismiss the place of passive tech in the modern world, it simply favors playtime over screen time.
As a movie, “Toy Story 5” has a sense of play about itself. Like the best of Pixar, it tackles real world issues like on-line bullying, insecurity (“What if am I just no good at being a toy?” asks Jessie.), the value of childhood memories and what true friends are but does so in a way that never feels maudlin. Director Stanton keeps things lively, pulling fun voice work from the returning cast, plus new additions like Conan O’Brien who has a blast voicing Smarty Pants, a toilet training tablet, and inserting some self-aware jokes, like depicting Woody, presumably the oldest of the toys, with a bald spot.
Add to that, beautiful cinematic visuals, with state-of-the-art 3D computer animation embellished with a lovely, handcrafted look for the imagination scenes, and you have a fine addition to the “Toy Story” franchise, rich in timely themes of the effects of tech on blossoming minds but never preachy or pedantic.
I join CHUM-FM’s Marilyn Denis and David Corey to talk about “Toy Story 5,” “The Odyssey” and why people are going back to the movies!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
See video HERE!
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.
On this August 12, 2023 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we get to know American film director, production designer, and screenwriter Catherine Hardwicke. Her directorial work includes “Thirteen,” ”Lords of Dogtown,” the megahit “Twilight,” “Miss Bala” and “mafia Momma” among many others. Today she’s here to talk about her latest film, “Prisoner’s Daughter,” a family drama starring “Succession’s” Brian Cox as a father hoping to reconnect with his estranged daughter and her son.
We’ll also meet author Wayne Ng. Wayne is an an award-winning short story and travel writer who was recently nominated for the Guernica Prize for his latest book, a family drama called THE FAMILY CODE, which was, in part, inspired by his 30 year career as a social worker.
Finally, we meet Phil Dellio. His new book, “Happy for a While: “American Pie,” 1972, and the Awkward, Confusing Now,” is a look at the famous Don McLean song and how to approach great art made by people whose personal transgressions become a matter of public record.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
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Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
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“Prisoner’s Daughter,” a new drama starring Kate Beckinsale and Brian Cox, and now on VOD, is a story of a father, a daughter and second chances.
When we first meet one-time Las Vegas showgirl Maxine (Beckinsale) she is a broke single mom, with a deadbeat ex-husband named Tyler (Tyson Ritter) and Ezra (Christopher Convery), her sweet-natured teenage son. Despite never having paid alimony, Tyler, an abusive addict, wants more control over Ezra’s life. Ezra, meanwhile, is bullied at school, and in need of epilepsy medication Maxine can barely afford.
Maxine’s father Max (Cox) has, by his own admission, been in jail “more times than I care to remember,” but has left his violent ways in the past. “I’m not that guy anymore.”
Max is about to be released from prison on compassionate grounds, after a twelve-year stretch. Diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, he will be discharged if, and only if, he lives with Maxine and Ezra in their small home.
Maxine, still stung by her father’s abandonment years ago, reluctantly agrees but on one condition. “You pay me rent,” she says. “You’re a tenant, that’s it.” She wants nothing to do with her dad. For her, this is a business deal that will help her pay mounting bills.
As Max settles in, he putters around the place, doing some long-needed repairs, teaching Ezra how to handle himself on the playground and calling in favors from his shady friends. With just months left to live, he is searching for reconciliation and redemption. “I know none of this will make up for who I was, or what I did,” he says to Maxine, “but let me be your father for once.”
“Prisoner’s Daughter” has many predictable elements as the ex-con father and his extended family find a new way to be a family, but Hardwicke’s delicate world building, as she presents the stark realities of Maxine’s life, and her efforts to atone for the mistakes of her past and point Ezra on the right track, bring great humanity to the tale.
Audiences expecting Cox to reprise his “Succession” role may be disappointed. Cox does let the old bull run free, bringing an air of menace to Max, but here the performance is tempered by tenderness. He’s a man plagued with regret, trying to unravel the tangled knots in his relationship with Maxine. The connection he builds with Ezra, even when he is teaching the youngster how to fight, is also shrouded in warmth.
Max is tough, but Maxine has a different kind of resolve. Beckinsale gives the character a backstory, a history of abuse that has toughened Maxine, and given her a sense of determination to survive at all costs. She does so with a steely brand of humor, and a great deal of sincerity.
It is the two lead characters, and the attention paid to the little details that form their relationship, that give “Prisoner’s Daughter” its gruff charm. The story is, more or less, predictable, and its anti-violence message is thwarted by a third reel punch-up, but despite the story misfires, it remains a compelling, if somewhat misguided, portrait of redemption.
It’s a movie that wonders if there are best before dates on amends, or if blood is truly thicker than water. Not a game changer story wise, but strong performances and interesting filmmaking earn it a recommend.
