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 “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch:” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I joined CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to have a look at new movies coming to theatres, including Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres including “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch:” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Listen to 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 Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I review the Hawaiian-set “Lilo & Stitch” and tell you about the legend of the Hawaiian cocktail so popular, it created a rum shortage.
Click HERE to hear Shane and I tell you how to get to Sesame Street (again), why George Clooney will be on CNN and how JIm Morrison lost his head (don’t worry, it’s been found).
Click HERE to listen to a tropical Booze & Reviews as I review “Lilo & Stitch” and tell you about some tasty tropical cocktails.
SYNOPSIS: This live-action animated remake of Disney’s 2002 animated film, “Lilo & Stitch” tells the story of Lilo, a lonely girl who befriends a mischievous, koala-like alien named Stitch. Despite Stitch’s genetic disposition to causing chaos, Lilo’s belief in ohana, the Hawaiian concept of family, helps Stitch com e to believe in love.
CAST: Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders, Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Hannah Waddingham, Billy Magnussen, Zach Galifianakis, and Courtney B. Vance, Tia Carrere, Amy Hill, Jason Scott Lee. Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp.
REVIEW: The latest live-action remake from Disney is an entertaining family film that may give fans of the 2002 movie déjà vu, but there’s just enough new stuff here to please older, nostalgic fans and win over new converts.
The new version, directed by “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” helmer Dean Fleischer Camp, follows the template set by the 2002 animated movie.
When we first meet Stitch he is known as Experiment 626. He’s the brilliant, but destructive creation of mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis). Born in a lab to be an agent of chaos, he is deemed too dangerous to stay on his home planet. As he is about to be exiled, 626 makes a run for it, hijacking a space craft and ultimately crash landing in Hawaii, where he is adopted by a lonely six-year-old named Lilo (Maia Kealoha) who thinks he is a dog.
In reality, he’s more of a cross between Keith Moon and Wile E. Coyote.
Since the death of her parents Lilo has been taken care of by her older sister Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong) who struggles to make ends meet and is now under the watchful eye of a social worker played by Tia Carrere.
With agents from his home planet and a determined CIA agent with the unlikely name of Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance) on the search for him, Stitch remains a troublemaker but soon learns the importance of feeling safe with Lilo and Nani, his new, adopted family.
The heightened family relationships give this otherwise run-of-the-mill alien tale a great deal of heart. It unapologetically slips into sentimentality, but the bond between Lilo and Nani, and later with Stitch, is the stuff of good kid’s cinema. The story doesn’t have the depth that Camp was able to infuse into every frame of “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” but he does a good job with the simple message of finding family in whatever form they appear.
Add to that Stitch’s hijinks, which are gently chaotic and likely to appeal to kids more than adults, and you get an entertaining kid’s flick that doesn’t improve on the 2002 film—it lacks the visual beauty of the original’s mix of hand drawn and watercolor animation and adds about twenty minutes of story that feels like padding—but reshapes the original with high-spirited humour and heart.
I joined BNN Bloomberg to talk about the weakest Memorial Day long weekend in nearly three decades.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
LOGLINE: Lasagna-loving, comic-strip cat Garfield returns to the big screen with a new voice, courtesy of Chris Pratt, and a new adventure. After being abandoned by his street cat father Vic (Samuel L. Jackson) as a kitten, the orange tabby leads a life of leisure with easy-going Jon (Nicholas Hoult) and canine best friend Odie. When Vic reappears, Garfield and Odie leave the lasagna behind to embark on a risky, high-stakes heist.
CAST: Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Harvey Guillén, Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang, Snoop Dogg.
REVIEW: “The Garfield Movie” is a big, action-packed (and product placement heavy) movie that doesn’t really feel like a Garfield movie. It’s a big, colorful action-adventure that will entertain kids, make their eyeballs spin and inspire a giggle or three, but the essence of the character, the sardonic, lazy cat with an obsession for sleeping, has been set aside in favor of a lively, fun character who has little to do with what made the comic-strip popular in the first place.
The new Garfield loses the simplicity of the strip, instead, filling the screen with rapid fire gags and frenetic action. The animation, which feels like a cross between computer generated and the comic-strip, offers up expressive character faces and fun voice work, particularly from Waddingham, who takes a generic villain character and gives her some oomph.
Aside from the father-and-son story, which touches on the importance of family, screenwriters Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove and David Reynolds keep it simple, sentimental and predictable.
“The Garfield Movie” will likely have little appeal for anyone over the age of 10, but has a silly sense of mischief that the younger members of the family may enjoy.
A love letter to the folks who jeopardize their lives so actors can look cool taking risks on the silver screen, “The Fall Guy,” based on the Lee Majors’s TV show of the same name, is an action romance that is easy to like, but hard to love.
Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers, stuntman for pompous Hollywood action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). He’s jumped out of tall buildings, crashed countless cars, been lit on fire and jumped through who knows how many breakaway windows in the name of making Ryderlook brave on screen and catching the eye if camera person Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt).
When a stunt goes horribly wrong, Seavers disappears, leaving the business and his relationship with Jody behind.
A year of isolation and recuperation later he goes back to work. But this time around the stunts aren’t the most dangerous part of the job. Moreno, now a director of a big budget action flick called “Metal Storm,” is pissed with him and to make matters worse, Ryder has gone missing mid shoot.
“The Fall Guy” delivers a crowd-pleasing mix of action, romance and high wattage performances from Gosling and Blunt. It is their chemistry that makes this as much fun as it is.
Set to a recurring musical motif of KISS’s “I Was Made for Loving You Baby,” their scenes provide good, old fashioned star power, with charisma to burn. The twinkle in Gosling’s eye, even as he is repeatedly brutalized on and off set, is a perfect foil for Blunt’s warmth and dead-on comic timing.
Together they help smooth over the film’s rough patches. A bit overlong, it gets unnecessarily convoluted in its last act, and loses some of its charm, but the whiz bang action and funny moments—like a fellow stuntman who helps Severs beat up the baddies as he calls out the various fighting styles from movies like “The Bourne Identity”—showcase what the movie does best, and that is deliver a sugar rush.
A cotton candy confection, light and airy, “The Fall Guy” is a bit of fun that leaves you with a sweet taste in your mouth, but not much else.
