Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to buy a lotto ticket! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the Oscar bound “The Whale,” the animated adventure “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” and the golden-age-of-Hollywood epic “Babylon.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Watch the iontercview on the CTV NewsChannel HERE!
In 2011, I accused the first movie in the “Puss in Boots” franchise of neutering the once-charming character. We fell in love with the frisky feline, as voiced by Antonio Banderas, in the “Shrek” movies, but his journey from supporting to leading character was far from purrfect. The movies were predictable and worse, had none of the purr-sonality (OK. I’ll stop with the cat puns now) of the “Shrek” movies.
Now, one television series, sequel and video game later, comes “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” a movie, now playing in theatres, that raises the stakes.
The new film opens with the plucky ginger cat (once again voiced by Banderas) in a life-or-death battle against a fur-midable (last one, I promise) opponent. “I am known by many names,” he brags. “Stabby Tabby. El Macho Gato. The Leche Whisperer. I am Puss in Boots!”
He’s been in sticky situations before, but this one is different.
“I have bad news,” says the doctor who attends to his wounds. “You died.”
It looks like the end for Puss in Boots, until he reminds the physician, “Doctor, relax! I have nine lives!”
“And how many times have you died already?”
“Oh,” says Puss, “I’m not really a math guy.”
Turns out, Puss is on his last life and must give up his adventurous ways if he wants to survive.
Rather than become a lap-cat, the swashbuckling Puss, along with love interest Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and chatty therapy dog Perro (Harvey Guillén), sets off to into the Black Forest to find the mystical Last Wish and restore the lives he lost. “I need to get my lives back,” he says. “Without them, I am not the legend.”
But after eight lives lived, Puss has many enemies, all of whom want track him down. “I find the idea of nine lives absurd,” says the Big Bad Wolf (Wagner Moura), “and you didn’t value any of them.”
Animation is generally thought of as entertainment for kids, but legends like Don Bluth and Ralph Bakshi made their careers creating films that addressed darker subject matter. Now, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” is no “The Secret of Nimh” or “Fire and Ice,” but it is bleaker and more experimental than anything else in the franchise. Like the recent “Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio,” “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” treads into adult territory theme wise, with higher stakes than we’re used to in a film aimed at kids– the Cave of Lost Souls, anyone?—but does so with family audiences in mind.
The character of PiB may be in peril, but the flamboyance that made him such a scene stealer in “Shrek 2” is still on full display. He’s a huge personality in pocket-size, and Banderas brings a perfect combination of roguishness and righteousness to the voice work.
Fun, villainous voice work from Florence Pugh, John Mulaney, and Wagner Moura, as Goldilocks, “Big” Jack Horner and Big Bad Wolf / Death respectively, add some spice and beautiful animation lifts the adventure sequences skyward.
Best of all, the film’s underlying life lesson, that time is precious and we should enjoy it while we can—”When you only have one life,” says Kitty Softpaws, “that’s what makes it special.”—is nicely woven into the film’s fleet-footed, if slightly predictable plot.
I appear on “CTV News at 11:30” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the best movies and television to watch this weekend. This week I have a look at the supernatural murder mystery “The Rising,” “The Doom Patrol,” both on Crave, “The Eternal Daughter” starring Tilda Swinton, now playing in theatres and, on VOD, the dark comedy”I’m Totally Fine.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 17:58)
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Lois Lee to talk about the eye-popping “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the self-reflective “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” the dark comedy “I’m Totally Fine” and the eerie Tilda Swinton movie “The Eternal Daughter.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres. Today we talk about the eye-popping “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the self-reflective “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” the dark comedy “I’m Totally Fine” and the eerie Tilda Swinton movie “The Eternal Daughter.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Tim Denis to discuss the weekend’s flickers including including the eye-popping “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the self-reflective “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” the dark comedy “I’m Totally Fine” and the eerie Tilda Swinton movie “The Eternal Daughter.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the eye-popping “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the self-reflective “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” the dark comedy “I’m Totally Fine” and the eerie Tilda Swinton movie “The Eternal Daughter.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to unload the dishwasher! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the eye-popping “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the self-reflective “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” and the dark comedy “I’m Totally Fine.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Like “Starman,” the 1984 Jeff Bridges movie about an alien who returns to Earth in the form of a heartbroken widow’s late husband, a new film is an out-of-this-world exploration of grief.
In “I’m Totally Fine,” a new dark comedy now on VOD, Jillian Bell plays Vanessa, a young woman struggling to clear her head after the sudden death of her best friend and business partner Jennifer (Natalie Morales).
Alone at the rental home, where she was planning a party to celebrate the success of their shared soft drink company, she is startled when someone—or something—who looks exactly like her late friend turns up in the kitchen. The strange situation becomes even stranger when new Jennifer (Morales) says she is an extraterrestrial, loaded with all of Jennifer memories, sent to Earth for forty-eight hours to study civilization. “Jennifer remains deceased,” says the species observation officer, “I am simply an extraterrestrial who has taken her form.”
Over the next two days, reluctantly at first, Vanessa undergoes tests and begins to understand the meaning of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s words, “’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
“I’m Totally Fine” is an undeniably weird odd-couple movie about the power of connection and the importance of letting go.
Bell is understated as she cycles through Vanessa’s stages of grief. “It might be fun to see how unstable I can get,” she says. Her world is inside out, but as alien Jennifer looks on, making notes—”Human has turned anger on herself.”—that actually help Vanessa punch a hole into the melancholy that hangs over her like a veil.
The far showier role belongs to Morales. As a monotone alien who is often bewildered by humanity, her unabashedly odd performance becomes endearing as she becomes the catapult for Vanessa’s catharsis. It’s a trick to find the balance between quirky and compassion, and Morales nails it.
Despite its odd story, “I’m Totally Fine” doesn’t go anywhere you don’t see coming, but the performances bring some real humanity to the alien premise.
