I appear on “CTV News at 6” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the weekend’s best movies, on streaming and in theatres. We have a look at the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons” and the drama “Eleanor the Great.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 36:46)
I join CTV Atlantic anchor Todd Battis to talk about the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons” and the horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 2.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CP24 to talk about the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons,” the drama “Eleanor the Great” and the horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 2.”
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 the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons,” the drama “Eleanor the Great” and the horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 2.”
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 quirky rtomance “The Baltimorons” and suggest a cocktail to enjoy while watching the movie.
Click to HERE to listen to Shane and me talk about “Spinal Tap” and hear my interview with the movie’s director Rob Reiner!
For the Booze & Reviews look at the quirky romance “The Baltimorons,” and some cocktails to enjoy with the movie click 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 the epic “One Battle After Another,” the quirky romance “The Baltimorons” and the horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 2.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: “The Baltimorons,” an underdog romance from director Jay Duplass, now playing in theatres, sees a dentist and her blabbermouth patient form a connection as they spend a special Christmas Eve together.
CAST: Michael Strassner, Liz Larsen, Olivia Luccardi. Directed by Jay Duplass.
REVIEWS: Set on Christmas Eve “The Baltimorons” is a character study of two mismatched people who find the gift of companionship.
Michael Strassner, who co-wrote the script with director Jay Duplass, is Cliff, recovering alcoholic and failed comedian. When he falls and breaks a tooth, he finds Didi (Liz Larsen), the one dentist willing to take a patient on Christmas Eve.
Even though they don’t exactly hit it off right away—“If you keep talking, I’m going fit you for a muzzle,” she tells him.—when his car is towed, she offers him a lift to the impound. His irrepressible nature lies somewhere between overbearing and charming, but over the course of one event-filled night, feelings develop between the two lonely people. “I just had an amazing day,” he says. “That’s it. And I didn’t want it to end.”
“The Baltimorons” is a quiet, sweet natured movie about an annoying guy who hides his vulnerabilities behind a façade of verbal diarrhea and a lonely woman searching for connection.
A throwback to character-based indie movies, circa the mumblecore years, the movie is a simple story about connection but is laced with subtext drawn out of the situation. As the two find ways to pass the time on Christmas Eve, their lives and true selves reveal themselves organically, without ever feeling like plot points wedged in for dramatic effect.
With a light touch Duplass and Strassner’s script touch on recovery, resilience and the role creative passion plays in Cliff’s life. These details bring these underdog characters to gentle life.
The film’s sense of longing and sentimentality is unspoken, but, by virtue of the Christmas setting, is steeped into every frame. Didi’s melancholy regarding her broken marriage is amplified by the season, as memories of Christmas’s past are triggered by the twinkling lights of downtown Baltimore and celebrations happening around her.
In the film’s final moments Did asks Cliff, “Where are we going with this kid?” “I don’t know,” he says. “I just like you.” Like the film itself, the exchange is simple, without bells and whistles, heartfelt and yet perfectly sums up the situation.
“Pain Hustlers,” a new true crime dramedy based on the non-fiction book “The Hard Sell” by Evan Hughes, starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans, and now streaming on Netflix, joins the ever-growing list of movies and television shows that detail big pharma’s culpability in the opioid crisis.
Blunt plays Liza Drake, a broke single-mom to daughter Phoebe (Chloe Coleman). Kicked out of her sister’s garage, where they’d been sleeping for more than a month, Liza is desperate for a job and cash.
During a chance meeting with oily pharmaceutical sales rep Pete Brenner (Chris Evans), she impresses him with her tenacity. Sensing she’d do anything for a buck, he offers her a job, despite her complete lack of qualifications, selling a new, inhalable fentanyl-based pain killer directly to doctors.
“It’s a long-odds lottery buried under a thousand rejections,” he tells her.
To keep the job, all she has to do is get the ball rolling by convincing one doctor to prescribe the drug. Just under the deadline, she lands a whale, the morally compromised Dr. Lydell (Brian d’Arcy James) who hands out the drug to his patients like candy to kids at Halloween.
Liza’s piece of the action is more money than she ever could have imagined. “You’re not going to make a hundred K this year,” Brenner tells her. “It’s going to be more like six-hundred.”
Drunk on success—and frequent drinking binges—she bends laws and bribes doctors as she chants her mantra, “Own your territory,” to a growing legion of sales reps. But while her bank account swells, so do her doubts, as her conscience becomes her moral compass.
“Pain Hustlers” breathes much of the same air as “Dopesick,” “Painkiller” and the documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Some. But not all. Those stories focused on patients and the personal toll of the opioid epidemic. Conversely, “Pain Hustlers” turns the camera on the sales reps, the pharmaceutical pushers who made fortunes on the misfortune of others.
Liza’s shift from desperation to greed isn’t a particularly fresh take on the rags-to-riches tale, but Blunt works overtime to make her character compelling. Her desire to succeed, to improve her life isn’t simply about the Benjamins, it’s about creating a new start for her daughter. Blunt grounds the movie with ample humanity, anchoring the film’s often over-the-top antics with her earthbound presence.
To its detriment, “Pain Hustlers” has a lighter tone than other recent opioid dramas. It’s not exactly a laugh a minute, but the jocular tone seems at odds with the serious subject matter, particularly in the performances of Evans and Andy Garcia, whose character loses his mind and the audience’s attention midway through.
“Pain Hustlers” attempts a new take on a hot button topic, but, the formulaic execution and uneven tone feels wonky given subject matter.
Theses days the word landline conjures up a specific retro feel. It harkens back to a time before everyone played Candy Crush on their mobile devices and when pay phones dotted the landscape. That’s the world where the new Jenny Slate dramedy “Landline” takes place.
It’s New York City, 1995. Dana Jacobs (Slate) is a layout artist at Paper Magazine when she isn’t at Blockbuster with her fiancée Ben (Jay Duplass) agonizing over what movie to rent. Younger sister Ali (Abby Quinn) is as free-spirited as her sibling is buttoned down.
“You’re like a piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe,” Dana says to Ali. “You are the embodiment of constipation,” Ali snaps back.
Despite their differences the sisters bond when Ali discovers erotic poetry her father Alan (John Turturro) wrote for a woman who is not his wife Pat (Edie Falco). Their disgust for his actions brings them together, despite the fact that Dana has thrown off the shackles of engagement and embarked on a secret journey of self-discovery with Nate (Finn Wittrock). “I am flailing,” she says. “Trying to figure out if the life I have picked for myself is the one that I want.” “We are a family of cheaters!” Ali exclaims.
“Landline” uses infidelity as a backdrop for a study of partnership and family. Everyone’s relationship is teetering on the edge and yet this is a hopeful movie, a film that suggests monogamy is viable when given room to breathe.
“Obvious Child” director Gillian Robespierre brings a strong ensemble together, elevating the material with strong performances. Duplass is suitably milquetoast as Ben, the dull but lovable fiancée. Turturro and Falco breathe life into characters that in lesser hands might have been caricatures or worse, simply a plot device to support the sisters’ story.
The stars here, however, are Slate and Quinn. They look like sisters but their chemistry extends beyond the skin deep. Slate’s giggles and affectionate asides—“You’re a weird little bird.”—feel authentic, as though these two have a long shared history that predates anything we see on the screen. They bring humanity and sympathy to the film despite their foibles.
“Landline” is an engaging portrait of broken relationships in an analogue time. It’s a gently heart tugging story about the consequences of breaking relationship rules. There are jokes and there are tears but mainly “Landline” has a wistful tone that gets under your skin.
