I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with guest anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about new movies in theatres including the demonic drama “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” the non rom com “The Threesome” and what’s happening at TIFF!
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 15:01)
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to have a look at new movies in theatres, “The Conjuring: Last Rites” and “The Threesome,” and the opening night of TIFF 50!
Watch the whole thing 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 demonic “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” the non rom com “The Threesome” and the gloriously gross “The Toxic Avenger.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Threesome,” a look at modern romance now playing in theatres, an impulsive ménage à trois leads to double trouble for Connor, Jenny and Olivia.
CAST: Zoey Deutch, Jonah Hauer-King, Ruby Cruz, Jaboukie Young-White, Josh Segarra, Robert Longstreet, Arden Myrin, Kristin Slaysman, Allan McLeod, and Julia Sweeney. Directed by Chad Hartigan.
REVIEW: A charming, but uneven rom com about adult truths and consequences, “The Threesome” is as narratively messy as the situation it essays.
The action in “The Threesome” begins with an impetuous, slightly stoned ménage à trois between nice-guy Connor (Jonah Hauer-King), his longtime crush Olivia (Zoey Deutch) and Jenny (Ruby Cruz), a random customer at Olivia’s restaurant who was just been stood up by her date.
Long story short, months later Jenny and Olivia let Connor know he’s going to be a father twice over.
The resulting complications are the stuff of farce, but with a heart.
Director Chad Hartigan, working from a script by Ethan Ogilby, plays the situation for light laughs, but keeps one foot firmly placed on the ground. Ogilby introduces some very non rom com elements to the story, and it is the stark realities of the situation that add layers to what could have been standard fare.
The film’s biggest selling point are the three leads, Deutch, Hauer-King, and Cruz. They hold on tight as the story veers from heartfelt to humorous to chaotic, often in the same scene. If not for their wonderful dynamics, “The Threesome” might have ended up feeling more like a hygiene film about the importance of contraception than a complex look at accountability and adulthood.
Structurally “The Threesome” pays tribute to rom com tropes but never falls victim to the genre’s cliches, even as it gallops toward a rushed happily-ever-after ending.
I joined CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to have a look at new movies coming to theatres, including the pandemic drama “Eddington,” the smurfy “Smurfs” and the legacy sequel “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Watch 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 return of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and the Fisherman serial killer.
Click HERE to listen to Shane and me talk about Larry David’s return to HBO, Eric Idle dare to ICE and some lost Woody Guthrie music.
For the Booze & Reviews look at “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and some scary good cocktails, 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 pandemic drama “Eddington,” the smurfy “Smurfs” and the legacy sequel “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: Set in the coastal town of Southport, North Carolina “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” the rebooted slasher film now playing in theatres, sees a group of friends menaced by a serial killer a year after they accidentally killed a man and covered up the crime. When they realize the killer is imitating the deadly hook-wielding fisherman who plagued the town in 1997, they ask Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.), the two survivors of the 1997 Southport massacre for help. “Nothing holds people accountable like a good old fashioned Fisherman murder spree.”
CAST: Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Billy Campbell, Gabbriette Bechtel, Austin Nichols, Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt. Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson.
REVIEW: You can’t keep a good serial killer down. “Scream’s” Ghostface and “Halloween’s” Michael Myers both recently made bloody comebacks and later this year “Saw’s” Jigsaw will be up to his ole tricks once again. Its’s nostalgia for the colourful villains of days past, but sometimes, as Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) declares in “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Nostalgia is overrated.”
She’s right.
There’s never been that much going on in the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies.
From the 1997 original through its sequels and the 2006 reboot, (“I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” and the reboot “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer”), the films have consistently seemed like lesser versions of “Scream,” lacking its self-aware tone, meta commentary, and compelling characters.
The new trip down memory lane, a legacy sequel that unites new characters with returning members of the original cast, stays true to the franchise. There’s a new spin on the death that kicks off the action, a fresh crop of young victims and a deadly fisherman who is certainly nobody’s friend.
But none of it adds up to much.
The new characters are essentially bait for the serial killer without enough personality to make the audience care about what happens to them. In an effort to avoid the hook they scurry around the screen, with concerned looks on their good-looking faces, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that the movie values nostalgia over actual thrills. The kills, and let’s face it, that’s why we watch movies like this, aren’t grisly enough to be memorable, and neither are the characters.
When Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) says, “This whole experience has been, like, zero out of five stars,” it’s hard not to agree with her.
Strangely, the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” mid-credit scene (NO SPOILERS HERE) sets up the movie for a sequel, and, in two or three minutes, is more entertaining than the movie that came before it.
Disney takes you back under the sea with “The Little Mermaid,” the latest of their photo-realistic, live action remakes of classic animated movies. Based on the 1837 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name, the new film places the titular mermaid in an undersea world that brings to mind your work computer’s aquarium screensaver.
Singer-songwriter and actress Halle Bailey stars as Ariel, the mermaid daughter of the Kingdom of Atlantica’s ruler King Triton (Javier Bardem). She is a free spirit, fascinated by the human world. Unlike his daughter, the overprotective King is no fan of humans and has forbidden her from visiting the “above world.”
But, like the song says, she “wants to be where the people are,” despite her father’s warnings. “I want to see them dancing,” she sings. “Walking around on those… what do you call them? Oh feet!”
Her dry land dreams are fulfilled when she rescues the human Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) from drowning. She is immediately smitten, and determined to live above sea level.
“This obsession with humans has got to stop,” scolds King Triton.
“I just want to know more about them,” she says.
Following her heart, Ariel makes a deal with Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), an evil sea witch with glow-in-the-dark phosphorescence tentacles, who grants the mermaid’s wish to be with Eric in trade for her “siren song,” i.e. her voice.
“Here’s the deal,” she says. “I’ll whip up a little potion to make you human for three days. Before the sun sets on the third day, you and Princey must share a kiss, and not just any kiss. The kiss of true love. If you do, you will remain human permanently. But if you don’t, you’ll turn back into a mermaid and you belong to me.”
Ursula’s “premium package” comes at a high cost, however. A steep price tag that could cost King Triton his crown and Ariel her life.
You can’t shake the feeling, while watching the new “The Little Mermaid,” that it is competing with itself.
The 2023 photo-realistic animation is very good, presenting beautiful, fluid images, buoyed by theatrical flourishes from director Rob Marshall and strong performances from Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy. The new songs, by Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda, are good too, particularly the fun “Scuttlebutt.”
But it feels like something is missing. That’s the magic that made the ink and paint “Little Mermaid” an enduring classic.
There is plenty of razzmatazz. Marshall, a veteran of big musical extravaganzas like “Chicago” and “Into the Woods,” is at his best when applying a Broadway style gloss to the musical numbers. “Under the Sea,” a holdover from the first film, is a knockout. The psychedelic underwater cinematography will give your eyeballs a workout and it has a good beat and you can dance to it.
But for every Ziegfeld Follies style dancing sea slug number—super cool—there is yet another movie-stopping scene of Ursula’s endless exposition where she explains her nefarious plot or a padded action scene. Those slow spots give the storytelling a choppiness that would capsize a lesser vessel but Bailey’s strong, emotional vocals and star-making performance coupled with a fun turn from Daveed Diggs as the “educated crustation” Sebastian keep the ship from sinking.
“The Little Mermaid’s” message of a young person giving up their voice so they could be heard, is unchanged, and is still powerful, but feels waterlogged by comparison to the original.
