I appear on “CTV News at 6” with anchor Andria Case to talk about “Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions” and the existential sci fi of “Lars Shrike Walks the Night.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 37:30)
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about the alien adventures of “The Outer Threat,” the moody “Her Private Hell” and the existential sci fi of “Lars Shrike Walks the Night.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 14:03)
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Renée Rodgers to talk about the new releases in theatres including the alien adventures of “The Outer Threat,” the moody “Her Private Hell” and the existential sci fi of “Lars Shrike Walks the Night.”
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 alien adventures of “The Outer Threat,” the moody “Her Private Hell” and the existential sci fi of “Lars Shrike Walks the Night” (VOD/Digital).
Listen to 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 alien adventures of “The Outer Threat,” the moody “Her Private Hell” and the existential sci fi of “Lars Shrike Walks the Night.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Lars Shrike Walks the Night,” a new existential sci fi mystery now on VOD/Digital, Kelsey Grammar plays Lars Shrike, a fictional character who breaks free of his creator. “Are you glad you exist?” Lars asks of his author. “I have mixed feelings.”
CAST: Kelsey Grammer, David Clennon, Christine Lin, Kati Schwartz, Will Amato, Bobby Furst, Laurie Drayton. Directed by Gary Walkow.
REVIEW: About as offbeat a movie as you’re going to find starring a six-time Emmy Award winner, “Lars Shrike Walks the Night” is a strange journey of self-discovery that embraces the ambiguity of being, of consciousness and reality.
When we first meet Lars Shrike (Kelsey Grammer) he’s alone, stranded in the desert. A cypher, he knows his name, courtesy of a tattoo on his arm, and has a vague memory of having escaped somewhere or something terrible, but nothing else. “Was I a test tube baby on a spaceship?” he asks. “Was amnesia engineered into my genes?”
Disoriented, he’s unable to understand his past or present, and gathers information from a series of strangers that lead him to a public library. There, a helpful librarian provides clues that lead him to a book called “The Trouble with Dick,” an author (David Clennon) and possibly some indication of who or what he is.
But is that enough to lift Lars’s cosmic confusion?
“Lars Shrike Walks the Night” is the latest entry in director Gary Walkow’s long gestating cinematic universe. Beginning in 1987 with the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning “The Trouble with Dick,” he has slowly built the LarsVerse, adding the Russo Brothers produced “Crashing” in 2007 and the comedic family film “The Trouble with Dot & Harry” in 2015. The new movie is the latest, but apparently not the last. A title card that reads “Not The End” promises more.
Question is, Are Lars’s existential exploits compelling enough to warrant more movies?
For those with a taste for slow moving soul searching, perhaps. A mix of philosophy and slow-burn indie filmmaking, this is sci fi about ideas and identity, not special effects.
Grammar’s smooth and sonorous voice provides Lars’s inner thought via an enormous amount of narration. I was initially worried that the voice over would break my first rule of cinematic storytelling—Show me, don’t tell me—but once the film’s style settles into a groove, it becomes a tool to reveal the way Lars is reacting to the world and his place in it.
Low-fi and definitely low budget, “Lars Shrike Walks the Night” is obviously a passion project for director Walkow. A multi-generational examination of what it means to be human, the LarsVerse (my term, not his) provides atmosphere and intellectual thrills in place of big set pieces.
Based on American author and pastor Greg Laurie and his book “Jesus Revolution,” the movie of the same name, now playing in theatres, is a late 1960s period piece starring Kelsey Grammar as a “square” Southern Californian pastor who embraces the era’s love and peace mantra—and the hippies who espouse it—despite the objections of his church’s elders.
When we first meet pastor Chuck Smith (Grammer) he’s very much an older man of his time. He’s befuddled by the new generation, and even his teenage daughter says he is “the very definition of square.” According to Chuck, hippies have “cast off authority, tradition, morals, cast off God,” and he wants nothing to do with them.
“When God walks in here and brings me a hippie,” he says. “I’ll ask him what it is all about.”
No sooner have the words spilled from his lips that the doorbell rings. On the stoop is Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), a long-haired, charismatic hippie street preacher who says he is often told he looks like Jesus.
With Frisbee comes a message of tolerance, love and the seeds of a Jesus youth Movement, which Time magazine called “The Jesus Revolution” in a June, 1971 cover story.
“God is saving the hippies,” says Frisbee, “and it is blowing everyone’s mind because nobody thought the hippies could be saved.”
Meanwhile, a lost teen from a broken home named Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney) is seeking liberation in the counterculture movement of Southern California. His life is revolutionized when his spiritual journey brings him into the sphere of Smith and Frisbee.
Set to a soundtrack of rock hits like “Jesus Is Just Alright with Me,” “Jesus Revolution” is a faith-based movie about embracing outcasts, searching for meaning and stirring up the status quo with love and acceptance. It’s an unabashedly feel-good story that unfolds quickly, without ever missing an opportunity to use a “far out” Boomer cliché to establish the time and place.
“Jesus Revolution” is at its best in the first hour. Once past Smith’s “I hate hippies” phase Grammar has several heartfelt scenes that give the story’s message of acceptance some real gravitas.
The story wanders into the wilderness when dramatic conflict, like Frisbee’s clash of ego with Smith—“Not everything needs to be a spectacle,” Smith scolds.—and Laurie’s romantic and familial issues take center stage. All stories need some sort of clash to maintain interest, but after an hour of peace and love, it feels forced.
“Jesus Revolution” is a very earnest film, with a strong point of view, that values uplift above all else.
Being an only child has its benefits. You don’t have to share clothes or wait in line for the bathroom, but Nate Gardner (voice of Anton Starkman) is lonely and one day announces to his busy parents, “I’ve decided I want a baby brother.”
To speed the process along the youngster writes a letter to the folks at Stork Mountain. “Dear Stork Delivery Service,” he writes, “Our son really deserves a baby brother. P.S. He has to have ninja skills. Signed adult parents Perry and Sarah Gardner… adults, not Nate.”
What Nate doesn’t know is that Stork Mountain head honcho Hunter (voice of Kelsey Grammer), a white stork and the executive CEO of Cornerstore.com, dropped babies years ago in favour of picking up packages. Why did they stop? Because there are other ways to get babies.
With huge profits rolling in the CEO offers the company’s top job to Junior (Andy Samberg). With over 1 million deliveries under his beak, he’s their best stork, but the new job it comes with a caveat. Junior must fire the company’s lone human employee, Orphan Tulip (Katie Crown), but the brash-but-kindhearted bird can’t bring himself to let her go. Instead he assigns her to the least used department in the company, the Letter Sorting Department.
Tulip intercepts Nate’s letter and accidentally feeds it into the Rube Goldberg-esque Baby Making Machine—literally a machine that makes babies, and not… well, you know what you were thinking—and through the science of baby making transforms the note from pen and ink to an adorable baby girl
Trouble is, Junior has never delivered a baby and doesn’t know what to do with the unauthorized child. He knows he must do something before Hunter gets wind of the kid. With a wounded wing Junior has no choice but to take Tulip along as they begin a wild adventure to unite the child with Nate and his parents. “If I can deliver this by Monday I can still be made boss,” says Junior.
“Storks” never quite takes flight. A manic mix of action-adventure and kid’s humour, it often feels padded by cut-a-ways and musical numbers and never met a gag it can’t run into the ground with repetition. There are several stand-out moments, like a silent battle between storks and penguins, kept quiet so as not to wake the baby and the ever-morphing Wolf Pack, who can change Transformers style into anything from bridges to submarines, but everything else is over-amped and loud with a side of sentimentality thrown in.
Samberg is perfectly cast as the brash but not-so-bright lead character and Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele provide funny and interesting voices to the Wolf Pack leaders but most of the voices are as undistinguished as the story.
“Storks” has promise but never really delivers the goods.
When we last saw thirty-something new parents Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne) they had just called a truce in a Hatfield and McCoy’s style feud with their unruly Delta Psi frat boy neighbours led by Teddy (Zac Efron) and Pete (Dave Franco).
Time has moved on.
Mac and Kelly have happily figured out how to balance fun and parenthood but Teddy is struggling to find his place. The final straw? He realizes he is the oldest Abercrombie & Fitch employee by six years. He finds purpose when he joins forces with party animal and grrrl power advocate Shelby (Chloë Grace Moretz) who brings him back to the scene of his greatest work—right next door to Mac and Kelly—to liven things up at her newly formed Kappa Nu sorority. “I have finally found something I am good at,” says Teddy.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or so the old saying goes. In the case of “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” the title and party animal gender has changed but everything else is pretty much identical to the first movie. There are sex toy jokes, loud parties, elaborate plans to put an end to the partying and even an air bag gag or two. The familiar elements raise a laugh or two and even made me slap my knee a couple of times, but the thing that makes “Neighbors 2” worth a look isn’t Efron’s abs, which are on ample display, but the relationships between the main cast.
Rogen and Byrne have the easy, kooky camaraderie of a long time couple. Individually they are funny, but together they radiate humour and warmth, even when they’re talking about being horrible parents to their two-year-old child.
That likeability trickles down to the supporting cast. Selby, Teddy, Ike (Ike Barinholtz) and Paula (Carla Gallo) may do ill-advised things—Selby comes just this side of kidnapping and Ike gets REALLY high at a party—but they aren’t terrible people. Just folks placed in extraordinary situations. When it comes right down to it they all do more or less the right thing. That kind-and-gentle approach is a change from Rogen’s earlier shock-and-awe films but doesn’t diminish the laughs.
“Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” isn’t quite as funny as the first time, but it’s genial just as good neighbours should be.
