I join CTV Atlantic’s Bruce Frisco to talk about the playful “Toy Story 5,” the grim historical drama “The Death of Robin Hood” and the supernatural horrors of “Leviticus.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join “CP24 Breakfast” hosts Nick Dixon and Jennifer Hsiung to talk about the playful “Toy Story 5” and the grim historical drama “The Death of Robin Hood.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I review “Toy Story 5” for ctvnews.ca: “By the time a franchise gets to the fifth instalment it’s usually a case of diminishing returns. The further you get from the source, the worse the movie. Luckily, “Toy Story 5” defies traditional wisdom, delivering a movie for the whole family that brims with heart and humour…” Read the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the playful “Toy Story 5,” the grim historical drama “The Death of Robin Hood” and the supernatural horrors of “Leviticus.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Toy Story 5,” the new Pixar animated film now in theatres, eight-year-old Bonnie shifts from tradition toys to a newfangled tablet.
CAST: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Tony Hale, Annie Potts, John Ratzenberger, Wallace Shawn, Blake Clark, Keanu Reeves, Bonnie Hunt, Kristen Schaal, Ernie Hudson, Melissa Villaseñor, Greta Lee, Conan O’Brien, Craig Robinson, Shelby Rabara, Matty Matheson, Bad Bunny. Directed by Andrew Stanton.
REVIEW: By the time a franchise gets to the fifth instalment it is usually a case of diminishing returns. The further you get from the source, the worse the movie. Luckily, “Toy Story 5” defies traditional wisdom, delivering a movie for the whole family that brims with heart and humor.
The story revolves around lonely eight-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the only kid on the block who still plays with toys, like the cowgirl rag doll Jessie (Joan Cusack) and superhero action hero Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). The other kids spend their time on their screens and don’t have time for a girl who still plays with dolls.
Hoping to help her fit in, Bonnie’s parents (Lori Alan and Jay Hernandez) buy her a Lilypad (Greta Lee), a frog-shaped smart tablet that comes complete with games, chat rooms, social media and a very assertive attitude.
“Once tech enters your home,” says tech-phobic toy Dr. Nutcase (voiced by Matty Matheson), “it’s over.”
As Bonnie plays games and joins chat rooms on the device she spends less and less time with Jessie and the other toys.
“Extinction!” yelps Rex the dinosaur (Wallace Shawn). “Not again!”
With the help of a team of Buzz Lightyears and cowboy ragdoll Woody (Tom Hanks), who returns from rescuing abandoned toys, Jessie sets off to make sure Bonnie makes new friends, without forgetting about her toy pals.
“Playing games isn’t play,” Woody says.
“Toy Story 5” isn’t the old man of the franchise, yelling at tech to get off their lawn. Nor is it a story about the evils of tech. Instead, it’s a testament to the power of imagination.
It’s about screens vs. imagination and the joys that come when an unstructured young mind is allowed to run wild, to create and learn. But the screenplay, by Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris, doesn’t dismiss the place of passive tech in the modern world, it simply favors playtime over screen time.
As a movie, “Toy Story 5” has a sense of play about itself. Like the best of Pixar, it tackles real world issues like on-line bullying, insecurity (“What if am I just no good at being a toy?” asks Jessie.), the value of childhood memories and what true friends are but does so in a way that never feels maudlin. Director Stanton keeps things lively, pulling fun voice work from the returning cast, plus new additions like Conan O’Brien who has a blast voicing Smarty Pants, a toilet training tablet, and inserting some self-aware jokes, like depicting Woody, presumably the oldest of the toys, with a bald spot.
Add to that, beautiful cinematic visuals, with state-of-the-art 3D computer animation embellished with a lovely, handcrafted look for the imagination scenes, and you have a fine addition to the “Toy Story” franchise, rich in timely themes of the effects of tech on blossoming minds but never preachy or pedantic.
I join CHUM-FM’s Marilyn Denis and David Corey to talk about “Toy Story 5,” “The Odyssey” and why people are going back to the movies!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
See video HERE!
The list of sitcoms that inspired movies is a short one. This week that exclusive list grows by one as “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” joins other animated shows like “South Park” and “The Simpsons” to make the leap from the small to big screen.
In what could be a supersized episode of the television show with a musical, murder mystery twist, the movie begins a week before the start of summer. The socially awkward daughter Tina (Dan Mintz) is hoping to hook up with her fantasy summer boyfriend. Son Gene (Eugene Mirman) hopes his latest musical invention, a napkin holder equipped with plastic forks, will be just the sound his band, The Itty Bitty Ditty Committee, needs to finally break through to audiences and after a classmate calls her a “baby,” youngest daughter Louise (Kristen Schaal) is determined to prove that she is grown up and brave.
Parents Bob (H. Jon Benjamin) and Linda Belcher (John Roberts) have bigger issues. “Every day I give myself a little diarrhea from the worry and the stress,” Bob sings in the movie’s first big musical number. They have seven days to get a loan extension from the bank or they could lose their beloved burger joint.
When a giant sinkhole opens up directly in front of their business they ask landlord, wealthy oddball Calvin Fischoeder (Kevin Kline), for an extension. “I’m of two minds,” he says, “and by that, I mean I’m drunk.”
When the sinkhole becomes a crime scene, a “crime hole” they call it, their problems increase but an investigation by the kids may lead to a solution… or maybe something worse.
With the main creative crew and cast returning from the television series, it comes as no surprise that “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” has the same kind of irreverent, funny and punny dialogue that makes the show and characters such a delight for twelve seasons. “Bob’s” aficionados should get the fan service they expect while newcomers should catch on to the vibe with ease.
It’s not all special sauce and sesame seed buns, though. The big musical number off the top is pretty great. It separates the movie from the small screen edition, with cool animated choreography and clever lyrics. Unfortunately, after that, it’s as if director Loren Bouchard left the rest of the musical score at home. There is a song or two later, one with a great “misdemeanors and wieners” rhyme, but the promise of something different, something cinematic, is by-and-large dashed.
Pacing problems make the final section, a far-too-long action, adventure sequence, a bit of a slog that sucks some of the fun out of the story. Still, like they say, the only bad burger is the one you didn’t eat, and up until then, “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” isn’t bad. It has enough laughs and clever dialogue to whet your appetite.
Just because Bill and Ted, the time travelling slackers last seen on screen almost thirty years ago, got bigger and older doesn’t mean they grew up. Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves reunite as William S. “Bill” Preston, Esq and Theodore “Ted” Logan in “Bill and Ted Face the Music,” available now in theatres and on demand, to try, once again, to save the world through music.
The leaders of the Wyld Stallyns are now middle aged with kids of their own, played by Brigette Lundy-Paine and Samara Weaving. At their peak Bill and Ted’s band played at the Grand Canyon but are now reduced to performing at a lodge for a handful of people who were already there for taco night. Still, they persist in their quest to write the perfect song, a tune so powerful it will unite the world.
Not everyone is on board. “It’s been hard to watch you beat your heads against the wall for 25 years,” says Ted’s wife Princess Elizabeth Logan (Erinn Hayes). “Not sure how much more we can take.”
But when their old mentor Rufus (George Carlin in archival footage) send his daughter Kelly (Kristen Schaal) from the future with a mission, Bill and Ted accept. Given 77 minutes and 25 seconds to create a song that will “save reality,“ the duo go on an excellent, time travelling journey to the future to get the song from their future selves. “Let’s go say hello to ourselves and get that song,” says the ever-optimistic Bill.
Cue the famous inner-dimensional phone box.
The new adventure brings with it some grown-up issues, marital problems, matters of life and death, their manipulative future selves, a trip to hell and killer robots.
Meanwhile, as Bill and Ted race into the future with Kelly their daughters are on a mission of their own. Zipping through time they convince some of the greatest musicians the world has ever known—Jimi Hendrix (DazMann Still), Louis Armstrong (Jeremiah Craft), Mozart (Daniel Dorr), drummer Grom (Patty Anne Miller), flautist Ling Lun (Sharon Gee) and rapper Kid Cudi as himself—to bring Bill and Ted’s music to life.
A mix of quantum physics and silly humor, “Bill and Ted Face the Music” is more a blast in nostalgia than laugh out loud funny. The screenplay, by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, who also penned “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” haven’t played around with the formula. This isn’t a gritty reimagining of the franchise. Bill and Ted haven’t developed dark sides or become jaded. They are carbon copies of their former screen selves, albeit with a few more miles on their faces. The yuks are derived from Bill and Ted as wide-eyed, Valley-speaking saviors who look for and find the best in everyone they meet in the past, present and future.
Along the way there are some welcome returns, most notably William Sadler as the bass playing Grim Reaper, who can’t understand why Bill and Ted don’t appreciate his 40-minute-long bass solos, and it’s nice to see Carlin again, if only for a second. Lundy-Paine and Weaving, have fun, playing the daughters as two chips off the old blockheads, naively discovering the true secret of world unity.
“Bill and Ted Face the Music” is a blast from the past, a movie that would look great on VHS, that maintains the goofiness and the optimism of the originals.
It is a rare comedy for kids that starts with explosions and the execution style deaths of bad guys, but here we are. “My Spy” is an action adventure co-starring a nine-year-old and a hulking action star in a story with no blood and guts but plenty of violence but also plenty of charm.
“Guardians of the Galaxy” star Dave Bautista is JJ, a tough talking mountain of a man whose closest friend is a fish named Blueberry. As a C.I.A. agent he gets the job done, usually in the least subtle way possible. After one action packed adventure he is assigned the relatively quiet gig of surveilling Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley), a single mother who was once married to a very bad man. Their mission is to gather information to determine if anything nefarious is happening inside the apartment.
When preteen Sophie (Chloe Coleman) discovers the camera’s in her mom’s apartment she tracks down JJ and his sidekick Bobbi (Kristen Schaal) in their “secret” apartment down the hall. Instead of being freaked out Sophie threatens to expose their operation unless JJ teaches her how to be a spy. As he clandestinely trains the youngster how to beat a lie detector and other 007 moves, he lets his bullet proof façade drop, becoming a father figure of sorts to Sophie and a love interest to Kate. “You opened up a part of me that has been closed for a long time,” he tells her.
When the baddies show up JJ and Sophie must team to keep Kate safe.
“My Spy” has many of the earmarks of a kid’s flick. There’s the young co-star, some silly humour and even a dance number of sorts at the end. It also has some bad language, violence and gunfire so keep the little ones away even if they are fans of the larger-than-life Drax the Destroyer’s more kid friendly adventures. Just as this movie is somewhere between a kid’s movie and an action film, the audience is best limited to tweens.
Bautista is following in the footsteps of other muscle-bound stars like Arnold “Kindergarten Cop” Schwarzenegger, Vin “The Pacifier” Diesel and Dwayne ” Tooth Fairy” Johnson in kid’s odd couple—big and burly, small and smart—films. The movies only work if there is chemistry between the leads and here the film’s biggest asset—and no, it’s not Bautista’s bulk—is the charming spark between Bautista and Coleman. The story is predictable, the villain is super evil and some scenes seem overly familiar (didn’t Schwarzenegger already speak to a class of kid in “Kindergarten Cop”?) but despite all that, it raises a laugh or three.
Bautista is funny here, he can do the physical stuff, deliver a one liner and doesn’t seem to be taking himself too seriously while Coleman delivers, presenting Sophie as naturally smart and independent.
“My Spy” owes a debt to the other tough guy babysitting movies that came before it but succeeds through personality over predictability.
