I join CTV Atlantic anchor Todd Battis to talk about the pandemic drama “Eddington,” the smurfy “Smurfs” and the legacy sequel “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
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.
“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” the sequel to the popular Daniel Craig detective movie “Knives Out, now playing in theatres before moving to Netflix in late December, is a satire of old school Agatha Christie with a modern sensibility.
Craig returns as detective Benoit Blanc, “The Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths.” He’s the American Poirot, with a honied Southern accent and a Jessica Fletcher-esque knack for being present when people are murdered.
In the new film he finds himself, post COVID lockdown, at a lavish private estate on a Greek island owned by billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton doing Elon Musk). Invited by a mysterious third party, it is just the tonic he needs to shake his post COVID lockdown blues.
“I lose it between cases,” he drawls. “I may be going insane. My brain is a fuelled up sportscar, with nowhere to go. I need a great case.”
Bron has invited “my dear disrupters, my closest inner circle,” like former business partner Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe), scientist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.), man’s rights YouTube star Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), fashion designer and unapologetic loudmouth Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) and politician Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn) among other glamourous types, to play a very special game.
“I’ve invited you all to my island,” says Bron, “because tonight, a murder will be committed. My murder.”
With clues hidden all over the island, Bron encourages his guests to “closely observe each other. If anyone can name the killer, that person wins our game.”
It’s all fun and games until a real dead body shows up and everyone on the island is a suspect in the crime.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” says Blanc. “You expected a mystery. You expected a puzzle. But for at least one person on this island, this is not a game.”
Cue the whodunnit. The characters are all connected, and all have a motive for murder. “This is a case that has confounded me like no other,” Blanc says as he peels back the layers of the mystery.
There is a lot of talk of disrupters in “Glass Onion.” Each of the guests have caused radical change in their industries, a fact pointed out by Bron as the reason they are all friends. It also applies to writer/director Rian Johnson. He pays homage to a well-worn format, the Agatha Christie ensemble cast and elaborate crime reveal, but breathes new life into the tried-and-true format, updating and disrupting the structure.
Johnson uses all the same stylistic—flourishes, flashbacks, red herrings and diversionary tactics—as Christie did, in books and on screen, but adds a spark, juggling the story’s twists, turns and reveals with great aplomb and humour. The result is a swiftly paced thriller that is equal parts silly and suave.
It’s become trendy to skewer the rich and ridiculous in film. Recent movies like “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Menu” lay waste to entitlement and privilege, and “Glass Onion” is no different. Bron and his crew of influencers and desperadoes are presented as self-serving, uncaring and absurd—“What is reality?” shrieks Birdie Jay when the going gets rough—providing a juicy blast of raucous moral ambiguity as an undercurrent to the murder mystery.
As a sequel that improves on the original, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” is a rarity. It may follow a template formatted by Agatha Christie, but like the titular “Glass Onion” itself, Johnson is transparent in his desire to make the mystery deeper, the characters more extreme and the thrills more thrilling. As Blanc says in the in the film, “This is truly delightful.”
