Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about Amy Adams in “Nightbitch,” the ghost story “Presence” and the sky high “Flight Risk.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to talk about Amy Adams in “Nightbitch,” the ghost story “Presence” and the sky high “Flight Risk.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Nightbitch,” a new darkly funny horror film now playing in theatres, Amy Adams plays an artist-turned-stay-at-home-mom who struggles with domesticity. Her life takes a surreal turn when her maternal instincts manifest in canine form, including an affinity for howling and hunting small animals. “I am a woman,” she says. “I am an animal. I am Nightbitch.”
CAST: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Snowden, Emmett Snowden, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Ella Thomas, Archana Rajan, and Jessica Harper. Written and directed by Marielle Heller, based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder.
REVIEW: “Motherhood, changes you,” says librarian Norma (Jessica Harper). “It connects you with some primal urges.”
“Nightbitch” may struggle to balance mythology, metaphor and the messiness of parenting, but Amy Adams’s fearless and ferocious performance ties it all together. “I was once a girl,” she says. “Then a woman. A bride. A mother and now I will be this.”
A blend of rebellion, confusion, horror and razor-sharp comic timing, it is an oddball examination of motherhood and the changes, physical and mental, that come along with it. “No one talks about the cellular change that happens when you become a mother,” she says.
“Nightbitch” is a combination of many elements, relies too heavily on voice over, and could have used a little harder shove toward the outer edges of good taste, but writer/director Marielle Heller finds compassion amid the chaos.
It’s a strange, sometime gross ride, driven by female rage and loneliness, but within its metaphorical approach are empowering, empathetic messages about the real-life job of parenting.
A high school, coma comedy with a fish-out-of-water twist, “Senior Year,” a new Netflix movie starring Rebel Wilson, plays like a mix between “While You Were Sleeping” and “Billy Madison.”
Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice as teenager, Wilson as an adult) was on track to have a perfect life. A high school star, she was a cheerleader, president of the fashion club and prom queen candidate until a head injury, caused by a tumble off the top of a cheerleading pyramid, put her into coma for twenty years.
Waking up at age 37, it is like no time has passed. As far as she knows, it’s 2002, words like “shiznit” and “bomb diggity” are still hip and she still wants to be prom queen, the pinnacle of high school success. “It’s more than just a crown to me,” she says.
But she is a relic. Social media is a new-fangled thing, political correctness is like science fiction, cheerleaders now do routines about the climate crisis and gun control, and her former classmates are now the parents of high schoolers.
To get on with her new life, its’s time for some adult education… in high school. “I can’t move on to the next chapter in my life,” she says, “if I am still stuck in the old one for twenty years.”
With just a month before graduation, she enrolls, trying to pick up where she left off. But she finds times gave changed. “I had more fun in the coma,” she sighs.
“Senior Year” is a comedy with a scattergun approach.
The coming-of-age story is meant to be a poignant look at Stephanie as she matures and comes to understand that there is more to life than cheerleading and being prom queen. The power of friendships and loyalty are examined—”It doesn’t matter who has the most friends, or likes, or followers,” says Stephanie. “If you just have one or two great friends, they will support you. Then you have got it all. That is worth fighting for.”—butted up against the notion of being true to yourself and the idea that who you are in high school doesn’t define you.
Doesn’t sound that funny, does it?
That’s because it isn’t. At least, not all the way through. “Senior Year” takes a one joke premise and milks it for humor in the first couple of acts. Funny, situational lines are sprinkled throughout the first hour or so. “You survived twenty years without solid food,” says Stephanie’s dad (Chris Parnell), “you can make it through a weekend without your phone,” but they dry up as the movies goes on.
It also goes for laughs from the culture clash between 2002 and 2022. Stephanie has much to learn about political correctness and world events, but to its credit, the film doesn’t treat the teens as woke zombies, spouting catchphrases, but as decent kids who care about their friends and the future.
It sounds like a lot, because it is a lot. Wilson does what she can to keep things moving along, but when the feel-good messaging begins, she is saddled with prosaic, by-the-book truisms that suck away the whatever fun had been established in the film’s first part.
Talented comic actors like Mary Holland and Zoë Chao bring both humor and heart to their roles, but “Senior Year” still feels messy. Too long, it toggles back-and-forth between the sincere and the silly like it is changing gears in a high-speed Formula One race, but, unfortunately, never finds its pace.
Richard joins Ryan Doyle and Jay Michaels of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show to talk the origins of the Dark ‘n Stormy cocktail and what movies to enjoy while sipping one on the weekend!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard finds the perfect cocktail to enjoy while having a drink and a think about “Golden Arm,” the laugh-out-loud charmer about self-discovery and female friendship.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Golden Arm,” now on VOD, isn’t a Gen X remake of Otto Preminger’s gritty, Academy Award nominated drug drama “The Man with the Golden Arm” or a remake of “Over the Top” minus Sylvester Stallone.
Instead, it’s a laugh-out-loud charmer about self-discovery and female friendship set against a backdrop of women’s arm wrestling.
Comedian Mary Holland is Melanie, a recently divorced owner-operator of a failing bakery. Her customers are rude, she’s going broke and she really needs a break.
Meanwhile, Melanie’s best friend Danny (Upright Citizens Brigade Theater’s Betsy Sodaro) takes on Brenda “The Bonecrusher” (Olivia Stambouliah) in an arm-wrestling match and, true to form, The Bonecrusher breaks Danny’s wrist. In a cast and unable to compete in the Women’s Arm-Wrestling Championship, Danny wants revenge. “We need a ringer,” Danny says.
When it turns out that years of running the bakery by herself has given Melanie natural arm strength, Danny asks her to sub in for her at the tournament. “I’m gonna have you fill in for me at the nationals,” she says.
Melanie doesn’t have the killer instinct of an athlete but the fifteen-thousand-dollar prize money would solve many of her problems so she agrees. But first they must train under the tutelage of legendary arm-wrestling coach, Big Sexy (former “Glee” star and fifteen-time world arm wrestling champion Dot-Marie Jones).
“Golden Arm” is a feel-good sports movie that, like all good sports movies, it isn’t really about the sport. There’s loads of time spent talking about arm wrestling and we learn that it takes to win—“Be quick and explosive, you want to get the jump,” and that it takes eight pounds of pressure to break a humerus, the bone that runs from the shoulder to the elbow—and, of course, there is a showdown at the film’s climax, but this is a movie about a personal journey, female friendship and empowerment.
It’s also laugh out loud funny, sometimes vulgar, sometimes sweet. Sodaro is like a female Jack Black, a brash performer who takes chances and can deliver a line. Balancing her out is Holland, whose arc extends from meek-and-mild to badass in ninety minutes. They are the heart and soul of the movie and, with a colourful supporting cast, provide enough laughs and emotion to make “Golden Arm” a winner.
“Greener Grass,” a new comedy from the Upright Citizens Brigade writing-directing team of Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, is a portrait of the suburbs as seen through a surrealistic lens.
Set in an unnamed Midwestern Stepfordian suburb, the place looks familiar but feels like an alternate universe. There are no cars, (everyone gets around by golf cart), the adults all have braces (although none of the kids do) and the couples dress in complimentary pastel colors. Strange? Yes, but no weirder than the opening scene when passive aggressive Lisa (Luebbe) convinces her best friend Jill (DeBoer) to give hand over her newborn baby Madison. Like forever. “Take her,” Jill says. “We’ve had her since she was born.”
It sets the heightened tone of what’s to come. Later Jill’s son Julian (Julian Hilliard) turns into a dog, husbands are swapped and, because why not?, there’s a killer on the loose. A look at the idealized lives we try to present to the world with happy, smiling faces, “Greener Grass” mines the absurdity of keeping up with the Jones for searing social commentary on materialism and our perceptions of success and even the media (check out what happens to the boy who watches a TV show called “Kids With Knives”).
DeBoer and Luebbe keep things lively with surrealistic and awkward humor, never straying from the absurd tone established in the film’s opening moments. Imagine a mix of David Lynch’s soft suburban underbelly and the fearlessness of John Waters and you get an idea of the brand of satire on display. It occasionally feels like a series of skits strung together by theme but even then, it’s so refreshingly unusual, so grounded in the world DeBoer and Luebbe have created and so smart, it earns a recommendation, particularly if you are a fan of midnight movies.
