Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make your bed. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the dark comedy “The Christophers,” the east coast crime drama “Little Lorraine” and the Montreal coming-of-age “Mile End Kicks.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Scott Hirsch to talk about the recently announced “Top Gun 3” and new releases in theatres, including the dark comedy “The Christophers,” the east coast crime drama “Little Lorraine,” the documentary “Lorne” and the Montreal coming-of-age “Mile End Kicks.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” to talk about hoiw big album drops may be related to traffic accidents, the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, a head banging prime minister and I review the east coast crime drama “Little Lorraine” and suggest some Cape Breton drinks to go along with the movie.
Listen to the entertainment news HERE!
Listen to Booze & Reviews HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Little Lorraine,” a new true crime drama starring Stephen Amell, Sean Astin, J Balvin and Stephen McHattie, a seaside fishing village in Nova Scotia becomes the center of an international cocaine smuggling ring in the 1980s.
CAST: Stephen Amell, Sean Astin, J Balvin, Matt Walsh, Rhys Darby, Stephen McHattie, Steve Lund, Sugar Lyn Beard, Hugh Thompson, Mike Dopud, Kaelen Ohm, Joshua Close, Auden Thornton, Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz, Mark A. Owen, Dax Ravina, Luis Javier, David Mortimer. Directed by Andy Hines.
REVIEW: Inspired by true events, “Little Lorraine” is a crime story set amid Cape Breton’s post-coal mining difficulties, that authentically depicts how far desperate people will go to support their families.
As the movie begins, hard times have come to Cape Breton’s tight-knit blue-collar community Little Lorraine. A faltering fishing industry coupled with a coal mine explosion that killed ten men and led to the closure of the local mine has left many of the community’s 60 inhabitants unemployed, desperate for work.
To keep food on the table former miner Jimmy (Stephen Amell) and two locals, Tommy (Joshua Close) and Jake (Steve Lund), accept an offer of good-paying jobs on a lobster boat run by Jimmy’s shady great-uncle Huey (Stephen McHattie).
Unfortunately, the honest work is anything but.
Turns out Huey’s boat and the secluded town are part of a global cocaine smuggling ring, with Jimmy, Tommy, and Jake unknowingly moving the drugs. The operation distributes cocaine via funeral homes, hiding it in coffins.
Faced with the choice of breaking the law to feed their families, Jimmy and his friends debate what to do as an Interpol agent, played by Colombian musician J Balvin, closes in.
Rich in atmosphere, “Little Lorraine” paints a vivid picture of a town and its people plunged into crisis.
Urgent and realistic, it succeeds because isn’t just about the crime, it’s about the people.
There’s loads of suspense, but director Andy Hines (who co-wrote the script with Adam Baldwin) makes sure that the cocaine smuggling takes a backseat to the effect of Uncle Huey’s scheme rather than the scheme itself.
As Jimmny, Amell leaves behind the high gloss of his best-known role as the crime fighting Green Arrow on the CW superhero series “Arrow” to find a welcome grittiness that serves the everyman character and the story. A man roiled by guilt, his self-destructiveness cuts through his stoicism to reveal the moral dilemma at the heart of the film.
As good as Amell is in the movie, it’s McHattie who steals scenes. A charismatic rogue, he drips menace through the malevolent smile on his face.
“Little Lorraine” is a stranger-than-fiction exploration of economic desperation, loyalty and moral dilemmas that finds the humanity in the situation without ever romanticizing or sensationalizing it.
SYNOPSIS: In “Novocaine,” a violent new rom com now playing in theatres, Jack Quaid plays a man with a congenital insensitivity to pain who is driven to extremes when the woman of his dreams is kidnapped by bank robbers.
CAST: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh. Directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen.
REVIEW: “Novocaine’s” central premise takes its inspiration from action movies of the past with silly gimmicks.
Remember Jason Statham’s adrenalized “Crank”? How about Scarlett Johansson‘s turbo-charged brainiac “Lucy”? Or Bradley Cooper’s enhanced cognitive abilities in “Limitless”? Each of those films features characters with a special ability that turns them into a superhero of a sort.
“Novocaine” sees Jack Quaid play Nathan Caine, a nerdy assistant bank manager nicknamed Novocaine because he has a rare medical condition that prevents him from feeling pain. “I have the superpower to step on a nail,” he jokes, “and not know until my shoe fills up with blood.”
When bank teller (and Nathan’s love interest) Sherry (Amber Midthunder) is kidnapped during a robbery at the bank, Nathan uses his condition to become an accidental superhero as he risks life-and-limb to rescue her.
“Novocaine” is what I call a “qualm rom com” because after the romantic, get-to-know-you vibe of the first half hour, it takes a violent twist that may leave you with some doubts about brutality on display. Most of the gruesome stuff is played for laughs, but after an hour or so of deep-fried hands, impalement and dangerous “Home Alone” style boobytraps, the initial feel-good ambiance has been replaced with a queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Luckily, guiding the action is the charming presence of everyman Quaid. As the mild-mannered Nathan he’ll do anything for love, and even when he’s reigning chaos down on anyone who gets in his way, he remains a nice guy. That congeniality goes a long way to keeping “Novocaine’s” on track, even as we get as numb to the violence as Nathan is to the pain in the film’s extended third act.
“Novocaine’s” superpower isn’t Nathan’s immunity to pain, it’s Quaid’s likability.
An aggressive but damaged comedic persona goes back to school. It worked well when Rodney Dangerfield did it in 1986 but will it work as well a second time? Melissa McCarthy hopes to find out with this week’s release of “Life of the Party.”
The “Bridesmaid” star plays enthusiastic domestic engineer Deanna, devoted wife of Dan (Matt Walsh), mother of senior year university student Maddie (Molly Gordon). When Dan unexpectedly dumps her, abruptly ending their twenty-three year marriage, she takes control of her destiny. “What am I going to do?” she asks. “Take spin classes? Oh no. I don’t want to start a blog.” Instead of any of that it’s back to school for Deanna for the first time since Counting Crows topped the charts.
Enrolled at the same university as her daughter, Deanna blossoms. Embracing life around the quad she discovers everything she missed during her marriage. Her journey of self-discovery includes hanging out with Maddie’s friends and getting friendly with the campus frat boys.
Like “Back to School,” “Life of the Party” isn’t a particularly good movie. The first half is brutal, with so few laughs its hardtop even label it a comedy. The second half is much better but still, scenes end when it feels like they are just getting started or at least like there is one better joke to come. When it really goes for laughs between beyond Seanna’s sentimentality, self-help platitudes and momisms, however, it earns them. A mediation scene is laugh-out-loud, the relationships gel and Maya Rudolph needs to make the jump from supporting roles to the above the title star.
Mostly though, the film features the relentless likability of Melissa McCarthy. I’m not sure she elevates the material (which she co-wrote with her director husband Ben Falcone) but she brings some heart to it and in this story of a mother and daughter, that’s enough.
An exercise in “found footage” handheld camera technique, “Into the Storm’s” story is almost as shaky as its visuals.
Playing like a cross between “Twister,” “Wizard of Oz” and “The Blair Witch Project,” the story is set in Silverton, a small Midwestern American town besieged by tornadoes. In just one twenty-four hour span deadly twisters rip through the town, sending sensible citizens rushing for cover while a storm chasing documentary crew led by director Pete (“Veep’s” Matt Walsh) and meteorologist Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies of “The Walking Dead”) rush headlong into the cyclone to get some up-close-and-personal footage. Meanwhile Gary (Richard Armitage) and son (Nathan Kress) are on the hunt for their son/brother Donnie (Max Deacon) who went missing when the storm started.
Director Steven Quale was the visual effects supervisor on “The Abyss,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “True Lies,” “Titanic” and “Avatar,” so the guy knows how to stage an action scene. It’s the other stuff he has trouble with. When the wind isn’t tearing the town apart it’s as if Quale doesn’t know what to do with the characters or the story.
To kill time between the wild wind storms the characters tell you what is about to happen—“Oh [crap],” says Allison, “it’s headed for the school!”—and talk about shooting anything that movies. “I can’t stop filming or I’ll be fired!” says cameraman Jacob.
Everyone seems to have a camera crazy-glued to their hands, and those who don’t seem to spend their time yelling, “Make sure you keep filming,” to the people who do. In fact, this movie should have been called “Keep Filming,” because it is the film’s mantra.
Mix that with a wooden performance from Richard Armitage that would make Woody Pecker’s mouth water, a series of tornadoes and a Firenado—an idea so silly I imagine the makers of “Sharknado” rejected it as too over the top—and you get a disaster movie that is a disaster of a film.
