Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less than a New York Minute! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the horror flick “Smile 2,” the Michael Keaton drama “Goodrich” and the political satire “Rumours.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the bonkers horror film “Smile 2,” the drama “We Live in Time,” the satire “Rumours” and the Michael Keaton flick “Goodrich.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton) always put work ahead of family. But now, with his once successful gallery is on the verge of collapse and his wife in rehab for ninety days, his self-centeredness must take a back seat to tending to his rocky relationship with pregnant adult daughter Grace (Mila Kunis) and his nine-year-old twins.
CAST: Michael Keaton, Mila Kunis, Andie MacDowell, Carmen Ejogo, Kevin Pollak, Poorna Jagannathan. Directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer.
REVIEW: The success of “Goodrich” hinges on star Michael Keaton’s ability to milk humor and charm out of human drama. A wee bit sentimental, and more than a bit manipulative, the film is saved from melodrama by Keaton’s sure and steady hand.
The family drama emanates from the title character. During an argument, his grown daughter Grace calls him the “never available, never home, never ask you how are you? Goodrich,” and we see that guy, but we also see who he’s trying to be, and it is that arc that makes him, and the movie, interesting.
Keaton gives the character the cockiness of a man who is used to success, but as that fades, he becomes more appealing, more aware of his failures as a father and a person. He quotes a Buddhist saying about how the measure of a life can be tallied in how much you’ve loved, how gently you’ve lived and how gracefully you let go of things that weren’t meant for you. He botched all three but wants to make amends.
It’s not a new story but Keaton draws us in because he’s willing to change, particularly in the relationship with Grace.
“Goodrich” is a slight movie that tries hard to pull at your heartstrings. A little too hard perhaps, but the scenes between Goodrich and Grace do offer some unexpectedly hard-hitting moments. “I am then only person who loves you as much as you love yourself,” she says and her words land like a slap in the face.
Ultimately, Goodrich discovers that it is the small things in life that matter, and that everything, from a sunrise to the smile on your Grace’s face can be art, not just the artwork he devoted his life to. Simple messages but delivered with the kind of heartfelt conviction and mix of comedy and drama that recalls Keaton’s earlier work in films like “Mr. Mom.”
Like Rodney Dangerfield, Sue Buttons (Alison Janney) gets no respect. In the new dark comedy “Breaking News in Yuba County,” now available on VOD, she discovers that with respect and unwanted attention comer hand in hand.
A help-desk operator, Sue is verbally abused by random callers, her half-sister Nancy (Mila Kunis) doesn’t remember her birthday and even shopkeepers talk down to her. “You’re important. You’re strong. You matter,” she says into the mirror, despite all the evidence to the contrary. When her husband Karl (Matthew Modine), who has been laundering money for crime boss Mina (Awkwafina), goes missing after a tryst with his mistress (on Sue’s birthday no less), people begin to take notice of Sue. Elevated to local celebrity status, Sue weaves a web of lies to keep policewoman (Regina Hall), deadbeat brother-in-law (Jimmi Simpson) and reporter Nancy from discovering what really happened to Karl.
“Breaking News in Yuba County” is part suburban satire, part character study. As a satire it aims to peel back the soft underbelly of big box stores, small town attitudes and middle-age angst.
As a character study, it follows Sue as she blossoms from wallflower into the anxious center of attention.
In a well-oiled machine, these two elements would sit comfortably side-by-side but here the satire doesn’t cut and the characters don’t compel.
The performances, particularly from Janney, tap every ounce of interest from the script, but the underwritten story from Amanda Idoko doesn’t dig deep enough for the satire. Mean spirited instead of insightful, it attempts the kind of juggling act Joel and Ethan Coen perform in films like “Fargo,” where crime, character and satire blend to unveil a more universal truth. Here, Sue’s search for acknowledgement and fame is as uninspired as her oft-repeated mantra, “You’re important. You’re strong. You matter.”
If nothing else the new animated film “Wonder Park” will teach kids how to use and possibly overuse the word “splendiferous.” Good lessons on self reliance and facing fears abound, but “splendiferous” appears so many times it’s as if the screenwriters earned a bonus every time a character utters it.
Precocious ten-year old June (Brianna Denski) spends most of her days hanging out in a world of imagination. Encouraged by her loving mother (Jennifer Garner), June is a mini P.T. Barnum, inventing a fantasy theme park, Wonderland, “the most splendiferous park ever,” using nothing but bendy-straws, stuffed animals like her monkey Peanut and her creativity.
When her mother falls ill and has to be hospitalized June puts away childish things, putting Peanut and all of Wonderland into boxes. Looking after her father she becomes obsessed with running the house. Concerned he cannot survive without her, she plays hooky from math camp, creating a diversion so she can get of the bus and cut through the woods to get home. On the way she discovers a discarded amusement park ride that transports her into the land of her imagination.
But things aren’t quite how she imagined them. Her beloved stuffed animal mascots are on the run from hoards of chimpanzombies determined to destroy the park. As the architect of the park her imagination will be put to the test as she searches for a way to restore harmony to her beloved Wonderland.
Even at just one hour and twenty-six minutes “Wonder Park” feels padded. Music montages and several frenetic action scenes stretch the story to feature length but there is much to like nonetheless. Good messages about the power of imagination to help work through life’s challenging moments and self-belief are sincere and powerful—“There is wonder in all of us!”—but it is the film’s willingness to expand beyond the eye-distracting action scenes into more personal territory that earns it a recommend.
The mother’s illness sub-plot is handled subtly and carefully but drives the entire story. “I got so scared of losing her,” June says, “that I lost myself.” It’s poignant and more heart-tugging than you might expect from a movie featuring a talking porcupine (John Oliver, doing some fun voice work).
“Wonder Park” is a movie that respects its audience. That understands children can handle complex ideas about real life and for that, it is splendiferous.
“The Spy Who Dumped Me” is the most multi-hyphenated movie to hit screens this year. It’s a spy-thriller-rom-com-buddy-flick-dark-comedy, that’s a lot of hyphens and genres. Too many, in fact.
Kate McKinnon plays Morgan Freeman (you read that right), BFF to Audrey (Mila Kunis), a cashier still stinging from being dumped by her boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux). They both thought he worked for NPR as a jazz and political podcaster. Turns out, he’s a secret agent for the CIA. Despite dumping her on her birthday, and by text no less, he reaches out to ask her to deliver a flash drive containing the “back door to the entire internet” to Vienna.
With some coaxing from Morgan—“Do you want to die never having been to Europe or do you want to die on a European trip?”—Audrey agrees and the best friends head for Europe. On their tails are squabbling MI6 spies Sebastian (Sam Heughan) and Duffer (Hasan Minhaj) the “bad people” who have been tracking Drew. “Some bad people are after me and now they are after you,” says Drew.
It seems Audrey‘s video game playing experience has trained her for life in the field. On the mission the two newbie spies Jason Bourne their way through Europe, stamping their stolen passports in Prague, Paris, Berlin while fending off ice cold Eastern European assassin Nadedja (Ivanna Sakhno). Several car chases, one death by fondue and hundreds of bullets later they uncover the truth of their assignment.
“The Spy Who Dumped Me” gets lost amid all its duelling genres. It’s not dark enough to be a dark comedy, not funny enough to be a full on comedy, not romantic enough to be a rom com and certainly not thrilling enough to give 007 a run for this money. Instead it’s a Frankensteined version of all the genres sewn together sitcom style.
McKinnon gives it her all as the well-intentioned BFF who starts as much trouble as she stops, spicing up all her scenes with the deadpan Kunis. McKinnon‘s characters are comedic things a beauty, human but other worldly, strange but relatable, but here it feels as if the big screen amplifies her already larger-than-life character. It’s as if she is acting in a different movie than Kunis and the others. She’s the movie’s MVP but her take on Morgan distracts rather than adds. As Drew tells her when they first meet, “Morgan, has anyone ever told you told you you’re a bit much?”
Despite McKinnon’s best efforts “The Spy Who Dumped Me,” at almost two hours, is overlong and overstuffed.
If you are to believe the new Mila Kunis comedy, “A Bad Mom Christmas,” the Yuletide is a time of joy… unless you are a mother. “Moms don’t enjoy,” we’re told, “they give joy. That‘s how being a mom works.”
In 2016’s “Bad Moms” Amy (Mila Kunis) Kiki (Kristen Bell) and Carla (Kathryn Hahn) were a Coffee Klatch of moms fed up with the burden of having to be perfect. Today not much has changed except for the weather. They are all still overworked and underappreciated as the holidays approach. “I feel like a giant stress ball from November to New Years,” says Amy.
On top of providing a memorable Christmas for their families, the original three moms, in the kind of miracle that only happens in Christmas movies, are ambushed by their own mothers, the primly perfect-in-every-way Ruth (Christine Baranski), the overbearing Sandy (Cheryl Hines) and former REO Speedwagon roadie Isis (Susan Sarandon). Each are as welcome as a bad case of Christmas Itch and all three complicate an already complicated season. “Remember when the holidays were actually fun?” asks Amy. “Let’s take Christmas back.”
Only in the era of climate change would it seem appropriate to release the snowbound “A Bad Moms Christmas” the day after Halloween. The first “Bad Moms” movie was a hell raising grrrls-gone-wild romp with plenty of gags but this one falls into the sloppy sentimental trap of many holiday movies.
It’s an hour-and-forty-minutes of dime store psychology—families aren’t perfect but they’re the only family you’ll ever have—that makes “Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever” look like “The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance” by comparison. It wants to warm the cockles of your heart with its tale of mothers and kids but none of it feels authentic. The heart-tugging stuff doesn’t tug because none of it feels authentic and the raunchy humour—the potty mouth kids, endless vaginal waxing jokes, the twerking on Santa and gingerbread cookies shaped like… well, you can guess—feels wedged in. Imagine a Hallmark Movie with male strippers and you get the idea.
It’s not the cast’s fault the script is drier than Aunt Ethel’s Christmas turkey. All of them—particularly Baranski and Hahn—are game but cannot turn this lump of coal into a polished diamond. Kenny G earns points as a willing pop-culture punchline and Baranski should win some sort of special prize for squeezing as many laughs out of this material as she does. Her take on “the most critical human being on the planet”—“When I was nine I made her a Mother’s Day card,” Amy says, “and she returned it with notes.”—is worthy of a much better movie.
“A Bad Mom Christmas” only gets one thing 100% right. “We’re going to watch ‘Love, Actually,’” says Amy. “Dumb movie,” sneers Ruth.
From the comedy minds who gave us “The Hangover” comes another trio. This time it’s less a Wolf Pack than it is a Coffee Klatch of moms fed up with the burden of having to be perfect. It has its raunchy moments—thanks to Kathryn Hahn’s spirited performance—but by and large “Bad Moms” might better be titled “Tired Moms.
Amy (Mila Kunis) is a thirty-two-year-old frazzled mom struggling to keep up with her family life and work. She has two kids, the overachieving Jane (Oona Laurence) and Dylan (Emjay Anthony) and a husband (David Walton) “who sometimes feels like a third child.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” she sighs. “That makes it sadder,” replies Jane.
When an epiphany turns her from stressed mother to bad mom, she sleeps in, lets her kids make their own breakfast and drinks loads of wine with two other exhausted mothers, Carla (Hahn) and Kiki (Kristen Bell). Having tossed the shackles of the daily grind of motherhood aside, Amy is reborn, but not everyone is pleased. Her newfound freedom puts her in the crosshairs of the fascistic PTA president Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate).
The mothers in “Bad Moms” aren’t bad moms, they’re simply fed up with trying to live up to the expectations. The movie has laughs, mostly courtesy of Hahn’s laser sharp delivery of lines like, “I feel like everything that comes out of your mouth is a cry for help,” but mostly this is a manifesto for taking a breath and giving both yourself and your kids a chance to enjoy their childhoods. As Amy becomes the Norma Rae of mothers, she discovers taking a step away from what she thought she should do as a mom is the best way to discover the joy of parenthood.
It’s a story of the power of friendship and despite the promise of raunch “Bad Moms” is filled with gooey warmth. The set up is formulaic—you know the bond between children or parents will only grow and get stronger by the time the end credits roll—but despite the obvious story, and some obvious plot holes, the movie succeeds because underneath it all it’s not just about them talking about their kids, their exhaustion or how to best to dress for a night out. It’s about taking control of their lives, standing up to injustice and, yes, getting a date with the handsome widowed dad (Jay Hernandez) who drops his kid off at the playground everyday.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
Who’s to blame for Hollywood’s lack of originality? Are the suits too eager to greenlight reboots and sequels? Are screenwriters so uninspired they can’t think past remaking their favourite 1980s TV shows? Do actors only consider characters based on video games?
Of course not.
The people responsible for the movie doldrums these days live in your mirrors and selfies. That’s right, if you go to the cinema and didn’t check out Birdman, Whiplash or Obvious Child but did go see Guardians of the Galaxy twenty-five times, you forced Hollywood’s hand, guaranteeing another ten years of the big screen exploits of comic book characters Rocket Racoon and company.
Guardians is a fun movie that people liked and Hollywood is in the business of giving moviegoers what they want, but the fear is that a constant stream of familiar feeling films could create a less discerning audience. If you are fed a steady diet of dog food eventually you’ll get used to the taste.
Birdman is an accessible and entertaining movie but with a total gross less than one weekend’s business for Guardians it’s unlikely to inspire a Birdman 2: No Plucking Way but bigger box office could inspire more adventurous films as an antidote to the slew of movies with numbers in their titles.
Big budget Hollywood doesn’t often take the path less trodden. People went to see Inception but I would argue that the reference point for that movie was the director Christopher Nolan, hot off the Batman streak and not the unique story. Less successful were originals like Edge of Tomorrow, despite the usually winning mix of great reviews and Tom Cruise and Transcendence, the computer hard drive horror that brought Johnny Depp’s box office average way down.
Despite those high profile failures this weekend Warner Brothers has gone off the map to show support for an original story from The Matrix directors, the Wachowskis. Jupiter Ascending is a space opera about genetically engineered warrior Caine (Channing Tatum) who helps human janitor Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) take her place as heir to the galaxy.
Big stars, name directors and a new story should appeal but already the knives are out. “Jupiter Ascending looks like a great movie,” wrote @RickIngraham on twitter, “to never see.”
Jupiter Ascending will rise or fall based on audience interest, but if it tanks it’ll be harder for other unusual stories to get made. There are already at least thirty sequels, reboots and spin-offs scheduled for 2015—everything from Star Wars: The Force Awakens to Paul Blart: Mall Cop II—so unless you want another Daddy Day Care reboot in 2016 get out of your comfort zone and see something new and original today.
