Had an absolute blast hosting the #Racewalkers opening night and doing a Q&A with the cast at the Scotiabank Theatre. The movie is really fun (read my review here: https://richardcrouse.ca/racewalkers-3-%c2%bd-stars-finds-emotional-depth-and-humor-by-not-punching-down/)! Go see it this weekend, you’ll feel better on the way out of the theatre than you did on the way in. Thanks to @Route504PR, producer Evan Landry, co-writers/co-directors/co-stars Kevin Claydon and Phil Moniz, producer/star @RobbieAmell, and stars Greg Bryk, Jess Salgueiro and Rebekah Francoz for letting me lead the conversation! Thanks to @shawngoldbergphotos for the pictures!
Here’s some info on the film: A Canadian sports comedy directed by and starring Kevin Claydon and Phil Moniz. The underdog story follows a struggling racewalking coach and a washed-up pro baseball player who team up to qualify for the Olympics, facing off against an ultracompetitive, villainous father-son racing duo. Often compared to “Cool Runnings” and “Happy Gilmore” for its mix of humor and heart.
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Akshay Tandon to talk about the new releases in theatres, including the live-action “Moana,” the sport comedy “Racewalkers” and the wacky “Wizard of Oz” homage “Gail Daughtery and the Celebrity Sex Pass.”
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to drink a Mai Tai. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the live-action “Moana,” the sport comedy “Racewalkers” and the wacky “Wizard of Oz” homage “Gail Daughtery and the Celebrity Sex Pass.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Racewalkers” a new underdog sports comedy now playing in theatres, an aspiring track and field coach and a washed-up baseball player team up to compete in the competitive world of race walking.
CAST: Kevin Claydon, Phil Moniz, Robbie Amell, Greg Bryk. Directed by Kevin Claydon and Phil Moniz.
REVIEW: “Racewalkers” walks the walk, molding a handful of sports cliches into a crowd-pleaser about perseverance and redemption, with equal parts slapstick and sincerity.
The story begins with Matt Mackenzie (Kevin Claydon, who also co-wrote the script), a washed-up former pro baseball player, now living in a van as he umpires little league games and pines for his ex-wife.
Meanwhile, physiologist and racewalking fan Will Lester (Phil Moniz, who co-wrote and co-directed) is stymied in his attempts to become a coach, kept out of the club by his hypercompetitive uncle Kurt Lester (Greg Bryk), whose son Ched (Robbie Amell) is an Olympic hopeful in the sport.
When Will meets Matt he immediately sees promise in the former ball player’s natural heel-to-toe gait. Race walking is not quite jogging or running; it’s a specific discipline that requires clenched butt cheeks and a distinctive rolling hip motion that creates a wiggle that propels the walker forward. “Looks like he’s coked out at a salsa bar,” says Ava (Italia Ricci).
With some training, he could give Chad a run for Olympic glory. “Racewalking is not walking, it’s a dance,” Will tells Matt.
But before they make it to the big leagues, they must work through Matt’s shattered confidence and Kurt’s dirty tricks.
Like all good sports movies “Racewalkers” isn’t just about the sport, although there is a fair amount of it on display. Instead, it’s about perseverance, passion, friendship and finding purpose. That it makes you laugh during its snappy 80-minute runtime is a bonus.
Kevin Claydon and Phil Moniz provide the film’s heart, bringing easy chemistry and razor-sharp comic timing to their roles. They bring the funny, but there’s also a great deal of warmth between them that gives the movie a great deal of charm.
“Racewalkers” could have been an over-the-top movie about a sport that, by its hip-swiveling nature, lends itself to parody, but instead it finds emotional depth by not punching down.
“Float,” a new romance starring “Kim Convenience’s” Andrea Bang and “Upload’s” Robbie Amell, and now playing in theatres, is an old-fashioned romance about having to choose between family expectations and love.
Set during the summer before Waverly (Bang) is set to do a medical residency in Toronto, the story begins with the young protagonist making a detour from a planned visit with her parents in Taiwan. She hasn’t seen them in years, not since she began studying medicine in Chicago. “They make sure I have everything I need,” she says, “but they don’t really know me.”
At the last minute she detours, and stops over to visit with her hippie-ish aunt (Michelle Krusiec) in Tofino, British Columbia.
“I haven’t had time off since med school,” Waverly says. “Now is my chance. I haven’t told my parents”
It’s a rare impulsive move for Waverly, who until this point has followed a path in life predetermined by her mother and father.
When she almost drowns, charming and handsome lifeguard Blake (Amell) comes to her rescue. He’s a local, tethered to the town by family obligations. The two hit it off, and as Waverly settles into life in the beach town, Blake gives her swimming lessons.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks.
“I like spending time with you,” he says.
They fall in love, but will the expectations of Waverly’s parents prevent them from having a life together?
If you can’t figure out how “Float” ends, then you may want to rethink your Harlequin Book of the Month subscription. The escapist story, about finding a path forward in life using love as a compass, may be predictable, but writer and co-director (adapting a wildly successful Wattpad story by writer Kate Marchant) Sherren Lee provides just enough conflict between Waverly and her parents and Blake and his sister to keep the movie on a low dramatic simmer throughout.
This is a story about, as Waverly says, finding creating a logical family over a biological family. It’s about the joys of friendship and love, and opening oneself up to new experiences and people. To that end Lee casts an appealing supporting cast with King Bach, Rukiya Bernard, Sarah Desjardins, Ghazal Azarbad and Tristan Arthurs, playing members of Waverly’s supportive new family.
It’s fitting, that given the setting of the film, that “Float” is the equivalent of a summer beach read. Despite some clunky, earnest dialogue—”I want to stay here with you but I want to be a doctor,” sounds like a rejected line from a Hallmark movie—the movie does what it set out to do, put a new spin on a classic genre.
Thanks to Mongrel Media for having me in to host the Q&A at the Canadian premier of “Simulant” with director April Mullen and actors Sam Worthington and Robbie Amell.
The movie’s synopsis: With androids (SIMS) and humans coexisting, Simulant centers around FAYE (Jordana Brewster) who has already pulled the plug on her late husband, now she can’t bring herself to do the same to EVAN (Robbie Amell), his android counterpart. Instead of deactivating Evan, Faye sets him up in an apartment to live illegally on his own. While there he meets Casey (Simu Liu), a brilliant programmer who helps him become more human in order to win Faye back. Unbeknownst to Evan, his new friend is wanted for questioning by a determined Artificial Intelligence Compliance Enforcement (AICE) agent Kessler (Sam Worthington). Evan has to win over Faye’s heart before they are both discovered and he loses everything.
On Friday April 7, 2023 I’ll be hosting a Q&A with the director and cast of the new sci fi film “Simulant” at the Scotiabank theatre in Toronto. Guests include director April Mullen and cast members Sam Worthington, Robbie Amell and Alicia Sanz.
Here’s some info on the film: With androids (SIMS) and humans coexisting, Simulant centers around FAYE (Jordana Brewster) who has already pulled the plug on her late husband, now she can’t bring herself to do the same to EVAN (Robbie Amell), his android counterpart. Instead of deactivating Evan, Faye sets him up in an apartment to live illegally on his own. While there he meets Casey (Simu Liu), a brilliant programmer who helps him become more human in order to win Faye back. Unbeknownst to Evan, his new friend is wanted for questioning by a determined Artificial Intelligence Compliance Enforcement (AICE) agent Kessler (Sam Worthington). Evan has to win over Faye’s heart before they are both discovered and he loses everything.
Gamers will recognize Raccoon City as the name of the once prosperous home base of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corp. That we’re talking about it on this page can only mean one thing, a new “Resident Evil” movie. The seventh film in the series, “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City,” now playing in theatres, reboots the videogame-inspired franchise, taking the story back to the beginning.
Raccoon City once thrived. A company town, from the 1960s to the late 90s the Midwestern city grew and prospered as pharmaceutical giant Umbrella set up shop there, and invested heavily in infrastructure and the townsfolk, who made up the bulk of their employees.
Everything changed in 1998 when a genetically-altered organism named Queen Leech attacked the facility, kicking off a series of events that left the city a desolate wasteland with a zombie problem.
It’s into this world director Johannes Roberts drops college student Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) and rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy (Avan Jogia) on one terrifying night in Raccoon City. Claire has come to the dying city to locate her brother Chris (Robbie Amell). The T-virus, Umbrella’s top-secret biological weapon isn’t much of a secret anymore, and the infected residents of Raccoon City are now terrifying zombies. Over the course of one night Claire, Chris, and others from the video game series like Leon (Avan Jogia), Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen) and Albert Wesker (Umbrella Academy’s Tom Hopper), fight to survive.
Adapted from the first and second “Resident Evil” games by Capcom, “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” returns the series to its video game roots. The previous films emphasized action over horror. This time around Roberts reverts to scary vibe of the videogames, paying homage to both the games and vintage John Carpenter for the atmosphere of dread that builds throughout. Stylistically, as a videogame tribute, that approach works quite well.
As a movie, however, it comes up lacking. Despite some good gooey and gory zombie action and some fun action scenes, it takes too long to get where it is going. While we wait for the going to get good, we’re subjected to dialogue straight out of the Handbook of Horror Clichés and too much exposition.
The opening feels long winded and the ending rushed, but, especially for gamers looking for Easter Eggs, “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” has enough moments in between to satisfy fans of the series.
Mild mannered office worker Sid Straw, played by “Veep”/”Arrested Development” star Tony Hale in the new V.O.D. comedy “Eat Wheaties!,” claims to be a close acquittance of “Huger Games” star Elizabeth Banks.
“There is no such thing,” says her manager (Sarah Chalke).
As the cringe comedy begins Sid is unlucky in love, an expert in saying the wrong thing, misreading signals and trying too hard. “I understand that I am not the most exciting person out there,” he says. When he is named co-chair of the upcoming University of Pennsylvania’s reunion it is the beginning of a spiral. Setting up a Facebook page to publicize the event, he repeatedly messages Banks, an alumnus he claims to have been acquainted with decades ago.
Not realizing the posts are public, he bombards her account with a series of personal notes inviting her to the reunion. His many messages go unnoticed by the star but not her team, who file a restraining order against him. When the posts go viral—“What does that mean?” he asks.—his life unwinds as he is publicly and personally humiliated.
Based on the novel “The Locklear Letters” by Michael Kun, “Eat Wheaties!” (that was Banks’ catchphrase in school), is a mix of tragedy and comedy, made human by Hale’s performance. Sid could have been a collection of quirks but Hale paints him differently. Sid is a lovable loser and Hale plays him as a sweet, lonely guy, oblivious to the hole he’s digging for himself.
Hale is supported by a great supporting cast, including Paul Walter Hauser, Elisha Cuthbert, Lamorne Morris and Robbie Amell, who play off Sid’s social awkwardness with good-natured sympathy.
“Eat Wheaties!” is a tightly paced comedy which is more about kindness and doing the right thing than it is about knee slapping jokes. It is occasionally knee-slapping funny but the laughs come from kind-heartedness, not cruelty and that makes this quirky comedy a winner.
