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 appear on “CTV News at 6” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the documentary “Lorne,” Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel in the dramedy “The Christophers” and the east coast crime dr5ama “Little Lorraine.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 37:00)
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about new movies 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! (Starts at 12:11)
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 sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the dark comedy “The Christophers,” the east coast crime drama “Little Lorraine” and the Montreal coming-of-age “Mile End Kicks.”
Listen to 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.
The crowd-funded “Code 8” is speculative fiction, set in the future, but addresses real world issues like marginalization and the healthcare crisis.
Robbie Amell is Connor Reed, one of the 4% of the population born with extraordinary powers. Instead of being celebrated, however, Reed and his kind are discriminated against, forced to live in poverty.
Blessed—or cursed, depending on how you look at it—with the ability to generate electricity, Reed lives a quiet life, working in construction. The low profile job keep him off the radar of Agents Park in Davis (Sung Kang and Aaron Abrams), leaders of a militarized police unit, but doesn’t earn enough to pay for his mother‘s (Kari Matchett) mounting hospital bills.
To make some much-needed cash he agrees to expose his abilities to aid crime boss Marcus Sutcliffe (Greg Bryk) and his sadistic henchmen Garrett (Stephen Amell).
The aura of “X-Men” hangs heavy over “Code 8.” Director and co-writer (with Chris Pare) Jeff Chan has re-contextualized the idea of superbeings being persecuted for their powers—they don’t wear costumes, have character names like Electro or attend tony private schools—but all roads lead back to artist/co-writer Jack Kirby and writer Stan Lee’s timely take on the mistrust of those seen as different. There’s more grit here and the characters aren’t as showy, they are simply trying to survive in a world that is inhospitable to them.
Chan does a good job balancing the action with ideas, effortlessly mixing and matching real word and sci fi elements to create a movie that has enough to say about the fear of diversity and tolerance to earn a look.
In the cold-blooded world of turtles, Yertle, Gamera, Koopa Troopa and Fastback are hot names. But the most famous testudines of all time have to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Stars of movies, comic books, television and video games, the four anthropomorphic turtle brothers even had action figures and breakfast cereals as part of their reptilian empire.
They were 20th-century pop-culture icons, which ain’t too bad for four hard-shelled crime fighters named after Renaissance artists.
Stephen Amell, who plays hockey-mask wearing hero Casey Jones in this weekend’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, says he grew up with Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello.
“The live-action films did it for me,” says the actor, who was just nine when the turtles hit the big screen for the first time. “I’ve always ingested superheroes, especially comic book superheroes, via feature films. Like Superman, Batman, Christopher Reeve, Michael Keaton, all that stuff. When they did the live-action turtle movie I remember my brain not being able to fully comprehend how they were going to do this. Those were seminal moments from my childhood.”
The story of four pet turtles transformed by radioactive ooze into sewer-dwelling, crime-fighting ninja warriors appealed to kids, but the original 1984 black-and-white comics were dark, gritty and violent, a subversive homage to popular books like Daredevil, Cerebus and Ronin. Sharp-eyed readers of the second issue of TMNT will notice old issues of Cerebus and Ronin discarded on the floor of the Turtles’ sewer home.
They sliced and diced bad guys and even uttered the odd PG-13 word.
Turtlemania really began in 1987 with an animated series aimed at younger viewers. They quickly became something of a sensation, but with popularity came an erosion of the rebellious aspects of the story. In short, they became the thing they once poked fun at.
The turtles went mainstream, and soon there were arcade games, action figures, clothing, movies and more.
Kids were taken with the turtle soup of gags, colourful characters and pizza obsession, but Amell says there is more than that to their appeal.
“At the baseline of this entire experience, we are talking about the relationship of four brothers — the relationship as they struggle through adolescence,” he says. “I feel like whether you have brothers, sisters, close friends, any type of family, everyone can relate to that.
“It’s this unique idea. It’s so unique it tends to be universal. I don’t know what the secret sauce is, otherwise I would create my own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and just sit back and collect the royalties.”
For many, including the crowds that will no doubt flock to Out Of The Shadows this week, the allure of the turtles is at least partly nostalgic, a return to a simpler time.
I get the feeling that for the Toronto-born Amell, the appeal is partly sentimental, partly professional.
“It’s pretty cool,” he says. “It’s a really great franchise to be part of. It’s amazing to play a character like Casey Jones. I was just at Yonge and Dundas Square [in Toronto] and it is overrun with Turtles’ posters. It’s a dream come true.”
