I join CP24 to talk about the big movies hitting theatres and streaming this week, including the dark comedy “My Friend Zoe,” the survival drama “Last Breath” and make some Oscar predictions.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
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 the dark comedy “My Friend Zoe,” the survival drama “Last Breath” and the feel good “Superboys of Malegaon.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In the dark comedy “My Dead Friend Zoe,” now playing in theatres, Afghanistan veteran Merit is haunted by her late best friend Zoe. Now in civilian life, Merit searches for a way forward as she suffers from PTSD and tends to her retired Lieutenant-Colonel grandfather.
CAST: Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Gloria Reuben, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris. Directed by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes
REVIEW: A study of the effects of PTSD, “My Dead Friend Zoe” is part dark comedy, part ghost story and part family drama but in its totality is greater than the sum of its parts. Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, who co-wrote the film with AJ Bermudez, based the heart and soul of the film, the despair of a veteran who left friends behind, on personal experience and the weight of that permeates the film’s every frame.
As such, “My Dead Friend Zoe” raises awareness about the importance of mental health assistance for veterans and does so in a heartfelt but entertaining way.
A trio of performances from Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales and Ed Harris bring the story to heartfelt life.
As Afghanistan veteran Merit, Martin-Green blurs the line between anguish and the practiced stoicism of a person trying desperately to hold it together. It’s powerful work that could easily become maudlin, but Martin-Green infuses every line with emotion while keeping Merit’s two feet firmly on the ground.
Morales, as the recently departed title character, is a live wire, ironically filled with life as she pops in and out of the picture, a reminder of the hurt Merit carries.
As Merit’s retired Lieutenant-Colonel grandfather, Ed Harris is a force of nature who commands his limited time on screen. He’s a hard man, one toughened by the Vietnam War and the negative reception he received upon his return and is an interesting counterpoint to Merit and her experience.
These fine performances smooth over Merit’s epiphany, an ending that feels rushed in an effort to wrap things up conveniently and expediently. But despite “My Dead Friend Zoe’s” soft finale, it does an otherwise remarkable job of balancing heart and humour with the real-life issues faced by soldiers returning from conflict.
Richard joins Jay Michaels and guest host Deb Hutton of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush to talk about the morbid history of the Sourtoe Cocktail and some new releases in theatres, the Ryan Reynolds action comedy “Free Guy” and the Aretha Franklin biopic “Respect.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Free Guy,” the new Ryan Reynolds action comedy now playing in theatres, has its philosophical moments but no one will confuse its search for the meaning of life with the explorations of Joseph Campbell or Socrates. This is pure pop philosophy that breathes the same air “The Truman Show” and “Edtv,” movies about men who yearn for more than life has offered them.
Reynolds is Guy, a bank teller in Free City, a video game metropolis where the main characters wear sunglasses, have devil-may-care attitudes, cool hair and treat laws as suggestions, not hard and fast rules. Everyone else, including Guy and his best friend Buddy (Lil Rel Howery), are NPC, non-player-characters, who exist simple to give the Sunglasses People someone to rob, beat down, or, in rare cases, flirt with.
They are set decoration in the grand video game of life. “People with sunglasses never talk to people like us,” Buddy says.
One day Guy’s orderly life is thrown a curve when he spots Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer), a gunslinging sunglasses person, who also happen to be the woman of his dreams. Consumed with feelings he has never had before; his behaviors change as he looks for love and meaning in his life. “Maybe I’ll get some sunglasses of my own,” he says.
IRL (In Real Life) Millie (also played by Comer) and Keys (Joe Keery) are former coding superstars whose idea for a videogame that would actually change and grow independently of its users was stolen by evil video game developer Antoine (Taika Waititi). Keys now works for Antoine, while Millie is obsessed with infiltrating the game as Molotov Girl to get evidence for her lawsuit against the obnoxious tech giant.
Soon the line between Guy’s algorithmic life and Millie’s quest blend as “Free Guy” asks, “Do you you have to be a spectator in your own life?”
You need a lot of hyphens to describe “Free Guy.” It’s a video game-rom com-satire-action-comedy that tackles, in a lighthearted way, questions that people had grappled with for thousands of years. “What is the meaning of life?” Guy asks. “What if nothing matters.” But don’t fret, this isn’t Camus. The nihilism that usually goes along with big questions about life is replaced with video game action and brewing romance.
Reynolds brings his trademarked way with a line to play man child Guy. He’s the definition of bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed, able to give Guy the naïve quality he would have as someone just coming to consciousness, driven by feelings he doesn’t understand, as it slowly dawns on him that he is free to make his own decisions.
Comer, best known for her Emmy Award winning work in “Killing Eve,” deftly hops between real life and Free City, creating two characters with a shared goal. She’s mostly present as a sounding board for Guy’s awakening, but Comer brings personality to both roles.
Ultimately “Free Guy” doesn’t teach us anything about life we couldn’t have learned from any number of episodes of “Oprah,” but the message that life doesn’t have to be something that just happens to us is delivered with a heaping helping of humor, heart and Reynold’s brand of irreverence.
Heartbreak has been the catalyst for much great art. During a lull in her relationship with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo painted “The Two Fridas” depicting herself on one side with a full heart and with a gaping hole in her chest on the other. David Levithan’s “The Lover’s Dictionary” told a tale of heartbreak through a collection of dictionary entries and Taylor Swift has made a career turning her romantic anguish into art.
In “The Broken Hearts Gallery,” a glossy new rom com starring Geraldine Viswanathan playing in theatres this weekend, a young woman deals with romantic upheaval by turning heartbreak into an art gallery.
Viswanathan is quirky Brooklyn art gallery assistant Lucy, a romantic hoarder, not of hearts but of trinkets from all the men who left her forlorn. The mementos, stuffed animals, bicycle locks, candlesticks and more, clutter her bedroom, acting as a shrine to love gone wrong. Her roommates (Phillipa Soo and Molly Gordon) tell her she can’t have a good relationship “because she’s always mourning the past.” An ex says, “Every time I came over it was like hooking up in a mausoleum.”
When her boyfriend Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar), who is also her boss at a tony art Manhattan gallery, suddenly dumps her at a work event, she causes a scene and loses her job. “I know we have 10 years before we all drown in the melting ice caps,” she says before being escorted out, “but I swear the most precious resource is not the ozone. Oh no. It’s honesty.”
Single and unemployed she calls an Uber, jumps into the first car on the block and, in the kind of meet cute that only happens in the movies, meets Nick (Dacre Montgomery) who isn’t an Uber driver, but gives her a lift anyway. Turns out he’s about to open a boutique hotel and it’s there Lucy find purpose as the curator of the Broken Hearts Gallery, a space where people can deposit the detritus of past relationships, leaving behind the pain and moving on to the future. “There are broken people out there who need help moving on,” she says.
“The Broken Hearts Gallery” is Generation-Y answer to “Bridget Jones’ Diary” and “Sex and the City.” It plays like a regular rom com with all the stuff we expect, the funny, raunchy best friends, the NYC setting (although whenever they step in doors it’s actually Toronto) and there’s even the predictable run through the rain as the beau declares his love.
What doesn’t feel conventional is Viswanathan’s performance. “The Broken Hearts Gallery” is a showcase for the 25-year-old Australian actress’ considerable charisma, sincerity and comedy chops. The story and the surrounding characters feel interchangeable with other rom coms but Viswanathan makes this optimistic ode to empowerment a cute, feel good diversion.
When we first meet twenty-eight-year-old Brittany (Jillian Bell) she’s at a low point in her life. Broke and unhappy, she drinks away her morning hangovers and is so unreliable an animal kill shelter rejects her adoption request because they don’t feel she can give the dog the future it deserves.
When her doctor (Patch Darragh) tells her she has a high BMI, placing her firmly in the obese category, she wisecracks, “I feel you completely missed the point of those Dove commercials,” but the news has an effect.
Feeling crappy, an influenced by her upstairs neighbour Catherine (Michaela Watkins) she decides to make some dramatic life changes. “I’m starting to feel like everyone’s life is going somewhere and mine isn’t,” she says.
Step one is exercise. She tries to sign up at a local gym but can’t afford the monthly fee. “I see under your fitness goals you have drawn a frowny face,” says her recruiter (Mikey Day). Instead she takes tentative steps that turn into a run through the streets around her walk-up apartment. With the help of new running friends Catherine, who is changing her life post-divorce and Seth, and Seth (Micah Stock) a novice athlete who wants to run the 26.2-mile New York Marathon to prove to his son it can be done. Together they train with the mantra, “We don’t have to win,” they say, “we just have to finish.”
She’s taking back her life, one block at a time but weeks before the big run Brittany is sidelined, forcing her to examine the deeper reasons she needed to change her life and begin to focus on the things she can control.
There’s a quick shot of Rocky Balboa, another great underdog who transformed through sheer will, in the film’s Philadelphia section. The comparison is apt. Both movies are underdog tales that transcend the sports on display. On the surface “Rocky” is about boxing, just as “Brittany Runs a Marathon” is about running but both have larger themes that examine dissatisfaction, respect, ambition and family. These universal themes, coupled with winning performances from the cast, particularly Bell and Utkarsh Ambudkar as Brittany’s sorta-kinda boyfriend Jern, and big laughs make “Brittany Runs a Marathon” more than an inspirational sports film. It digs deep and the story packs an unexpected emotional punch as it uplifts.
“Blindspotting,” the debut film from director Carlos Lopez Estrada, filters an essay on privilege, gentrification and violence through the lens of one relationship. Colin (Daveed Diggs) and Miles (Rafael Casal) have been friends since childhood but still have much to learn from one another.
Set in Oakland, California the bulk of the action takes place over the course of Colin’s last three days of probation on an assault and battery charge. Living in a halfway house, Colin works as a mover, with best friend Miles, for his ex-girlfriend Val (Janina Gavankar) and has a strict curfew of 11 pm. He’s trying desperately to stay out of trouble but Miles, a loudmouth who carries a gun, is a loose cannon, always on the edge of blowing up the situation. When Colin witnesses a cop shoot an unarmed African-American man in the back he’s plagued by nightmares and an increasing sense of trauma and dread. A situation at a party that escalates out of control forces Colin to assess his place in the world, or at least, his place in a rapidly gentrifying Oakland.
“Blindspotting” is a happily undisciplined a movie. Raw and brimming with ideas, it’s an exciting look at contemporary life that kicks preconceive notions of storytelling to the curb. Co-writers and co-stars Diggs and Casal weave a story that bristles with provactive ideas. Funny one moment, tragic the next, it confronts the viewers ideas not only on the narrative form of the storytelling but the stereotypes so often used to portray people of colour in movies.
Director Estrada builds tension all the way through leading up to a surreal showdown that brings the story into sharp focus.
Despite many stylish flourishes “Blindspotting” feels authentic. Perhaps it’s because of the warm camaraderie between Diggs and Casal or perhaps it’s because of the sense of nuance given to large scale issues of race, loyalty and class.
