I joined CP24 Breakfast to have a look at new movies and television shows coming to theatres and streaming services. Today we talk about the intense “Civil War,” the spider horror film “Sting” and the Netflix series, “Files of the Unexplained.”
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 and streaming including the intense “Civil War,” the spider horror film “Sting” and the serial killer flick “Damaged.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Sting,” a new creature feature from director Kiah “Nekrotronic” Roache-Turner, is about a young girl named Charlotte and a spider, but “Charlotte’s Web” this ain’t.
Alyla Browne is precocious 12-year-old Charlotte. Ignored by her parents, saddled with an annoying baby brother and a cruel aunt, she escapes the tedium of everyday life by shimmying through the duct work of her Brooklyn apartment complex.
Her exploration of the creaky old building brings her to a locked room, where she finds a tiny spider living in a dollhouse. As she adopts the creature, names him Sting but what she doesn’t know is that the arachnid is no ordinary spider. Brought to earth inside a meteor fragment, the eight-legged alien grows rapidly, spinning a web of terror as it preys on the residents of Charlotte’s apartment building.
“I always say, ‘Never make friends with anything with more than four legs,’” says exterminator Frank (Jermaine Fowler). “A spider only knows two things, that’s eat and kill.”
As Sting wreaks havoc on her neighbors, Charlotte takes it upon herself, with some unlikely help, to squash the bug.
Arachnophobes beware! “Sting” contains enough eight-legged horror to make your skin crawl. Much of the action happens in the shadows, but the spider attacks are graphic and have an “Alien” vibe. A spider crawling into a person’s mouth will never not be terrifying.
The focus on pure horror is blurred somewhat by the introduction of characters like Erik (Danny Kim), the monotone, awkward guy Charlotte turns to for help, who dilute the story, distracting from the horror and Charlotte’s fractured family.
The family dynamics provide the film’s anchor, supplying the high stakes that keep the audience invested in the action. The oddball characters are fun, but it is the emotion of Charlotte’s reclaimed relationship with her family, forged in the fire of a full-blown spider attack, that gives the movie its heart.
“Sting” has a few laughs and some spidery scares, but it works best when it allows the two-legged stars to shine.
Richard’s CP24 reviews for “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” “Vacation” and “A Lego Brickumentary” with host Marci Ien.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” “Vacation” and “A Lego Brickumentary” with host Marci Ien.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Rusty Griswold may have grown up but the humor of the movies that made him famous hasn’t. “Vacation” is a reboot of the “National Lampoon Vacation” series that featured Chevy Chase as the hapless patriarch, Beverley D’ Angelo as his wife, daughter Audrey (played in different movies by Dana Barron, Dana Hill, Juliette Lewis and Marisol Nichols) and Rusty (played variously by Anthony Michael Hall, Jason Lively, Johnny Galecki and Ethan Embry in different movies).
In the new film Ed Helms plays Rusty as a sweet-natured adult, father to James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins) and husband to Debbie (Christina Applegate). The family is falling apart and on the eve of their usual summer holiday, a boring trip to a camp that everybody hates, Rusty decides to try something different to bring his family together, a recreation of a childhood road trip with his parents to Walley World.
Anyone who remembers the original 1983 film knows the 2500-mile trip turned into a vacation from hell. It seems Rusty learned nothing from his father’s ill-fated journey. “From the moment we left nothing has gone right,” says Debbie. “Can’t you just admit this was a mistake?” From an angry GPS and a menacing trucker to an inappropriately well-endowed brother-in-law and an open sewer, the trip is fraught with problems.
If not for certain brand of anatomical humour “Vacation” would be about 12 minutes long. Remove the swearing and jokes about sexual acts—Wait! Don’t forget the bodily functions!—there wouldn’t be much going on here. Not that I’m a prude. Far from it. Some of it is genuinely funny. It hits many of the same notes as the original—the father’s verbal break down the extremely unseemly relatives (Leslie Mann and Chris Hemsworth)—but doesn’t have the same good-natured feel. It tries hard to inject some heart into the story in the last half hour but up until then is rough around the edges. Need convincing? Check out the fate of the pretty motorist in the sports car.
Co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein have a tendency to give away the jokes too soon, but Helms and cast sell the jokes, no matter how raunchy. Particularly good are Gisondo as the sensitive son James and Hemsworth who displays an until now unseen sense of comic timing.
Ultimately “Vacation” is about bringing the Griswold family back together, but it’s not a family movie.
