Tag Archives: Robert

Animated Movies Review



















Loving Vincent







Oscars 2016 Shorts Reviews: Animation and Live-Action






























Oscars 2016 Best Picture Summary: Part 1




Amy Adams knows how to communicate with aliens in Arrival.






























Movie Review: Doctor Strange












VIFF 2016 Review: 1:54


Antoine-Olivier Pilon (left) plays a gay teen who wants to settle a score with his bully (Lou-Pascal Trembley; right) in a track meet in 1:54.

As I’ve said countless times, Quebec is the leader in Canadian cinema. 1:54 is one of the latest to come from la belle provence and this is not your typical teen story.

The film begins with 16 year-old Tim returning to high school. The first back-to-school moment comes from Jeff, who has taunted him since the age of 12, throwing food at him and later posting the video of it on YouTube. It’s not easy for Tim to make new friends. He’s a gifted student who’s great at chemistry but it doesn’t attract too much appreciation despite the chemistry teacher’s encouragement. Life at home is difficult for Tim as he has been distant with his father since his mother died four years ago.

If there’s one escape from Tim’s problems, it’s with his friend Francis. He’s able to share Francis his second-biggest secret: he’s able to create a bomb. However Tim’s unable to share with Francis his biggest secret that he’s gay and attracted to Francis. Francis has been developing more security in being gay himself but that all changes after Jeff bullied Francis into admitting he’s gay. It upsets him to the point he jumps off a bridge, right in front of Tim.

Francis’ death affects Tim into questioning why he was always embarrassed about his sexuality. And right while a girl named Jen is taking an interest in him. Tim wants to get even with Jeff. Sure, he’s become friends with Jen who actually rejected a pass from him months ago. Tim actually decides the best way to get even is to get him where it hurts: in running. Jeff is a stellar half-miler who dreams of of making the National Championships. Tim was also a talented runner who even rivaled Jeff in the 800m at aged 12 but quit just after his mother’s death. Through the encouragement of a coach who knew him back then, Tim returns to running and to be the one qualifying for the Nationals instead of Jeff.

Finally we see a more positive side from Tim as he has something to chase. However it’s not without its troubles. Jeff still bullies him questioning his sexuality and it bothers Tim into making Jen look like his girlfriend in front of everyone, much to Jen’s discomfort. Tim is still distant with his father and has even kept his return to running a secret even from him. On top of that, Tim goes to a party where he receives a fellatio from another male and Jeff has it on videocamera.

Jeff thinks he can use the video to threaten Tim’s goals of beating him and it works, but temporarily as Tim resumes running with top-secret training drills from his coach and Jen as his training partner. The running goals even rekindle the closeness between Tim and his father as he’s back to supporting Tim in his running and delighted to see Tim happy again.

At the Provincial Championships, Jeff and Tim run separate heats and they both qualify for the finals both with the fastest times of the heats and only .02 seconds between them. This sets up for excitement for the final as the winner qualifies for the nationals. At the second turn, Jeff notices Tim in front of him and tells him to look to his friend. Standing by the side is the friend with the video waiting to download it. Tim is undeterred but before the final turn, the friend downloads the video right with Tim watching. The trick works. Tim slows down in embarrassment with Jeff coming through to win.

While Jeff is celebrating his win, the whole school’s track team gets the video on their phones. No doubt Tim is humiliated. There’s no way out. Even his father finds out. The father may be shocked to learn Tim is gay but he promises to be supportive of him. Despite Tim’s father, Jen and the coach trying to be supportive, Tim feels there’s no way out. Not while the video’s on YouTube and all over social media where Tim constantly gets taunted by everyone at school, including Jeff. Tim decides there’s only one way to end this all and it’s at Jeff’s celebration party at a night club. Tim decides it’s the perfect place to set off the bomb he showed Francis. The story leads into a heavily climactic ending that’s a surprise to all.

No doubt this film is full of topics. It’s about teen peer pressure, teen sexuality, depression, teen violence, teen competitiveness, but most noticeably bullying. A lot packed into one film. Yan England has even mentioned that he hopes this film stimulates a lot of discussion of the topics. No doubt it’s worth talking about.

It’s definitely a film that can bring back bad memories of high school to many. Especially me. I struggled with learning disabilities which were also behavioral disabilities. The behavior I displayed in a lot of cases would be cause for fellow teens to easily single me out. It doesn’t upset me as much but I’m still not happy about my past. In fact years ago, one person got on the topic of bullying and asked those in her conversation, including me, if we were bullied. I responded: “I was a bully’s delight,” with a smile of disgust. The craziest thing about the film is that it brought back a lot of the anger and frustration I had when I was a teen. Memories I thought I resolved those many years ago. What can I say? All I can say is high school never changes. Teens still think that mocking others different from the will make them look cool. Problem is it does make them look cool in front of their peers. I like the end when Jeff tells the police of the video: “It was a joke.” That common response from teens: “It was a joke.” They think it’s that easy to get off.

The frustrations Tim goes through are a lot of frustrations teens go through. Being bullied by someone for years can be a frustration one can have. The frustration of learning of one’s homosexuality can definitely be a frustration, especially since many teens are known to respond with hostility. Trying to be someone is a frustration most feel. It’s obvious Tim wanted to be somebody other than Jeff’s victim. Francis’ death made him want to get even with Jeff and he thought he could do it in track. He had what it took. Then the race. This was to be Tim’s chance to get even with Jeff for the many years of bullying and for Antoine’s suicide. Instead it became the creme de la creme of Jeff’s bullying and the biggest humiliation of Tim’s life.

You could easily see and feel Tim’s frustration at that moment. Even with the support of people like his coach, his father and Jen after the incident, it just bothered Tim so much, he snapped. I can easily remember about frustrations I went through as a teen and feeling like my situation was hopeless. It’s easy to forget your parents’ love for you or even support from your friends when this happens. It’s easy to see why Tim would snap and do this.

As for the film itself, this comes across as a conventional story at first and you think you know the ending when you see the track competition. However it’s right there when it becomes a new movie. That’s the best thing about the film: it’s like three films in one. Yan England is taking a lot of unorthodox, if not all that creative, steps in creating a film that’s unpredictable. The victory over Jeff we all hoped for all of a sudden turns into a worse situation for Tim. A surprise to all of us in the audience. That scene at the beginning where Tim shows Francis his bomb seems to be an irrelevant scene as time goes on until the very end. Even the scene at the end when we don’t know what will happen to Tim’s bomb will have you at the edge of your seats. However, I will say if the movie had the right scenes at the end. I’m thinking it could have ended better.

This is a very good first feature-length film for writer/director Yan England. Yan used to be a young actor in Quebec with the teen variety show Watatatow back in the 90’s. He’s moved into directing and writing. In fact his short Henry was nominated for an Academy Award years ago. Here he delivers a film relevant to what’s happening with teens and the subject of bullying. He shows how much bullying has ‘progressed,’ if you can truly call it that, with cybertechnology. He also does a very good job in creating three movies in one.

Antoine-Olivier Pilon delivers again in a character completely different from the one he played in Mommy. Instead of an eccentric, he plays a down-to-earth teen filled with anger and hurt but ambition. He also played the frustration parts in the last part of the film very believably. Another accomplishment for him. Sophie Nelisse was very good on playing the supportive friend. She shows a maturity since Monsieur Lazhar. David Boutin was very good as the father trying to be supportive and Lou-Pascal Tremblay was very convincing as Jeff. You will end up hating him! The techno music score in the film added to both the excitement and the drama.

1:54 is not your typical teen movie. It deals with a lot of serious issues very well, if imperfectly. It has some technical glitches but it does engage the audience and is worth seeing.

Summer Movie Summary: Superhero Movies


Captain America: Civil War







Suicide Squad










Movie Review: Joy


Joy stars Jennifer Lawrence as inventor and Home Shopping Network personality Joy Mangano.


I’m sure before you go to see Joy, you’ll think you’ve seen all the rags-to-riches stories you’ve had to. However you’re in for a surprise.

The film is first set in the 1960’s when Joy Mangano is a child. She’s very creative and very inventive. Fast forward to 1989. Joy Mangano is the breadwinner to a household of four generations of family: her grandmother, her divorced mother and father, her overachieving half-sister, her ex-husband and her two children. She works as a ticket agent at a major airline. Not exactly an admirable job for someone that was valedictorian when she graduated.

“How did it go wrong?” Joy ponders. She was an inventive girl but that all changed when her mother and father divorced. It was like her creativity went with her. She married a wedding singer with high hopes but his dreams fell apart and so did their marriage, albeit left amicable enough for him to still live in Joy’s house. Hey, he’s broke! Actually all the family’s lives appear unchanging as her father is dating the wrong women and her mother escapes the pain of divorce by locking herself in her bedroom and watching soaps. The one thing that stayed solid and has kept on going right over they years was Joy’s friendship to Jackie, her best friend since grade school.

One day, her father dates a new woman: an Italian woman named Trudy. She comes from a wealthy background and takes the whole family on the family yacht. A wine bottle breaks and Joy is left to mop it. She gets her hands cut trying to remove the broken glass from the mop. While recovering from her cuts, that’s when her inventiveness comes back. She has an idea for a self-cleaning mop and she’s willing to design it with something as simple as paper and her daughter’s crayons. Her mother is discouraging of her to chase her dreams but her grandmother is more supportive.

However she knows the difficulties of making something and merchandising it. She knows there’s someone who has a patent for something similar and has to agree to pay a certain percentage. She knows she will need financial support. Trudy is willing to offer but she’s very stern with whom she’s willing to support. She knows she will need a place to get the mop made. Her father offers her space in his workshop and women hired to make the mop. She even finds a factory willing to make the parts.

Then comes the advertising. She’s unable to get a deal and is subject to advertising her mop in K-Mart parking lots which is illegal. However she catches the attention of Neil Walker, CEO of the shopping channel QVC. He is impressed with the product and is willing to get it advertised on the channel. However everything goes wrong when first advertised as the salesman, who is considered the top salesman of the channel, does everything wrong and there’s no sale. Joy however doesn’t quit and negotiates with Walker for her to sell the product herself on the channel. When she does the commercial, she is very nervous. However a helpful phone call from Jackie while live on the air is just the boost she needs and it works. Her mop is a hit and it succeeds in getting her mops sold and paying her off.

However it doesn’t end there. Her success happens as her grandmother, the person who believed in Joy all along, dies. Then there’s news about excessive production fees paid. Joy goes to the factory and finds out a lot of bad truths about what has been happening and what’s being planned. Feeling helpless, Joy is about to file for bankruptcy until she finds out a certain truth and settles the score.

The movie isn’t just simply about a rags-to-riches story about a woman who was able to make it as a tycoon. It’s also a reminder that even in tight economic times, the American Dream is still achievable. Even in cases where there are obstacles thrown in your face like an advertiser who doesn’t do their job right or even lawsuits left, right and centre, it can still be done. We shouldn’t forget that Joy Mangano was making this all happen during the recession of the 90’s. I remember that recession well as I remember young adults like myself at the time received a lot of neglect from the job markets. Joy was not only able to create a ‘better mousetrap’ but be able to make it sell. Sure she faced a lot of common business challenges and hard blow of the business world and yes, she may have thought of giving up but she prevailed in the end. Now she’s the one in control. The film shows that this is still very much possible today.

One thing I will have to say is that doing such a film of a person achieving the American Dream has been done countless times. For one to do such a story differently, they would have to make the right choices. David O. Russell tries to make some unique choices such as having the story told by the grandmother’s point of view, even in time periods when the grandmother is deceased. Even the ending where the story progresses to the present but flashes back to just after Joy won her legal dispute is another unique choice in storytelling. However it makes one question whether those were the right choices. I can understand the attempt to tell a story differently but did they work? I don’t think they were the best choices.

David O. Russell sure has made a name for himself in the last five years with films like The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. This is a new challenge for him to direct and co-write with Annie Mumolo a story about a female inventor and media personality. Not something I would normally associate with Russell. I will admit this is not his best work. There are times I even wondered if David O. Russell is the right director for such a movie. Nevertheless it’s still very professional despite some of the glitchy storytelling choices. I do give him and Mumolo kudos for telling this story of a woman who starts in a situation familiar with most Americans and turning it into a relatable success story. That is one of its best points. Even the human element of Joy Mangano is another excellent part of the film. The film is not just about a woman wanting to make a success of herself for her own purposes but also being someone for her own daughter to look up to. Joy goes from someone mocked by her half-sister in front of her own kids to being someone for her kids to look up to. That element is another plus.

No doubt Jennifer Lawrence owned the film. Of course the Hunger Games movies have made her a household name already at 25 but it’s Russell who knows how to bring out the best in Lawrence’s acting. In her third movie directed by Russell, she again masters a character many years older than her and comes out shining and in excellent style. Robert de Niro was also good as the trying father. However the biggest scene stealer of the supporting players had to be Isabella Rossellini as the new mother-in-law who means business. Actually all the actors in the film from those that played family members to Bradley Cooper as Neil Walker did a good job with their characters and made them entertaining to watch.

Joy is a good story about a woman who would not give up until she succeeds even after everything that could go against her was thrown at her. However it’s also a reminder that the American Dream is still possible even in the toughest of times. Not exactly the best film from David O. Russell but definitely worth seeing.

Movie Review: Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996)


Death Valley is one of the unexpected stops for Beavis and Butt-Head as the two Do America.

Remember Beavis and Butt-Head? Yes, the two stupid teens who somehow could make us laugh. As most of you remember, they had a feature-length film from 1996 entitled Beavis and Butt-Head do America. I had the luck to see it on the big screen in theatres.

The story is about Beavis and Butt-Head first losing their television. With nothing else to do, they go around town searching for it. However they find themselves with a drunken criminal, Muddy Grimes, who had just been done wrong by his girlfriend Dallas and wants revenge. He thinks B&B are the two hired to do the job and sends them to Las Vegas to off her.

While in Vegas, the two first make fools of themselves on the dance floor only to be led to their hotel suite: right next door to Dallas. However Dallas is one step ahead of Muddy and is able to get the two to transport a small electronic capsule which unknowing to them actually contains anthrax.

The FBI learn of B&B having the anthrax capsule and are on pursuit of them. Nevertheless they’re led astray as B&B constantly go off-path to various other areas of the U.S. such as the Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park and Death Valley. The latter they encounter their long-lost fathers: former Motley Crue roadies.

Things become more bizarre as they meet up with a vengeful Muddy who wants to kill the two only to learn he mistook B&B for his real accomplices. Meanwhile the FBI are after B&B and the capsule and are ready to get them as they near Washington D.C. The ending sets up for what everyone would expect to be the takedown of the two only to have things change by their unwitting and temperamental neighbor. In the end, Beavis and Butt-Head save the day and are rewarded by President Bill Clinton. They return home to find their TV and return to being their stupid selves.

I remember when the project first came out, it was originally thought to be a challenge to have a consistent entertaining feature-length film of Beavis and Butt-Head. Those who remember the TV show from MTV will remember that the show was about the brainless duo going into situations that were both mind-numbing but very entertaining in a stupid kind of way. That and their critiquing of music videos where they came across as your typical teen male bozo horndogs. The series created by Mike Judge and aired on MTV turned out to be just what the young wanted as it charmed crowds from 1993 to its end in 1997.

However the series also freaked parents out and would cause a lot of debate over television ratings and parental friendliness of shows, especially after it made headlines for a lot of young people recreating a lot of destructive incidents of the show: two of which proved to be fatal. Despite the copycat incidents, Mike Judge refused to believe that his show was responsible and would ask where the parents were. The controversy surrounding the show however would be reason why there’s that scene at the end of Bill Clinton rewarding B&B for their ‘service to the country’ and saying: “You exemplify a fine new crop of young Americans who will grow into the leaders of this great country.” Talk about the right shock stuff at the right time. Mind you that’s what 90’s entertainment was all about: entertainment that rattled cages, wreaked havoc, got people’s blood boiling…but came out winners because of it.

Once B&B became a phenomenon in 1993, it paved the way for the chance for a feature-length film. Mind you it would not be easy. It had to be a consistent script that would fit the big-screen right. That would mean an actual story instead of the typical ‘incidents’ as in the series. Plus the flavor of the two characters could not be lost. The two disgustingly charming underachievers had to start that way at the film and stay that way at the end despite whatever happens throughout.

You could imagine Mike Judge and his writing team would have to make a lot of choices and some were noticeable: include Anderson, have a big of Van Driessen, have a surprise for McVicker and everyone, leave out Buzz-Cut, Daria and Stewart, include their long-lost dads, keep out music video critiquing. Yes, it was a challenge. Plus there was having actors for the right fit for the roles like Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, big names at the time, rising star Greg Kinnear, loyal fan David Letterman who gave the two an appearance on his show, and character-actors Robert Stack and Cloris Leachman. In the end, it turned out to be a winning result and it not only charmed fans but received appreciation from critics as well. Watching it in the theatres again this summer got me laughing once again.

However this leads to the big question. Does Beavis and Butt-Head Do America stand the test of time all these years later? I don’t think it does. Firstly today’s young people may not get why B&B was just just what we needed back in the 90’s. Those of us from the 80’s and 90’s remember headbangers at school and teenagers who were idiotic, clueless and even violence-obsessed. Beavis and Butt-Head were the epitome of those teenage male stupids who impulsively loved violence and used their penis instead of their head. Teenagers change over the decades and over the various waves of pop culture and I don’t think today’s teens would get B&B. In fact the show was brought back to MTV a few years ago but it didn’t even last a full season.

Secondly, I feel the biggest reason why B&B don’t stand the test of time too much is because of the shock value and envelope-pushing they did in their time. Look at entertainment nowadays. We have a lot more now than what was around 20 years ago. We have the internet which allows for free speech that’s as unlimited as it gets. We have YouTube where one can post all sorts of videos of all sorts of things. We also have channels strictly devoted to cartoons that pave the way for more adult-oriented cartoon shows than before.

Beavis and Butt-Head came during a time when there were no cartoon channels. Most adult-oriented cartoons would have to soften themselves up if they wanted to be shown on the networks. MTV was the network that dared to show a cartoon as irreverent as Beavis and Butt-Head. B&B hit the airwaves just three years after The Simpsons were rattling cages with Homer’s stupidity and Bart’s sass-mouth and just a year after Ren and Stimpy took cartoon weirdness to new levels. B&B and MTV were the right fit, especially with their music video critiques. They ruled cartoon irreverence during their entirety. However their irreverence would actually pale in comparison to the irreverence of today. In fact it wouldn’t even take a year after the films release for South Park and it’s first season consisting of Stan’s Gay Dog, Cartman dressing up as Hitler and Mr. Hankey The Christmas Poo to outdo all the irreverence and envelope-pushing Beavis and Butt-Head did in their entirety. That’s the fates of entertainment and why Beavis and Butt-Head would now be seen as something to yawn at. Heck, even the whole channel of MTV is struggling right now but that’s another subject.

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America may now lack the the shock value, the envelope-pushing and the irreverent punch it had in its time. Nevertheless it can still entertain loyal fans of the show that still love it after all these years.

Movie Review: Iron Man 3












Movie Review: Silver Linings Playbook

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence shine in Silver Linings Playbook.

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence shine in Silver Linings Playbook.










