Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
This image released by Netflix shows, foreground from left, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Rebel Wilson, Avantika and Joshua Colley in a scene from "Senior Year." (Boris Martin/Netflix via AP)
A high school coma comedy with a fish-out-of-water twist, “Senior Year,” a new Netflix movie starring Rebel Wilson, plays like a mix between “While You Were Sleeping” and “Billy Madison.”
Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice as a teenager, Wilson as an adult) was on track to have a perfect life. As a high school star, she was a cheerleader, president of the fashion club and prom queen candidate until a head injury, caused by a tumble off the top of a cheerleading pyramid, put her into coma for 20 years.
Waking up at age 37, it is like no time has passed. As far as she knows, it’s 2002, words like “shiznit” and “bomb diggity” are still hip and she still wants to be prom queen, the pinnacle of high school success. “It’s more than just a crown to me,” she says.
But she is a relic. Social media is a new-fangled thing, political correctness is like science fiction, cheerleaders now do routines about the climate crisis and gun control, and her former classmates are now the parents of high schoolers.
To get on with her new life, its’s time for some adult education… in high school. “I can’t move on to the next chapter in my life if I am still stuck in the old one for 20 years," she says.
With just a month before graduation, she enrolls, trying to pick up where she left off. But she finds times have changed. “I had more fun in the coma,” she sighs.
“Senior Year” is a comedy with a scattergun approach.
The coming-of-age story is meant to be a poignant look at Stephanie as she matures and comes to understand that there is more to life than cheerleading and being prom queen. The power of friendships and loyalty are examined—"It doesn’t matter who has the most friends, or likes, or followers,” says Stephanie. “If you just have one or two great friends, they will support you. Then you have got it all. That is worth fighting for.”—butted up against the notion of being true to yourself and the idea that who you are in high school doesn’t define you.
Doesn’t sound that funny, does it?
That’s because it isn’t. At least, not all the way through. “Senior Year” takes a one joke premise and milks it for humour in the first couple of acts. Funny, situational lines are sprinkled throughout the first hour or so. “You survived 20 years without solid food,” says Stephanie’s dad (Chris Parnell). “You can make it through a weekend without your phone." But the jokes dry up as the movies goes on.
It also goes for laughs from the culture clash between 2002 and 2022. Stephanie has much to learn about political correctness and world events, but to its credit, the film doesn’t treat the teens as woke zombies spouting catchphrases, but as decent kids who care about their friends and the future.
It sounds like a lot, because it is a lot. Wilson does what she can to keep things moving along, but when the feel-good messaging begins, she is saddled with prosaic, by-the-book truisms that suck away whatever fun had been established in the film’s first part.
Talented comic actors like Mary Holland and Zoe Chao bring both humour and heart to their roles, but “Senior Year” still feels messy. Too long, it toggles back-and-forth between the sincere and the silly like it's changing gears in a high-speed Formula One race but, unfortunately, never finds its pace.
"The Last Victim" (Courtesy Decal)
“The Last Victim,” starring Ron Perlman as a sheriff on the hunt for some ruthless killers, now streaming on VOD, is a throwback to gritty, neo-westerns like “Hell or High Water” and “No Country for Old Man.”
Beginning with a calculated, but brutal slaughter at a small-town southwest American
diner, “The Last Victim” follows Jake (Ralph Ineson), the vicious ringleader of the restaurant slaughter, as he attempts to dispose of the bodies from the ramshackle at the seemingly closed-for-the-season Yaj Oolal Overlook Nature Preserve.
Jake’s plan is interrupted by Susan (Ali Larter), an anthropologist with OCD, and her husband, Richard (Tahmoh Penikett), who stumble across the place on a cross country drive. The killer makes short work of Richard, shooting him on sight. Susan is luckier, disappearing into the woods. “Go see if she was dumb enough to make a run for it,” Jake tells his henchmen as their deadly game of cat-and-mouse begins.
As Sheriff Hickey (Perlman) and Deputy Mindy Gaboon (Camille Legg) begin their investigation into the diner murders, Susan must stay one step ahead of Jake to avoid becoming the last victim.
In his directorial debut, Naveen A. Chathapuram has made a stylized, tense story of survival. The film has an aura of dread, that builds as the story ticks down to the inevitable climatic showdown.
Chathapuram is aided by a menacing performance from Ineson who oozes evil, Perlman, whose presence evokes a certain, special kind of gravitas, and Larter’s authoritative work. They make up for some of the movie’s weaknesses, like some o-so-serious voiceover, a somewhat too leisurely pace in the film’s mid-section, and a tacked-on ending sequence that adds little, except for a few minutes to the overall running time.
“The Last Victim” is a very strong directorial debut that packs excitement into the storytelling, including a rather surreal climax, with enough twists to keep the story of survival compelling throughout.
This image released by Universal Pictures shows Ryan Kiera Armstrong in a scene from "Firestarter." (Ken Woroner/Universal Pictures via AP)
It’s unclear whether or not a remake of the blistering 1984 Stephen King movie “Firestarter” is a burning concern for audiences, but here we are with a new version of an old story, in theatres now, about a young girl with pyrokinesis.
All parents think their child is special, but Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) truly know their daughter has a gift. “You’re going to change the world,” he tells her.
Years ago, Andy and Vicky were injected with an experimental serum and a side effect left them with telepathic abilities, which they passed down to the daughter, Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), along with the talent for conjuring up heat and fire when angry or in pain.
For a decade they have been on the run from a secret government agency who wants to kidnap Charlie and study her superhuman power. Up until now they have trained the pre-teen to control her fiery ability, but as she grows up it becomes harder and harder to manage. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Charlie says. “But it feels kind of good.”
When the family’s location is accidentally revealed, a mysterious government operative (Michael Greyeyes) is sent to bring her in as Andy and Charlie look for sanctuary.
The big question about “Firestarter 2.0” is whether or not it improves on the 1984 original. That movie was unfavourably compared to “The Fury,” a 1978 Brian De Palma film that treads -- more successfully -- similar ground. Looking back now, the original “Firestarter” isn’t a great movie, but it does have George C. Scott in full-on menacing mode and a cool soundtrack from Tangerine Dream amid the flames and fire.
Does the new movie bring the heat?
In another cinematic multiverse (which is o-so-hip right now), Charlie could have been a member of the X-Men Jr. or a teenage Fantastic Four. So it makes sense, particularly in today’s superhero happy market, that the new movie leans into the science fiction and allegorical aspects of the story over the horror. It’s just too bad it doesn’t do much with either approach. Charlie spits fire, and things burn but, cinematically, nothing really catches fire.
The paranoiac feel of government interference is gone, replaced by long boring stretches of exposition and Greyeyes’ underused villain. Set to an interesting score by legendary director John Carpenter (with Cody Carpenter and Daniel A. Davies), who was supposed to helm the original film, the new version gets the soundtrack right, but most everything else feels like a backfire, rather than a “Firestarter.”
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.