Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)

Nostalgia can be dangerous. An overreliance on the past can be a handicap. There's no reason for some things to be revived except for purely sentimental reasons. This wasn't one of them.

This film features many callbacks accompanied by old clips cribbed from the first movie to make you remember how much you enjoyed that one and desperately try to recreate those old feelings. Most of the time, it falls flat.

My other complaint is that comedies are too long nowadays. It's completely self-indulgent for this to be two hours. Clip it at 90 minutes and leave out all the fluff. It ages better that way. 

I sound like an old fuddy-duddy now. I didn't hate everything about it, I just wish it tried to do something different. For some people, same-old will be perfectly acceptable. It just feels sadder when these people are in their 50s.

1½ gratuitous cameos out of 5

Blink Twice (2024)

Two women are invited by a charming billionaire to his private resort for a holiday in debauchery. Strange, unexplainable occurrences take place around them as one of the women disappears and none of the other tenants can recall her presence. Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut is a slick mystery-thriller with an all-star cast and more than a few tricks up its sleeve. Unfortunately, my screening of the film contained a trigger warning at the very beginning which gave away certain plot details that effectively spoiled the twist and undercut its themes. I cannot for the life of me understand why we have to be so sheltered, even in mass-produced, mainstream Hollywood entertainment, but here we are.

In all honesty, it's not a bad flick, but it loses a ½ rating for the patronizing TW.

2½ red rabbits out of 5

YOGA HOSERS [2016]

After the disastrous box office results from Tusk, I don't know how Honorary Canadian director Kevin Smith miraculously made the second part of his True North horror trilogy.
Yoga Hosers follows teenage Canadian clerk BFFs, the Colleens, as they fend to save their convenience store from a horde of tiny Nazi Mounties made out of scrumptious sausage and sauerkraut.
While Tusk was disturbingly funny and disgusting, Yoga Hosers might be just as demented but it's really really dumb.  There might be some great chuckle-worthy Canadian in-jokes but everything is predictable, inane and quite frankly embarrassing.  Johnny Depp's Christophe Waltz-esque French-Canadian P.I.  and his ever-moving moles are the highlight of the film and that's not saying a whole lot anymore.  It's pretty awful but somehow I can't but help admiring Smith and his endless ambition to do whatever the hell he wants.

2 Pucky Charms out of 5

TUSK [2014]

Every now and then a film comes along and lingers with you for days, constantly bringing up that nagging question: "what the fuck?"
Kevin Smith's oddball horror Tusk is most definitely one of those films.
In what is destined to be a cult classic, the story follows an obnoxious podcaster who interviews a man that ends up surgically turning him into a human walrus.  It dives deep into the absurd but always manages to bring the characters to the surface for the stark realization that it's actually quite horrific as it is hilarious.  Michael Parks steals the show as the batshit crazy walrus lover, particularly when he's sharing a gut-wrenchingly funny scene with Johnny Depp that steers into David Lynch territory.
It's far from perfect but that's actually part of it's midnight movie appeal.

3 Clerks out of 5

THE SIXTH SENSE [1999]

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's knack for telling creepy bedtime stories has become somewhat of a joke as of lately but that doesn't take anything away from the power that is The Sixth Sense.

This creepy and heartbreaking ghost story (as all ghost stories should be) about the need for communication serves the scares a plenty all the while grounding it with just the right amount of heart.  Shyamalan lays on the atmosphere something fierce with his beautiful, yet dismal, photography, keen sense of space & lack of and the command of excellent performances, particularly Toni Collette.

Years later and this film still sends chills down the spine while tugging at the heartstrings.  

5 shades of red out of 5