Category Archive: Film Reviews

Ford v Ferrari Home Entertainment Release Car Rally

On February 15, 2020 we attended a fun event at Carroll Shelby Enterprises in Gardena, CA. I had the pleasure of sharing this event with my brother, Anselmo Ortiz. We found ourselves drooling over cars we only have in Hot Wheels. Check out our images of cars and memorabilia we saw during our visit.

Jeff Bucknum

Jeff Bucknum, is a retired race driver. Who did some of the stunt driving in the film. His father was Ronnie Bucknum, an American race-car driver, born in Alhambra, California. You can listen in on our conversation by clicking on the audio box.

L-r: Jim Marietta, Jim O’Leary, photographer Dave Friedman and Ted Sutton.

We even got to meet the the original Venice Crew: Jim Marietta, Jim O’Leary, photographer Dave Friedman, and Ted Sutton for Shelby America.

In Ford v Ferrari Matt  Damon and Christian Bale star in this “thunderously exciting” film based on the remarkable true story about Ford Motor Company’s attempt to create the world’s fastest car. American car designer Carroll Shelby (Damon) and the fearless British-born driver Ken Miles (Bale), together battled corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car and take on Enzo Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France in 1966.

FORD v FERRARI on Digital, 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™ and DVD now.

©2020 Angela María Ortíz S.


I’m Not in It for the Gold—John Thornton of The Call of the Wild

We got to screen The Call of the Wild a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t know what to expect with all the CGI involved in the film. I can now say, the story is so compelling that you forget you are watching a live-action/animation hybrid. The Call of the Wild employs visual effects and animation technology to bring the animals in the film to life and its so much fun to watch.

Cara Gee in white.

A group of us got a chance to talk with Cara Gee (Françoise), Harrison Ford (John Thornton), and director Chris Sanders. We called it a mini conference, but it was worth it. Ms Gee is nine-months pregnant, and due any time now. Mr. Ford will be working on another Indiana Jones, Indy 5 this coming summer. And director Sanders told us about how his wife found the dog that Buck was design from. Now Buckley “Buck” lives with them and is a big part of the family. To listen in on the conversations just click on the audio boxes.

Harrison Ford

Synopsis: Twentieth Century Studios’ The Call of the Wild, adapted from the novel by Jack London, vividly brings to the screen the story of Buck, a big-hearted dog whose blissful domestic life is turned upside down when he is suddenly uprooted from his California home and transplanted to the exotic wilds of the Canadian Yukon during the Gold Rush of the 1890s. As the newest rookie on a mail delivery dog sled team–and later its leader–Buck experiences the adventure of a lifetime, ultimately finding his true place in the world and becoming his own master.

Director Chris Sanders

The Call of the Wild is directed by Chris Sanders and stars Harrison Ford, Omar Sy, Cara Gee, Dan Stevens, Karen Gillan, Bradley Whitford, Michael Horse, Jean Louisa Kelly, Colin Woodell, Adam Fergus, and Abraham Benrubi.

Cara Gee

Harrison Ford

Chris Sanders

The Call of the Wild opens in U.S. theaters on February 21. If you love DOGS this is a movie for you! — A.O.

Photos: ©2020 Angela María Ortíz S.

Sonic The Hedgehog and Fantasy Island in Theaters Now!

A few weeks back we got to sit in with the cast and crew of Sonic The Hedgehog and what a fun time we had. Even though the questions were asked by youngsters or their parents.

L-r: producer Toby Ascher, director Jeff Fowler, Jim Carrey, James Marsden and Ben Schwartz.

There was lots of laughter just like in the film with producer Toby Ascher, director Jeff Fowler, Jim Carrey, James Marsden and Ben Schwartz. You can listen to the question and answers by clicking on the audio box.

Sonic The Hedgehog is FUN! FUN! FUN! for the whole family. We really enjoyed it. Can’t wait to watch it again.

Sonic Press

Based on the global blockbuster videogame franchise from Sega, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG tells the story of the world’s speediest hedgehog as he embraces his new home on Earth. A live-action adventure comedy.

Cast and kids

Also starring Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Neal McDonough, and Adam Pally.

Sonic The Hedgehog is in theaters February 14. Photos: ©2020 Angela María Ortíz S.

We also caught up with the director of the reimagined, Fantasy Island, Jeff Wadlow. We talked about him being an infant when the television series premiered and that the film wasn’t the Fantasy Island of my youth. You can listen to our back and forth by clicking on the audio box.

Writer/director Jeff Wadlow and Angela Ortíz

In Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island, the enigmatic Mr. Roarke (Peña) makes the secret dreams of his lucky guests come true at a luxurious but remote tropical resort. But when the fantasies turn into nightmares, the guests have to solve the island’s mystery in order to escape with their lives.

Jeff Wadlow

Fantasy Island stars Michael Peña, Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Jimmy O. Yang, Portia Doubleday, Ryan Hansen, and Michael Rooker.

Fantasy Island is in theaters February 14.

Michael Peña as Mr. Roarke

Blu-ray/DVD Review: Snatchers: A Fun, Funny, Almost Good Horror/Comedy

**Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided us with a free copy of the Blu-ray. We reviewed in this blog. The opinions we share are ours.

Horror/comedy is a hard thing to pull off, but Snatchers takes a pretty good crack at it with a funny, fast goofy and gross take on teen pregnancy and monster-mayhem. You could do way worse.

When it comes to horror/comedies, many have tried and many have failed; after decades of earnest attempts, you can still count the number of really fun and funny ones on the fingers of one hand beginning with Gremlins and Shaun of the Dead and ending, maybe, with What We Do in the Shadows. Snatchers (not to be confused with Grabbers, which is actually pretty good, too) may not be one of the top five, but it does a pretty good job at mixing monsters, high school, and really bad sex into a dizzying deep dish of blood-and-guts.

Mary Nepi, with huge eyes and flawless deadpan delivery, and Gabrielle Elyse, who raises truth-telling and horn rims to high art, are the two teens who steal the show, almost in spite of the crazy-ass plot. We begin with Sara (Nepi), eager to gain social acceptance and lose her virginity, as she ditches her bestie Haley (Elyse) and loses her virginity to her boyfriend, an absolute moron who just got back from a vacation in deepest, darkest  Mexico with a monkey on his back. Or in his scrotum. Their first time seems a little…odd?…especially when she wakes up the next morning already hugely pregnant, and gives birth before the end of the day to a thing–not a baby–that looks like a bug made out of skin and teeth and just loves to kill things. People, mostly. After that, things get really weird.

You’ll see shades of The Faculty and bits of Shaun here, as well as a grimmer Gremlins in the creature design. You’ll also see lots of chases and hand-to-hand battles that are pretty well done, especially considering the budget, along with lots of blood, and some very sharp dialogue. Mary Nepi may have the biggest eyes in all of Hollywood, and Elyse the best hair, and both girls navigate some tough scenes, see-sawing from absurdity to actual emotion with a confidence that far exceeds their experience. It’s hard to believe this flawed little gem began as a web series; about a quarter of this film re-purposes footage from the web and smoothly integrated into full-on feature film. Read the rest of this entry »

My Only Concern is Greatness! Timmy Failure

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made is a fun family film. It’s heart-warming, funny, and sentimental. It reminds us of how important using our imagination is. Even though Timmy’s is way over the top. It’s a film perfect for the 4-year-old who’s starting to develop their imaginative thoughts and the adults who need a reminder of how it used to be, an imaginative kid.

Wallace Shawn and Angela Ortíz
Photo: Kyle Bornheimer

We had the great pleasure of sitting down with three of the adults in the film, actors Wallace Shawn (Mr. Crocus), Ophelia Lovibond (Patty Failure) and Kyle Bornheimer (Crispin), who reminisced about some of their favorite schoolteachers and working together on this new Disney flick.

Timmy Failure – Adults

Timmy Failure – Kids

We also got the kids! The four young actors we spoke to sounded like old souls and I could see why they were perfect in their roles. Kei (Rollo Tookus), Winslow Fegley (Timmy Failure), Chloe Coleman (Molly Moskin), and Ai-Chan Carrier (Corrina Corrina) loved their experience working on this project and are hoping strongly that they will be more Timmy Failure movies made from the other books.

You can listen in on the conversation by clicking on the audio boxes. They also jokingly told us to be nice to Wallace Shaun, because it was his first roundtable.

L-r Wallace Shawn, Ophelia Lovibond and Kyle Bornheimer.

L-r Kei, Winslow Fegley, Chloe Coleman and Ai-Chan Carrier.

Disney’s Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, is an original movie based on the best-selling book of the same name, debuts today, streaming only on Disney+. The film, follows the hilarious exploits of the quirky, deadpan hero, Timmy Failure, who, along with his 1,500-pound polar bear partner Total, operates Total Failure Inc., a Portland detective agency.

Directed by Tom McCarthy, who won an Oscar® for his Spotlight screenplay, Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made is written by McCarthy and Stephan Pastis based on the book by Pastis. The film also stars Craig Robinson. — A.O.

Photos: ©2020 Angela María Ortíz S.

Film Review: Birds of Prey: A whole lot of crazy goin’ on

By Brad Munson (The Dark Multiverse of Stephen King)

The newest addition to the DC Cinematic Universe is a relentlessly madcap, ultra-violent super-dark, semi-humorous take on super-hero adventure and heroism in general. Some will love it. Some will walk away disappointed.

Make no mistake: Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is going to make a ton of money, and in many ways it deserves to. This whacky whirlwind visit to Batman’s Gotham (with Batman barely mentioned and the Joker never entirely seen) is extremely well-made. The slightly hallucinatory production design is great; the action sequences, editing, and especially the sound track are terrific, and the acting–over-the-top though it may be–is expert, especially from Margot Robbie is Harley and a nearly unrecognizable Ewan McGregor as Black Mask (This is the guy from Doctor Sleep? And Star Wars? And Fargo? Really?)

But…Birds is going to hit every viewer a little differently, depending–maybe–on their generation, their expectations, and their tolerance for the whole superhero genre. That was certainly the case in the half-dozen viewers from SeFija! who saw a pre-release screening.

The story, underneath it all, is actually pretty simple: Harley Quinn breaks up with the the Joker, the super-villain and Batman arch-nemesis who made her crazy-evil, then immediately gets involved in a wild series of chases and fist fights to acquire a very important diamond that’s been found and lost and found again, all so she can be free of her dark past and start a new, equally nutty chapter in her life. But how the story is told, and all the new-to-most characters that are introduced along the way, struck our little movie squad–ranging in age and comics tolerance from early twenties and newbies to sixties and jaded as hell–as everything from delightful to repellant to even a tad bit boring.

The bam-bam-bam editing, the twisty camera angles, and the roller-coaster storytelling on top of this ‘simple’ tale–doubling back to re-tell sections of the adventure, breaking off to give backgrounders on various new characters, even taking a short break for a disturbing Marilyn Monroe-inspired dance dumber–can leave you breathless and/or annoyed. For some of us, it had the gleeful abandon of a Guy Ritchie movie, like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch; for others, it was just puzzling and unnecessary. If you were a comics fan going in, it was fun to see these new versions of familiar characters like The Huntress, Black Canary, and Black Mask. We were the ones who reveled in the ‘secret’ knowledge that Detective Montoya might eventually become the masked detective called The Question (if she follows various comics continuities), and that another version of the rebellious young pickpocket Cassandra Cain is destined to become one of Batman’s protégés, a nearly silent super-stealthy bat-suited superhero called Orphan.  But for the non-comics-geek, there are a lot of characters you’ve never heard of before ramming in and out of Birds of Prey, each with their own backstory by the last act, the whole thing can look pretty crowded and chaotic. Read the rest of this entry »

Film Review: The Gentlemen Kick Ass

The Gentlemen, from Guy Ritchie, serves as a redemption for this writer/director after his live action “comedy” Aladdin last year. This film brings back memories of his earlier, far better movies, like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch; it also reminds me of the sleekness of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

The Gents are fun to watch—once you overcome the use of the “C” word over and over. I know it is used to describe both men and women in some working-class neighborhoods in England, but it’s still hard for an American to listen to over and over. For us, Hugh Grant (Fletcher) stole the film and Colin Farrell (Coach) was right behind him. Both were in roles you’ve never seen them do before and they were really good, fun to watch. Don’t get me wrong: everyone is good in this film, but these two really stand out.

The Gentlemen, is a star-studded, sophisticated action comedy. It follows American expatriate Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) who built a highly profitable marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he’s looking to cash out of the business forever, it triggers plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail as everyone he knows (and a few he doesn’t) attempt to steal his domain out from under him. And that’s just the beginning of the craziness. It features an ensemble cast that includes Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, and Eddie Marsan.

The Gentlemen is in theaters now.

Film Review: Weirdly Confusing: The Turning

By Brad Munson (The Dark Multiverse of Stephen King)

Floria Sigismondi’s The Turning is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. The problem is there is no solution to the mystery, no explanation for the wrapping, and barely a decent jump-scare to be had in this beautifully acted, wonderfully photographed, absolutely baffling and ineffective new horror movie.

Most of Sigismondi’s credits are music videos, from David Bowie to Fiona Apple and beyond, and–despite her work on The Runaways a while back–she clearly can’t (or doesn’t want to) actually tell a story; she seems content to set up an almost unconnected string of set-pieces and images that are supposed to chill and thrill and do neither.

Henry James’ short novel, written in 1898, was one of the first true “haunted house” stories and a masterpiece of ambiguity that has continued to be a center of controversy for more than 120 years. Were there really ghosts, or was the governess going mad? Sigismondi seemed to reach for the same kind of spooky ambiguity using the bare bones (really just the premise and character names) that the original story of malevolent ghosts presented, but James’ story had a singular advantage: it made sense as a story. It had a beginning, middle, and end (though a tragic one), and was populated by human characters that acted in believable ways. This particular adaptation of the tale (and there have been plenty, including an opera and a ballet), has none of the above. The logical questions and inconsistent character behavior begins almost with the first beat, long before things get spooky. And it goes downhill–or really out every which-way–from there. Read the rest of this entry »

Film Reviews: Dolittle

Dolittle (Family)
It’s not a perfect film. It is visually pretty but lacks warmth. They are a few funny lines that make you laugh out loud. But I spent my time thinking about the original Doctor Dolittle I watched as a youngster (with Rex Harrison).

Doolittle in theaters January 17. — A.O.

The Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Harry Collett, Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, John Cena, Kumail Nanjiani, Octavia Spencer, Tom Holland, Ralph Fiennes, Selena Gomez, Marion Cotillard, Jim Broadbent, Jessie Buckley, Frances de la Tour, Carmel Laniado, Jason Mantzoukas, Craig Robinson, Kasia Smutniak, and directed by Stephen Gaghan.

Disney’s TOGO is Exciting to Watch

Kim Zubick and Ericson Core

Today’s press day with Disney’s TOGO director/cinematographer Ericson Core and producer Kim Zubick. At one point, Core spoke about having a pet wolf and how incredible that experience was. This film is beautiful to watch and it’s perfect for the family.

TOGO Press

We hope you enjoy the conversations we had with these filmmakers. Now listen in by clicking on the audio box.

Ericson Core

Zubick, Core and Ortíz

If you aren’t familiar with the Togo story, here’s a little about it. Togo (Siberian Husky) was the lead sled dog of Leonhard “Sepp” Seppala and his dog sled team in the 1925 serum run to Nome across central and northern Alaska. He ran over 250 miles, while Balto, along with other sled dogs, ran an average of around 30 miles. Balto got the glory but Togo was the real hero.

Togo and Seppala

The film stars Willem Dafoe, Julianne Nicholson, Thorbjørn Harr, Christopher Heyerdahl, Michael McElhatton, Michael Gaston, Richard Dormer, Michael Greyeyes, Jamie McShane, and Nive Nielsen.

TOGO is streaming on Disney+ now. — A.O.

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