Sofia Carson Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Carry-On,’ starring Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler and Jason Bateman

December 25, 2024

by Carla Hay

Tonatiuh and Taron Egerton in “Carry-On” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, the action film “Carry-On” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent is forced to participate in a terrorist plot, where he has been told that he has to let a certain carry-on suitcase past the X-ray machine that he is monitoring and onto a certain plane, or else his pregnant girlfriend will be murdered.

Culture Audience: “Carry-On” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and action movies that are predictable but enjoyable.

Jason Bateman in “Carry-On” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Carry-On” is a preposterous but entertaining thrill ride about an airport security agent caught up in a deadly terrorist plot involving a smuggled carry-on suitcase. The movie doesn’t take itself seriously and has well-cast heroes and villains. This is the type of movie made for escapism for viewers—not to make any meaningful statements or to provoke deep thoughts.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by T.J. Fixman, “Carry-On” takes place in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve. The movie was actually filmed in New Orleans, mainly at the decommissioned terminal at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. “Carry-On” begins by showing two Russian thugs named Olek (played by Jeff Pope) and Yuri (played by Raymond Rehage) at a large greenhouse somewhere in Los Angeles. The movie’s chief villain (played by Jason Bateman)—an assassin whose name is never revealed—enters the greenhouse, shoots Olek and Yuri, and then sets the greenhouse on fire.

The next scene in “Carry-On” shows live-in couple—30-year-old Ethan Kopek (played by Taron Egerton) and 27-year-old Nora Parisi (played by Sofia Carson)—waking up to get ready to go to work. Ethan and Nora, who have been dating each other for three years, both work at Los Angeles International Airport, also known as LAX. Ethan is a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent. Nora is an operations manager at North Wind Airlines, a company that was fabricated for this movie.

Nora is pregnant with her and Ethan’s first child, but the movie never says how far along she is in her pregnancy. Based on her physical appearance and conversations about the pregnancy, Nora is probably two or three months pregnant. Ethan and Nora are a happy couple looking forward to the birth of the child, but Ethan has some lingering insecurities that are affecting the relationship.

It’s eventually revealed in conversations that Ethan, who is originally from New Jersey, isn’t satisfied with the way his career is going. He moved to Los Angeles to be with Nora after she was hired by North Wind, which requires her to live in the Los Angeles area. Ethan only became a TSA agent at LAX so he and Nora could work in the same building.

What Ethan really wants to do with his life is be a police officer. He applied to enroll at a police academy once and was rejected. He was so hurt by this rejection that he hasn’t bothered to apply again, even though Nora keeps encouraging Ethan to re-apply. Nora candidly tells Ethan that when he applied to a police academy, it was the last time she saw him truly excited about his life.

A little later in the movie, it’s revealed there are other reasons for Ethan’s insecurity and disillusionment about becoming a police officer: His father (who’s never seen in the movie) also wanted to be a police officer and applied to a police academy several times but was always rejected. Ethan’s father is now an Uber driver. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know that Ethan is afraid he’s going to end up just like his father—doing a job he doesn’t really like because he couldn’t get his dream job.

It’s under these circumstances that Ethan arrives for work late (which apparently isn’t the first time), where he has a reputation for being likable but not particularly reliable. It’s why Ethan has been assigned the job of a metal-detector agent instead of the more challenging job of being an X-ray agent responsible for operating the equipment that scans carry-on items. It’s also why Ethan hasn’t been promoted in the three years that he’s had this job.

Ethan’s closest friend at his job is a mild-mannered co-worker named Jason Noble (played by Sinqua Walls), a married father who is a TSA agent who operates X-ray machines. Jason advises Ethan to try to get a promotion to have this type of job because Ethan is going to need more money to raise a child. Their boss Phil Sarkowski (played by Dean Norris) bluntly tells Ethan that he hasn’t given Ethan a promotion because Ethan acts like he doesn’t want to be at this TSA job. Ethan promises that he will be more responsible and wants to prove that he’s worthy of getting a promotion.

Jason tells a skeptical Phil that Jason will switch job responsibilities with Ethan on that day so Ethan can get a chance to show that he has the ability to do the X-ray job. Phil reluctantly agrees. It’s the first of many things that don’t ring true in “Carry-On” because there’s nothing to show that Ethan was trained for this X-ray job before being suddenly thrust into it.

Of course, this unlikely but still possible twist of fate is why Ethan is in the proverbial “hot seat” that makes him the distressed hero of the story. He becomes a target when terrorists force him to allow a certain passenger and the passenger’s carry-on suitcase through the X-ray machine and onto the plane. The terrorists refuse to say what’s in the suitcase, but Ethan finds out that the plan is to kill all of the approximately 250 people on the plane after the plane is in flight. (This review won’t reveal what’s in the suitcase, except to say it’s not an obvious weapon, such as a bomb.)

It isn’t long before Ethan is contacted by the person who forces Ethan to participate in this deadly terrorist plot. This person (the same killer from the movie’s opening scene) becomes Ethan’s chief adversary. Even though this assassin’s name is never revealed in “Carry-On,” in the movie’s end credits, he is listed only as Traveler. This elusive killer is able to avoid detection because he looks like a regular middle-aged guy who’s able to blend in easily.

Traveler has an unnamed accomplice, identified as Watcher (played by Theo Rossi), who is stationed in a repair van in an airport parking lot. Somehow, this van has surveillance equipment that can track several areas inside the airport. One of the repeated scenarios is that Watcher and Traveler are constantly tracking Ethan in the airport through surveillance, which makes it harder for Ethan to get help when he finds himself embroiled in this terrorist plot. It’s a very far-fetched scenario. Ethan is able to find a few “blind spots” in the airport that the terrorists can’t see.

Watcher and Traveler are able to quickly find out a lot of personal information about the TSA agents. These two criminals had originally planned to force Jason into their terrorist plan by holding Jason’s wife and daughter hostage. But when Watcher and Traveler see that Ethan is working at the X-ray station where Jason normally works, they decided to target Ethan under the threat of killing pregnant Nora.

Traveler tells Watcher about this sudden change of plans: “Let’s pivot. Fill in some blanks. No matter what, this gets done today.” Traveler is able to get a cell phone placed on the conveyer belt that Ethan is operating. Just as Ethan sees that no airline passenger has claimed this phone, he sees text messages appear on the phone telling Ethan to wear an ear bud that is placed nearby.

It’s the first time that Ethan hears from Traveler, who communicates with Ethan through this ear bud. Traveler tells Ethan about the plan and describes in detail what the passenger and briefcase look like. Ethan later finds out that the passenger carrying the briefcase is named Mateo Flores (played by Tonatiuh), who is wearing a red baseball cap. At first Ethan thinks it’s all an elaborate prank. But when Traveler tells Ethan how many personal details he knows about Ethan’s life, Ethan is convinced this is no prank.

Traveler not only threatens Ethan by saying Nora will be killed if Ethan doesn’t follow Traveler’s orders but Traveler also threatens to kill other people inside the airport if Ethan tries to get help or report this terrorist plot. Traveler says that if Ethan does something such as removing the ear bud to cut off contact with Traveler, that could get someone killed too. At one point, Traveler asks Ethan if he would rather have 250 people die on an airplane or thousands of people die in an airport.

When Ethan asks Traveler if he’s a terrorist, Travel replies: “I consider myself a freelance facilitator.” It’s implied throughout the movie that Traveler and Watcher are “middle men” hired by a larger entity, which is never named in the movie. Traveler is often cold and detached, but he also has a tendency to rant and ramble about things that irritate him. During some of his rants, he reveals his contempt for millennials and Gen Z people, whom he thinks are wimpy and over-reliant on technology. Traveler also thinks he’s the smartest person in the room who’s skilled at psychoanalysis as a way to predict and manipulate people’s actions.

“Carry-On” has a few supporting characters who are pivotal to the story. Los Angeles police detective Elena Cole (played by Danielle Deadwyler) is the first law enforcement officer to suspect that there might be a terrorist plan put into motion at LAX. She’s later joined by Agent Alcott (played by Logan Marshall-Green) from the FBI. Ethan also has a TSA co-worker named Eddie (played by Gil Perez-Abraham), an aspiring rapper who shamelessly peddles his music to his co-workers and other people at the airport. Eddie is the movie’s “comic relief” character.

“Carry-On” has some other intentionally comedic moments, including a montage of angry and difficult passengers who feel that they’re being inconvenienced in some way by the TSA screening process. Traveler also has some wry comments that are meant to show that he’s deeply cynical about how society works and he’s just a hired gun who doesn’t care about taking sides in politics when it comes to the work he’s hired to do. Detective Cole also has some one-liner jokes that are a bit corny but are intended to bring some laughs.

“Carry-On” is an effective thriller not just because of the adrenaline-packed actions scenes but also because of the performances from the movie’s talented cast members. A movie like this is often appealing because of the chief hero and the chief villain. Egerton is able to be a vulnerable “everyman” who’s easy to root for when it’s time for Ethan to show he’s a lot braver and smarter than most people think he might be. Bateman is also quite convincing as a mysterious but menacing terrorist. “Carry-On” doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a crowd-pleasing movie that has a few twists to its formulaic plot but ends up right where most viewers expect.

Netflix premiered “Carry-On” on December 13, 2024.

Review: ‘Songbird,’ starring KJ Apa, Sofia Carson, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stromare, Alexandra Daddario and Demi Moore

December 16, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Songbird”

Directed by Adam Mason

Some language in Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles during a coronavirus pandemic in the year 2024, the sci-fi thriller “Songbird” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latinos and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: During the pandemic, a minority of people have immunity to the disease but are also supercarriers of the virus, and this dichotomy affects relationships and has caused a black market to sell illegal immunity passes.

Culture Audience: “Songbird” will appeal primarily to people who like watching tacky disaster movies with ridiculous plot developments.

Peter Stromare in “Songbird” (Photo courtesy of STX)

In the horrifically tasteless disaster film “Songbird,” which takes place during a coronavirus pandemic that has killed millions of people and devastated the entire world, unscrupulous and greedy people have exploited the situation so that they can benefit financially. Ironically, it’s the same mindset that is obviously why this moronic film was rushed into production during the real-life COVID-19 pandemic—to cash in on people’s fears about the pandemic and use the movie’s pandemic storyline as a gimmick to sell it during a real-life pandemic. The results are a useless movie where every single second looks like it was based on an early, substandard screenplay draft, with none of the filmmakers caring about taking the time to improve the film’s quality.

“Songbird” (directed by Adam Mason, who co-wrote the movie’s screenplay with Simon Boyes) takes place in Los Angeles in the year 2024. The worldwide mortality rate has risen to 56% and 8.4 million people have died because of COVID-23, which is supposed to be a deadlier strain than COVID-19. And there’s no vaccine. The desolate and devastated landscape of Los Angeles looks like a city in the aftermath of a tornado, and there’s a general atmosphere that a corrupt, totalitarian government is in charge. Because of this high mortality rate, Los Angeles has been on lockdown, with people ordered to stay at home, except for essential workers.

One of those essential workers is a bike courier in his mid-20s named Nicholas “Nico” Price (played by KJ Apa), who works for an online retailer called Lester’s Gets, which sells a variety of items that people can use in their homes. It’s not a giant company, because Nico’s boss Lester (played by Craig Robinson) is the only person shown in the dark video control room that monitors the movements of the company’s couriers, via GPS. In other words, the film’s budget was so low that the filmmakers didn’t bother to cast anyone else to work in this monitor room.

Lester communicates frequently with Nico and has to watch Nico like a hawk, because Nico often takes detours, goofs off, and is late with deliveries. For example, in one of the movie’s scenes, Nico randomly shoots hoops at a basketball court while in the middle of a delivery. Lester lectures Nico about Nico’s constant tardiness, but Nico acts like someone who knows he probably won’t be fired.

And why hasn’t Nico been fired because of his tardiness? Because he’s one of the small minority of people on Earth who are immune to COVID-23, and therefore he can freely go outside without needing any face coverings. However, these Immunies, as they’re nicknamed in this movie, are also supercarriers of COVID-23. And so, they’re both envied and shunned by the general population.

Immunies are identified by immunity passes (which look like yellow wristbands) that can be scanned to reveal their personal information. These immunity passes are highly coveted by people who want to be able to go outside whenever they want without fear of being fined or arrested. People are required to take frequent COVID-23 tests at home, which are done on government-issued hand-held monitors that can diagnosis people just by scanning their faces.

People who are found to be infected with COVID-23 are forced to go to the Q-Zone, which is not a health recovery center but it’s described in the story as a death detention center. These detentions are handled by the sanitation department, which is headed by Emmett D. Harland (played by Peter Stromare), who’s an Immunie. Emmett is such an over-the-top, creepy villain that you just know he’s involved in more misdeeds than just being rough and unmerciful with the people he detains.

Because of these drastic changes in society, Los Angeles (and presumably, most of the rest of the modern world) has become a place where people have become paranoid about going outside, for fear of being sent to the Q-Zone. Masked military soldiers patrol the streets and are ready to send people to the Q-Zone if they don’t have immunity passes. Some of these patrollers are quick to draw their guns if they see anyone on the street without a mask. It’s what happens to Nico when he tries his make his way to a home for a delivery, and he’s blocked by overzealous soldiers until Nico shows them his immunity pass.

The high demand for immunity passes has caused these passes to be sold on the black market at prices that can only be afforded by wealthy people or people who can come up with the cash any way that they can. Two of the people who are considered among the top-tier sellers of illegal immunity passes are unhappily married couple William Griffin (played by Bradley Whitford) and Piper Griffin (played by Demi Moore), who are already living an upscale life but apparently are greedy and want more money. William’s day job is as a high-ranking executive in the music industry, even though the movie never shows him doing any work except his illegal side hustle of selling immunity passes.

And because “Songbird” is a movie like the 2005 drama “Crash,” which eventually shows how everyone in the story is connected to each other in some way, the Griffins’ home is one of the places where Nico makes a delivery. People are not allowed to open their doors to delivery people. Instead, deliveries are dropped into a capsule outside a home, and the item in the capsule is then disinfected through ultra-violet rays.

Nico has been to the Griffin home enough times that the house residents recognize him when he arrives. William and Piper have a daughter named Emma (played by Lia McHugh), who’s about 11 or 12 years old and who has respiratory problems, because she always has to wear an oxygen tube. The implication is that she’s especially vulnerable to getting COVID-23.

Emma is really just a “token” underdeveloped character that doesn’t serve any purpose in the movie except to try to make William and Piper look more sympathetic. It’s a futile effort, because these two spouses, who have simmering hatred for each other, are ruthless and sleazy, although one of them turns out to be a lot worse than the other. An innocent and sweet kid like Emma doesn’t deserve the parents she has.

Meanwhile, although Nico might seem to have a cavalier and cocky exterior when he’s on the job, the movie slowly shows that he’s actually in a lot of emotional turmoil. His entire family is dead, presumably because of COVID-23. And before the pandemic, he was a paralegal with plans to become a lawyer, but he had to abandon those dreams. There’s a scene where Nico goes back to the now-deserted law office where he used to work and bitterly goes through some of the remnants of his past.

But more heartbreaking for Nico than the loss of his career dreams is the fact that he’s fallen in love with a woman who’s around his age, but they haven’t been able to be in the same room together because of the pandemic. Her name is Sara Garcia (played by Sofia Carson), who lives in an apartment with her beloved grandmother Lita (played Elpidia Carrillo), whom Sara calls Grammy. Sara’s parents are also dead because of COVID-23.

Nico and Sara met when he made a delivery to her apartment. They had an instant connection and fell in love through constant contact over the phone. Nico also visits Sara by going to her apartment, but not going inside and instead talking to her outside the apartment door. It’s explained that the apartment building is under heavy government surveillance, because it’s a “hot spot” for COVID-23 infections. Therefore, Nico and Sara know they could be arrested if he’s allowed inside her apartment, and Sara and Lita could be sent to the dreaded Q-Zone.

Sara sees firsthand (through her front-door keyhole) how brutal one of these arrests can be, when one of her female neighbors is dragged from her apartment, yelling and pleading for mercy, because the neighbor tested positive for COVID-23. Before the hazmat-suit-wearing sanitation workers arrive to take her to the Q-Zone, the neighbor begs Sara to let her inside Sara’s apartment to hide, but Sara refuses to hide the neighbor, on Nico’s advice. Emmett is supervising this particular detainment with sadistic glee. And he vows that he will be back to this apartment building to get more people because he’s convinced that the entire building is infected.

There are several scenes in “Songbird” where Nico talks to Sara through her apartment door, like he’s her pandemic Romeo to her quarantined Juliet. It’s supposed to be romantic, but Nico and Sara just utter cheesy soap-opera-type dialogue to each other that will make viewers roll their eyes or laugh at the corniness of it all. And when Lita starts having a persistent cough, you know exactly where this movie is going to go in the “race against time” part of the film that’s supposed to make this movie a suspenseful thriller.

Meanwhile, one of Lester’s employees who works from home is a lonely paraplegic named Dozer (played by Paul Walter Hauser), a military veteran in his mid-30s who lost the use of his legs during the war in Afghanistan. Dozer, who’s been a self-described shut-in for the past six years, uses a drone to keep track of Lester’s courier employees. Dozer has a strong sense of right and wrong and likes feeling as if he’s a “rescuer,” which all affect his actions later in the story.

Dozer has been a subscriber to a pretty YouTuber named May (played by Alexandra Daddario), who is a self-described struggling singer/songwriter. She has a YouTube channel called May Sings the Blues, where she sings cover songs and her own original music during livestreams and in prerecorded videos. People who watch her YouTube channel have the option to donate money to her, because she often tells her viewers that the pandemic has made it impossible for her to make money by performing in person.

Dozer has been one of her biggest donors, so May decides to connect with him online and reaches out to him to personally thank him. They begin chatting and soon get very candid with each other about the problems in their lives. Dozer tells May about being a shut-in: “I was in lockdown before it was fashionable.”

May tells Dozer that she moved to Los Angeles because a guy in the music industry promised to make her a big star. She and the guy ended up having an affair, which she now regrets, but the guy still wants to keep seeing her. And then the pandemic happened, and she’s been stuck in an uncomfortable limbo where she still needs the guy to help her with her career, but she wants to break off their affair.

Because of the strict lockdown, it’s illegal for people to have in-person social visits with other people who don’t live in the same household, but May’s lover insists on visiting her for their sexual encounters. May confides in Dozer that she’s afraid of getting infected and/or arrested because of this guy. Dozer offers to help her any way that he can. May’s “mystery lover” is eventually revealed, and it will be shocking to no one who’s seen enough of these types of formulaic, unimaginative movies.

Except for the COVID-23 pandemic aspect of the movie, there’s absolutely nothing unique about “Songbird,” which is a lot like many other badly made post-apocalyptic movies that have a weak, nonsensical plot and dumb action scenes. There’s a chase scene where Nico gets trapped in a building with Emmett and some of Emmett’s armed goons. And out of nowhere, Nico gets help from a gun-toting vigilante named Boomer (played by Paul Sloan), who randomly shows up in the scene and then is never seen in the movie again.

Viewers will also have sit through lots of inane dialogue, such as during another scene when Emmett has cornered some people he wants to capture. He taunts them by saying, “Roses are red. Violets are blue. You think you can hide? I’ll find you!”

One of the producers of “Songbird” is Michael Bay, who’s best known as the chief filmmaker for the “Transformers” movie franchise and the first two “Bad Boys” movies. Even though those movies had mediocre-to-bad screenplays, at least those films had high-octane action to keep people interested and wanting more. “Songbird” doesn’t even have memorable action scenes, unless you think it’s an improvement that at one point in the story, Nico ditches his bicycle and replaces it with a stolen motorcycle.

It all leads up to an ending that’s so terrible that it will make people either laugh or get angry, depending on how much it might bother people that their time was wasted by watching this garbage. And why is this movie called “Songbird,” when the only singer in the movie is a supporting character, not a leading character? Just like this entire ludicrous movie, it doesn’t make sense and it’s too lazy to try to give any logical explanations.

STX released “Songbird” on VOD on December 11, 2020.

2019 ARDYs: A Radio Disney Music Celebration is rebrand of Radio Disney Music Awards; Sofia Carson is first ARDYs host

April 19, 2019

The following is a press release from Disney Channel:

Radio Disney is throwing a real-time live party for its most passionate fans, evolving music’s biggest event for families to the newly rebranded “ARDYs: A Radio Disney Music Celebration” (for the past six years known as the “Radio Disney Music Awards”). Actress, singer, songwriter, Hollywood Records and Republic Records recording artist Sofia Carson (Disney Channel’s “Descendants,” Freeform’s “Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists”) is set to host the exciting music and star-filled event. For the first time, it will be a live telecast, originating from Los Angeles, on Sunday, June 16 (8:00 p.m. EDT/re-airing at 8:00 p.m. PDT), on Disney Channel and in DisneyNOW, with a simulcast on Radio Disney. Multiple Emmy(R) and Producers Guild Award nominee Casey Patterson Entertainment (“Lip Sync Battle” and “MTV Movie Awards”) will executive produce the show.

The ARDYs will celebrate the biggest and rising stars in music, television and movies and create an event designed to inspire and entertain today’s families. Beginning May 20, and during the live ARDYs show, fans will be invited to be part of the planning for the live telecast. By visiting the DisneyNOW app, the Radio Disney app or online (Disney.com/ARDYs), fans can participate in polls that will help determine certain elements of the show.

Returning sponsors of the 2019 ARDYs include Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Shapes, Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker 2 video game on the Nintendo Switch system and The Walt Disney Studios.
“We’re creating a next-level celebration of music to entertain and inspire families and over the next many weeks, we’ll bring our fans into the celebration planning, getting their opinions during pre-production and bring it all to life, live, during the show,” said Phil Guerini, vice president, Music Strategy, Disney Channels Worldwide and general manager, Radio Disney Network.

Casey Patterson is a six-time Emmy and three-time PGA Award-nominated executive producer who has created a wide array of groundbreaking programming. Patterson recently produced and directed legendary country singer-songwriter Loretta Lynn’s star-studded tribute celebration in Nashville. Patterson’s credits include “Lip Sync Battle,” “MTV Movie & TV Awards,” Dwayne Johnson’s “Rock The Troops,” Bill Murray’s “A Very Murray Christmas” on Netflix, “One Night Only: Alec Baldwin,” “Time and Punishment: A Town Hall Discussion With Jay Z,” “The Concert of the Century” at the White House, “The Concert for New York City,” “Saturday Night Live 25th Anniversary Special” and “Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: A Fairytale of New York.”