Valorie Curry sits down with “Canada AM’s” Richard Crouse to talk about the hit CTV drama series ‘The Following,’ starring Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy.
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“Devil’s Due,” a new horror film that gives “Rosemary’s Baby” an unwanted found footage update wasn’t screened for the press. Living up to his motto–“I see bad movies so you don’t have to.”–Richard saw it on Saturday afternoon. Here’s his twitter review (click on the pictures to enlarge).
From IMDB: After a mysterious, lost night on their honeymoon, a newlywed couple finds themselves dealing with an earlier-than-planned pregnancy. While recording everything for posterity, the husband begins to notice odd behavior in his wife that they initially write off to nerves, but, as the months pass, it becomes evident that the dark changes to her body and mind have a much more sinister origin.
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Canada AM’s film critic Richard Crouse shares his reviews for ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,’ ‘The Nut Job,’ and ‘The Invisible Woman.’
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By Richard Crouse and Steve Gow Reel Guys – Metro Canada
Steve Gow is in for Mark Breslin
SYNOPSIS: Ex-Marine Jack Ryan is back on screen after a twelve-year break, but this time he looks like Captain Kirk. As played by Chris Pine (taking over from Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck) CIA field agent Ryan discovers evidence of an upcoming terrorist attack. Leaving his suspicious girlfriend (Kiera Knightley) behind, he is sent to Moscow to continue the investigation by Intelligence boss Agent Harper (Kevin Costner). Dodging bullets and bad guys, he encounters Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh) an evil businessman with a plot to destabilize the global economy.
Star Ratings:
Richard: 2 Stars
Steve: 2 Stars
Richard: Steve, Shadow Recruit is nothing fancy… and it’s also nothing Clancy. As the first of the Ryan movies not based on a Tom Clancy novel it feels quite generic. There is the usual intrigue and a couple of tense scenes but what the movie doesn’t have is the ear for dialogue of the other Ryan films. When you have a senior CIA agent muttering the line, “This is geopolitics, not couple’s therapy,” it’s hard to know whether this is a satire of spy films or just badly written.
Steve: It certainly wasn’t inspired writing, that’s for sure. I get the feeling the genesis of this film came straight from a money-angling producer who somehow decided to attempt reviving a 12 year old movie character like Jack Ryan would be better business sense than creative endeavor. The problem is, even if you look at the previous incarnations of the CIA operative – he’s pretty indistinct. He’s no James Bond. And vanilla Chris Pine doesn’t add much to that blandness.
RC: True, but I really think that this is a case of a director with no affinity for the material. It’s almost as if the movie was pieced together by people who had seen a lot of spy movies, but didn’t really understand them. Add to that action scenes so frenetically edited it’s often hard to see through the flashes of light on the screen to see who is punching who. A little clarity in those sequences would have gone a long way to make up for the ridiculous dialogue and under developed characters.
SG: Absolutely. I had a hard time making sense of the action sequences since they were filmed with shaky handheld cameras and in what seemed to be extreme close-up. Perhaps filmmaker Kenneth Branagh was focusing less on direction and more on playing the Russian antagonist in the film, which he does effectively enough in spite of the formulaic dialogue. Keira Knightly too, in the pretty unremarkable role of Ryan’s unwitting operative wife is fine – although I’m not sure what her attraction to the part was.
RC: Knightley was fine, but I thought Branagh played Cherevin with all the nuance of a Bond villain. He’s ruthless, flamboyantly accented and super smart. Smart enough to bring down the global economy but not smart enough, apparently, to see through Chris Pine’s terrible drunk act near the climax of the film.
Steve: True enough. And that probably exemplifies this film’s biggest flaw. As much as the action is set at the pace of an over-caffeinated ferret, this thriller is pretty much boilerplate material with any subtle intricacies simplified for the sake of the neatly-capped plot. In the end, it’s a pretty plain spy flick that’s easy to unravel.
“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” is nothing fancy… and it’s also nothing Clancy.
As the first of the Ryan movies not based on a Tom Clancy novel it feels generic. There is the usual spy story intrigue, exotic locations and tense scenes but what the movie doesn’t have is the ear for dialogue of the other films in the series. When you have a senior CIA agent muttering the line, “This is geopolitics, not couple’s therapy,” it’s hard to know whether this is a satire of spy films or just badly written.
As played by Chris Pine (taking over from Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck) CIA field agent Ryan discovers evidence of an upcoming terrorist attack. Leaving his jealous girlfriend (Kiera Knightley) behind, he is sent to Moscow to continue the investigation by Intelligence boss Agent Harper (Kevin Costner).
Dodging bullets and bad guys, he encounters Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh, who also sits in the director’s chair) an evil businessman with a plot to destabilize the global economy and create the “second Great Depression” in the United States.
Remember when Kenneth Branagh used to make movies like “Henry V” and “Hamlet”? I do too, which makes me feel a little empty inside when I watch something like “Shadow Recruit.”
This is a case of a director with no affinity for the material. It’s almost as if this was pieced together by people who had seen a lot of spy movies, but didn’t really understand them.
Like Branagh’s “Thor” movie, the action is muddled and so frenetically edited it’s often hard to see through the flashes of light on the screen to see who is punching who. A little clarity in those sequences would have gone a long way to make up for the ridiculous dialogue and under developed characters.
Branagh plays Cherevin with all the nuance of a Bond villain. He’s ruthless, flamboyantly accented and super smart. Smart enough to bring down the global economy but not smart enough, apparently, to see through Chris Pine’s terrible drunk act near the climax of the film.
Knightley is the movie’s third headliner, but you have to wonder why she would accept a role that gives her little to do except complain and go all moon faced over Ryan.
Then there’s Pine, who heroically anchors the “Star Trek” series but comes off here as a little too bland to play an international man of mystery.
“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” is the first Ryan movie after a twelve-year break. It wasn’t worth the wait.
“The Nut Job” is chock full of the standard animated fare. There’s cute furry animals, a not-so-scary-villain, some slapstick and messages for kids about sharing and teamwork.
Unfortunately there’s also a noisy, nutty story that left me feeling like an assaulted peanut.
Think that was a bad peanut pun? Wait till you see this movie. Or not.
“The Nut Job” begins on a downer note. The animals of Liberty Park don’t have enough food for the winter and the selfish actions of Surly Squirrel (voiced by Will Arnett) has pretty much guaranteed they’ll starve once the weather turns cold.
Raccoon (Liam Neeson), the park patriarch banishes Surly but soon the mischievous rodent involves the park’s citizens—wannabe hero Greyson (Brendan Fraser) and sexy squirrel Andie (Katherine Heigl)—in a dangerous scheme that will either save them or kill them—robbing a nut store owned by some Damon Runyonesque mobsters.
“The Nut Job” is an original story that feels Frankensteined together from other, better kid’s movies. Echoes of “Ice Age” style slapstick and “Ratatouille” situations and even “Animal Farm” ethos reverberate throughout. I’ll give the filmmakers credit for adding in the gangster twist and some jazzy music but it’s the characters themselves that really disappoint.
To give you an idea of the amount of thought put into the characters, let’s start with their names. Neeson’s raccoon character is inventively named Raccoon, the rat sidekick is Buddy (Robert Tinkler) and the surly squirrel is, of course, called Surly.
Different names wouldn’t have made this a better movie, but the literal names display a lack of inventiveness that permeates the entire film. The animation is fine, but the rest—the story, the voice work, the action—feels as uninspired as peanut butter without jam.
There is very little joy, almond or otherwise, in “The Nut Job.”
An elegant period piece about Charles Dickens and his mistress, starring and directed by Ralph Fiennes, comes with great expectations, most of which, unfortunately are not met.
When “The Invisible Woman” begins Charles Dickens (Fiennes) is the Justin Bieber of his day. He’s fabulously famous and wealthy thanks to his best selling books and stage appearances.
Married with children, his life becomes a tale of two women when a seventeen-year-old actress named Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones) is cast in one of his plays. Infatuated with the young woman the “David Copperfield” author begins a long-running, but secret affair with her that lasted until his death.
Younger viewers might wonder why Lord Voldemort is traipsing around London in a top hat and spats but the range of his performance will strike older viewers, familiar with Fiennes’s brooding work. His physical resemblance to the writer is remarkable, but it is the arc of the character, from charismatic celebrity to love sick puppy to Victorian rascal that really impresses.
Ditto the work of Joanna Scanlan as the long-suffering Catherine Dickens. She’s the mother of Dickens’s children, and a good and loyal person who becomes one of the invisible women in the author’s life as he falls deeper in love with Nelly. She hands in a wonderfully sympathetic performance rich with pathos and sadness.
Too bad these two stand-out performances are wrapped around a terribly dull film. With none of the crackle of Fiennes’s last directorial work “Coriolanus,” it’s a wealth of period details and sure handed direction but it plays like a tedious episode of “Masterpiece Theatre” broadcast by the BBC, which in this case would stand for Boring British Channel.
The story of a life-changing love affair is presented almost completely without passion and bookended by a sidebar of Nellie as an adult, still pining for her lost lover. Or, as it is presented in the film, staring off into the distance. As a viewer you hope the Ghost of Dickens Past will appear to snap out of her endless funk.
Ultimately “The Invisible Woman” could have used a little more TMZ and a little less BBC.
(From Richard’s book, “The 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen,” ECW Press 2003)
“It’s a fucking good film, Robert, but if it ever shows in America we’ll never be allowed in the country again.” – Mick Jagger to director Robert Frank
You probably haven’t seen one of the best movies about rock and roll ever made, and Mick Jagger wants to make sure you never do. “Cocksucker Blues,” the legendary documentary about the Rolling Stones, is so raunchy it even made the Fab Five blush. Although it was produced with the full cooperation of the band, they still took director Robert Frank to court to block distribution.
The Rolling Stones first met the Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank at a mansion in Los Angeles during the sessions for “Exile on Main Street.” As Europeans they shared a common fascination with American culture. The Stones were walking encyclopedias of Southern blues, while Frank had travelled the States in the mid-1950s snapping a series of photographs that would be released as a book titled ”The Americans.” By the time of their meeting in 1972 the Stones were the biggest rock band in the world and “The Americans” was already regarded as one of the classic photography books of the century.
After their initial meeting Frank was hired to provide cover art for “Exile on Main Street.” He gave them a photo h had taken in 1950 of a collage of circus freaks from the wall of a tattoo parlor on Route 66. The cover photo was met with such critical acclaim that the Stones decided to expand theoir working relationship with rank and hired him to shoot a no-holds-barred documentary of their 1972 American tour, to be produced by the legendary owner of Chess Records, Mashall Chess.
The Stones had not performed I the U.S. since the December 1969 debacle at the Altamont Racetrack, the final date of the tour that was filmed by Albert and David Maysles and released as a full-length feature titled “Gimme Shelter.” Shot in the waning moments of the 1960s, “Gimme Shelter” not only documents the actual end of the decade, but it ideological end as well. During the Altamont concert the Hel’s Angels, hired as security by the Stones, used pool cues and knives to beat an 18-year-old African-American audience member to death. AS the band played “Under My thumb” and Meredith Hunter lay dying on the ground, the image profoundly signaled the end of the era of peace and love. It was an historical moment and the Rolling Stones had it on film.
“Gimme Shelter” is an above-average rockumenary, and the inclusion of the controversial Altamont footage assured it would be successful. Three years later it was time for a follow-up. Jagger decided to call the movie “Cocksucker Blues” after a rough-and-ready tune he had written about a gay hooker in London, and gave Frank a full access pass to shoot wherever and whatever he wanted. That was a decision that would later come back to haunt the band.
Frank chose to shoot the film cinema verite style in black and white (with the odd bity of colour thrown in), which lends a stark newsreel feel to the movie. His dispassionate eye neither judges nor comments, preferring the viewer to draw their own conclusions as he films Keith Richard’s descent into heroin addiction or a battered woman trying to hide her face from the camera. There are many outrageous sequences in the film: saxophonist Bobby Keyes and Keith indulge in one of the great rites of passage for any rock star—throwing a television out of a hotel window; Keith advises Mick on the best way to snort cocaine; naked groupies masturbate for the camera—and one gets the feeling they are genuine, despite the Stones’ later claim that Frank stages some of the more decadent scenarios. As part of a legal settlement with the band rank was forced to add a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie stating, “all scenes except the musical performances are fictitious.”
To my mind the thing that makes this documentary special, setting it heads above the other anything-that-is-worth-doing-is-worth0-over-doing music movies is not the sensational sex, drugs and rock and roll footage, but the shots of the band in the downtime between concerts. This, I suspect is the side the myth-hungry Rolling Stones didn’t want you to see.
Frank unblinkingly shows us the tedium of life on the road, and allows the real lives of the band members to be revealed. Mick, the ultimate rock star, for example, is seen trying to deal with his high maintenance wife Bianca, who is often seen crying and playing with a small music box. The band is shown killing time between gigs be ordering room service, engaging in inconsequential conversations, or simply not speaking at all. This was hardly the high glam life that would be expected from the “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band,” although these are the scenes that humanize the group and put a pinprick in the bubble of fame that surrounded the Stones in their glory days. Director Jim Jarmusch called “Cocksucker Blues” “definitely one of the best movies about rock and roll I’ve ever seen. It makes you think that being a rock star is one of the last things you’d ever want to do.”
There are also some great in-concert moments, although “Cocksucker Blues” is by no means a concert flick. In one memorable sequence Frank intercuts backstage antics at roadies snorting coke with the Stones on-stage, creating a hypnotic tableau that shows both the public and private dichotomy of the group and life on the road. Other standout performances include an “Uptight”/”Satisfaction” medley (with Stevie Wonder), “Happy” and “Street Fighting Man.”
The era when it would be possible to make a film like this showing a band at this level is over. Now publicists would run interference at every stop, and every media-savvy groupie would demand a release form and a fee. “Cocksucker Blues” may represent our last truly unfettered look into the lives of rock gods at the peak of their fame. The practice of celebrity journalism has been dealt a mortal blow by overzealous celebrity minders whose purpose in life is to sanitize their client’s images and make sure that compromising situations like the ones in the movie never make the light of day.
Not everyone agrees with my assessment of “Cocksucker Blues” as the greatest (and most revealing) rock movie ever, least of all the Rolling Stones. “I thought it was a piece of shit actually,” Bill Wyman, the Stones original bass player told me in 2001. “I thought it was so amateur and poorly done. I just couldn’t relate to it. [Robert Frank] was obviously just looking for anything sensational. That’s why me and Charlie are hardly in it, because we weren’t sensational. All the good bits, I thought, were cut out. It was just like a poor home movie, shot badly. I couldn’t relate to it. I had no interest in it really.”
The film has had very few public screenings. Frank’s vision of the rock and roll superstardom may have been too raw for the Stones, who sued to have the film shelved. Instead of suppressing the film completely, they reached a complicated settlement that allows Frank to show the film once a year, as long as he is in attendance. Bootleg copies—with a picture quality that “sucks as much as the groupies” as one critic joked—have bee widely distributed and are available for rent in many places.
UPDATE: “Cocksucker Blues” screens on Friday, January 17 at 6:30 p.m. at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, and “Pull My Daisy” screens on Saturday, January 18 at 4:30 p.m as part of Hold Still – Keep Going: Films by Robert Frank — The Free Screen’s annual artists’ retrospective for 2014, running from January 17 to January 20. Programmer Chris Kennedy presents four programmes on the work of photographer and experimental filmmaker Robert Frank. Although best known for his photographic series The Americans, Frank is also considered one of the most important independent filmmakers in post-war America.
