Richard hosted the “The Martian” press conference at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox on September 11 with Kate Mara, Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Andy Weir, director Ridley Scott, Sean Bean,Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Drew Goddard.
Like millions of people I remember exactly what I was doing the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001.
When the first plane hit the World Trade Center I was walking down Bloor Street in Toronto, on my way to the InterContinental hotel to do a day of Toronto International Film Festival coverage.
I didn’t register anything unusual in the air until I got to the hotel. People on the street may have been walking and talking a bit faster, acting a bit more animated than usual, but not so that I noticed.
Entering the hotel was a different story. The halls were eerily silent.
What was usually a cheery beehive of activity with camera crews, stressed publicists and actors roaming around, was now quiet, still.
At 9 a.m. I walked into our makeshift interview suite on the third floor just as the second plane hit. My crew were sitting around the television. Sobs from the rooms next to ours broke the stunned silence.
What the hell was going on?
What was going on was a change in all our lives; a new era where the unthinkable became possible.
It was a confusing day. With no details we, like many others, pressed on with the business at hand.
David Lynch came and went, smoking American Spirits and chatting about his film Mulholland Drive.
A handful of others walked the halls, unsure of what else to do, keeping previously scheduled interview slots.
When I mentioned to New York actress Adrienne Shelly that I couldn’t reach my girlfriend, who was living in Manhattan, she loaned me her cellphone.
“For some reason it seems to get through,” she said.
It did, and after a quick call to make sure she was safe, the full impact of what had just happened sunk in. Sometimes the small stuff, the personal things — like the anxious voice at the other end of the line — help you understand the magnitude of a grim situation.
We cancelled the rest of the day but I stayed put, talking to my hotel neighbours, most of whom were Americans, many from New York.
There were hugs, tears and bafflement in equal measure. TIFF elected to cancel many of the day’s events and tone down the glitz for the rest of the festival.
But the show would go on and in that moment art won over terror.
What we began to hear were stories from New York filmmakers who, with all flights cancelled to and from the city, were loading cans of film into their cars and driving to the festival.
It wasn’t about vanity and it wasn’t about ego.
It was about filmmakers, the storytellers of our times, the people who document our lives, not being silenced.
The rest of the festival was a sombre affair but there was a steeliness uncommon at the usually glitzy event. We gathered, watched films, communicated and healed, sending a message that the uncertainty of the times would not prevent us from expressing ourselves, from sharing stories.
Fourteen years later I think back to those days and realize that terror didn’t win on 9/11.
As long as we don’t allow ourselves to go silent, as long as we breathe life into our stories and experiences on film and elsewhere, we won’t and can’t live in fear.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
The summer movie season began amid doom and gloom. I don’t mean George Miller’s filling screens with his dystopian vision of the future in Mad Max: Fury Road or the career ending fallout from the Sony hack. No, I mean the sky-is-falling predictions that circulated about the movie business.
Box office is down! No one goes to the movies anymore! And best of all: Movies are dead!
To paraphrase Mark Twain, I’m happy to say the reports of the death of cinema have been greatly exaggerated. The summer box office of 2015 will go down in the record books as the second-biggest in history with almost seven billion dollars generated by Minions, Ant-Man, Mad Max, dinosaurs and a sad little girl named Riley.
Superheroes helped put bums in seats, but 2015 won’t be remembered as the Year of Ultron. Now that the summer silly season is over, a definite trend toward female-driven movies like Trainwreck, Pitch Perfect 2 and Spy showed that, as Amy Schumer told me, Hollywood has finally realized “our money works, too. Our banks also accept the female dollar.”
But it wasn’t just women going to the movies. With Jurassic World pulling in 1.6 billion samolians worldwide, it seems everyone put down the remote and went to the cinema.
We didn’t rush out to everything — cash grabs like Ted 2 and Terminator: Genisys flopped — but the naysayers, the folks who, in January, were declaring movies to be a thing of the past, an old outmoded form of entertainment in the digital age, missed the point.
People flocked to the movies in huge numbers this summer, filling seats and studio bank accounts, not simply to sit in air conditioning for a few hours as relief from the summer heat or to dine out on popcorn and Twizzlers, but to engage in an age-old ritual.
Of course, you can watch movies at home or on your phone. New technology has made it easier than ever to enjoy a film from the comfort of your coach on a 60-inch screen with surround sound and healthy, homemade snacks, but no matter what set-up you may have in your living room, the thing missing is the ancient practice of sharing entertainment with a large group of strangers. It’s a primal thing, hard-wired into our DNA, that dates back to when tribes of cave dwellers would sit around fires and tell stories through to the Globe Theatre, vaudeville, the talkies and right up to today’s IMAX and AUX screenings.
People have gathered to be entertained since there were tales to be told because there is no better way to enjoy the storytelling experience than surrounded by strangers who are laughing, crying, gasping— whatever — in response to a shared event.
No matter how large your TV or comfortable your sofa, home viewing misses the magical element of community. In the theatre you’re getting the sound and the picture the director intended, but more than that the experience brings people together, inspires conversation, respect and triggers actual physical interaction with others. Try that as you stream a movie on your iPhone.
Of course, as in any other community there are a few troublemakers — texters, seat kickers — but I spend more time in theatres than most and find the pros far outweigh any negatives.
In the era of home entertainment the idea of going to the movies may sound old fashioned or quaint but I like the way English novelist Angela Carter described watching a film in a theatre. She called it “dreaming the same dream in unison” and that, for me will never go out of style.
Twenty years ago “A Walk in the Woods” would have starred Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as grumpy old men in a movie that plays like “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” with a dash of the finding-yourself-in-the-woods movie “Wild” thrown in. Matthau and Lemmon are long gone, but in their place are weathered icons Nick Nolte and Robert Redford as old (literally and figuratively) friends hiking the twenty-two hundred mile Appalachian Trail.
Based on Bill Bryson’s 1998 memoir of the same name, the movie sees Redford as Bryson, a travel writer grappling with growing older. In an effort to clear his head and feel alive again he ignores his wife’s (Emma Thompson) objections—“I don’t think you’re too old,” she says. “You ARE too old! Can’t you just do this in the Volvo?”—and embarks on the Georgia-to-Maine trail.
None of his friends are interested in making the five month, five million step trip with him. “Next time asked me to do something fun… “like a colonoscopy,” says one, until Stephen Katz (Nolte), an estranged friend who owes Bryson money from their last adventure, volunteers to go. Is he up for the trip? “I walk everywhere these days,” he says, “especially since they took away my license.”
Despite their age, their differences and the fact that less than 10% of the people who start the trail, finish it, the pair set off on a journey that will give them a deeper appreciation of home.
“A Walk in the Woods” brings Redford back to the light comedy of his early career but he spends much of the film playing straight man to Nolte’s disagreeable Santa routine. Nolte lurches through this movie with all the subtlety of a drunken elephant, filtering his lines through a voice that sounds like a broken whiskey glass. He has most of the laugh lines and displays good comic timing, dropping well placed swear words and gags with precision.
The movie itself is episodic. Every step takes them closer to a new opportunity for a gag whether it’s a collapsing bunk bed or a bit of mild slapstick in a river. While many scenes are left hanging with no resolution and, occasionally, no real purpose, it’s so amiable watching these two (and their stunt doubles) walking through the woods that you’ll forgive the randomness of several of their adventures.
The guys are the focus, to the detriment of Emma Thompson and Mary Steenburgen who aren’t given near enough to do. Only Kristen Schaal as an annoying over confident hiker makes an impression.
“A Walk in the Woods” won’t ever be mentioned in the same breath as any of Redford or Nolte’s classic films—it’s too silly and the message of leaving home to appreciate home is too obvious—but watching these two charismatic actors onscreen it’s not hard to remember what we liked about them in the first place.
One question hangs heavy over “The Transporter: Refueled” (sic), Can the franchise survive and thrive without its former star Jason Statham? The action hero drove off into the sunset after three instalments, leaving it up to “Game of Thrones” actor Ed Skrein to take his place. Can Skrein put the pedal to the metal or is the series headed to the junkyard?
Skrein is the Transporter. No names please, it only complicates things. He is a skilled driver who delivers packages for anyone who agrees with his rather stringent demands—no lateness, detailed weight restrictions and once the deal is made if the deal changes, he walks away.
Against the backdrop of the French Riviera the Transporter and his newly retired spy father Frank Martin Sr. (Ray Stevenson) soon finds themselves involved in a dangerous revenge plot against a vicious Russian pimp (Radivoje Bukvic) staged by Junior’s newest clients, four prostitutes willing to die to get away from their old lives.
“The Transporter: Refueled” is a slick looking movie that substitutes squealing tires for story. It adheres to the fight scene/car chase formula that drove the Statham’s “Transporter” triptych but the dark humour and the wink of the older films is missing. Skrein is all business, a grim-faced chauffeur who can take a punch and throw a kick with a wild style that would make Jackie Chan proud, but it all seems rather joyless. Stevenson has the charm to pull this off but is a secondary character, mostly left in the background.
Then there are the female revenge plot masterminds (Loan Chabanol, Tatiana Pajkovic and Gabriella Wright), the supposedly strong female characters at the heart of the movie. They are capable of pulling off a major heist and going-head-to-head with Russian bad guys but, for some reason, become freaked out squealing school girls at the prospect of driving through a gate secured only with a flimsy chain. Skrein simply frowns and gets on with the job but the women react as though they’re about to jump off a cliff and later, jump into bed with their rescuers as a sign of gratitude.
Some grrrl power.
But what did I expect? Ten minutes in it’s clear why “The Transporter: Refueled” isn’t in 3D. It’s because the characters are so one-dimensional they simply couldn’t exist in three dimensions. Instead they are cartoons, existing in a world where you’re shot, near dead one day, wearing a tight dress and kicking butt the next.
“The Transporter: Refueled” is a silly movie, and that’s OK, lots of silly movies are entertaining and worth your money. Unfortunately “The Transporter: Refueled” isn’t one of them.
East meets West in “Dragon Blade,” an epic new film starring Jackie Chan, John Cusack and Adrien Brody. The story of a showdown between Roman armies and the tribes of Western China is the most expensive film ever produced in China and after a successful run overseas the $65 million movie is now opening in North America as one of the top grossing Asian films of all time.
Very loosely based on the true story of a legion of Roman soldiers who went missing along China’s Silk Road, the action takes place in a flashback to 48 BC after Roman ruins are found in China. The convoluted story boils down to this: After a corruption charge Chinese captain Huo An (Jackie Chan) is banished to reconstruct Goose Gate, a ruined fortress. When a Roman legion, led by general Lucius (Cusack), shows up in need of supplies Huo An makes a truce, teaming with the general in advance of the approach of the vicious Roman leader Tiberius (Brody) and his army of 100,000 men. The murderous Tiberius plans on taking control of the Silk Road, the country’s main artery for trade and culture.
“Dragon Blade” has the grand feel of “Gladiator” and “300’s” respect for the past, which is to say it is a large scale humanistic epic with virtually no regard for the history books. It’s a sword and sandal spectacle with hundreds of extras, big battle scenes, pure hearted good guys and an over-the-top villain. Add in a culture clash, some bizarro casting—Lloyd Dobler as a Roman general? Really?—and you’re left with a loud-and-proud movie that puts the ‘O Man!’ in Roman. It occasionally sags under the weight of the story, but a charming performance from Chan and Brody’s pantomime villain keep things interesting.
“I love Canada,” says Mountain Men star Chace Crawford. “I’m from Texas so I get along with Canadians really well. There is some weird kindred spirit there.”Crawford is best known as the star of Gossip Girl — he played Upper East Side heartthrob Nate Archibald on over 100 episodes of the hit show — but he got his big break working in Canada.
“I worked in Montreal on my first film ever back in 2005,” he says. “It was a Screen Gems movie called The Covenant, which was like The Craft meets the Backstreet Boys. I had the best time of my life on that. I love Montreal but I know Montreal is a lot different than Toronto or Vancouver and definitely Revelstoke.”
Revelstoke is, indeed, a long hike from Montreal. The beautiful southeastern British Columbia community has provided a backdrop for films dating back to the 1930s — a 1937 Lilli Palmer about the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway was partially shot there — and gave Mountain Men its picturesque setting.
The film is the story of estranged brothers Cooper (Crawford) and Toph (Tyler Labine, real life brother of the film’s writer and director Cameron Labine). When Cooper returns home to attend their mother’s wedding, Toph tricks him into taking a trip into the Rocky Mountains. When everything goes wrong they must bond or die.
The scenery is suitably rustic, but Crawford says the location wasn’t as rough as it looks in the film.
“We really pulled it off,” he says. “To be honest we got there in April and had this house up in the middle of nowhere. There was a couple feet of snow everywhere but by the end it was gorgeous springtime. The snow just slowly melted. We had to keep going higher and higher up the mountain to make it look more treacherous. It was nice out almost. It was more wet than anything.”
When he wasn’t shooting on the mountain he was getting to know his co-star.
“Tyler and me shared a big house,” he says. “He has a family and a wife and kids and he’s a great dad, but he got to be away from that for a moment and kind of lock in. We’d go out and have a few drinks and get to know one another. There was nothing negative about it. We didn’t get tired of one another or angry. It was more a bonding experience and by the end of it we were brothers from another mother.”
