Archive for July, 2017

Richard on Anthony Lemke in Sotheby’s International Realty RESIDE Magazine

From Sotheby’s International Realty RESIDE Magazine: “Anthony Lemke’s reach is worldwide. As cocky mercenary Marcus Boone on the hit space opera Dark Matter he is seen in 160 countries around the world. Off screen he travels the world as an Official ambassador in Canada for Handicap International. Recruited by a chum from law school—that’s right, he’s also a lawyer—he lobbies for reducing the impact of armed conflicts on innocent civilians in regions ravaged by the use of explosive weapons…” Read the whole thing HERE!

Just for Laughs 2017: “In Conversation” with Trevor Noah on Trump & more!

JFL Pro calledRichard’s on stage Just for Laughs “In Conversation” with Trevor Noah “one of the best ‘In Conversation’ events ever.” Read all about it in the Hollywood Reporter! Some excerpts: “There are things to be angry about. There are reasons to mobilize. But some of this stuff Donald Trump does — hey, just laugh at that.” “The idea of him being in control of this country is a frightening thing. I also know you cannot be afraid when you’re laughing, but you also have to acknowledge there is a certain element of danger.”

Read more HERE!

CHECK IT OUT: RICHARD’S “HOUSE OF CROUSE” PODCAST EPISODE 111!

Welcome to the House of Crouse. This week the late, great George A. Romero puts an end to one of the most enduring film legends of all time. Then the former Vice President of the United States drops by to discuss his new documentary “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” and what to do when it gets so hot the street starts to melt. Stop by and sit a spell, it’s good stuff. Also, there is a great pun inhere somewhere about the pairing of the Zombie King and a man named Gore, but we are too tasteful to make it.

 

 

NEWSTALK 1010: INFO ON THE RICHARD CROUSE SHOW FOR JULY 29, 2017!

Check out the Richard Crouse Show on NewsTalk 1010 for July 29, 2017! This week Richard welcomes a special roster of guests. Ethan Hawke talks about his movie “Maudie,” Christopher Nolan chats about shooting his film “Dunkirk” on the beach where it actually happened, Matt Reeves talks about the scariest movie he’s ever seen and former Vice President Al Gore speaks about the environment and his new documentary “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.”

Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!: Each week on The Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Richard also lets you know what movies you’ll want to run to see and which movies you’ll want to wait for DVD release. Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed! Read Richard NewsTalk 1010 reviews HERE!

The show airs:

NewsTalk 1010 –  airs in Toronto Saturday at 9 to 10 pm. 

For Niagara, Newstalk 610 Radio – airs Saturdays at 6 to 7 pm 

For Montreal, CJAD 800 – Saturdays at 6 to 7 pm 

For Vancouver – CFAX 1070 – Saturdays 6 to 7 pm. 

For London — Newstalk 1290 CJBK, Saturdays 10 to 11 pm

CTVNEWS.CA: “THE CROUSE REVIEW FOR ‘ATOMIC BLONDE’ AND ‘LADY MACBETH’!”

A new feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at Charlize Theron’s Cold War spy story “Atomic Blonde,” the masterpiece theatre murder mystery “Lady Macbeth” and the found footage scares of “Phoenix Forgotten.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS & MORE FOR JULY 28.

Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Erin Paul to have a look at the big weekend movies including Charlize Theron’s Cold War spy story “Atomic Blonde,” the masterpiece theatre murder mystery “Lady Macbeth” and the found footage scares of “Phoenix Forgotten.”

Watch to the whole thing HERE!

Metro In Focus: Charlize Theron kicks butt and takes names in Atomic Blonde

By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus

“I got offered a lot of stuff in action movies that was either the girl behind the computer or the wife,” says Charlize Theron.

That was then, this is now. After dipping her toe in the action genre with Aeon Flux and Mad Max: Fury Road, the South African actress is kicking butt and taking names in Atomic Blonde, a wild spy thriller Variety calls “a mash-up of The Bourne Identity and Alias.”

Based on Antony Johnston’s 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City, it’s a Cold War thriller about an undercover MI6 agent sent to Berlin to investigate the murder of a fellow agent. “I didn’t just want to play a girly spy who depends on her flirty ways,” she says.

To prepare for the gruelling shoot Theron worked with eight personal trainers who taught her the stunt work.

“‘We’re going to pretend to do that, right?’” she asked director David Leitch during the preparation. “David was like, ‘No you’re actually going to throw big dudes.’ Alright, let’s throw some big dudes.”

Throwing big dudes around like rag dolls may look great on film but was a physical challenge for Theron. The Oscar winner twisted her knee, bruised her ribs and clenched her teeth so hard while shooting one of the over-the-top fight scenes she cracked two teeth, requiring dental surgery.

Theron joins a list of dangerous distaff action stars like Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Scarlett Johansson (Lucy, The Avengers), Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Jenette Goldstein (Aliens), Angelina Jolie (Wanted, Salt, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider), Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil) and Uma Thurman (Kill Bill, Parts 1 & 2) who give Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson a run for their money.

All of those women owe a debt to two female action stars. Pam Grier and Tura Satana were larger-than-life pioneers, opening cans of whoop-ass on screen at a time when that was primarily the purview of the boys.

Quentin Tarantino directed Grier in Jackie Brown and says she may be cinema’s first female action star. Her films, like Foxy Brown and Sheba, Baby suggest he’s right. Grier could deliver a line and a punch, attributes that allowed her to cut a swathe in the male-dominated action movie market of the 1970s.

Perhaps the wildest female action movie of all time is 1965’s “ode to female violence,” Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! starring Tura Satana as the thrill-seeking go-go dancer Varla.

Experienced in martial arts, Satana did her own stunts and brought her unique style — black leather gloves, Germaine Monteil eyeliner and layers of Max Factor makeup — to the film.

She also supplied some of the movie’s most memorable lines.

When a gas station attendant ogles her cleavage while extolling the virtues of being on the open road and seeing America, Satana ad libbed, “You won’t find it down there, Columbus!”

Time critic Richard Corliss called Satana’s performance “the most honest, maybe the one honest portrayal in the (director Russ) Meyer canon and certainly the scariest.”

“I took a lot of my anger that had been stored inside of me for many years and let it loose,” Satana said of her most famous role. “I helped to create the character Varla and helped to make her someone that many women would love to be like.”

ATOMIC BLONDE: 4 STARS. “stylish film with visceral action scenes.”

“I didn’t just want to play a girly spy who depends on her flirty ways,” Charlize Theron told W Magazine. Mission accomplished. Based on the wild ‘n woolly graphic novel “The Coldest City” by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart “Atomic Blonde” is a Cold War thriller that sees Theron dropkick Daniel Craig or Matt Damon out of the space they’ve occupied as film’s go-to super spies.

Set in 1989, just days before the fall of the Berlin wall, the film starts with the KGB assassination of an undercover MI6 operative in East Berlin. Theron plays Agent Lorraine Broughton, a high-ranking MI6 spy sent to the communist side of the wall to retrieve a dossier containing the names of other vulnerable British intelligence assets. “It’s an atomic bomb of information that could set the Cold War back 40 years!”

Toby Jones and John Goodman as MI6 and CIA head honchos respectively urge her not to trust anyone but she sparks up a personal and professional relationship with an inexperienced French agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella). Because everybody wants the dossier she is teamed with shady Berlin station chief David Percival (James McAvoy)—a “feral” man who moonlights selling bootlegged Jack Daniels to tourists—to beat the US, UK, USSR and France to the punch. How? By folding, spindling, mutilating, punching, kicking and head butting. There’s death by cork screw, fist and bullet and everything in between in some of the most dynamic fight scenes we’re likely to see on screen this year (and that includes “John Wick 2).

The trailers make “Atomic Bomb” look like wall-to-wall action. It isn’t. It’s a cold war spy movie with intermittent wild and woolly fisticuffs. And that’s OK. The fight scenes definite highlights and get the pulse racing but to be truly effective all movies must have hills and valleys.

If it was all action it would be like a Jason Statham movie. All talking it would be “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” As it is it hits the sweet spot between the two.

It’s a stylish film with visceral action scenes connected by an original cold war story, compelling characters and German versions of 80s pop hits.

This isn’t a Michael Bay style spectacular, it’s up-close-and-personal bare-knuckled warfare. Theron and her victims grunt and groan as fists hits faces and all manner of mayhem is unleashed. One particularly intense fight scene mixes and matches the above-mentioned grunts and groans with the catchy pop of George Michaels’ “Father Figure.” An even more effective sequence gets rid of the music completely.

The tour de force six-minute fight scene looks like a one-shot wonder. It’s hard to believe there isn’t some trickery involved but the sequence is dazzling nonetheless.

As Broughton, Theron is not a superhero. She comes out on top of most fights but emerges bruised and battered, which lends an air of unpredictability to the =storytelling.

“Atomic Blonde” is a violent, arty spy flick that doesn’t just open the door for Charlize Theron to create an effective spy franchise; it kicks it off its hinges.

LADY MACBETH: 3 ½ STARS. “treats vengeance like an everyday event.”

“Lady Macbeth,” a new drama based on Nikolai Leskov’s Russian novella “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk,” is not your father’s period drama. Disturbing and diabolical, it’s an erotic thriller that examines gender politics, power and class.

Set in rural northern England in 1865 we first meet Katherine (Florence Pugh) when she is just seventeen-years-old, sold, along with a plot of land, into an arranged marriage with a much older man, Alexander Lester (Paul Hilton). Her job, according to the cruel and unyielding family patriarch Boris (Christopher Fairbank), is to provide an heir to the family fortune but their marriage is a sham, loveless and impotent.

When Alexander abruptly leaves for an extended trip abroad she is left behind in the rambling, damp manor home. Alone, save for a handful of servants, including Anna (Naomi Ackie), she is bored and unhappy until she meets groomsman Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). The two begin a torrid affair, unafraid of prying eyes. “He hates his father,” she says of Alexander, “he hates me. He won’t come back.” Except he does come back, pushing Katherine to extreme measures to preserve her relationship with Sebastian.

More “The Making of a Murderer” than “Wuthering Heights,” ice runs through the veins of “Lady Macbeth.” Cold and austere, the story of sexual rebellion is given life by Pugh’s mesmerizing performance. Her insolence and opportunism are fascinating to watch as she thumbs her nose at the social norms of the day. Don’t let the stillness of her performance fool you. Her calm, collected demeanour hides Katherine’s conniving nature but much is revealed in the small details. The fire in her eyes as Alexander says, “I do not like owning a whore,” the tilt of her head as Boris berates her. In her case, the devil is literally in the details. It’s tremendous work that should spell big things for her.

She is ably supported by Ackie and Jarvis. Ackie, in a performance of few words still manages to convey a great depth of feeling while Jarvis is compellingly plays a man torn between the physical pleasures Katherine offers and the metaphysical consequences of their actions.

Through Katherine’s power struggle “Lady Macbeth” deftly shows how the various hierarchies of class—patriarch Boris controls Alexander, Alexander dominates Katherine (or thinks he does) leaving her with power over the house staff—can be upended in a ruthless social coup. The oppressed become conquerors and vice versa in a story that treats vengeance like an everyday event.

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