Archive for July, 2021

BOOZE AND REVIEWS: THE PERFECT COCKTAIL TO ENJOY WITH “JUNGLE CRUISE”

Richard makes a Painkiller, the perfect cocktail to enjoy while watching the new Emily Blunt, Dwayne Johnson action-adventure “Jungle Book.” It’s the Rock on the rocks! Have a drink and a think about “Jungle Cruise” with me!

Watch the whole thing HERE!

JUNGLE CRUISE: 4 STARS. “fun adventure delivers action, humour & chemistry.”

“Jungle Cruise,” now playing in theatres and on Disney+ with premium access, is a new adventure story that reaches back into Hollywood history for inspiration. The Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson movie is based on the 65-year-old Disneyland riverboat cruise theme park ride, which, in turn, was inspired by the Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn’s antics in the 1951 film “The African Queen.” Add to that a hint of “Indiana Jones” and “Romancing the Stone,” and you have a family friendly film that simultaneously feels brand spankin’ new and old fashioned.

Blunt is the eccentric botanist Dr. Lily Houghton, an English adventurer in search of the Tree of Life, a mythical Amazonian tree whose “Tears of the Moon” blossoms are said to have healing properties. If she can find it and harness its powers, she believes it will be the beginning of a scientific revolution.

Travelling from London to the Amazon, she meets steamboat captain “Skipper” Frank Wolff (Johnson), a fast-talking cynic who reluctantly agrees to take her and her assistant, brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), on his ramshackle boat into the heart of darkness. “If you believe in legends,” Frank says, “you should believe in curses too. It’s not a fun vacation.”

On the voyage up river they contend with slithery supernatural beings and the rival Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), a Hapsburg aristocrat determined to use brute force to reach the Tree of Life before Houghton, on a dangerous race against time.

Movies based on theme park rides have a checkered history. For every “Pirate of the Caribbean” that becomes a hit and spawns signals, there is a “The Haunted Mansion” or “Tomorrowland” gathering dust in a delete bin somewhere.

“Jungle Cruise” seems likely to avoid that fate. A classic adventure, it is an action-packed journey fuelled by the chemistry between the leads, Blunt and Johnson.

The opening half-hour actually feels like the theme park ride. It takes off like a rocket with one elaborately staged action scene after another. That sets the frenetic pace the movie keeps up for most of the running time, right up to a drawn-out ending that threatens to overstay its welcome, but doesn’t, courtesy of the actors.

Blunt and Johnson have great chemistry, verbally jousting throughout. It’s the “Romancing the Stone” template; they’re an odd couple who roast one another while dodging life-threatening situations and ultimately reveal their true feelings. The comic timing works and adds much charm to the action sequences.

Threatening to steal the show is Plemons, who reveals his rarely used comedic side. As the power-mad Prince Joachim, the actor embraces the cartoon aspects of the character, creating one of the best family-friendly villains in recent memory.

“Jungle Cruise” is much more fun than you might imagine a movie based on a theme park ride will be. There’s some dodgy CGI and a slightly over-inflated running time but it’s an old-fashioned adventure, updated with one character’s coming-out scene (no spoilers here) and a reversal of the theme park’s treatment of its Indigenous characters, that delivers action, humour and chemistry.

FOR MADMEN ONLY: THE STORIES OF DEL CLOSE: 4 STARS. “a mix of legend and real life.”

“For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close,” a new documentary now on VOD, is about the best-known funny man you’ve probably never heard of. Tina Fey says he taught her to be bold in life. Mike Myers says he learned the connection between comedy and bigger ideas from him and Robin Williams campaigns for a Church of Del. Del Close is called a living legend by Amy Poehler and yet, as the movie says, this Zelig of comedy has the same name recognition as a third-tier fast food chain.

As one of the pioneers of a new kind of theatre called improvisational comedy Close, along with a handful of others like Elaine May (who close calls a supernatural figure) and Mike Nichols, created the form and the rules of performing comedy without a net. Some were intellectual. “Always work at the top of your intelligence,” and “Don’t deny, respect the other person’s reality.” Others practical. “Remember where the object are,” and “Don’t do mime.” Most important of all, “You’re not locked into this like an actor with a script.”

Using recorded interviews with Close, who died of emphysema at age 64 in 1999, and newer interviews with many of his friends and students, like the names I listed above and Tim Meadows, George Wendt, Bob Odenkirk among others, plus recreations, (which have a “Closeness” about them because director Heather Ross based on Close’s autobiographical comic “Wasteland”), and archival footage and photographs, a story emerges of a self-destructive rebel who put human nature onstage in an attempt to explore why we behave the way we do.

By the end of the film, it’s a portrait of a complicated man whose window into human nature was both a gift and a curse. He was, as Dave Thomas describes him, “a delicate basket of eggs destined to break at any moment.” He was brilliant, but as Adam McKay points out, also a “bit of a baby sometimes.”

What remains is his pioneering work teaching improv (with a big leg up from Charna Halpern). His “Harold” teaching method, the structure used in longform improvisational theatre, is both rigid—there are a set of strict rules—but also freeing in a way that made his students, as Myers says, “get in touch with their higher selves.”

“You have a light within you,” he would tell them. “Burn it out.”

You can draw a straight line from Close to most folks who have made you laugh in the last thirty years. He was a guru, who never reaped the rewards or the recognition many of his students enjoyed but the film aims to correct the latter.

As often happens in biographies, the legend sometimes looms larger than life. Did he really give L. Ron Hubbard the idea to start a religion to circumvent taxes? Did he really volunteer to have his dreams monitored by the US government while high on LSD, leave the project early and then sent a letter saying he owed the government one more dream?

Who knows? They’re good stories though. Fact and fiction, it seems are the two sides of the coin that inform the legend of Del Close.

THE EXCHANGE: 3 ½ STARS. “funny with a message of acceptance.”

Sometimes you don’t get what you want, but you get what you need. Especially in coming-of-age movies.

In “The Exchange,” now on VOD, teenager Tim Long (Ed Oxenbould) was born and has lived his entire life in a small Ontario town, but feels like an outsider. Obsessed with all things French, he’s a student of Camus, worships Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais, and looks down on his school mates and even family. The feeling is mutual. “Bookworm” and “loser” are two of the nicer jabs thrown his way. “Everyone hates you,” says Gary (Justin Hartley) the school’s soccer coach. The only person Tim really likes is Brenda (Jayli Wolf), who is unaware of his crush.

Craving sophisticated company, he signs up for an exchange program to acquire a “mail order best friend.” He’s hoping the exchange student will be a Gallic breath of fresh air in his stale little town. But instead of an erudite tour guide to all thing French he gets Stéphane (Avan Jogia), a teenage chain-smoking horndog more interested in girls than Gruyère Gougères.

After making a splash in town Stéphane’s behavior soon starts to raise eyebrows until he finds an unlikely supporter.

“The Exchange” is based on a true story. Screenwriter Tim Long, a Canadian from Manitoba who has been the consulting producer of “The Simpsons” for twenty plus years, adapts his own awkward friendship with an exchange student as the basis for the story. I’m sure characters are amplified and situations blown out of proportion, but underneath it all “The Exchange” is a feel-good story with laughs and a great deal of heart.

It’s lighthearted but that doesn’t prevent “The Exchange” from adding denser textures to the story. Near the end Long and director Dan Mazer (longtime writing partner of Sacha Baron Cohen) tackle the xenophobia that informs the latter part of the movie. After a brief moment of celebrity in town, the tide turns against Stéphane due to veiled racism. He is, as the Gallophile Tim might have said, l’étranger, an outsider whose motives are questioned, simply because he wasn’t born in the local hospital. It gets sorted—“We drew certain conclusions about you being different,” a character says to him—and is handled delicately, but in our divided times it hits the nail on the head.

Ultimately “The Exchange” works because it is about empathy. It’s funny, with the kind of premise that could have been sitcom fodder, but beyond the laughs is a bigger message of acceptance.

THE GREEN KNIGHT: 2 ½ STARS. “dense, deliberate, often beautiful but obtuse.”

“The Green Knight,” a new medieval fantasy film now playing in theatres, reaches back to Arthurian legend and a fourteenth century poem for its hero’s journey.

Based on the poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” the movie stars Dev Patel as King Arthur’s nephew and Knight of the Round Table, Sir Gawain. The young man is headstrong and rash but, despite his bravado, he says, “I fear I am not meant for greatness.”

The young knight sees a chance to prove his mettle when the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson), a larger-than-life, green skinned “tester of men,” throws down a challenge to King Arthur. “O greatest of kings, let one of your knights try and land a blow against me,” he says. “Indulge me in this game.”

Gawain impulsively accepts, charging at the stranger, removing his head with one blow.

But the challenge isn’t over.

Picking his own head up off the floor, the Green Knight mocks Gawain, commanding him to meet again in one year’s time at a cursed place, the Green Chapel, to finish their duel. As the headless adversary gallops off, Gawain’s quest to test his prowess begins. The journey to the Green Chapel is a dangerous adventure, fraught with supernatural forces, betrayal and challengers who will test the strength of his character.

“What do you hope to gain from all of this?” he is asked. “Honour,” Gawain replies. “That is why a knight does what he does.”

Calling “The Green Knight” an adventure implies that it is also exciting. It has all the earmarks of an old school “Lord of the Rings” style adventure story—there are trippy giants, a talking fox, a headless woman and more—but exciting it is not.

Director David Lowery has made a cerebral movie about finding one’s true path in life through trials and temptations. His retelling of the classic poem is dense, deliberate and often beautiful. But just as often it is willfully obtuse as it gets lost in the surreal deconstruction of Gawain’s journey. As a result, the film is oft times more interesting than actually entertaining.

Near the end of the film Gawain asks, “Is this all there is?” Oddly enough, life imitated art in that moment as I found myself wondering the same thing.

BOOZE AND REVIEWS: THE PERFECT COCKTAIL TO ENJOY WITH “OLD”

Richard makes a Gin Old Fashioned, the perfect cocktail to enjoy while watching the new M. Night Shyamalan thriller “Old.” Have a drink and a think about “Old” with us!

Watch the whole thing HERE!

NEWSTALK 1010: BOOZE AND REVIEWS WITH RICHARD CROUSE ON THE RUSH!

Richard joins Jay Michaels and guest host Deb Hutton of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show The Rush to talk about the pirate who invented the Pina Colada and some movies, “Old” and the rock and roll biopic “Creation Stories,” to enjoy while sipping one of the creamy drinks.

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

OLD: 3 STARS. “provides enough thrills to make it time well spent.”  

They grow up so quickly. That’s what everyone always says when you have kids. That old axiom comes to horrifying life in “Old,” the new film from director thrill meister M. Night Shyamalan, now playing in theatres.

Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps are Guy and Prisca Capa, parents to 11-year-old daughter Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and six-year-old son Trent (Nolan River). They are headed for divorce but before the ink dries on the legal papers, they want one last three-day family vacation at a fancy resort. “Can you believe I found this place on-line?” says Prisca, taking in the beautiful hotel.

Despite tension between mom and dad, the kids have fun, and when the resort offers an invitation to visit an exclusive beach, they eagerly accept. “It’s a once in a lifetime experience,” purrs the manager.

Coming along on the day trip is an assortment of other guests, including high strung cardiothoracic surgeon, Charles, (Rufus Sewell) and his family, rapper Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre) and long-married couple Jarin (Ken Leung) and Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird).

A shadow is cast on the day of sun, surf and sand when a dead woman washes ashore on the beach. Trying to call for help, the panicked vacationers quickly realize they are alone, isolated, with no cell service or anyway to get back to civilization.

When the mysterious body decomposes right in front of their eyes, wounds heal instantly and their kids begin to age two years every hour, they realize, in a masterstroke of understatement that “there’s something wrong with this beach.” “It’s hard to explain,” adds Guy.

Is it mass hysteria or is something more sinister happening?

Based on the graphic novel “Sandcastle,” by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, “Old” has an intriguing premise, one that could sit on the shelf comfortably next to the “Twilight Zone” box set. But the ain’t-it-funny-how-time-slips-away premise is almost undone by painfully bad dialogue and the strangely muted reactions of most of the characters. When your six-year-old grows up and has a baby in a matter of hours I would expect some deep introspection alongside shrieks and confused looks. Instead, this group is unusually accepting of the beyond strange situation.

Having said that, Shyamalan is a stylist who creates arthouse horror in “Old.” He effectively builds tension—most of the movie is as taut as a tightrope—and finds interesting ways of showing, not telling, the character’s physical changes like blindness and hearing loss. In addition, the really terrible stuff is mostly off screen, an old school Val Lewton technique, that allows the audience to imagining things much worse than he could show us.

Beyond the horror are poignant messages about embracing the time we have and that a life that whips by without memories or experiences, is time wasted. As time passes, the movie suggests, leaving things unsaid and undone are the greatest crimes in the timelines of our lives.

“Old” is melodramatic and has a protracted ending that wraps things up without providing much satisfaction but Shyamalan provides enough thrills to make it time well spent.