“Riceboy Sleeps,” a new drama from Vancouver director Anthony Shim, and now playing in theatres, is a meditative study in the immigrant experience in Canada through the lens of a mother and son relationship.
Set in the 1990s, Choi Seung-yoon is So-young, a single-mother to Dong-Hyun (as a child played by Dohyun Noel Hwang, later, as a teen by Ethan Hwang), who moved to Canada from Korea following the death of her husband. Once in Canada, the better life she hoped for seems just out of reach.
At her factory job So-young faces discrimination and, at school Dong-hyun is teased because his lunches are different than the sandwiches everyone has in their lunch boxes. His teacher even anglicizes his name to David because she can’t properly pronounce Dong-hyun.
Life isn’t easy for them. Dong-hyun, who, trying to assimilate to his new home, dyes his hair blonde and wears blue contacts, is suspended from school for fighting, and turns to drugs.
Gradually mother and son drift apart, but when So-young receives life-changing news, they attempt to reconnect with one another and with their heritage on a trip to Korea.
“Riceboy Sleeps” occasionally dips into melodrama, but is remarkably effective in its portrayal of the isolation and frustration that envelopes So-young and Dong-hyun’s new life. It’s in the details, the small (and sometimes not so small) behaviors, that define their interactions with many co-workers, doctors and even Dong-hyun’s teachers. Director Shim smartly visualizes the cultural claustrophobia with a boxy aspect ratio that doesn’t open up until the Korean sequences.
The natural performances are particularly effective in the film’s intimate moments. A scene where So-young struggles to use a Korean-English dictionary understand her cancer diagnosis is as frustrating and tragic as it is heartbreaking.
Ultimately, it is the film’s central relationship, the mother/son bond, that gives “Riceboy Sleeps” its poignancy.
Disney+ wades into the true crime pool with a retelling of one of the most notorious serial killers of the 1960s.
From June 14, 1962 to January 4, 1964, thirteen single women, between the ages of 19 and 85, were sexually assaulted in their apartments before being strangled with articles of clothing.
Dubbed the “Silk Stocking Murders,” the case left police scrambling until reporters Loretta McLaughlin (Kiera Knightly) and Jean Cole (Carrie Coon) connected the murders and dubbed the killer the Boston Strangler. “The city is, for some, glamorous, stimulating, prosperous,” says a radio reporter. “Only recently has it become dangerous.”
When we first meet McLaughlin she is an ambitious reporter for the Record-American newspaper stuck on the lifestyle desk. Her pitches for hard news stories, including one on three elderly victims of a mysterious killer, are brushed aside.
“I don’t see the interest,” says editor Jack MacLaine (Chris Cooper). “These are nobodies.”
When McLaughlin offers to work on the story in her spare time, MacLaine relents, but adds, “You’re still on the lifestyle desk.”
As the mysterious murderer continues to strike, McLaughlin recruits Cole, one of the few female reporters not working on the lifestyle desk, to expand the investigation. Together they fight against the blue wall of police silence, the sexism of the newsroom and the very real threat of violence at the hand of the man they are helping to expose.
“Boston Strangler” is a period piece that works on a couple of levels. It is, first and foremost, a journalism procedural along the lines of “She Said” or “Spotlight,” following the reporters and their investigation.
Unlike “The Boston Strangler,” the 1968 Tony Curtis big screen version of the story, which focused on the efforts of the police, this is a story of finding the story. McLaughlin and Cole methodically build the case that these murders are connected, and that they are likely the work of one person. Despite very real threats to their safety as they hone in on one suspect, they are driven by the door knocking, boots-on-the-ground passion for the work.
Just as important is the portrait of workplace culture it paints in regards to women in the newsroom. The era’s rampant sexism, inside the newsroom and out, suggested the two women not only lacked the skills to cover the story but that they were emotionally unequipped to be involved with the case. The real-life McLaughlin and Cole were pioneers at a time when most women in newsrooms were relegated to soft news, advice columns or fetching coffee for their editors.
In fine performances, Knightly and Coon both embody the tenacity it took to smash the glass ceiling and break the Boston Strangler story. McLaughlin kicks through the gender norms of the 1960s, shaping the future she wants for herself, professionally and personally. Coon, playing a character who had worked in newsrooms since the age of 18, is spirited and funny with a razor-sharp wit.
Although there are several upsetting scenes and descriptions of the victims, the movie wisely put its focus on McLaughlin and Cole, rather than the grisly details of the crimes. Unlike the awkwardly titled “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” “Boston Strangler” doesn’t feel exploitive in its retelling of the sensational story.
Given the popularity of true crime, the murder aspect of “Boston Strangler” is the hook, but the story is deepened by its portrait of the importance of journalism to uncover the truth, and the intrepid reporters who do the work, despite the consequences.
I join Canada’s number one mid-morning show, “The Marilyn Denis Show,” with fashion expert Mana Mansour to talk about what hit and what was missed at this year’s Oscars.
On this edition of the Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet Lindsay Wong. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir “The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family,” which was a 2019 Canada Reads finalist. Her new book, “Please Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality,” is a collection of 13 horror stories, all of which tour the Chinese-Canadian experience.
Then we’ll meet Zale Mednick is a successful ophthalmologist who, just at the cusp of embarking on his career, was suddenly overcome with self-doubt about the path he’d chosen for himself. Realizing that his preconceptions might be misleading him, Zale set out to explore many of his preconceptions in a podcast called “Preconceived!” Today we talk about his podcast and his new book, “Preconceived – Challenging the Preconceptions in our Lives.”
Fionally, actor, musician and writer Cliff Cardinal stops by. If you happen to find yourself in Toronto in the next little while, check out his provocative new show, a “radical retelling by Cliff Cardinal” of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Called “The Land Acknowledgement or As You Like It,” the show is the unvarnished truth of the state of the reconciliation process this country has been attempting for the last few decades.
Each week on the nationally syndicated 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 hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
Listen to the show live here:
C-FAX 1070 in Victoria
SAT 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM
SUN 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
CJAD in Montreal
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
CFRA in Ottawa
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 610 CKTB in St. Catharines
Sat 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1010 in Toronto
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1290 CJBK
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
AM 1150 in Kelowna
SAT 11 PM to Midnight
BNN BLOOMBERG RADIO 1410
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed!
Ghostface is back, kicking and screaming—and stabbing, punching and shot-gunning—in another bloody adventure where real life imitates the reel life of slasher movies. Like the other entries in the franchise “Scream VI,” now playing in theatres, sets out to deconstruct slasher movies, but actually delivers the gory slasher goods.
Set following the events of the 2022’s “Scream,” the new film moves the action out of Woodsboro, California, site of the previous Ghostface killings, to New York City at Halloween. The “core four,” the survivors of Ghostface’s latest rampage—sisters Samantha and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) and twins Chad and Mindy Meeks (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown)—hightailed it across country to attend school and put the past behind them, but trauma has a way of following a person.
Sam, who killed her boyfriend Richie Kirsch (Jack Quaid) when she discovered he was a Ghostface killer, in love with her simply because she is the daughter of the original killer in the screaming mask, is now seeking treatment, but admits, stabbing him 22 times, slitting his throat, and shooting him in the head, “felt right.”
No spoilers here, but suffice to say, the movie follows the “rules” laid out by film student Mindy: Rule one: As the franchise ages, the movies will get bigger. Rule two: Expect the opposite of last time. Rule three: Legacy characters and main characters are cannon fodder. No one is safe.
“Scream VI” feels fresher than you would expect from an almost thirty-year-old movie franchise. A rotating cast of new and old faces helps with that, providing new stories wrapped in nostalgia, but it also has something to do with the franchise’s desire to entertain at almost any cost.
This one is a tightly knit, if familiar-ish, story, amped up with gorier-than-usual killings—I’m sure I saw intestines!—and what Alfred Hitchcock would have called a “refrigerator climax.” That means it seems to make sense while you are watching it, but later, when you’re standing in front of the fridge looking for something to eat, and your mind drifts back to the film, you realize just how preposterous it was. The Grand-Guignol ending is over the top, but hey, remember rule number one?
“Scream VI” doesn’t exactly slash a new path for the franchise, but the expected mix of humor, gore and self-reverence and its willingness to be silly and kinda tense at the same earns it a recommend.
