A look at a strained marriage through the lens of a public murder trial, “Anatomy of a Fall,” the Palme D’Or winning film now playing in theatres, is more concerned with human drama than the procedural aspects of the story. The result is a complex look at the search for truth in relationships and justice in court.
Set at a remote country residence in the Swiss Alps, home to best-selling writer Sandra (Sandra Hüller), her less-successful writer husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) and their visually impaired 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). When Samuel is found dead outside the home, a pool of blood surrounding his head like a halo, questions arise.
Was it suicide or murder? Did he fall from an upstairs window, or was he pushed?
Sandra’s muted response to her husband’s death raises eyebrows, and soon suspicion leads to murder charges. In court her compassionate defense lawyer Vincent (Swann Arlaud), a man she once had an affair with, is pitted against a confrontational state prosecutor played by Antoine Reinartz in a trial that puts Sandra and Samuel’s complicated lives on display.
“Anatomy of a Fall” is not a “Law & Order” style procedural. As director Justine Triet moves through the story, the courtroom framework becomes a backdrop for a captivating study of human behavior.
At the film’s stone-cold heart is Hüller. In her hands Sandra is a compelling and complex person who confronts the usual courtroom trope of widowed wife as a sympathetic character. Her independence, powerful presence and chilly demeanor, broken by the occasional emotional outburst, stares down preconceived notions and subconscious prejudices about Sandra’s life and behavior.
Triet isn’t asking if Sandra is guilty or not. She is more interested in why we, as the observer, might pass judgment on the character, one way or another. Placing the onus of judgment on the viewer is a fascinating way to subvert the procedural genre.
At 2 hours and 30 minutes “Anatomy of a Fall” may test some viewer’s attention spans as it slowly layers detail upon detail, both procedurally and personally, but for patient audiences it offers up an interesting mystery and an opportunity to examine personal biases.
Were it not for the explicit language, X-rated songs and a pair of monstrous puppets called The Sewer Boys, “Dicks: The Musical,” a raunchy new movie now playing in theatres, could have been a 1960s sitcom style family comedy about a pair of twins who conspire to get their estranged parents back together.
Instead, it’s a no-holds-barred ode to the likes of John Waters, attempting to find that sweet spot between shock and awe.
Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson are Craig and Aaron, two high-powered salespeople who meet for the first time when their company Vroomba! merges their two offices into one. They’re alpha males, sharks in tight suits and ultracompetitive, but one musical number later, they realize they share a birthday, looks and goals. They are long separated twins, one raised by their mother Evelyn (Megan Mullally), the other by father Harris (Nathan Lane). They concoct a plan to be a family again, to bring their parents back together, despite the fact that Evelyn keeps her winged genitals (you read that right) in a purse and Harris is gay and keeps The Sewer Boys, two toxic creatures he found in the NYC sewer, in a cage as his children.
“We didn’t realize being lied to your entire lives would be so upsetting,” says Harris.
Cue a barrage of crude jokes and a series of show tunes with double entendre titles like, “I’ll Always Be on Top” and “Love in All Its Forms” (“All love is gross/But all love is love.”) as this unconventional family discovers how to love again.
Originated as a two-hander theatre piece by Upright Citizens Brigade members Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, “Dicks: The Musical” feels like an attempt at a Midnight Madness movie, but is more outrageous than actually funny. There are amusing moments, mostly courtesy of Mullally and Lane, who understand, unlike Sharp and Jackson, that not every line has to be delivered with the annoying enthusiasm of Woody Woodpecker in the midst of an amphetamine binge.
When Evelyn says, “I’m dumbfounded and flummoxed,” Harris sharply shoots back, “Those were always your best qualities.” It’s a classic set-up and response that raises a laugh because it is character based and delivered with panache. Unfortunately, the rest of the material is dispensed at a fever pitch, like a manic children’s show television host, creating a white noise that becomes tiresome early on.
“Dicks: The Musical” was probably a blast as a half-hour underground cabaret show, but on the big screen it feels stretched paper thin. For all its surrealist affectation, envelope pushing and yes, even blasphemy, it’s never as shocking as it wants to be.
On the Saturday October 14, 2023 edition of The Richard Crouse Show get to know Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris. His film “The Thin Blue Line” placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest documentaries ever made, and he has, in his films, documented everything from the career of Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War and physicist Stephen Hawking to a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist.
“The Pigeon Tunnel,” his latest film, now streaming on Apple TV+, is a look at the extraordinary life of David Cornwell a.k.a. prolific author John le Carré. Through a retelling of his life, Cornwell examines the very essence of truth, and how memory and manipulation play a part in how we shape our world and our perceptions.
“The Pigeon Tunnel” is as compelling as any le Carré novel. Cornwell/ le Carré knows how to tell a tale, and like any good spy, he knows what details to include, and which to hide away. Morris doesn’t attempt to chip away at the façade and get at the underlying truth, because he knows, in the hands of master storyteller, a good story is a good story, whether it is true or not.
We’ll also meet Robert McCallum, director of the Amazon Prime documentary “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe,” an award-winning look at the life and legacy of legendary children’s entertainer Ernie Coombs.
Finally, we’ll chat with Tatiana Maslany. You know her as the Emmy winning star of thew science-fiction thriller “Orphan Black,” and as part of the Marvel Universe as the star of “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.” Today she joins me to talk about playing Jennifer, a Monarch butterfly who suffers from acrophobia, a fear of heights, in the new animated film “Butterfly Tale.” We talk Butterflies, Broadway and much more.
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!
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“The Burial” is an old-school fist-in-the-air Hollywood crowd-pleaser, now streaming on Amazon Prime, whose winning performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx and courtroom shenanigans are way more interesting than its downbeat title might suggest.
Based on true events, the movie sees Jones as funeral home owner Jeremiah O’Keefe, proprietor of a legacy Mississippi funeral home and burial insurance business. The once successful enterprise has hit a rough patch, and fearing he’ll have nothing left to pass along to his kids and grandchildren, O’Keefe decides to sell off assets.
One handshake deal to sell off three of his funeral homes to the slick-talking Canadian billionaire Ray Loewen (Bill Camp) of the Loewen Group conglomerate, and O’Keefe thinks his financial problems are a thing of the past.
When the deal goes sour, O’Keefe sues, but instead of trusting the case to his longtime attorney (Alan Ruck), he opts for hotshot personal injury lawyer Willie E. Gary (Foxx). Gary is a flamboyant character, with a private jet (named “Wings of Justice”) and a profile on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”
He’s wealthy, well-known, and has never lost a case. But there’s always a first time.
The Loewen team, with their high-powered Ivy League attorney Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollett) at the helm, will require more than Gary’s usual courtroom theatrics.
“The Burial” has a definite 90s vibe. It is based on Jonathan Harr’s 1999 New Yorker article, and could sit on the shelf next to “A Time to Kill,” “Primal Fear” or “The Client.” There’s even a satisfying “You can’t handle the truth” style gotcha moment.
Most of all though, it has the Jones and Foxx odd couple.
Jones leaves his crusty old man persona in the bag for this one, instead, busting out a quiet performance, informed by his character’s deeply held faith, general decentness and his determination to leave a legacy for this family.
It is, however, Foxx’s show. In his best role in recent memory, he is larger-than-life, a kind of Baptist preacher in the courtroom, and while it is a blast to watch Foxx in full flight, it is in the quieter moments that Gary really comes to life. He has bluster to burn, but as the son of a sharecropper and the middle child of 11, it is his backstory that deepens the characterization and prevents him from becoming a sharp-tongued lawyer caricature.
“The Burial” takes time to reflect on the details of the 1995 case, like how funeral companies financially took advantage of marginalized communities at a time of grief, but for all its Sydney Lumet style social commentary, it is the David and Goliath nature of the story that is so appealing.
Heartwarming is not usually a word that comes to mind when reviewing vampire movies, but somehow it applies to “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person,” a new French-Canadian coming-of-age film now playing in theatres.
We are introduced to teenage vampire Sasha (Sarah Montpetit) at her birthday party. At first glance it’s a normal birthday celebration, if maybe a little dour, with presents and a clown. But the clown isn’t hired to entertain. He’s brought in by Sasha’s mother (Sophie Caideux) and father (Steve Laplante) as a special treat, a meal to commemorate the teenager’s vampiric coming of age.
Trouble is, she is too empathetic to kill people. “I’m in a very delicate position,” she says. “where I’m forced to do bad things. The problem is, if I don’t do it, I’ll die.” She can only feed off people she feels a personal connection to. Her fangs won’t even appear unless she is comfortable with her prey.
“I don’t need to kill people,” she tells her horrified parents. “to know I won’t like it.”
When a vampire pediatrician diagnoses her with an unusual degree of compassion, she survives off blood-bags supplied by her father.
Her cousin Denise (Noémie O’Farrell) tries, and fails, to teach her how to find victims in bars. “Pick your favorite,” she says. “I’ll show you how to bleed him.”
Fed up, her parents cut off her blood supply, triggering an existential crisis. Entertaining thoughts of ending it all, she comes across a support group for depressed people, and meets the world-weary Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), a downcast teenager with very little hope for the future. Sasha is 68 in chronological, human years old, but looks seventeen, so the two become friends.
When Paul learns Sasha’s secret, he offers to save her life and be her next meal.
“Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” breathes some of the same fetid air as
“What We Do In The Shadows,” “Let the Right One In” and “Only Lovers Left Alive” in its creation of a vampire world that intersects with our own. Quebec filmmaker Ariane Louis-Seize builds a world for Sasha to inhabit that feels familiar, like our reality filtered through a Tim Burton lens.
Atmospheric and gothic though it may be, the movie is actually a tender-hearted story that uses the undead to celebrate life.
“Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” is brought alive, pun intended, by Montpetit and Bénard. The darkness of the premise is lightened by the palatable chemistry between the leads. Their work gives this off-kilter teen rom com an undeniable sweetness in its exploration of teen life and search for identity.
“Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe,” a look at the life and legacy of legendary children’s entertainer Ernie Coombs, now streaming on Amazon Prime, has the same brand of low-key kindness and empathy that made his show, “Mr. Dressup,” appointment viewing for several generations of Canadians.
The beauty of “Mr. Dressup,” which aired 4000 episodes chock full of songs, skits and crafts between 1967 and 1996, is that it was a simple, heartfelt program. So, it’s appropriate that director Robert McCallum leans into those qualities in this retelling of the life and legacy of the man and the show.
From his start in children’s entertainment as an assistant puppeteer to Fred Rogers in Pittsburgh and the move to Canada to the creation of his legendary CBC show and his decades long partnership with treehouse legends Casey and Finnegan, the film paints a vivid picture of the era through rarely seen archival footage and talking heads.
A generation or two of Canadians who grew up watching “Mr. Dressup,” including notable names like Eric McCormack, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Bif Naked, Michael J. Fox, Graham Greene, Peter Mansbridge and Andrew Phung chime in on the impact Coombs had on their lives.
More interesting is Judith Lawrence, Coombs’s puppeteer partner for much of the show’s run, who provides valuable insight to the inner workings of the show.
Along the way we learn about the foundations of the CBC that gave birth to “Mr. Dressup” and, much later, the budget cuts that threatened its existence.
But don’t come to “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe,” looking for dirt. There isn’t any. There are no bodies buried in the Tickle Trunk. It’s Mr. Dressup for goodness sake.
There are, however, heartfelt and tragic moments. The passing of wife Marlene is heartbreaking, not only because of the circumstances surrounding her death, but by the loss felt by a man who had given so many, so much.
“Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe” is a feel-good blast of nostalgia, reminiscent of a kinder and gentler time.
“Stellar,” a new film starring Elle-Máija Tailfeathers and Braeden Clarke, now on VOD and streaming on Crave, is about making a connection as a storm—or is it the end of the world?—brews outside.
Set in a Northern Ontario dive bar, the story revolves around two Indigenous strangers, She (Tailfeathers) and He (Clarke), as a storm rages outside. They meet, make a connection, unperturbed by the weather. They get to know one another, trading stories in Ojibwe and English, of lost loves, community and their deepest held feelings, as the bartender (Rossif Sutherland) grows agitated by the unsettling thunder and lightening.
Others come and go, including two Aunties (Billy Merasty and Tina Keeper) who ask if He and She know their way home, metaphorically. Then there’s a windbag professor (R.H. Thomson), in love with the sound of his own voice, who proclaims, “Knowledge is out foundation.”
“Your knowledge. Not required,” He replies.
Outside, the erupting storm is portrayed as another passing apocalypse in the timeline of Indigenous life. He and She are the calm in the face of the storm, resilient with an eye to the future. “I feel like the weather outside,” She says, “changing, challenging.” They are connected to nature, to their heritage, and to one another.
Strong visuals tell “Stellar’s” tale. Anishinaabe director Darlene Naponse blends the lyrical beauty of the love story inside the bar with cut-a-ways of the pollution and waste that mar the world beyond the bar’s walls. Her experimental, figurative treatment of the material creates a powerful, poetic allegory of Indigenous strength amid the storm of life, wrapped in a touching love story.
Mystical and metaphorical, “Stellar” is experimental in its storytelling, but hypnotic in its effect.
On the October 6, 2023 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet actor Peter Facinelli. You know him from roles on TV shows such like Six Feet Under, Damages and Nurse Jackie but he’ll likely always be best known as Dr. Carlisle Cullen in the wildly popular Twilight franchise. Today we talk about his new film On Fire, the story of a family who lives in a trailer home in the woods who are suddenly confronted by a wildfire.
Then we’ll meet John Carney, the Irish musician and director of Flora and Son, a new Apple TV+. comedy about a mom, played by the fabulous Eve Hewson, who tries to connect with her rebellious son with music. The director of the Academy Award winning film “Once” tells me about his music saved his life and why he didn’t include my favorite Dublin pub in the film.
We’ll also meet Michael Crummey, an award-winning poet and novelist from Newfoundland and Labrador. The Toronto Star called his latest novel, The Adversary, a story about two rivals who represent the largest fishing operations on Newfoundland’s northern outpost, a masterpiece. We’ll talk about the novel and how it begins with one of the best opening lines I’ve read in recent memory.
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!
I appear in a report by CTV Kitchener reporter Stefanie Davis on the closing of Landmark Cinemas Kitchener and what this means for the theatrical industry.
