After 2021’s “Dune” was relegated to the small screen in the wake of pandemic related theatre closings, this weekend, the long awaited “Dune Part 2” brings the thunder, debuting on screens suitable for the story’s epic scale. The sci fi saga starring, well, almost everyone, in a sprawling cast headed by Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and the giant sandworms who are literally and figuratively the film’s biggest stars, will play exclusively in theatres.
Wrestling novelist Frank Herbert’s expansive story of a psychedelic drug called Spice and reluctant messiah Paul Atreides, into a comprehensible movie has confounded filmmakers for decades. Most notably, David Lynch adapted the 1965 novel into a noble 1984 failure. The story is complex, with many characters and big, brainy concepts.
As a result, the spectacle of “Part 2,” on its own, isn’t for casual viewers. The last movie ended with Fremen warrior Chani (Zendaya) saying “This is only the beginning,” which means the new film isn’t a sequel, or a reboot. It’s a continuation, the second part of the story director Denis Villeneuve began in 2021, and to understand the story, you have to see the first film.
Equal parts action packed and philosophical, “Part Two” picks up where “Dune” left off. Set 8,000 years in the future, Atreides (Chalamet) son of an aristocratic family, and once heir to the planet of Arrakis, a desolate, almost inhabitable place, but rich in the lucrative, and psychedelic Spice, that is home to the Indigenous Fremen people.
Betrayed by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), the former steward of Arrakis, the family is all but wiped out, with Atreides and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), left in the desert to die. If they are to survive it will be with the help of the Fremen—including Chani and Stilgar (Javier Bardem), leader of the Fremen tribe at Sietch Tabr—who call Atreides “The Chosen One” and believe he is a prophet with the power to bring peace to their world.
“Part 2” sees Atreides embedded with the Fremin in a mission of revenge against the House Harkonnen, the treacherous Baron, his sinister nephews, the brutish Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista) and Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), who Atreides holds responsible for the death of his father. Fighting gallantly alongside the Fremin, he’s mostly unconcerned with their belief that he is their messiah. His feelings for Chanti and his thirst for creating a conflict that will place him within striking distance of Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), his daughter Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), and Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother and the Emperor’s Truthsayer, Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling), are top of mind.
As the reckoning approaches, Atreides is plagued by terrible visions of the future.
There is so much more, but that is essentially the peg on which Villeneuve hangs his epic vision of Herbert’s tale. The director gives voice to the author’s study of vengeance, spirituality, fanaticism, liberation and conquest, articulating the story’s humanist nuances in the framework of a film that can only be described as a spectacle. It’s a bigger, wilder vision, an answer to the stately elegance of the first film.
The action sequences fill the screen. Villeneuve overwhelms the senses with grand images of desert warfare and Atreides sand surfing courtesy of giant “grandfather sand worms.” It’s blockbuster filmmaking writ large, exciting and laced with high stakes. Perfect for IMAX screens.
But the action sequences wouldn’t mean much if the film’s world building and characters didn’t set the stage. Arrakis is a sand swept hell, so immersive you’ll think you have sand in your underpants by the time the end credits roll. The vision of the planet is aided considerably by Greig Fraser’s gorgeous cinematography.
The devil, though, is in the details. On an arid planet, the Fremin syphon water from the bodies of their vanquished enemies to use in their cooling systems. Minutiae like this, and more, give the story depth, creating an exciting world for the characters to inhabit.
The stacked cast of a-listers deliver. Chalamet’s character comes of age on his hero’s journey, shedding any boyish traits Atreides may have had, to become a worm riding warrior and leader of armies.
Also making a mark is Butler as the eyebrow-challenged Feyd-Rautha (the part played by Sting in the Lynch’s adaptation). He maintains the rock star swagger of Elvis, his best-known role, but brings the danger as the sadistic nephew and heir.
It’s good stuff that showcases Villeneuve prowess, even if it feels rushed in its last act.
What Villeneuve isn’t good at, are endings. His first “Dune” film left audiences hanging, finishing up with no definitive ending. The end of “Dune Part 2” doesn’t dangle in quite the same way, but tensions are still unfolding as the end credits roll. Looks like we’ll have a “Part 3” coming in a couple years.
Despite the open-ended conclusion, however, “Dune Part 2,” with its stunning visuals, deep emotional core and good performances, suggests “Part 3” will be worth the wait.
Adam Sandler’s career arc is wide and weird. Rotten Tomatoes lists dozens of films, ranging from the wacky “The Ridiculous 6,” which earned a 0% approval rating, to the dramedy “Hustle” that clocks in at a healthy 93%. In between is a wildly diverse collection of movies that vacillate from beloved comedy classics like the goofy “Happy Gilmore” to the Oscar nominated “Uncut Gems.”
His latest, “Spaceman,” now streaming on Netflix, is something new, an outer space marital drama featuring the comedian as a Czech astronaut on a mission to Jupiter, who receives personal advice from an extraterrestrial six-eyed hairy spider, voiced by Paul Dano.
In space, nobody can hear you scream… but a giant spider can read your mind.
Based on Jaroslav Kalfař’s novel “Spaceman Of Bohemia,” the story revolves around Commander Jakub Procházka (Sandler), a withdrawn astronaut on a solo six-month mission to the fifth planet from the Sun. During a live press conference from space, organized by Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini), a child asks him, “Are you the loneliest man in the world?”
He may well be.
He hasn’t had a message from his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) in a long time. Unbeknownst to him, she has tired of being alone and sent him a Dear John transmission, which was suppressed by Tuma. “He’s not doing well,” Tuma says, fearing for Jakub’s mental health. “He misses his wife.”
Left adrift in space, alone and cut off from Lenka, Jakub receives relationship guidance from a large, chatty spider who says, “Your loneliness intrigued me. I wish to assist you in your emotional distress.” Whether the celestial spider is real, or a figment of Jakub’s fevered imagination, their conversations are therapeutic, forcing him to reassess his life and relationships.
“Spaceman” doesn’t play any of this for laughs. It is a low-key but high-minded film about a psychoanalytic spider, longing, loss and love. Set against the backdrop of a space mission, it examines the personal reasons why Jakub would leave behind the love of his life for the isolation of space.
“Billy Madison” this ain’t.
In a quiet, heartfelt performance, Sandler plays Jakub as a flawed man, deadened by emotional distress. It is sombre work, with whispered dialogue, longing looks and loads of introspection. He pulls it off, playing off of the goodwill earned from many years of making us laugh, to create a character we have instant empathy for. It’s another notch on his serious actor belt, even if it veers toward dreary for much of the film’s runtime.
Dano brings a whispery HAL 9000 vibe to the wise alien tarantula. He’s an eight-legged psychiatrist; a strange looking companion who knows how to ask the right questions to fire Jakub’s memories. Although the spider looks like something that may have escaped the set of “H.R. Pufnstuf,” Dano gives him real empathy.
As the earthbound Lenka, Mulligan isn’t given that much to do, but effectively displays her character’s deeply rooted, but conflicted, sadness.
As outer-space dramas go, “Spaceman” has more in common with “Solaris” than it does “Star Wars.” It is a slow-moving movie, with very little action—although a broken, on-board toilet threatens to pierce through the movie’s lugubrious tone—that is more concerned with the human condition; Jakub’s childhood trauma, his fear at impending fatherhood, his deep emotional scars.
Director Johan “Chernobyl” Renck does provide moments of great beauty and compassion, but the film’s listless pacing blunts the effectiveness of Jakub’s emotional journey.
“500 Days in the Wild,” a new documentary from director Dianne Whelan now playing in theatres, isn’t exactly “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” It more like “Hiking, Biking, Paddling, Snowshoeing and Skiing.”
In 2015 British Columbia filmmaker-photographer Whelan was disillusioned, feeling the effects of a recent break-up and worried about the state of the world.
As a way to reconnect with the planet and herself, she undertook the most grueling film shoot of her career, documenting her journey across the 24,000 kilometres, over land and water, of the 487 different trails and multiple waterways that make up the Trans Canada Trail. The longest trail in the world, it connects the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific Oceans.
Without a firm schedule—she ripped up her written plan ten days into the journey—Whelan spent much of the next six years completing the trail.
Culled from 800 hours of footage, the new movie showcases the visual poetry of the country—starry nights captured by her camera, the communing with nature, open spaces untouched by modern life—and danger in the form of bears, hypothermia and, at the beginning of the trip, of strangers, like two hunters she encounters on a rainy night.
The film highlights the gorgeous landscapes of the trail, and the challenges of navigating it, but it’s the inner journey that fascinates.
Whelan finds personal serenity through isolation, introspection and intimate moments. What began with disillusionment, ends with a newfound appreciation of the kindness of people, Indigenous beliefs and nature. She emerges changed, but most importantly, without a trace of the cynicism that characterized her mindset at the beginning.
“500 Days in the Wild” captures the expansiveness of the journey with beautiful, often eye-popping photography and contains moments of high drama alongside some lighter sections, but it’s Whelan’s vulnerability and personal journey that illuminates.
On the Saturday February 24, 2024 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we meet award-winning, former Toronto Star journalist Morgan Campbell. His new memoir “My Fighting Family: Borders and Bloodlines and the Battles That Made Us,” offers a history of his family’s multigenerational battles, a coming-of-age story, and a powerful reckoning with what it means to be Black in Canada when you have strong American roots.
Morgan Campbell joins CBC Sports as our first Senior Contributor after 18 standout years at the Toronto Star. In 2004 he won the National Newspaper Award for “Long Shots,” a serial narrative about a high school basketball team from Scarborough. Later created, hosted and co-produced “Sportonomics,” a weekly video series examining the business of Sport. And he spent his last two years at the Star authoring the Sports Prism initiative, a weekly feature covering the intersection of sports, race, business, politics and culture. Morgan is also a TedX lecturer, and a frequent contributor to several CBC platforms, including the extremely popular and sorely-missed Sports Culture Panel on CBC Radio Q. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Literary Review of Canada, and the Best Canadian Sports Writing anthology.
Then we meet New York Times bestselling author Nita Prose joins me to talk about her new book, “The Mystery Guest,” it’s a follow-up to her phenomenally successful first The Maid. It follows the adventures of Molly Gray, a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel who launches an investigation of her own into the death of an acclaimed author who died in one of the hotel’s rooms. We’ll learn how a mummified rat was part of the unusual inspiration for this book 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!
All iHeartRadio Canada stations are available across Canada via live stream on iHeartRadio.caand the iHeartRadio Canada app. iHeartRadio Canada stations are also connected through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home smart speakers.
“Ordinary Angels,” a new faith-based film starring Hillary Swank and Alan Ritchson, and now playing in theatres, is an uplifting film about the virtues of not taking “no” for an answer.
Based on a true story, “Ordinary Angels” sees Ritchson, still pumped-up from playing former U.S. Army military policeman on Amazon Prime’s “Reacher,” as Ed Schmitt, the recently widowed single father of two preteen girls, Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) and Michelle (Emily Mitchell).
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Ed would have any luck at all.
“Have faith,” his mother (Nancy Travis) tells him.
“A lotta good faith is doing me,” he says.
Already drowning in debt from his late wife’s medical bills, Ed is also struggling with Michelle’s life-threatening liver condition. She will need a transplant, but finding a donor could take years, and until then, the medical bills will continue to pile up.
In another part of town, while Michelle waits for a new liver, Sharon Stevens (Swank), a brassy hairdresser with a drinking problem, is doing everything she can to ruin hers. She is bold, the kind of drunk who dances on (and falls off of) bars, and says “I ain’t great with boundaries.”
The morning after a bender, while buying beer at a local shop, a newspaper headline about Michelle’s dire condition grabs her by the heart. Uninvited, she shows up at Ed’s church as the preacher implores his flock to, “Find a way to help this family.”
Sharon trades her enthusiasm for drinking with fund-raising efforts to help Ed and his family dig themselves out of their financial hole. After she arrives at Ed’s home with an enveloped stuffed with $3000, he reluctantly accepts her assistance. “I’m good at a lot of things,” she says. “Taking ‘no’ for an answer isn’t one of them.”
Co-writers Kelly Fremon Craig (who recently wrote and directed the film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”) and Meg Tilly, lean on the details of true story from 1994 in linear fashion. So, there are no big surprises in “Ordinary Angels,” just compelling characters and a three Kleenex story.
Ritchson leaves Jack Reacher’s sarcastic brashness on the shelf to play Ed as a quiet, broken man who puts his family’s needs ahead of his own. Without time to properly grieve his late wife, he has tamped down his heartache as he carries the weight of the world on his very broad shoulders.
Swank gives Sharon a blustery shell that camouflages a troubled past. Her soured relationship with her adult son and alcoholism are confronted, but neither are fully explored. Sharon says she doesn’t like to talk about herself, but a bit more backstory may have fleshed out the psychology behind her extraordinary generosity. Still, Swank makes her forceful in an Erin Brockovich kind of way.
“Ordinary Angels” is formulaic—the highs are really high, the lows are really low—and the climatic race against time goes on too long to be truly exciting, but the film’s themes of the importance of community, of the healing power of kindness and of how one person can make a difference, may tug at the heartstrings.
“Suze,” a new film featuring “Tiny Beautiful Things” star Michaela Watkins, and now playing in theatres, is an empty nest dramedy about a mother who takes an unusual path to combat the loneliness she feels when her daughter leaves town for university.
After discovering her husband cheating with their golf pro, Suze (Watkins) is once again confronted by abandonment when daughter Brooke (Sara Waisglass) announces she is moving to Montreal to attend McGill University. Although she is assured by a colleague that she’ll find time for herself in her daughter’s absence—“You’re finally free!”—she instead feels alone and adrift. “I am terrified of losing her,” she says.
And she’s not the only one.
Brooke’s heart-broken, Spicoli-wannabe ex-boyfriend Gage (Charles Gillespie), who plays guitar in a band called The Emotional Morons, falls to pieces and lands in the hospital. “It hurts in places I didn’t even know could hurt,” he says.
Gage’s father (Aaron Ashmore) isn’t available to help him recuperate, so Suze reluctantly allows him to stay with her for a couple weeks. “It’s kinda funny Suze,” Gage says, “how we both got left by the same person.”
Over time, they work through their heartbreak, finding strength in other’s company as they really get to know one another.
“Suze” is a never-judge-a-book-by-its-cover story, with a few laughs, some earned heartfelt moments and heaps of compassion. The daughter is a McGuffin, more a plot device to put the odd couple story in motion than anything else. The important and appealing part of the story is the relationship between Suze and Gage, everything else is set dressing.
There is a great chemistry between Watkins and Gillespie.
Suze moves from mistrustful to maternal as Gage’s innocent, natural charm becomes obvious, but Watkins avoids sentimentality in her approach to the burgeoning relationship. She has an edge, born of anger, experience and frustration that can be heartfelt, dramatic or comedic depending on the situation.
Gillespie brings the off-kilter energy of a guy who has been misunderstood his entire life. His performance is a winning mix of guilelessness and charisma, one that easily could have been a caricature but emerges fully formed.
What binds them both is their natural approach to kindness and compassion.
The key to “Suze’s” success is the way it presents a platonic relationship based on mutual respect and how they give one another a reason to embrace the battle scars that formed them, and move ahead toward happiness.
Set in 1999, “Drive-Away Dolls,” a new LGBTQ2+ b-movie wannabe from director Ethan Coen in his first solo outing, feels like it emerged, untouched from the time before Y2K.
A loving throwback to the kind of independent, verging on experimental, filmmaking that made the Coen brothers famous, “Drive-Away Dolls” is a queer caper film whose action, after a brief but memorable prologue, begins when the uninhibited Jamie (Margaret Qualley) cheats on girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) and gets thrown out of their apartment.
“I’ve had it with love,” Jamie says. “It might be alright for the bards and the troubadours, but I don’t think it works for the twentieth, soon to be twenty-first, century lesbian.”
Looking for a change of pace, Jamie decides to hit the road, along with Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), a reserved friend who is bored of her job and her life. They acquire a drive-away car (a vehicle that needs to be delivered from one city to another) and head off for a fresh start in Tallahassee.
Trouble is, the car they were given contains very valuable cargo that kingpin Chief (Colman Domingo) and his dopey henchmen Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C. J. Wilson) need to get their hands on.
“Drive-Away Dolls” has many of the trademarks of the kind of 90s indie cinema the Coens and Tarantino left in their wake. There’s smart-alecky dialogue, over-the-top, bickering bad guys, a mysterious briefcase, a preposterous crime and “not your garden variety decapitation,” all wrapped in a tidy 84-minute package.
Unfortunately, it’s not an entirely welcome u-turn to 90s form for Coen. For all the free-wheeling vibes the movie emits, it’s a bit of a slog, even at its abbreviated runtime. Choppy storytelling, low stakes and an emphasis on quirky caricatures over real characters slow the roll of what could have been a fun road trip romp. The pitch perfect sweet spot between serious and silly, Coen achieved (with brother Joel) in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “The Big Lebowski” is sadly missing here.
The performances are amiable. Qualley’s intermittent Texas accent is distracting, but Viswanathan brings the nerdy charm to Marion. The great Bill Camp steals scenes as Curlie, the crusty drive-away clerk, and Pedro Pascal has a memorable cameo.
“Drive-Away Dolls,” written by Coen and his wife, and long-time editor, Tricia Cooke is about hitting the road and cutting loose but never puts the pedal to the metal.
On the Saturday February 17, 2024 edition of The Richard Crouse Show, get to know Reinaldo Marcus Green, director of the Oscar winning film “King Richard.” He returns to theatres this weekend with “Bob Marley: One Love,” a story of how reggae icon Bob Marley overcame adversity, and the journey behind his revolutionary music. We talk about why Bob Marley’s influence still resonates today, when his life was cut short in 1981, when he was aged just 36.
Then we’ll hear from Bob Marley’s son Ziggy Marley who talks about his father as an icon, a father and a musician.
Rik Emmett also joins me. He left Triumph in 1988 to pursue a solo career, and released records in a variety of styles, including rock, blues, jazz, classical, bluegrass, and flamenco. He’s he won the Canadian Smooth Jazz Award for Guitarist of the Year and now has written a book called “Lay It On the Line: A Backstage Pass to Rock Star Adventure, Conflict and Triumph,” available now wherever you buy fine books.
Finally, Chris Hadfield joins the show. He is an astronaut, engineer, singer, fighter pilot and author of many books, including the one we’ll talk about today, “The Defector.”
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!
All iHeartRadio Canada stations are available across Canada via live stream on iHeartRadio.caand the iHeartRadio Canada app. iHeartRadio Canada stations are also connected through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home smart speakers.
“Madame Web,” a new Spider-Man spinoff starring Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney, and now playing in theatres, is a superhero origin story that actually becomes less interesting once the man character’s powers kick in.
The story begins in the Peruvian Amazon where pregnant arachnologist Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé) and explorer Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) are hunting for a rare spider whose venom can cure diseases. Upon discovery, Ezekiel decides he wants the spider all for himself, and shoots Constance, leaving her for dead. Before she passes away, however, she is bitten by the magical spider and gives birth to a daughter.
Cut to thirty years later. It’s 2003, and Ezekiel is now wealthy beyond imagination, with powers derived from the Peruvian spider venom. But with the good comes the bad. He is plagued by visions of his own murder by teenagers Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) and Anya Corazon (Isabel Merced).
His sidekick Amaria (Zosia Mamet) tracks them down, and Ezekiel wants them dead before they can do him harm.
In another part of New York, Constance’s daughter has grown up to be socially awkward paramedic Cassandra Webb (Johnson). A near death experience, coupled with the injection of spider venom from her mom, has left her with the ability to see into the future. When she has a premonition of Ezekiel murdering the trio of teens on a train, she steps in to help. “If you want to live,” she says, “you have to trust me.”
To fully understand why Ezekiel wants the three women dead, Casandra must learn to control her new powers. To do that, she must look to the past, and her mother’s work in the Amazon.
Like a lot of people who follow this kind of thing, I saw the on-line “Madame Web” news and its star, Dakota Johnson’s endlessly meme-able press tour. I thought the chatter was entertaining, and Dakota’s interviews may one day become the stuff of internet lore. Flippant, disinterested and outspoken, her press interviews probably gave the studio a headache, but likely made her fans happy for their unfiltered honesty.
After having seen the film, it is my solemn duty to let you know that the interviews are more entertaining than anything in the movie she was out there promoting.
I was intrigued that “Madame Web’s” story was not another caped superhero saves the world tale. Origin stories should keep the action personal, allowing us to get to know the character before they set off on grand, planet changing adventures.
But origin stories are tough. The stories have to do the heavy lifting with exposition while keeping the movie moving along. “Madame Web” gets bogged down with tedious repeating of what is to come, comedy moments, some intentional, some not, that don’t land, and weirdly disengaged direction and performances.
It may have worked if the stakes weren’t so low. Ezekiel, the villain, while ill-tempered and creepy, doesn’t seem to pose THAT much of a threat. He does have a cool villain’s lair, what little we see of it anyway, and has power and money, but he isn’t that hard to thwart, and great villains should at last appear to be unthwartable (I know that’s not a word, but it seemed appropriate here).
Even the action scenes seem listless. They harken back to the bad old days of “Catwoman” and “Daredevil.” No huge stakes, unless you are the Pepsi-Cola sign in Queens, New York. That thing takes a beating.
I know the movie is set in 2003, but the action doesn’t feel like a tribute to the shooting style and CGI of the era, it just feels dated.
By the time the end credits roll, you’ll wish you had the power to see into the future, like Cassandra Webb, so you’d know to skip this one.
