On the Saturday December 21, 2024 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet Bette Reynolds. She’s Everyone’s Favourite Granny and if you’ve been on line in the last few months—and who hasn’t?—you probably saw her performance on The Voice UK.
Earlier this year she became the show’s oldest contestant ever when she did her rendition of The Sugarhill Gang’s, Rapper’s Delight in an effort to get coaches Sir Tom Jones, Will.i.am, LeAnn Rimes and Tom Fletcher and Danny Jones to turn their chairs.
She became a sensation, and she joins me today top talk about being on the show, doing a duet to Black Eyed Peas, I Gotta Feeling, with the song’s writer Will.i.am and her new Christmas single “Grandma’s Christmas Escape.”
Then, we’ll take a deep dive into Christmas horror stories with author Joshua Millican. Over the past decade-plus, Millican has proven himself to be a horror expert of the highest caliber. He is one of the genre’s premiere journalists, and today we’ll talk about the best Christmas horror movies and his two new books, “All Through the House: The Novelization” and “Chopping Mall: The Novelization.”
Finally, I’ll share my conversation with one of the world’s most successful music stars, Robbie Williams. He found fame as a member of the pop group Take That from 1990 to 1995, launching his mega successful solo career in 1996. By 2008, he had sold more albums in the UK than any other British solo artist in history and right now his record sales stand at over 77 million worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time, and now his wide ride to fame has been captured in a new movie called Better Man, which comes to select theatres on Christmas Day before opening wide on January 10.
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.
Richard joins the popular podcast Toronto Mike’d to open a Santa’s sack of Cool Yule Christmas tunes. Richard and Mike kick out the jams, playing 10 top songs for the holiday season. Find out which song put the X in Xmas! Also, Richard explains why he gravitates to Christmas songs you may not hear on your local all-Xmas music station.
SYNOPSIS: When a mysterious and powerful enemy threatens to destroy the planet, Sonic (Ben Schwartz), Knuckles (Idris Elba) and Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) are recruited by the secretive Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N.) to save the day.
CAST: Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, Natasha Rothwell, Shemar Moore, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Idris Elba Krysten Ritter, Keanu Reeves. Directed by Jeff Fowler.
REVIEW: A combination of live action and animation, “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” starring Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves and now playing in theatres, sees the lead trio of heroes, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles face-off against “the Ultimate Lifeform.” He’s Shadow the Hedgehog, a powerful villain, recently unleashed after fifty years of captivity, who is determined to destroy Earth. To save the planet the trio teams with an old adversary, Ivo Robotnik. “Let’s do this,” the formerly evil doctor says. “If I can’t rule the world, I might as well save it!”
Usually by the time a franchise gets to the point where they have a “3” in the title the movies are bigger and louder but not better. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” is one of them.
90s nostalgia takes the day. A generation who grew up with the Sonic videogames—the first one was released in 1991—are rewarded with a story that packs loads of lore into the fast moving movie.
Sometimes it feels like there’s too much lore.
The plot is all over the place and the film jumps to and fro through time and mythology at breakneck speed, but even though it’s convoluted, it’s a lot of fun for old fans and new.
The bonus for Generation Y’ers is the presence of Jim Carrey in the dual role of Dr. Robotnik and Gerald Robotnik, Ivo’s grandfather and Shadow’s creator. Carrey is in fine comedic form, recalling his up-for-anything performances in 90s favorites like “The Mask” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” It’s double the fun as Carrey delivers the film’s funniest lines and shows off his mastery of physical humour.
Another 90s superstar, Keanu Reeves, takes a role that could have been a standard issue villain and makes us understand the source of his malevolence. When he talks about the effect of the death of his best friend had on his psyche, it’ll make you feel something for an evil, animated hedgehog.
Not all of it works. James Marsden and Tika Sumpter aren’t given much to do as the adoptive father of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, simply adding another story shard to an already crowded movie.
“Sonic the Hedgehog 3” defies the rule of sequel diminishing returns. It builds on the strengths of the first two films in the franchise to deliver a fun family friendly movie just in time of the holidays.
SYNOPSIS: Set in the Pride Lands of Tanzania, the new musical drama “Mufasa: The Lion King” is both a prequel and sequel to the 2019 remake of the 1994 film “The Lion King.” It’s the origin story of two lions, Mufasa and Scar, one who would become king, the other a villain.
CAST: Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, John Kani, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Tiffany Boone, Mads Mikkelsen, Thandiwe Newton, Lennie James, Anika Noni Rose, and Blue Ivy Carter. Directed by Barry Jenkins.
REVIEW: “Mufasa: The Lion King” is filled with visual tricks courtesy of the photo-realistic computer animation. For instance, a lion’s face is reflected in a single drop of rain. The topography changes from sunburnt savannahs to lush landscapes with a CGI flourish. You might even think a lion can sing Broadway style show tunes.
Yes, there’s lots of tricks on display, but very little magic.
Sure, fans learn where Rafiki (John Kani) found his famous bakora staff and how Pride Rock came to be, but even with the easter eggs, the sweeping cinematography, beautiful scenery, some action (which may be too intense for younger members of the family) and songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Mufasa: The Lion King” feels inert. Instead of being enhanced by the endless possibilities of CGI, the film feels limited by it.
The rendering of the characters is impressive. They lions, and many of the other animals, look as though they just wandered in from a National Geographic nature doc. That’s great, but the photorealism doesn’t offer the range of expression of the original’s hand drawn work (which was enhanced by digital coloring). Those stylized characters had more opportunity for facial expressions and therefore had far more personality.
The new CGI work looks real… until the characters begin to speak.
Then the illusion shatters.
Ditto when they sing. Near the end Taka—the lion who will become Scar—sings “Brother Betrayed,” a song of heartbreak that would have benefitted from more emotion and less realism.
“Mufasa: The Lion King” is a technical achievement but feels bloodless. Familiar “Lion King” themes of family, loyalty, love and discovering purpose in life are present, but they feel lost amongst the pixels in this generic prequel.
SYNOPSIS: In “Carry-On,” a new thriller now streaming on Netflix, Taron Egerton plays an airline security guard blackmailed into smuggling a dangerous package through an LAX security checkpoint and onto a plane on Christmas Eve.
CAST: Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler and Jason Bateman. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.
REVIEW: Another entry into the “Is it a Christmas movie or not?” category, “Carry-On” is a preposterous thriller, set on Christmas Eve, that reverberates with echoes of “Die Hard 2.”
This is the kind of movie that feels like you’ve already seen it, even as you watch it for the first time.
There’s an unlikely hero, racing against time and circumstance to save the day. There’s an airport setting. Been there, done that.
But “Carry-On” isn’t looking to break new ground. Director Jaume Collet-Serra is more interested in taking familiar tropes and twisting them just enough to feel fresh.
As Ethan, Taron Egerton is a classic b-movie everyman hero, a guy of modest ambition—he’s a middling TSA agent who wants to be a cop—thrust into an extraordinary situation.
For much of the movie he’s stationary, sitting behind his screening station, reacting to orders being barked through an earpiece by a ruthless terrorist played by Jason Bateman. It takes some chops to keep these sequences compelling and Egerton, with the help of some slick filmmaking from Collet-Serra, manages to convey a suitable amount of paranoia and tension even when nothing much is happening on screen.
When the action finally kicks in the movie becomes a bit more conventional but the high velocity third act, while completely silly, will up your pulse rate.
By the time the end credits have rolled “Carry-On” reveals itself to be a Christmas movie for people who don’t like Christmas movies, a showcase for Bateman playing against type and a bit of forgettable fun.
On the Saturday November 30, 2024 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet multi-award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster Carol Off. For almost 16 years, she co-hosted CBC Radio’s flagship current affairs program, As It Happens. As a television journalist, writer and radio host it’s estimated she did 25,000 interviews with newsmakers and noticed that as politics became more polarized than ever before, words that used to define civil society were being put to work for completely different political agendas.
In her new book, “At a Loss for Words: Conversation in the Age of Rage,” she analyzes six terms—freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice and taxes—and how their meanings have been twisted.
Then, we meet a guest who began his career as a child actor, appearing in everything from “Back tio the Future II” to Internal Affairs opposite Richard Gere. He became an international star after playing Frodo Baggins in the acclaimed “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. He’s Elijah Wood, and his extensive filmography now includes “Bookworm,” an intriguing film about a 12-year-old named Mildred whose life is turned upside down when her mother lands in hospital and estranged, American magician father, Strawn Wise, played by Elijah Wood, comes to look after her. Hoping to entertain the bookish tween, Strawn takes Mildred camping in the notoriously rugged New Zealand wilderness, and the pair embark on the ultimate test of family bonding — a quest to find the mythological beast known as the Canterbury Panther.
Finally, we meet director Tim Fehlbaum. He’s an award-winning Swiss filmmaker whose previous films, like “Tides” and “Hell,” focused on post-apocalyptic and science fiction stories. He returns to the real world with “September 5,” a new thriller starring Peter Sarsgaard and Ben Chaplin, and now playing in select theatres, an American sports broadcasting crew finds itself thrust into covering the hostage crisis involving Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
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.
SYNOPSIS: “Kraven the Hunter,” a new superhero flick now playing in theatres and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, follows the Marvel Comics character of the same name from his teen years to his emergence as the world’s most skillful and feared hunter. “Once you’re on his list, there’s only one way off.”
CAST: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe. Directed by J. C. Chandor.
REVIEW: There are three bad guys in “Kraven the Hunter,” a toxic father (Russell Crowe), the enigmatic assassin The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) and the thick-skinned Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) but the real villain here is the lazy script.
The idea of The Hunter as an antihero, a bad guy who kills even worse guys (think “Dexter”), is a solid, if slightly shopworn idea. Even when you add a mystical potion that give him a Doctor Dolittle style connection with animals and the ability to stalk and kill using the methods of all the creatures of the jungle, the character is no more absurd than a physicist who transforms into a giant green monster when he gets mad or a half-Atlantean, half-human superhero.
With some suspension of disbelief, “Kraven the Hunter” and its lore is no more outlandish than any other superhero movie. It’s the execution, not the kills but the handling of the material, that sinks the movie.
Origin movies are tough. The script must introduce characters, motivations and backstories, and do so in an expedient, entertaining manner. “Kraven the Hunter,” scripted by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, manages neither. Talky and repetitive, the script never met a cliché it wouldn’t embrace, or a story element it couldn’t reiterate to the point of numbness.
Granted, one of the fight scenes uses a bear trap in a grimly unique fashion, but the other action scenes, while nicely choreographed, suffer from wonky CGI and frenetic editing.
Taylor-Johnson is suitably buff to play Kraven but he is saddled with clunky dialogue in several unintentionally hilarious scenes that undercut the character’s menace. Kraven is a classic example of, “fight not with monsters, lest you become one,” but, despite his piercing eyes, chiseled abs and parkour skills, he’s simply not compelling enough to maintain interest.
Worse, the stakes don’t appear to be very high.
As Nikolai Kravinoff, gangster, and father to Sergei, a.k.a. Kraven and Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), Crowe is reduced to a mouthpiece for the script’s ideas of manhood. “Man who kills legend,” he says in his best Boris Badenov accent, “becomes legend.”
And the other baddies, The Foreigner, whose superpower appears to be his ability to count, and the Rhino, seem like small timers when compared to previous Sony Spider-Man Universe rogues like Venom or Doctor Octopus.
If there is a sequel to this movie, and I highly suspect there won’t, but if there is, Kraven should spend his time hunting for a better script instead of new villains.
SYNOPSIS: In “September 5,” a claustrophobic new thriller starring Peter Sarsgaard and Ben Chaplin, and now playing in theatres, broadcast executive Roone Arledge oversees the ABC coverage of the terrorist attack on Israeli Olympic team members at the 1972 summer games in Munich, West Germany.
CAST: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Zinedine Soualem, Corey Johnson, Georgina Rich, Benjamin Walker, Rony Herman. Co-written and directed by Tim Fehlbaum.
REVIEW: Early on in “September 5” television producer Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) says this about his television coverage of the Olympics: “It’s not about politics, it’s about emotion.”
The same could be said about the film.
Of course, echoes of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine reverberate throughout, but this is more a frantically paced, behind the scenes look at high-stakes newsgathering and the ethics of how the stories are told.
It rewinds the clock to a time when society was more a monoculture, when the news was watched by, well, pretty much everyone. We’re told that more people watched the ABC coverage of this terrorist attack than watched Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon.
The eyes of the world were on them, and in a brisk 94 minutes, director Tim Fehlbaum tells the story of a complicated terrorism situation the ABC crew, by virtue of their proximity to the action, were in a unique position to cover and broadcast the first acts of terrorism ever shown on live TV.
It’s a closed room drama where 90% of the action takes place in a broadcast control room. Tensions fray, shots are called, and news is made, but what Fehlbaum doesn’t concentrate on is the act itself, the massacre by the group Black September.
Instead “September 5” asks if, by showing the hostage situation live on television where the terrorists could watch themselves and the police’s response, they were fulfilling the public’s right to know or making the situation worse. Screenwriters Moritz Binder, Alex David and Fehlbaum present this and other big ethical questions regarding the job and responsibility of journalism but leave the task of answering them up to the audience.
However you feel about the decisions made on that day, in our era of “fake news” and an eroded trust of mainstream newsgathering it’s thrilling to see the nuts and bolts of how breaking stories unfold and the quick decisions that form the news we see on television.
On the downside, “September 5” is more interested in whip fast editing and forward momentum than characters. The main cast effectively hold our attention, but don’t offer up much in terms of characterization. They are the blunt instruments Fehlbaum uses to create tension, and while it works, it would have been nice to have more of a sense of who these people are.
Perhaps “September 5’s” most interesting aspect, however, is in its ability to wring suspense and tension out of well-known historical events. We know how this story will end, and yet Fehlbaum and editor Hansjörg Weißbrich have us inching toward the edge of our seats as each minute of this tautly rendered story passes. They clearly took Arledge’s maxim, “It’s not about politics, it’s about emotion,” to heart.
SYNOPSIS: “Queer,” a romantic drama based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs and now playing in theatres, finds American ex-pat Lee, played by Daniel Craig, living in 1950s Mexico City. He’s cut adrift and lonely until a young man named Eugene Allerton, a recently discharged US Navy serviceman, becomes the object of his infatuation.
CAST: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Henrique Zaga, Lesley Manville. Directed by Luca Guadagnino.
REVIEW: A study of loneliness and longing, “Queer” is a melancholic film with a slow burn, introspective story that explores both the main character’s mind and outward desires. More than anything this is a character study, a dive into the deep end of Lee’s (Craig) psyche.
He’s lost, looking for a love that may never come, and even if he can find a companion like Eugene, how can he be sure the feeling is reciprocal? Feelings of sadness, self-doubt and frustration are the character’s fuel, the thing that makes move him through the story, and make him so interesting.
Daniel Craig is terrific, casting off the suave James Bond persona, and once again reminding us of what a great actor he is outside the action-adventure of the 007 world. It’s a touching performance in a very specific movie that touches on universal themes about aging, one’s value to others and longing for love.
Craig is the film’s centerpiece, casting a long, charismatic shadow over the supporting cast, save for Joe, Jason Schwartzman’s welcome comic relief and an almost unrecognizable Lesley Manville as the scruffy Dr. Cotter.
Director Luca Guadagnino stays true to the wandering, rambunctious Beat Generation spirit of Burroughs’s book, sending Lee into the night, or to bed with a stranger or to the jungle to take a psychedelic drug that may help him ascertain how Eugene really feels about him. The connective tissue is Craig in a performance that is as intensely personal as the intimate work by Burroughs that inspired it.
