SYNOPSIS: In “The Toxic Avenger,” a remake of the 1984 Troma Films gross-out classic, Peter Dinklage plays a down-on-his-luck janitor transformed by radioactive gunk into the mutated superhero, The Toxic Avenger.
CAST: Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Julia Davis, Jonny Coyne, Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon. Directed by Macon Blair.
REVIEW: A modern-day adaptation of the goofy and gory 1984 film of the same name, “The Toxic Avenger” updates the story, but maintains the original’s glorious bad taste.
At the heart of both films is an underdog janitor who uses his newfound powers to fight corruption and abuse of power, but the circumstances are different.
Originally, the main character Melvin (Mark Torgl) was a bullied outcast who, once transformed by a dip in a vat of toxic waste, meted out vigilante justice to get revenge on the baddies who terrorized him and his hometown of Tromaville.
In the new movie Peter Dinklage is Winston Gooze, janitor for corporate behemoth BTH by night, single father to a teenage son Wade (Jacob Tremblay) by day. Diagnosed with a terminal illness, he’s terrified of leaving his son without a father. In desperation he approaches BTH head honcho Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon) to beg for help. In short order he finds himself left for dead in a pool of BTH toxic goo which transforms him into The Toxic Avenger. With his trusty mop, Winston fights to create a future for Wade.
There may be a deeper emotional core to the contemporary Toxie tale, but along with the family drama comes wonderfully over-the-top juvenile humor, exploding heads and bloody mop wounds that need to be seen to be believed.
Director Macon Blair is reverential in his handling of the material. He embraces the shocking schlock of the original, with a cavalcade of practical effects and ridiculous jokes that ensure the spirit of Troma Films lives on. It’s a gory good time with a better-than-expected cast (Dinklage, Bacon and Elijah Wood are having fun here) that doesn’t cater to a mainstream audience.
Fans of midnight movies will be in on the joke, all others, approach with caution.
On the Saturday August 23 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we meet New York Times bestselling author Joy Fielding. With a career spanning over four decades, she has eraned readers with her ability to weave intricate plots, complex characters, and emotional depth. Known for bestsellers like “See Jane Run,” “Don’t Cry Now,” and “Someone Is Watching,” Fielding explores themes of relationships, betrayal, and human resilience.
Today we’ll talk about her latest novel, the psychological thriller “Jenny Cooper Has a Secret.” The book follows a 76-year-old widow named Linda who visits Legacy Place, a memory care facility where she meets 92-year-old Jenny Cooper, a dementia patient who shocks Linda with a confession: “I kill people.” Initially dismissing it as delusion, Linda grows intrigued as Jenny lucidly recounts tales of her victims—mostly men who wronged her. When a resident dies under seemingly natural circumstances, Linda begins to question whether Jenny’s claims might hold truth.
Then, we’ll hang out with singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith. Often called a “songwriter’s songwriter,” his fans include Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen and many, many others. He’s release 17 albums to date, and collaborated with producers like Daniel Lanois, Mitchell Froom and Bob Rock. His songwriting appears on albums from Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé, k.d. lang, Emmylou Harris and Feist. Today we talk about his latest album, “Hangover Terrace,”
The album was sparked during Ron’s extended stay in the UK in late 2024, following his Sexsmith at Sixty tour. Inspired by time spent recording at London’s Eastcote Studios, Ron says the album was inspired by “the hangover I feel from the last few years of pandemic and life knocking us around.”
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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SYNOPSIS: There’s a lot more to DEVO than the herky-jerky funk of their biggest hit “Whip It.” A new documentary, now streaming on Netflix, offers a complete, and completely entertaining, look of a band who, as keyboardist Mark Mothersbaugh says, “did some absurd things.”
CAST: Gerald Casale, Mark Mothersbaugh, Bob Mothersbaugh, Bob Casale, Josh Freese. Directed by Chris Smith.
REVIEW: My teenage brain wouldn’t have allowed the thought that DEVO, the art rock band from Akron, Ohio who occupied my teen ears for years, would still be a going concern in 2025. Their music was so of-the-moment it felt destined to become dated as pop culture trends shifted and even their name, a shortening of de-evolution, suggested they would disappear over time.
And yet, half a century after they first chanted, “Are we not men? We are Devo!” on stage, they are having a bit of a renaissance, complete with the “Cosmic De-Evolution Tour” and “DEVO,” a new documentary, now streaming on Netflix, that details their unlikely rise to fame.
Like most music docs “DEVO” utilizes new and archival talking head interviews with the band and their contemporaries to shape the story, but the real magic comes with director Chris Smith’s vivid wallpapering of the film with a collage of educational films, ads, old black & white movies, cartoons and television shows to create a sense of time and place.
From the eerie “Island of Lost Souls”—which provided their famous “Are we not men?” refrain—and the religious pamphlet “Jocko Homo Heavenbound” to David Bowie concert footage and industrial films, the surreal images contextualize the influences that created the band’s ethos.
Born as an art rock experiment, the early satirical work of DEVO’s founding members, Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis, quickly became serious following the Kent State massacre of May 4, 1970. Their embrace of “de-evolution” as a metaphor for societal decline became central to their subversive cultural commentary and aesthetics. Their lyrics, like 1979’s “Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA”—”He’s just a clone / Of a chromosome / He’s our Mr. DNA / He’s a mutant on the loose / He’s the living proof / We’re not what we used to be”—spoke to what they saw as social regression.
Add to that their matching jumpsuits, strange “energy dome” hats and sunglasses and the comment on corporate conformity and societal homogenization was complete.
Using the hallucinogenic visuals and new firsthand interviews with band member Mark Mothersbaugh, Bob Mothersbaugh, and Gerald Casale, Smith creates a portrait of a committed, uncompromising band who rode a wave of success in the kind of corporate medium they were satirizing.
Sure, “DEVO” has a good beat, and you can dance to some of it, but, as the film reveals, underneath the band’s crazy costumes and off-kilter music, are keenly observed positions on consumerism, alienation, conformity and regression.
The songs may be nostalgic for those of us who grew up hearing them on the radio, but their philosophies haven’t aged a day. “This is not how we wanted to be right at all,” says Gerald Casale. “We sure wish we had been wrong.”
“DEVO” is a fascinating look into the machinations of a misunderstood band who maintained their Dadaesque integrity for half a century, treating every phase of their career as an art project.
SYNOPSIS: In “Honey Don’t,” a new crime drama from director Ethan Coen, Margaret Qualley is a sultry, small town private investigator whose probe into a woman’s death leads to a religious cult. “You’re fascinating,” Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans) tells her. “And you haven’t even seen the riddle tattooed on my ass,” Honey replies.
CAST: Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day, Billy Eichner, and Chris Evans. Directed by Ethan Coen.
REVIEW: “Honey Don’t,” part two of director Ethan Coen and co-writer Tricia Cooke’s “lesbian B-movie trilogy,” following 2024s “Drive-Away Dolls,” is a hard-boiled private investigator story; a neo-noir set in sunny California.
Sleek yet aimless, “Honey Don’t” displays an obvious love for its pulpy style but doesn’t show any affection for its story. Co-writers Coen and Cooke craft a series of red herring situations rather than a compelling narrative.
The movie begins with a car crash that takes the life of a woman. The only problem she had, says one of her friends, is “taking curves too fast.” As queer private detective Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) investigates the case, she also becomes involved with the local cop shop’s no-nonsense Property Room Officer M.G. (Aubrey Plaza), goes head-to-head with a cult leader played by Chris Evans and searches for her missing niece Corinne (Talia Ryder).
Not that any of that adds up to much. The plot U-turns mostly serve a showcase for Qualley’s old-school movie star glamour and way with snappy dialogue. As the title character she’s an anachronism, an echo of the PIs of the past. She uses a Rolodex and doesn’t have a cell phone. “I carry around a bag of quarters for the pay phone,” she explains. Qualley has a knack for the character’s hard-boiled cadence, delivering Honey’s terse comebacks with deadpan flair.
As over-sexed cult leader Reverend Drew Devlin, Chris Evans hands in the most flamboyantly unwholesome role of his career. Whether he’s sleeping with his parishioners or shooting them or delivering a sermon based on a macaroni allegory, there isn’t a hint of Captain America anywhere to be seen.
Qualley and Evans do all the heavy lifting here. The filmmaking is playful, but the wandering story and disregard for any character not played by Qualley makes the title “Honey Don’t” seem less like a name and more like a warning.
SYNOPSIS: In “Relay,” a new thriller now playing in theatres, Riz Ahmed plays Ash, a “bribe broker” who arranges payments between corrupt corporations and whistleblowers. Mysterious and meticulous, his carefully crafted set of rules go out the window when he falls for a client, former bio-tech company employee Sarah Grant (Lily James). With a high-tech investigation team on her trail, her life is in danger unless Ash can make a deal.
CAST: Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington, Willa Fitzgerald, Matthew Maher, Victor Garber. Directed by David Mackenzie.
REVIEW: A thriller that runs headlong into its suspenseful plot, only to stumble and fall in its last half hour, “Relay” does not stick the landing.
It begins with promise. The idea of a champion for whistleblowers is an intriguing one and as we learn the ins-and-outs of how the secretive Ash runs his business, the movie earns our attention. For instance, Ash, who lives in a shadow world, faceless and nameless, communicates with his clients via the Tri-State Relay Service, which uses an operator who converts text to voice and vice versa. It’s usually reserved for the Deaf community, but, because no records are kept of the transitions Ash uses it as a tamper-proof means of exchange.
It also allows for a running joke in a rather dry movie, as the relay operators sign off every call, no matter how contentious, with “Thanks you for using the Tri-State Relay Service. Have a wonderful day.”
There’s all the stuff of classic conspiracy thrillers; pseudonyms—like Archie Leach, which was Cary Grant’s real name—secret, fortified storage lockers and tense exchanges of information.
That’s all well and good, and director David Mckenzie even stages several twitchy scenes that amp up the suspense. When a set piece in Times Square that should have been a simple exchange of information erupts into chaos, Mckenzie visually captures the chaotic, dangerous nature of Ash’s business.
Later, a concert hall sequence put me in the mind of Brian DePalma, but soon afterwards the carefully constructed cat-and-mouse game falls victim to a plot upheaval—calling it a twist is too mild a term—that is as silly as it is predictable.
It’s a shame that the same film that allows Ahmed the chance to do such layered, interesting work with minimal dialogue chooses to put such a pedestrian cap on a story that began with so much promise.
SYNOPSIS: Ron Howard’s “Eden” is a star-studded—Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney, Jude Law and Daniel Brühl— story of backstabbing, ego and survival set against the unforgiving landscape of a deserted Galápagos Island. Based on a true story, it’s a heart of darkness tale done on an operatic level.
CAST: Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney, Daniel Brühl, Felix Kammerer, Toby Wallace and Richard Roxburgh. Directed by Ron Howard.
REVIEW: Based on a true story, “Eden” is an ambitious psychological thriller from director Ron Howard about a utopia that echoes the savagery and societal collapse of “Lord of the Flies.”
The film begins in the early 1930s with Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his wife Dora Strauch (Vanessa Kirby) leaving the chaos of post-World War I Germany behind in favor of the solitude of Floreana Island in the Galápagos. Ironically, the misanthropic Ritter spends his days writing a philosophical manifesto about the betterment of humanity.
His dispatches to Europe attract the attention of the open-hearted Heinz and Margaret Wittmer (Daniel Brühl and Sydney Sweeney) who, much to Ritter’s annoyance, arrive with the hope of creating a community on the remote island.
Ritter’s solitude is further interrupted when the flamboyant Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas), and her two lovers land on the island with the idea of opening a luxury hotel on the beach.
A tale of survival, jealousy, betrayal, and violence, “Eden” is about the collapse of idealism. Director Ron Howard and screenwriter Noah Pink explore human nature through a jaundiced lens. The film takes its time escalating the power struggles that eventually erupt into violence, building tension as it does so, but a lack of energy in the film’s first half, as jealousy, deception, and betrayal blossom, makes our introduction to the story a bit of a slog.
Despite Jude Law’s full-frontal nudity and grotesque infected tooth, things liven up considerably when the larger-than-life Baroness and entourage show up. It’s a reset for the staid storytelling of the first half. Not only do her hedonistic ways alienate the island’s occupants, but she actively attempts to pit the Friederichs against the Wittmers. Her actions are the match to the powder keg, leading to the film’s more sordid aspects. The Baroness’s luridly glamorous presence adds some much-needed zip and Ana de Armas steals every scene she appears in with a deadly mix of charm and menace.
There is much to recommend in “Eden.” Gorgeous cinematography by Mathias Herndl and a tense score from Hans Zimmer go a long way to sell the story, but slack storytelling mars what could have been a fascinating trip to Floreana Island and the human condition.
On the Saturday August 16, 2025 episode of The Richard Crouse Show we meet Patrick Tarr. He has over a decade of experience in the film and television world in Canada—currently he is the co-executive producer and writer of CBC’s “Saint-Pierre,” and he was the head writer and executive producer on CTV’s “Cardinal.” He’s also written for Saving Hope, Nurses, Cracked and The Colony, as well as Canadian institution Murdoch Mysteries to name a few.
Today we’ll talk about his television work, but I also want to tell you about his debut novel, “The Guest Children,” which is now available wherever you buy fine books. The book was inspired by the real-life thousands of “guest children,” British children who were sent to Canada during WWII to stay safe from the bombings.
Then, I don’t know if you’ve been watching the Billy Joel documentary on Crave called “And So It Goes.” It’s a fascinating and revealing two part look at the life and music of the “Just the Way You Are” singer, exploring love, loss and struggles that contributed to his songwriting.
As a companion to those documentaries, I dug into the archive and found an intercview I did a few years ago with Liberty DeVitto. As Billy Joel’s drummer from 1976 to 2003, he’s credited as drummer on records with sales of over 150 million copies. Do you love “Just the Way You Are”? That Liberty DeVitto. How about “She’s Always a Woman,” “Only the Good Die Young” “You May be Right” or “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”? All Liberty DeVitto. He’s what they call a New York City style drummer, solid and powerful. He also an author with a memoir called, “Liberty: Life, Billy and the Pursuit of Happiness,” available wherever you buy fine books. It details not only the good times with Joel, but also the bad… leading up to their split in 2006.
Today, I chose some excerpts from the interview to share an insider’s view of what it was like working with Billy Joel as he became a superstar.
Finally, I love going to live theatre, but I recently had a chance to experience it in a different way. “Back to the Future: The Musical” is now playing at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre in Toronto, and I was invited to not only see the show, but to visit the theatre, on stage and backstage, to chat with the show’s stars, DAVID JOSEFSBERG who plays Doc Brown and LUCAS v who brings Marty McFly to vivid life.
The show is based on the iconic 1985 movie “Back to the Future,” and sees Marty McFly accidentally change the course of history when he is transported back to 1955 in a time machine built by the eccentric scientist Doc Brown. He’s in a race against time to fix the present, escape the past, and send himself… back to the future.
