SYNOPSIS: “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a new musical fantasy starring Diego Luna, Tonatiuh and Jennifer Lopez, and now playing in theatres, sees incarcerated window dresser Molina (Tonatiuh) befriend his cellmate, the leftist political activist Valentin (Luna), with a grand retelling of the Technicolor musicals starring his favorite screen diva, Aurora (Jennifer Lopez).
CAST: Diego Luna, Tonatiuh, Jennifer Lopez. Directed by Bill Condon.
REVIEW: A mix of gritty prison drama and lush Hollywood musical, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is a testament to the power of imagination as a powerful antidote to oppression and suffering.
Set in an Argentine prison during the 1980s Dirty War, a time of state terrorism that saw political dissidents and socialists jailed or murdered, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is the story of two cellmates, Molina (Tonatiuh), a queer window dresser imprisoned on a trumped up charge of indecency and Marxist revolutionary Valentín (Diego Luna) who is as stoic as his new roomie is impassioned.
To pass the time and distract from the grimness of their situation, Molina vividly recounts the movies of his favorite star, the glamorous Aurora (Jennifer Lopez) a.k.a. the Spider Woman.
An intimate story set against the inhumane horrors of the Dirty War, this is a story of identity, loyalty and sacrifice that works best when it focusses on the inner lives and evolving connection between the two leads.
Like Technicolor dreams, Molina’s stories are surreal, but the seductive Spider Woman’s songs are more than simple escapism. They momentarily transport the duo to another place but in their staging, they comment on the evolving relationship between the two men. The tunes forward the movie’s themes of identity, dignity and sacrifice and add a dollop of unexpected glamour.
Lopez wows in the fantasy segments, but it’s Tonatiuh who steals the show. He hands in a career making performance as a gay man whose flamboyance in Argentina’s repressed society of the time feels is an act of rebellion. It’s emotionally charged, often heartbreaking work that provides the film’s heart.
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” has three compelling leads but is let down by songs that are thematically appropriate and visually beautiful but musically don’t make leave of an impression. Still, as a portrait of connection in adversity, it succeeds.
Making its Canadian debut, Toy Story in Concert presents the animated classic on the big screen in its entirety, accompanied by a live orchestra performing composer Randy Newman’s vibrant score note for note on Friday, November 21 – 7:30 pm and Saturday, November 22 – 2 pm at Meridian Hall.
Thirty years since making movie history as the first-ever computer animated feature, the adventures of Woody, Buzz, and friends continue to delight audiences worldwide.
Acclaimed by audiences and critics for its characters, storytelling, and unforgettable music—including songs “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” “Strange Things” and “I Will Go Sailing No More”—Toy Story is a feast for the ears.
The perfect way to experience the original ahead of next year’s Toy Story 5!
Featuring the FILMharmonique Orchestra, Canada’s premier orchestra dedicated to film concerts.
On the Saturday October 11, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet Canadian astronaut, author, and musician Chris Hadfield. . A former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, he flew three space missions, including commanding the International Space Station during Expedition 35 in 2013. Hadfield gained widespread acclaim for his viral videos, including a cover of David Bowie’s Space Oddity filmed in space. A bestselling author, his works include the memoir An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth and the Cold War thriller series The Apollo Murders, culminating in Final Orbit (2024), which is an edge-of-your-seat thriller about China’s secret role in the 1970s Space Race between the US and the USSR.
Then, we’ll meet celebrated Newfoundland-born musician, actor, author, and cultural ambassador Alan Doyle. Best known as the lead singer of the iconic folk-rock band Great Big Sea, today we’ll be talking about his two most recent projects, a stage musical called “Tell Tale Harbour,” which is making its Toronto debut at the Royal Alexandra Theatre after a smash-hit sell-out run at Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, PEI. Based on the screenplay The Grand Seduction by Ken Scott, it’s the story of a small but proud Newfoundland harbour eager to keep its community together.
We’ll also talk about his latest, wildly entertaining and informative book, “The Smiling Land,” a celebration of Newfoundland—both its storied past and its ever-vibrant present.
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.
Celebrate the 75th anniversary of “Sunset Boulevard” with us and check out my filmed introduction to the classic Hollywood film noir on the big screen!
“75 years later the movie holds up, not just because of intense performances or beautifully crafted filmmaking, but because the issues it addressed in 1950 are still hot button topics today. I couldn’t help but see echoes pf “Sunset Boulevard” in “The Substance.” Of course, Billy Wilder could never have imagined the extremes of “The Substance’s” visuals, but both films, made decades apart, are timely Hollywood horror stories about what happens when the white-hot spotlight of show biz dims.”
HERE‘s a preview. To see the whole thing, check your local Cineplex listings for times and a theatre near you!
SYNOPSIS: A likeable documentary about a likeable subject, “John Candy: I Like Me” is a straightforward look at a comedian whose work is still entertaining audiences three decades after his passing.
CAST: John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and Macaulay Culkin. Directed by Colin Hanks.
REVIEW: Martin Short told “John Candy: I Like Me” documentary producer Ryan Reynolds and director Colin Hanks (whose famous father co-starred with Candy in “Splash”), they would not be able to find anyone with anything bad to say about John Candy. Short was right. Everyone in the doc speaks glowingly of Candy, his generosity of spirit and luminous talent, but this isn’t a straight up hagiography.
Those nearest and dearest to the late comic actor, like his children Jennifer and Chris, widow Rose, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Macaulay Culkin, Dan Aykroyd and Catherine O’Hara, paint a colorful portrait of a larger-than-life character who battled weight issues and an anxiety disorder.
Thirty years after his passing on a film shoot in Durango, Mexico, Candy’s work remains as funny and endearing as it was when first released. Hanks’s film offers up copious evidence in the form of clips from “SCTV,” “Uncle Buck,” “Splash,” “Spaceballs,” “Home Alone,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” (it’s a line in the latter that gives this movie its name: “I like me,” Candy says as Del Griffith. “My wife likes me.”) and many others, and while it’s lovey to revisit those moments, it’s the picture of Candy off screen that compels.
New interviews with school friends, family and colleagues like Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short and Steve Martin tell the tale. From growing up in a working-class Toronto family, to his father’s passing of heart disease at age 35 when John was four years old, to putting his dreams of football stardom aside after a knee injury to discovering acting in college, we learn how each of these events shaped the trajectory of his life and career from the people who were there with him.
Everyone describes him as a charismatic character, the first one to pick up the tab in the early days, even though they were all making the same money. He was a people pleaser, but as Conan O’Brien points out, “The hazard of this business is that it’s very unhealthy for people pleasers.”
More up-close-and-personal are the remembrances of his Chris, Jennifer and Rose. They provide an intimate, behind-the-scenes glimpse of a man who, as his daughter says, “took care of people” but didn’t necessarily take care of himself. He liked a drink, a cigarette and, as anxiety entered his life, became convinced he would die early, just as his father had.
Ultimately, “John Candy: I Like Me” is a straightforward, heartfelt documentary with a bittersweet ending. Candy passed at age 43, but the wealth of material he left behind, the TV shows and movies, still entertains, three decades after his passing.
SYNOPSIS: The third installment in the “Tron” series and the sequel to 2010s “Tron: Legacy,” “TRON: Ares” follows a super-intelligent AI soldier named Ares (Jared Leto) sent from the digital Grid to Earth on a dangerous mission. “Since time began, man has gazed at the stars and he has wondered, ‘Am I alone?’ So much talk of AI and big tech today,” says Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters). “Virtual worlds. What are they going to look like? When will we get there? Well folks, we’re not going there. They are coming here. I would like you to meet Ares, the ultimate soldier.”
CAST: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson, Jeff Bridges. Directed by Joachim Rønning.
REVIEW: Given the attitude in Hollywood toward AI, it’s no surprise “TRON: Ares” can be boiled down to one basic premise: Humans, great; AI, bad.
The story of rival tech companies, Dillinger Systems, whose megalomaniacal CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) has his eyes on writing “his name on the face of time… in blood,” and Encom, run by the idealist Eve Kim (Greta Lee), the movie is an old-fashioned story of good and evil dressed up with a bunch of high-tech jargon.
As Dillinger unveils his latest project to an assembled group of military leaders, it seems like he has invented the ultimate fighting machine, an AI warrior named Ares (Jared Leto). He’s the most sophisticated security code ever written, completely controllable, virtually unbeatable, and, if anyone does manage to kill him, Dillinger brags, we’ll just create another version of him.
What Dillinger fails to mention is that his creation can only stay “alive” for 29 minutes before collapsing in a pile of digital dust.
Meanwhile, Kim has discovered the secret “permanence code,” a bit of programming that allows digital creations to survive and thrive in the real world. Dillinger wants the code and sends his fighting machines Ares and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) to retrieve it by any means necessary.
There’s more, mostly about Ares and his decision to embrace humanity and Kim’s grief over the loss of her sister to cancer but this movie is more about the whiz-bang special effects and trippy trip into the Grid than it is about Ares’s Pinocchio-esque transformation into a real boy.
As deep as a lunch tray, the story, such that it is, is mostly an excuse to set the AI creations into action with cool, neon-lit Light Cycles and menacing bat wings.
Also a vehicle for large dollops of pop psychology—”I guess that’s the thing about life,” Ares muses as he searches for the permanence code, “there’s nothing permanent about it.”—and even some rom com flourishes—“Can I trust you?” Ares asks Eve a couple times in the film. “Probably not,” replies Eve coyishly. —“TRON: Ares” tells its simple story with a blur of digitized gloss.
Worse, the script by Jesse Wigutow, treats the audience as though they’re not paying attention. For instance, mid-chase Eve pulls out the hard drive with the permanence code she’s carrying to remind us why the chase is happening in the first place. Need to get caught up non information you already have? Check out Ares’s high-tech exposition dump that looks cool but adds nothing new.
“TRON: Ares” will make your eyeballs dance (and you may even want to dance to the dynamic Nine Inch Nails soundtrack) but it won’t engage your brain.
SYNOPSIS: Based on a true story, “Roofman,” now playing in theatres, stars Channing Tatum as an escaped convict who avoided detection for months by living in a Toys “R” Us store.
CAST: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Lily Collias, Jimmy O. Yang, and Peter Dinklage. Directed by Derek Cianfrance.
REVIEW: A showcase for its star’s charm, “Roofman” stretches credulity until it is paper thin. If not for Channing Tatum’s innate likeability this story of a vet who turns to a life of crime so he can afford a normal life with his kids would be a stone-cold clunker.
Set in 2004, when Blockbusters still dotted the landscape, “Roofman” is the true story of former United States Army Reserve non-commissioned officer Jeffrey Manchester. His years of service gave him the unique talent of being able to analyze situations and expertly determine operational weaknesses. “I see things other people don’t see,” he says.
The skill comes in handy on his return Stateside.
Unable to get meaningful employment or hold his marriage together, he scopes out McDonald’s locations, learning their routines, particularly when and how they make bank deposits after a brisk weekend business. Discovering all the chain restaurants operate in essentially the same way, he begins a crime spree that sees him enter a restaurant through the roof and hide inside until the first shift arrives. He then gets them to open the safe, grab the “weekend corporate burger money,” lock the workers in a walk-in cooler and flee.
Forty-five or fifty robberies into his crime wave ends with a sentence of forty-five years in prison. Inside, he once again uses his power of observation to make a daring escape. On the run, he settles in Charlotte, North Carolina, finding shelter in a Toys “R” Us store.
It’s here the movie really begins, as we learn about Manchester’s survival skills—he lives, undetected in the store for 8 or 9 months—and his relationship with Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst), a single mom and Toys “R” Us employee.
Tatum plays Manchester as a nice guy driven to extremes by circumstance. Sure, he locks burger joint employees in room-sized coolers, but he always makes sure they wear jackets to stay warm. He’s a sensitive soul who, on the phone from prison, tells his daughter, “We don’t say goodbye, because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
It’s an effective performance that brings warmth, humour, some pulse racing sequences and even a wild, nude chase scene to the film’s overlong two-hour running time. But despite Tatum’s presence and Dunst’s kindly work, “Roofman” has a hard time finding its tone. A multi-hyphenate—it’s a romantic-true crime story with farce, light humor and loads of family drama. Tatum runs the gamut and hands in one of the most emotive performances of his career, but the film’s various elements feel like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together.
I appear on “CTV News at 6” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the weekend’s best movies, on streaming and in theatres. We have a look at the Netflix series “Wayward,” and two from Disney+, the crime series “The Lowdown” and the comedy “English Teacher.”
On the Saturday October 4, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we meet Paul Myers is a Canadian writer and musician living in Berkeley, California. He’s written extensively about music, including books like the critically acclaimed “A Wizard a True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio;” “It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues;” and “Barenaked Ladies: Public Stunts, Private Stories.” If you’re a comedy fan, you may have read “The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy,” which was the source for the Canadian Screen Award-winning documentary “The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks from Amazon Studios.” His latest book, available now wherever you buy fine books, is “John Candy: A Life in Comedy.”
Then, actor musician Donna Garner stops by. Her company Garner Theatre Productions is currently working with Mirvish Productions, on a staging of the Tony-nominated “Bright Star,” a musical, set in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, it tells a story of love and redemption inspired by the Iron Mountain Baby story. The bluegrass score by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell will be performed by an all-Canadian cast.
Finally, Sloan is one of Canada’s most enduring and influential rock bands, blending infectious power pop with sharp alternative rock since 1991. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, the band—Chris Murphy, Patrick Pentland, Jay Ferguson, and Andrew Scott—stands apart for their rare, democratic approach, with all four members writing and singing. Their landmark album Twice Removed is consistently ranked among the greatest Canadian records, and their catalog of hook-laden anthems and harmonies has earned them critical acclaim and a devoted fanbase worldwide. With an unstoppable live show and decades of hits, Sloan continues to define and defy the sound of modern rock.
Today the band’s guitarist Jay Ferguson joins me to talk about their fourteenth studio album, “Based on the Best Seller,” which is available now wherever you buy fine music.
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.
