Author Archive

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND: 3 ½ STARS. “an elegant post-apocalyptic film.”

“Leave the World Behind,” a new end of the world drama starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali and Myha’la, now streaming on Netflix, is a strange tale of how people become friends in trying times and the power of the sitcom “Friends.”

Based on the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam, the movie sees Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as A-type Amanda and go-with-the-flow Clay, New Yorkers and parents to teenagers Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and Archie (Charlie Evans). On a whim Amanda rents a luxury weekend retreat in Long Island, to get away from the stresses of the city.

“I figured if I made the reservation and packed our bags,” Amanda says, “it would eliminate most of the reasons to say no.”

They arrive to find a beautiful modernist home waiting for them, complete with interesting art, a lavish gift basket and an inviting pool in the backyard. It’s a paradise, although Rose, who has been binging “Friends” online, is annoyed that the spotty wi fi is preventing her from watching the last episode of the series. But that’s nothing that some fresh air and a dip in the pool can’t fix.

“Oh, this is nice,” Clay says. “The kids look so happy.”

Later that night, after dinner with lots of wine and well after nightfall, the doorbell rings. “Get a bat,” says the edgy Amanda. At the door are strangers G.H. Scott (Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la), who apologize for stopping by so late. “We were driving back to the city,” G.H. says, “then something happened.”

G.H. owns the home, and wants to spend the night in safety with his daughter. Turns out there is a blackout, or something happening in the city. With no internet, radio or television service, there is no way to know for sure what is going on. Amanda is immediately suspicious.

“Something is happening,” she says. “I don’t trust them.”

But, as strange things begin to happen, trust becomes essential if they are to survive.

Despite its luxurious trappings, “Leave the World Behind” is as bleak as any movie we are likely to see this year. It’s a “Twilight Zonesque” story that comments not only on societal collapse, but our reaction to it, and, as usual, the human aspect is the monstrous part. The idea of a cyberattack is scary enough, but the aftermath, the ripple effect of how humanity deals with implosion, is truly terrifying. While there are some scenes that approach action—planes dropping from the sky, an oil tanker that runs aground, and aspects of nature gone wild—this is a psychological drama with very high stakes.

After a slow start, director Sam Esmail heaps on the tension, ensuring the audience and the characters are on an equal plane. We don’t know anything more than they do, so we speculate along with them. It’s a clever ploy to draw the viewer into the story, to personalize the situation, and make us wonder what we would do in a similar situation.

An edgy score by composer Mac Quayle adds to the feeling of unease, but it is the performances that drive it home. It’s a character study in how these audience proxies respond, whether it is with racism, violence, greed or down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.

Roberts plays against type, edgy and racist, a coiled spring ready to unwind at any moment. Amanda wears her biases on her sleeve, seemingly unaware of the power of her words. She’s oblivious to her micro and macro aggressions, a misanthrope who excuses her behaviour with a simple mantra: “I hate people.” Plus, the look on her face when G.H. calls the couple’s Brooklyn N.Y. neighborhood is “affordable” is a highlight.

The script offers more subtlety to Hawke. Ruth says he looks like the kind of guy things come easily to. But when he is faced with real crisis, he is forced to make an extraordinary confession: “I am a useless man.” In finely tuned work, Hawke calibrates the performance, allowing desperation to sink in bit by bit until there is nothing left but fear and helplessness.

The movie really finds its feet, however, when G.H. Scott and Ruth emerge. Their appearance sets the action in motion, and introduces the film’s two most interesting characters.

G.H. is a bit of a man of mystery. Suave and obviously very wealthy, he has a gravitas that makes him an oasis of calm, but as the story progresses, it’s clear he knows more than he is letting on. He’s the only character who seems to understand the big picture, and is the conduit by which the movie fully explores the issues of technology’s stranglehold on the world, trust, race, class and international intrigue. Ali pulls off a neat trick, giving G.H. warmth and empathy, while building tension with the character’s fundamental unknowability.

The two daughters, Ruth and Rose are polar opposites. As Ruth, Myha’la is spirited, unwilling to put up with Amanda’s passive aggressive prejudice, while Mackenzie is a wide-eyed innocent, more concerned with what happens to Rachel and Ross on her favorite show, than the collapse of society.

The film tackles many big subjects, but is most compelling when it zeroes in on the interpersonal interactions between the two families, set against the backdrop of a divided America.

“Leave the World Behind” is an elegant post-apocalyptic film that asks far more questions than it answers. It is thought provoking, but the ending (which I loved) may leave some viewers wishing for more.

EILEEN: 3 STARS. “more about what’s left unsaid, than the obvious story points.”

In “Eileen,” a 1960s-set, Hitchcockian psychological thriller starring Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway, a lonely woman’s life takes a sinister turn when she meets a glamorous new co-worker.

Mckenzie is the title character, a lonely and unhappy twenty-something secretary at a small-town Massachusetts juvenile detention centre. She lives with her ex-cop father (Shea Whigham), a widower with a nasty drinking problem and a personality to match. “Get a life, Eileen,” he says to her. “Get a clue.”

To pass the days she daydreams of having relations with her co-workers and, at night, is a voyeur, spying on couples making out in their cars at Look Out Point.

She is invisible at home and at work; a blank slate. “Some people, they’re the real people,” Eileen’s dad says. “Like in a movie. They’re the ones you watch, they’re the ones making moves. And other people, they’re just there, filling the space. That’s you, Eileen. You’re one of them.”

A ray of light in the form of Dr. Rebecca St. John (Anne Hathaway) illuminates the dark corners of Eileen life. Stylish and vivacious, the detention centre’s new counsellor is everything Eileen isn’t. A glamorous vision, squeezed into a red dress, topped with a burst of blonde hair, Rebecca drinks and smokes— “It’s a nasty habit,” she says, sparking up a fresh Pall Mall, “that’s why I like it.”—and her arrival inspires Eileen to examine her own wants and desires.

As Rebecca takes an interest in Sam Polk (Lee Nivola), a young inmate convicted of a gruesome crime, revealing a dark secret, Eileen shows there is more to her than meets the eye.

Based on the 2015 novel by Ottessa Moshfegh, “Eileen” begins as a character study, a slice-of-life look at a floundering woman, becomes a multi-pronged psychological thriller in its final third. The film takes an audacious turn, one that changes the film’s power dynamic, and closes things off with a bang (and a tremendous performance from Marin Ireland as Rita Polk, but no spoilers here).

Until then, it is a slow burn, a film that luxuriates in its characters. Mckenzie balances the character’s bored exterior with her bombastic inner life, creating Eileen, a ticking time bomb of emotion, careening toward a life defining moment (no spoilers here). It’s finely tuned work that cuts through the film’s dark ennui.

Hathaway has the showier role as Hitchcockian icy blonde Rebecca. Intelligent, enticing and ultimately empathic, she stands in stark contrast to the movie’s deliberately dull backdrop. Rebecca is a polar opposite to Eileen, the catalyst that gives the movie its spark.

“Eileen” is more about what’s left unsaid, than it is about the obvious story points (keeping it vague and spoiler free here). The suggestion of a budding relationship as a hand brushes against a knee, a shared slow dance in a bar and stolen looks, is ultimately more suspenseful than the pulpy twist at the film’s end. The end, while impactful, is more conventional than we might have expected from this moody period piece.

THE BOY AND THE HERON: 4 STARS. “a simple tale, with an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ vibe.”

Imaginative and visually beautiful, “The Boy and the Heron,” a new film from Japanese animator, filmmaker and manga artist Hayao Miyazaki, now playing in theatres, is a unique look at life, death and friendship.

The twelfth film by Miyazaki and the 23rd film from Studio Ghibli centers on Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki), a 12-year-old boy whose mother is killed in a 1943 Tokyo hospital bombing. A year later, Mahito’s father Shoichi (Takuya Kimura), owner of an air munitions factory, marries his late wife’s sister Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura) and moves to her country home. Still racked with grief over his mother’s death, Mahito has a tough time in his new home and does not get along with his step-mother/aunt.

Then there is the Grey Heron (Masaki Suda) who bedevils him daily.

Mahito feels lost, cut adrift from everything he once knew until he discovers a mysterious tower, built on the property by his granduncle, a famous architect who went missing.

The chatty Heron tells Mahito that his mother is inside, and if he wants to find her, all he has to do is go have a look. Inside is a mystical, alternate universe inhabited by the living and the dead. With the heron at his side, Mahito enters a world of wonder, with strange creatures, like man-eating parakeets, souls waiting to be born, secrets and just possibly, a path to happiness.

“The Boy and the Heron” is a work of great texture. Miyazaki infuses every frame with warmth and wonder, poignancy and poetry. The story can be convoluted and introspective, but at its heart, it is a simple tale, with an “Alice in Wonderland” vibe, of coming to grips with heartbreak.

The hand drawn animation is beautiful. Miyazaki uses symbolism, metaphor and fantasy to draw out his themes of grief, loneliness and fear. It’s a complex movie, with equal measures of whimsy and pathos, that shows that octogenarian Miyazaki is still working at the top of his game.

IHEARTRADIO: AUTHOR Mary Sanders + COMEDIAN AND AUTHOR Dave Hill!

On the Saturday December 2, 2023 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet Olympic gymnast, Cirque du Soleil acrobat, entertainment executive and now author, Mary Sanders.

Mary inherited an Olympic dream by her father, a Big Ten Champion from the University of Michigan. Determined to follow in his footsteps, the young gymnast struggled through training setbacks, financial hardships, and personal rivalries, to compete in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. But that achievement was only the beginning for a woman determined to reinvent herself and consistently raise her own standards for success. In her memoir “9 Lives By 35,” now available wherever fine books are sold, Mary recounts her journey from Olympian to Cirque du Soleil acrobat to entertainment executive while balancing life at home with two children. It’s a story of dedication and personal sacrifice that led to success and reinvention.

Then we’ll meet American comedian, radio host, writer, musician, actor and author Dave Hill.  He is also part-Canadian, as he explained in his previous book, Parking The Moose. He’ll explain more about that in this interview.

Today we’re here to talk about his latest book, “The Awesome Game: One Man’s Incredible Globe-Crushing Hockey Odyssey.” At the heart of the book is a simple question, Why is hockey so incredibly awesome?

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!

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!

MAESTRO: 4 STARS. “stylish movie that both warms and breaks the heart.”

Depending on what generation you belong to, Leonard Bernstein is either a name from the distant past, a prodigiously talented musician who wrote the music for “West Side Story,” or the subject of a well-loved name drop in the 1987 R.E.M. song “It’s The End of The World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” “Maestro,” a new film written, directed, produced and starring Bradley Cooper, aims to remind audiences of the complicated man who said, “music, it keeps me glued to life.”

The story of gender roles and genius begins in 1943 with Bernstein’s (Cooper) career making debut as a conductor at Carnegie Hall, filling in for an ailing colleague with only an hour’s notice and no rehearsal. The day before he was a talented but struggling musician, living in a cramped apartment with boyfriend David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer). The next day a star is born. He is the toast of New York, lauded on the front page of the New York Times.

At a party he meets Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), a Chilean actress with dreams of starring on Broadway. It’s love at first sight and Cooper stages their first night together as a romantic fantasy, a ballet in a theatre that is both beautiful and surreal as it morphs from stage bound to involving Lenny and Felicia.

The couple marry, and have three children, Jamie (Maya Hawke), Alexander (Sam Nivola) and Nina (Alexa Swinton), as Felicia turns a blind eye to her husband’s extramarital relationships with men. “One can be as free as one likes without guilt or confession,” she says to him. “Please, I know exactly who you are.”

She is his muse, a catalyst for his best work, who pushes him to perform with passion but his lack of discretion eventually takes its toll. The couple split, but when she is diagnosed with cancer, he returns to care for her in her final days.

“Maestro” is a tenderhearted tragedy, a movie about a complicated marriage and the push and pull between Leonard Bernstein public and private lives. It is not a cradle to grave portrait of the title character. Instead, it’s an ambitious film that disregards most of the usual biopic conventions to delve into Bernstein’s sexuality, creative genius and his marriage to Felicia, brilliantly played by Mulligan.

Bernstein may be the focus, but the contradictions of his life are best viewed through the lens of his relationship with his wife. With a sexual appetite that rivalled his passion for music, Bernstein is a compelling character, and wonderfully played in a career best performance by Cooper.

Any trace of his “Hangover” persona disappears behind an inch of make-up but this isn’t a performance made from cosmetic prosthetics. Cooper digs deep to get into the nooks and crannies of Bernstein’s life, from his playfulness—“I’ve slept with both your parents,” he jokes when he bumps into Oppenheim, wife and baby in Central Park—to his musical passions, to his warmth and self-absorption.

The performance’s pinnacle comes with a vigorous recreation of Bernstein conducting Mahler’s Second Symphony in London at the Ely Cathedral in 1976. The nearly six-minute sequence is a powerhouse of performance—Cooper reportedly spent six years learning Bernstein’s moves and conducts a live orchestra on screen—that captures the passion that fuels the character. It is the kind of work that wins awards.

As dynamic as Cooper is, it is Mulligan’s delicate work as Felicia that steals the show. She is a pillar of resilience and gracefulness, as composed as Bernstein is mercurial. Her final moments in the film (NO SPOILERS HERE) are quiet and reserved but devastating. It’s a radiant performance in an already impressive body of work.

When Cooper and Mulligan share the screen their effortless chemistry and the way they look at one another tells us as much about their lives and how they moved through the world as the script. Their dynamics and wonderful performances are invigorating in their portrayal of a creative life, marred and fuelled in equal measure by self-destructive behaviour and fervidness.

“Maestro” avoids most, but not all, of the usual biopic cliches.

It occasionally goes too heavy on expository dialogue to move the story along, is linear in its construction and a scene in which Felicia plunges into a pool, sitting on the bottom to escape trouble at home, is a film staple, but Mulligan, to her credit, makes it work. And while the film doesn’t shy away from Bernstein’s same sex liaisons, it is fairly chaste in the depiction of that aspect of his life.

Still, this is a stylish, passionate movie with just enough depth to both warm and break the heart.

MAY DECEMBER: 4 STARS. “a satire of our fascination with tabloid criminality.”

“May December,” a new melodrama starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, and now streaming on Netflix, is a sorta-kinda retelling of the tabloid story of Mary Kay Letourneau, a Seattle school teacher sent to jail for having a sexual relationship with a sixth-grade student.

In the film, Portman is Elizabeth Berry, a television actress best known for playing a veterinarian on a show called “Nora’s Ark,” who travels to Savannah, Georgia to do research for what she hopes will be a breakout role in a gritty true crime drama.

She will portray on Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Moore), a thirty-six-year-old woman who had a sexual affair with a seventh grader. Caught having relations with the middle schooler in the stock room of the pet store where they both worked, Gracie did jail time, gave birth to the couple’s twins while behind bars, and now, twenty-four years later, lives with the grown-up Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), who is approximately the same age as her eldest son from her first marriage.

Notebook in hand, Elizabeth is a fly on the wall, logging the action like a student at a lecture as she learns about what makes Gracie and Joe tick. But as the couple prepares to become empty nesters as the twins depart for college, Elizabeth’s presence stirs up old ghosts that cause Gracie and Joe to relive the more sensational and troubled aspects of their lives. “She’s getting on my last nerve,” says Gracie. “She’s just everywhere I look.”

A mix of the dramatic and the mundane, “May December” is brought to life by the psychological interplay between Portman and Moore. For example, a make-up tutorial between Gracie and Elizabeth is a stunner. What could have been a TikTok style guide to applying lipstick and foundation becomes a tense transformation as Elizabeth comes one step closer to literally getting under Gracie’s skin. Elizabeth isn’t content with just taking notes, or wearing Gracie’s make-up, she wants to become Gracie.

It is method acting on a Talented Mr. Ripley level as the actress surrenders herself to the role. Portman is terrific, mimicking Moore in interesting, small ways, like adopting her lisp and during the make-up scene, physically resembling her in a truly uncanny way.

Moore has the showier role, playing a complicated woman who is confident in public, but prone to crying jags in private. Moore plays her with a combination of steeliness and vulnerability that can imbue a line like, “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs,” when accompanied by a dramatic music sting, with a deeper meaning that displays the A-type personality that lies at the core of the character.

Both hand in Oscar caliber performances, the kind of above the title work that gets attention, but it is Melton, as a man essentially tethered to Gracie for his entire life, who is most emotionally affecting. Elizabeth’s visit has forced him, reluctantly, to reassess his life and choices, and Melton’s understated, melancholic performance catches his quest for understanding. “This isn’t a story,” he says to Elizabeth. “It’s my life.”

“May December” is, I suppose, a satire of true crime and our fascination with tabloid criminality, of how the worst of human behavior can be exploited as entertainment, but mostly, it is a chance to watch a trio of great performances that draw us into this uneasy story.

SILENT NIGHT: 2 STARS. “a quiet movie about a guy who makes a lot of noise.”

The title “Silent Night,” action icon John Woo’s first American film in twenty years, is a double entendre. On one hand it refers to the holiday season in which most of the action takes place, but it’s also a nod to the film’s construction. With no dialogue, it’s a quiet movie about a guy who makes a lot of noise.

The movie begins with a bang as Brian Godluck (Joel Kinnaman), dressed in a Rudolph Christmas sweater and sleigh bell necklace, attempts to outrun two cars filled with gun toting bad guys. The odds are not tilted in his favor, and soon he is in hospital with a bullet-sized hole in his throat. Alive but unable to speak through shredded vocal cords, he’s lucky to be alive but doesn’t seem too happy about it.

Returning home with wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) it’s revealed he is not the only victim. Turns out, on the previous Christmas Eve a stray bullet killed their young son Taylor in the front yard of their Texas home.

Haunted by the loss of his son, Brian hits the bottle, spending his days drunk and disengaged, waiting for the police to get on the case. At an appointment with Detective Dennis Vassel (Scott Mescudi), Brian spots the Most Wanted posters for the men responsible for murdering his son.

It triggers something in him; a fierce need for revenge. He becomes a one-man army, builds up an arsenal, trains in self-defense, does surveillance on the baddies and writes “Kill Them All” on the calendar on Christmas Eve.

Those looking to “Silent Night” for the patented John Woo full-on assault action will be disappointed. After the pulse-racing opening sequence the movie becomes ninety percent set-up, leading to a generic shoot-out so dull it makes “My Dinner with Andre” seem exciting by comparison. A fight scene between Brian and a gang member is promising, but ultimately leads nowhere.

The gimmick, cutting all dialogue save for the odd police scanner buzz, radio news report or the self-defense videos Brian watches, works against the effectiveness of the storytelling. Woo’s poetic visuals are evident, although a tear that turns into a bullet feels a little heavy handed, but the lack of dialogue reduces the characters to one dimension.

Kinnaman’s vacillates between ennui and bloodthirsty, but not much in between. We don’t know anything about him and because he doesn’t speak, he doesn’t even get a cool, “what I do have are a very particular set of skills” speech.

But at least he has some range. The gang members are meat puppets, snarling bullet catchers with targets on their backs and nothing more. This is a basic good vs. evil bullet ballet, but some kind of character work might have gone a long way toward making us care about the people on screen and their stories.

“Silent Night” takes a long time to get where it is going, and once it gets there, isn’t worth the wait.

SALTBURN: 3 ½ STARS. “a tale of the haves and unchained aspiration.”

“Saltburn,” a dark comedy of manners starring “Priscilla’s” Jacob Elordi and Academy Award nominee Barry Keoghan and now playing in theatres, is a titillating “Talented Mr. Ripley” style tale of class, position and desire that is not afraid to get weird.

Keoghan is Oliver Quick, a shy “scholarship kid” at Oxford University who doesn’t quite fit in with his classmates. His jackets aren’t from Saville Row, he lacks their social graces and most notably, doesn’t come from oodles of cash.

When the handsome, gregarious and monied Felix Catton’s (Elordi) bicycle get s flat tire on the way to a tutorial, Oliver comes to the rescue and the odd couple become fast friends. Ollie isn’t exactly embraced by Felix’s well-heeled inner circle, who find him coarse, but they become tight, hanging out at the pub when they aren’t studying.

At the end of the term Felix asks if Oliver will go home for the summer.

“Honestly, home doesn’t mean the same thing for me as it does for you Felix,” Oliver says. “I don’t think I’ll ever go home again.“

His tale of woe, of growing up as the only child to a drunken father, moves Felix who invites him to spend the summer at Saltburn, his family’s palatial estate.

“Just be yourself,” Felix says. “They’ll love you. It’s relaxed. I promise.”

Except it’s not. It’s the kind of English country home that makes Downton Abbey look like a shack. Priceless art lines the walls, there are butlers and footmen, mandatory jackets at dinner and an oddball collection of aristocratic family members including Felix’s eccentric, self-absorbed father Sir James (Richard E. Grant), casually cruel mother Elspeth (Rosamund Pike) and troubled sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), who tells the newcomer, “You’re just another one of his toys.”

He may be a novelty, out of his depth, but Oliver is drawn to shiny things, the lives of the rich and famous, and will do anything to stay in that privileged world.

“Saltburn” isn’t just a study of the haves and the have nots, it’s a tale of the haves and unchained aspiration. Obsessed with the good life, Oliver will do bad things to get a taste of it.

Keoghan takes risks as the chameleonic Oliver. Whether he is vulnerable, hapless, or a menacing manipulator, the “The Banshees of Inisherin” actor chooses interesting ways to manifest Oliver’s state of mind. There may not be much beneath the surface, other than danger and avarice, but Keoghan, whether he is dancing naked through the grand home or lapping up bath water, keeps the performance and the audience off kilter.

Elordi allows just enough of Felix’s heart of gold to shine through his charming veneer to make the filthy rich character feel a little less dirty and Grant is perfection as the repressed upper-class twit at the head of the family, but it is Pike who steals every scene she’s in. Blessed with the film’s best lines, Elspeth has an off-hand, casual way with a barb that cuts like a knife. When she hears about a friend who has taken her own life, she snorts, “She’d do anything for attention.” These lines are often asides, not central to the action, but Pike makes them memorable.

Unfortunately, director Emerald Fennell, who also wrote the script, doesn’t mine the class satire for answers. She’s content with the black comedy, Oliver’s coldhearted desire and little else. The result is an entertaining film, but a mixed bag. It’s diverting, filled with over-the-top moments and plot twists, but at the end it feels less than the sum of its parts.

IHEARTRADIO: COMEDIAN AND AUTHORS BRENT BUTT + RICK MERCER!

On the Saturday November 25, 2023 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet two Canadian legends.

First up is stand-up comedian Brent Butt, the star, writer and/or producer of TV shows such as “Corner Gas,” “Hiccups” and “Corner Gas Animated.” He recently added a new line to his resume, thriller author. His debut novel is “Huge,” and it is indeed a huge bestseller.

Set in 1994, the darkly comedic psychological thriller follows a trio of comics on a tour put together by a shady Winnipeg-based comedy booker, through small-town Manitoba and Ontario. The situation goes from bad to worse to downright frightening and violent as they try and get off the road in one piece.

Then, we’ll meet Canada’s sharpest and funniest political satirist, Rick Mercer. His latest project is a book titled “The Road Years: A Memoir, Continued…” It’s a look at the his wildly popular show The Mercer Report, it’s beginnings, it’s end and everything in between, including Every living prime minister. Rock and roll royalty from Rush to Randy Bachman. Olympians and Paralympians. A skinny-dipping Bob Rae. And Jann Arden, of course, who gets a chapter to herself.

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!

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!