Richard speaks to “CTV News at 11:30” anchor Andria Bain about movies on VOD and in theatres to watch this weekend including Chloë Grace Moretz’s action thriller “Shadow in the Cloud” and the poignant documentary “Sing Me a Song.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 24:18)
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with host Anita Sharma to have a look at the new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including Chloë Grace Moretz’s action thriller “Shadow in the Cloud” and the poignant documentary “Sing Me a Song.” Then we look at the top five movies to stream right now!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A tribute to the pulpy adventure movies of the 1940s by way of “The Twilight Zone,” “Shadow in the Cloud,” now in select theaters and on VOD and digital, is a popcorn movie, for better and for worse.
Chloë Grace Moretz is strong willed Women’s Auxiliary Air Force officer Maude Garrett. The only female presence on a massive B-17 Flying Fortress military plane, her mission is to protect, at all costs, a precious piece of cargo but the chauvinistic attitude of the male crew makes the job next to impossible. Stuck in a turret in the belly of the plane, Garrett has an almost unobstructed, 360° view of their airspace. When she reports a “shadow in the clouds,” a possible enemy attack, she is ignored. When airborne gremlins (you read that right) attack, she is blamed. “Whatever is in that package,” the men say, “is what’s causing the failures on this plane.”
Cue the first of the movie’s outrageous twists.
The first half of “Shadow in the Cloud” is a showcase for Moretz. For much of the film’s running time it’s a one person show, with the “Kick Ass” star strapped into a gunner’s turret, spewing hardboiled dialogue. She’s energetic, holding the screen with sheer force of personality. Garrett even finds room in the generic 1940s style cliched dialogue to convincingly poke through the veneer of chauvinism from her plane mates.
The second half is frenetic, with airborne action and Gremlins! Gremlins! Gremlins! The movie becomes less character driven and more a vehicle for director Roseanne Liang’s prowess with a camera.
Each half has its strengths, but they are bound together by twists that would make even M. Night Shyamalan shake his head. There are logic holes big enough for a B-17 Flying Fortress to soar through which would be OK if the twists didn’t feel tacked on for the sake of shaking things up.
At just 83-minutes offers up two movies and while there are moments of interest in the busy second half, the film is strongest when Moretz is on screen alone, before the film’s twists tie it into a Gordian knot.
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at the crime drama “White Boy Rick,” the Nicolas Cage rage-a-thon “Mandy” and the thriller “A Simple Favor.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the crime drama “White Boy Rick,” the Nicolas Cage rage-a-thon “Mandy” and the thriller “A Simple Favor” with the CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Years from now, when we look back at Nicolas Cage’s career, we’ll divide his films into categories. The retrospective may look something like this: The Early, Eager Era exemplified by movies like “Wild at Heart” and “Vampire’s Kiss,” the Prestige Years of “Leaving Las Vegas,” the Blockbuster Age that gave us “National Treasure” and then there’s Everything Else.
The Oscar winner has always made off-kilter choices, even at the peak of his fame, but his recent output has been, in a word, uneven. The pleasures of the violent “Mom and Dad” do not make up for the eye-peelingly bad “Pay the Ghost.”
But, whatever the film his fearlessness is undeniable. I get it. Nicolas Cage is not like us. Unbound by the rules of his Hollywood peers he chooses extreme movies that defy the audience to recall when he was a multi-plex ready movie star.
Watching his latest film “Mandy” hammered that home. The experimental revenge flick is the kind of unhinged revenge flick the word phantasmagorical was created to describe. Watching it made me think it must be freeing to be Cage. To not care one whit what people think; to fully immerse oneself to the whims of the imagination, to be a full-blown peacock in a world of pigeons.
“Mandy” is a story about Red Miller (Cage), a backwoods logger and artist wife Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). Solitude is their thing but when that peace and quiet is invaded by a murderous cult leader (Linus Roach), Red seeks bloody revenge. “I’m going hunting,” he tells a friend.
Your enjoyment—if that is the word I should use—of “Mandy” will be directly linked to your liking of psycho bike gangs, strange hallucinogenic visuals and chainsaw battles. The first hour is all menace and foreboding; the second hour is a big fat slab of Cage Rage. High and seemingly unstoppable Red shouts “I am your god now!” as he unleashes holy hell on the folks who did him wrong.
“Mandy” is a deeply weird movie, tailored for a very specific grindhouse type of audience, and brought to life by Cage’s cock-a-doodle performance.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk about the crime drama “White Boy Rick,” the Nicolas Cage rage-a-thon “Mandy” and why Lady Gaga kissed him at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
