Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a handstand! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the drama “We Live in Time,” the satire “Rumours” and the edgy family film “Bookworm.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with hosts Jim Richards and Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the drama “We Live in Time,” the satire “Rumours” and the family flick “Bookworm.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 27:39)
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the bonkers horror film “Smile 2,” the drama “We Live in Time,” the satire “Rumours” and the Michael Keaton flick “Goodrich.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: Part rom com and part essay on what lingers after we’re gone, “We Live in Time” stars Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield as a couple who learn to cherish the short time they have together.
CAST: Andrew Garfield, Florence Pugh, Adam James, Marama Corlett, Aoife Hinds. Directed by John Crowley.
REVIEW: Told with a broken chronology, jumping to-and-fro in time, “We Live in Time” begins as a light and frothy rom com but becomes a touching story of love and loss.
Before it becomes a four-hankie tearjerker, however, it acts as a showcase for the chemistry and charisma of its leads Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, as it captures their meet cute and the initial spark of their love. Those sections are playful, imbued with a sense of hope and expectation at where this relationship may take them.
When Almut (Pugh) is diagnosed with a recurrence of ovarian cancer, the film becomes less about the romance, and more about the transcendental nature of living life on a deadline. “Let’s just say I’m not sure I can go through all that again,” she says. Having gone through chemo once before—“All I did was go bald and puke my guts out,” she says—she opts for quality of life versus quantity opting to have six great months, rather than get treatment and live twelve “passive” months.
It sets the couple, and their young daughter Ella (Grace Delaney), on a journey to live as fully as possible in the time they have left together.
The film’s unconventional puzzle structure goes a long way in preventing the story from becoming a maudlin tale of a young mother’s demise. It can take a few minutes to acclimatize to the time travel, but once the film’s rhythm makes itself clear, the shifting between good times and bad tempers the movie’s innate tragedy.
Tempers, but doesn’t erase. When Almut says, “I don’t want my relationship with Ella to be defined by my decline,” it is as devastating an admission as we’re likely to hear in a movie this year.
Cue the Kleenex.
“We Live in Time” is funnier than you might imagine it will be, but it is still a weepie, although one that skirts easy sentimentality. That’s because of the richness of the characters, courtesy of Pugh and Garfield, the intimacy they create on screen, and director John Crowley’s insistence that a movie about death can still be life-affirming.
