Posts Tagged ‘Alan Cumming’

YOU TUBE: THREE MOVIES/THIRTY SECONDS! FAST REVIEWS FOR BUSY PEOPLE!

Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to tie a shoelace! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

 

NEWSTALK TONIGHT WITH JIM RICHARDS: DOES RICHARD CROUSE LIKE THESE MOVIES?

I join NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards on the coast-to-coast-to-coast late night “NewsTalk Tonight” to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”

Listen to he whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY FEB 17, 2023.

I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres.  Today we talk about the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe,” the “What’s-in-a-name” documentary “The Other Fellow” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

CKTB NIAGARA REGION: THE TIM DENIS SHOW WITH RICHARD CROUSE ON MOVIES!

I sit in with CKTB morning show host Tim Denis to have a look at the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe,” the “What’s-in-a-name” documentary “The Other Fellow” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

CFRA IN OTTAWA: THE BILL CARROLL MORNING SHOW MOVIE REVIEWS!

I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the MCU adventure “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the hardboiled “Marlowe,” the “What’s-in-a-name” documentary “The Other Fellow” and the documentary “Cat Daddies.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

MARLOWE: 2 ½ STARS. “questions in search of a meaningful story.”

“I intend to ask questions,” says detective Philip Marlowe (Liam Neeson) in the new gumshoe thriller “Marlowe,” now playing in theatres. And ask questions he does. This revisiting of the classic hardboiled 1930s P.I. Philip Marlowe, made famous on the big screen by Humphrey Bogart, isn’t so much a story as it is a very long series of questions strung together to tell the tale. Screenwriter William Monahan, adapting “The Black-Eyed Blonde,” a 2014 authorized Marlowe novel by Irish writer John Banville, must have burned out the “?” key on his typewriter.

Set in Hollywood, in 1939, the same year Raymond Chandler published “The Big Sleep,” his first Marlowe novel, the movie begins when Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger) hires the detective to find her missing lover, Nico Petersen (François Arnaud). A prop master at one of the studios, he makes extra cash smuggling drugs into the United States in the props he imports from Mexico.

The police say Nico was killed in a hit and run outside a fancy private club, Cavendish thinks he is still alive and Marlowe has questions. Lots of questions.

When “Marlowe” isn’t in Q&A mode, it has, if nothing else, a collection of interesting characters. Jessica Lange makes an impression as a secretive former movie star who just might be her daughter’s love rival, Danny Houston redefines creepy bluster as a pimp at the upmarket Corbata Club but it is Alan Cumming who leaves a lasting impression. He is businessman, philanthropist and gangster Lou Hendricks, a chewer of scenery who delivers lines like, “I am entirely composed of tarantulas,” with the gusto of a Marvel villain.

Neeson gives the title character a world weariness that borders on ennui. In the Raymond Chandler books he is portrayed in his 30s and 40s. Neeson is 70 and, as Marlowe, is still able to take on a room full of bad guys with his fists and his wits, but he’s seen too much of the underside of life, and it has left him cynical, disengaged to the evil that men do. “I’m getting too old for this,” he says after dispatching a group of baddies, and given Neeson’s listless performance, he may be right.

“Marlowe” has the look and feel of an old time Hollywood noir, but is a pale imitation of the real thing. The golden haze that hangs over every frame can’t disguise the fact that this is a movie comprised of a series of questions with unsatisfying answers in search of a meaningful story.

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY JANUARY 23, 2014.

Screen Shot 2015-01-23 at 4.56.39 PMCP24 film critic Richard Crouse reviews “Still Alice,” “Cake,” “Strange Magic,” “The Boy Next Door” and “Mordecai.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

Alan Cumming: Kids can deal with more darkness than we think

strange-magic-07-636-380By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

Strange Magic, a new animated jukebox musical fantasy from George Lucas, follows in the footsteps of Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. All are musicals, all are for kids and all feature a villain geared to make young pulses race.

“I do think we underestimate how much darkness kids can deal with,” says Alan Cumming, who plays the film’s chief baddie, the Bog King,

Inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Strange Magic is set in a fairy world where you can never judge a book by its cover.

Cumming’s character, with his glowing eyes and a skeleton that is more exo than endo, certainly embodies the movie’s message that beauty is only skin deep.

“All these kinds of films are based on a tradition that goes way, way back to the Grimm Brothers,” says Cumming.

“In a way, the reason these stories are told is to teach kids some sort of moral lesson. You have to scare people but ultimately show that he has a nicer side to him.”

Lucas, who has a ‘story by’ and producer credit on the film says, “with the Bog King we did tone him down a bit because it is a delicate balance. We’ve shown it to a lot of kids and most of them aren’t affected by it at all. My daughter, who is only 18 months, saw the trailer with the Bog King in it on a screen, not on a TV and she wasn’t moved by it at all. But of course 18-month-olds aren’t afraid of anything yet.

“Kids are not as fragile as you think they are. All the stuff, that it warps their brains, I’m not sure about that,” he said.

“There is a certain reality to imitative violence, which is monkey see, monkey do, and that is dangerous, but at the same time a well brought up kid doesn’t fall into that.”

Lucas, who has been working on this project on and off for 15 years — “I liked to do it in between working on Star Wars and writing scripts and things”— says there are only three moments in the movie that are “bothersome.”

“It has been my experience with my kids that if you sense something coming up you just put your hand over their eyes and usually they’re faster at doing it than you are.”

RICHARD’S “CANADA AM” REVIEWS FOR JANUARY 23 WITH JEFF HUTCHESON.

Screen Shot 2015-01-23 at 10.27.23 AMRichard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Still Alice,” “Cake,” “Strange Magic,” “The Boy Next Door” and “Mordecai.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!