I join the CTV NewsChanel to talk about the fiery “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” the crime drama “Dead Man’s Wire” and the shake, rattle and roll of “The Testament of Ann Lee.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the fiery “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” the crime drama “Dead Man’s Wire” and the shake, rattle and roll of “The Testament of Ann Lee.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Testament of Ann Lee,” a historical musical drama now playing in theatres, Amanda Seyfried stars as the titular character, the 18th-century founder of the Shaker religious movement.
CAST: Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Abbott, Stacy Martin, Matthew Beard, Scott Handy, Viola Prettejohn, Jamie Bogyo, and David Cale. Directed by Mona Fastvold (who co-wrote with Brady Corbet).
REVIEW: “The Testament of Ann Lee” is a historical musical, but it’s no “Les Misérables” or “Hamilton.” The music takes a turn from Broadway to traditional Shaker hymns that fuel the film’s feverish spirituality.
Narrated by Ann Lee’s loyal disciple Mary (Thomasin McKenzie), “The Testament of Ann Lee’s” remarkable story unfolds in three chapters beginning in 18th-century England. Lee (Amanda Seyfried), a young woman born into poverty in Manchester, struggles with her faith after losing four children in infancy. Her life finds purpose when she has spiritual visions suggesting she is the second coming of Christ, and joins a radical offshoot of the Quakers, who allowed female pastors.
Preaching gender and social equality, communal living and pacifism, she differentiates herself and her followers from the Quakers by an oath of celibacy and using communal ecstatic dance to “shake” off sin. Nicknamed the Shaking Quakers, or simply the Shakers, they faced persecution in England which forced Ann and her flock to relocate to America in search of religious freedom.
Her messages of pacifism and gender equality do not go down well in the New World, and she is accused of witchcraft and treason for her refusal to support of the Revolutionary War.
A singular and otherworldly movie, “The Testament of Ann Lee” is as passionate as its lead character. Anchored by a career best performance from Seyfried, it’s a portrait of a woman whose agony and ecstasy challenged the societal norms of the day.
Seyfried presides over every scene with conviction. Sometimes visceral, sometimes vulnerable, she’s always intriguing. Lee is a person fueled by tragedy and trauma to find a new path in life, and Seyfried plays her with compassion, empathy and determination. It’s her commitment to the material that keeps “The Testament of Ann Lee” on track.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” features a great deal of music but isn’t a musical in the traditional sense. The characters don’t suddenly burst into song. Instead, the songs are woven through the narratives as part of the religious worship. Performed with biblical enthusiasm, the musical numbers have a hypnotic feel that transcends theatricality to become a blissful display of faith.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” is a cradle to grave historical biography, but it isn’t a Wikipedia entry style film. Instead, it’s an unusual film that explores spirituality through a retelling of an unconventional woman’s life.
I join CTV Atlantic’s Todd Battis to talk about the epic “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the absurd “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants,” the feel-good divorce drama “Is This Thing On?” and the psychological thriller “The Housemaid.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres including the epic “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” rthe absurd “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants,” the feel-good divorce drama “Is This Thing On?” and the psychological thriller “The Housemaid.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the epic “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the feel-good divorce drama “Is This Thing On?” and the psychological thriller “The Housemaid.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Housemaid,” a new psychological thriller starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, and now playing in theatres, a parolee gets a job working for a wealthy family, in a beautiful home filled with secrets.
CAST: Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone, Elizabeth Perkins. Directed by Paul Feig.
REVIEW: A story of a campaign of domestic psychological warfare, “The Housemaid” is a drawn-out, twisty-turny story of gaslighting, an attic room and a broken dinner plate.
The story begins with Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) looking for work to satisfy the conditions of her parole. In prison for ten years, she’s living in her car and if she doesn’t get a job soon, it’s back to the big house to finish her sentence.
When she lands a job as a live-in housemaid at the Winchester family estate, tending to the ultra-wealthy Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), her husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and daughter Cecelia (Indiana Elle), it appears to be a dream job. Given flexible hours and a new phone and credit card, she moves into a bedroom in the attic, the one with the lock on the outside.
“Hold on to this job and the living situation,” her parole officer reminds her, “or you’ll be back in Bedford to finish the last five years of your sentence.”
Desperate to avoid going back to jail, she puts her head down and gets to work, even though Nina’s personality leans toward Jekyll and Hyde; kind one second, cruel the next. “Today wasn’t a total disaster,” Nina says to Millie by way of praise.
Smoothing things out is Andrew, who always has a kind word and a way of keeping the peace between Nina and Millie. He’s a good guy, but is he too good to be true?
Director Paul Feig is best known for making comedies like “Bridesmaids,” but “The Housemaid,” despite sharing four letters in the title of his biggest hit, is not a laugh-a-minute. It has more to do with the intrigue and suspense of his 2018 film “A Simple Favor” than his other films.
Feig sets the dark story against the dazzling backdrop of the Winchester’s palatial home, a sun-dappled mansion painted inside and out in bright white, save for the creepy little room in the attic. The opulent home silently establishes film’s the power dynamic; the disparity between Nina’s effortless cruelty and Millie’s desperation, and it’s the last time anything in the film goes unsaid.
The movie takes some big swings and has more twists than a winding country road and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine wants to make sure you don’t miss a thing. I suppose, that’s great if you’re scrolling through your phone while watching (which you shouldn’t be, especially in a theatre) but it draws out the action, especially two flashback sequences near the end. By the time we get to the story’s revenge aspect, it feels played out.
Still, despite being overlong, it’s a bit of a romp, with the main cast, Sweeney, Seyfried and Sklenar, jumping in with both feet, throwing themselves at the pulpy premise with vigor that helps smooth most of the storytelling’s rough edges.
“The Housemaid” isn’t quite as clever as it needs to be to keep the audience on the edge of their seat until the end credits but has enough wackadoodle twists and engaging characters to register as a playful “evil one-percenters” time waster.
SYNOPSIS: In “I Don’t Understand You,” a new horror-comedy now playing in theatres, Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells play Dom and Cole, a wealthy American couple whose tenth anniversary trip to Italy devolves into chaos when they get lost on the way to a fancy restaurant located in a rural farm. “I thought we would die here,” Cole says. “Alone in a rental car.” Complicating an already complicated situation, their surrogate (Amanda Seyfried) goes into early labor and asks them to return from their trip earlier than planned.
CAST: Nick Kroll, Andrew Rannells, Morgan Spector, Eleonora Romandini and Amanda Seyfried. Written and directed by David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano.
REVIEW: Mean spirited, but often very funny, “I Don’t Understand You” mixes deadpan humor with buckets of blood in a story of a vacation gone horribly wrong.
Loosely based on the real-life vacations-gone-wild and adoption fraud experiences of writer/directors David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, the movie is a farcical mix-and-match of misunderstandings and murder that still manages to find time for tenderness.
That comes courtesy of Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells, who, when they aren’t accidentally killing the locals, have great chemistry and the lived-in feel of a real couple. That both are also masters of the throw-away, funny comment is an added bonus as they humorously remark on the increasingly chaotic goings on.
As funny as the leads are, the movie struggles to reconcile adoption anxiety and mayhem. The story’s adoption fraud angle is left mostly unexplored, serving primarily as a McGuffin for the mayhem in Italy. As a result, “I Don’t Understand You” has some tonal problems, but its commitment to outrageous fun trumps whatever wonky feeling is left behind by the script.
On the March 15, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we meet Atom Egoyan and Amanda Seyfried of the new film “Seven Veils.” In this a new psychological thriller, now playing in theatres, Seyfried is Jeanine, a director dealing with repressed trauma as she mounts a production of her mentor’s most famous work, the opera “Salome.” Rich with metaphor and suspense “Seven Veils” is an intellectual thriller about art imitating life.
We also meet Sonequa Martin-Green. You know her from “Star Trek: Discovery,” “New Girl” and “The Good Wife.” She also played Sasha Williams, a main character and a survivor of the outbreak in “The Walking Dead.”
Today we’ll talk about her new film, the dark comedy “My Dead Friend Zoe,” now playing in theatres. In it she plays an Afghanistan veteran haunted by her late best friend Zoe. Now in civilian life, she searches for a way forward as she suffers from PTSD and tends to her retired Lieutenant-Colonel grandfather played by Ed Harris.
Then we meet Keira Jang, star of Can I Get A Witness?” a new Canadian eco-sci fi/coming-of-age film now playing in theaters. It’s set in a future where climate change and world poverty have been eradicated. To mitigate these modern-day issues, travel and technology are banned and every citizen must end life at 50. Documenting the process are artists as witnesses, like the character Kiera plays, a teenager on her first day on the job.
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!
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