Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “Halloween,” the late Rob Stewart’s ecology documentary “Sharkwater Extinction,” the drug drama “Beautiful Boy” and the film Robert Redford says may be his swan song “The Old Man and the Gun.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
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 drug drama “Beautiful Boy,” the wistful “The Old Man and the Gun” and the eco-doc “Sharkwater Extinction.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases, the tricks and treats of “Halloween,” Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek in “The Old Man and the Gun” and the drug drama “Beautiful Boy.”
Watch to the whole thing HERE!
“Beautiful Boy” is a story about the unrelenting grip of addiction. Based on the memoirs “Beautiful Boy” and “Tweak” by David and Nic Sheff, the film stars Steve Carell as a father desperate to save his son, played by Timothée Chalamet, from a life with a needle stuck in his arm.
The non-linear story begins with David admitting he no longer knows his son. “There are moments when I look at him, this kid I raised, that I thought I knew inside and out, and I don’t recognize him. He’s on drugs. Crystal meth.”
Then a mix of contemporary and flashback scenes tells the story of a young man who says crystal math “takes the edge off reality. When I tried it I felt better than I ever had,“ he continues, “so I just kept doing it.“
The film follows David’s attempt to rescue his son, paying for stints in a rehab and spending time searching for Nic on a rainy streets and in back alleys.
It’s a study on how one person’s addiction can have a ripple effect through many people’s lives. Nic’s drug use affects himself and David and his mother (Amy Ryan), stepmother Karen (Maura Tierney) and two younger siblings (Christian Convery and Oakley Bull).
There are many touching moments in “Beautiful Boy.” The look of devastation on Carell‘s face as he drops Nic off at a long-term care facility is subtle but effective. Imagine sending your brilliant 18-year-old—he was accepted to six universities—to rehab, knowing his fate is out of your hands. Carell also nicely plays the frustration of not understanding why his “beautiful boy“ just can’t say no to drugs. That “relapse is part of the program.“ That the son he thought he knew has a secret, dangerous and unhappy life. It’s strong work coupled by Chalamet’s performance as a charismatic but troubled young man who idolizes Charles Bukowski take on the dark side of life. “I’m attracted to craziness,“ Nic says to his dad, “and you don’t like who I am now.“
Much of “Beautiful Boy” works but—and there is a big but—I never felt overly moved by the story. It should be heartbreaking to watch Nick throw his life away but we never learn enough about him to feel deeply for his plight. We know he was a cute kid, tight with his father, that he loves his siblings and is very smart but those are broad strokes that don’t paint a detailed enough picture.
“Beautiful Boy” is a little too structured, a little too clean to hit the gut as a story of Nic’s descent into depravity.
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Patriot’s Day,” “Live By Night” from director-actor Ben Affleck and the terrible “Monster Trucks.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies, Peter Berg’s ripped-from-the-headlines “Patriot’s Day,” “Live By Night” from director-actor Ben Affleck, the terrible “Monster Trucks” and the sublime “20th Century Women” and “Paterson.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
TODAY! TODAY! TODAY! The worst movie on four wheels! No adrenaline pumping action! “Monster Trucks!” We’ll sell you the whole seat… to make it easy to take a nap!
“Monster Trucks” begins when avaricious oil baron Reece Tenneson (Rob Lowe) insists on drilling through an underground water main to get to “the ocean of oil” that lies underneath despite the possibility of disturbing the life forms that may live down there. “If we keep this quiet will all do very well,” cackles Tenneson. His greed unleashes several strange creatures, sort of land squids with big googly eyes, whom he immediately orders destroyed.
On the other side of town Tripp (Lucas Till) is a curiously old high school student and scrap yard worker. He’s a blonde James Dean type, an outsider more comfortable around cars than people. When one of these creatures shows up at his junkyard he doesn’t set it free, nor does he call the authorities. After discovering oil is this tentacled creature’s mother’s milk, as any true grease monkey would do, he straps it to the underside of an old truck he’s been working on, using it as a super-charged engine, literally turning his old junker into a “monster truck.”
With the help of biology student Meredith (Jane Levy) and the creature—who Tripp inventively nicknames Creatch—our hero tries find out exactly where his oil-guzzling new friend came from.
Fittingly “Monster Trucks,” a movie about automobiles, is my first seatbelt movie of the year. It is a film so bad I needed to a seatbelt to keep me in my chair for the entire movie.
Forget that Tripp looks old enough to be his high school classmates’ hip guidance counsellor or that the sum total of the great Amy Smart’s role is advising her son what to eat for lunch or that a sea monster appears in the landlocked state of North Dakota. That stuff is bad enough, but the thing that really puts “Monster Trucks” on a collision course with the ditch is a complete lack of playfulness.
What might have been a fun action-adventure with a kid friendly sci fi twist is, instead, a collection of lame brained ideas that feel strung and in search of a heartwarming or interesting moment. “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” another alien movie, works not because we believe the little rubber alien is real but because we care about the way that Elliot, Gertie and Michael interact with him. Despite the presence of a rubber alien it feels authentic and not cobbled together by a marketing department.
When Tripp’s dad (Frank Whaley) says, “It’s like the earth got mad and let something bad out,” he may well have been speaking about this movie and not Creatch.
Imagine if “Donnie Brasco” and “Narcos” had a baby. Now imagine that the baby grew up to be the dull kid who thought he was smarter than everyone else. That baby is “The Infiltrator,” a new drug movie starring Bryan Cranston.
Set in 1985 South Florida, the War on Drugs is in full swing. Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar is flooding the streets with $400 million of cocaine per week while remaining out of reach to law enforcement. Enter Robert Mazur (Cranston), an accountant-turned-federal-undercover-drug-agent. He’s wounded and eligible for retirement with a full pension, but takes in one last job that turns out to be the biggest and most dangerous of his career. Working with fellow narcs Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger) and Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo), he goes deep as Bob Musella, money launderer to the cartels. Dodging bullets and unwanted sexual advances, Musella gains the trust of the Medellín Cartel but must balance his friendship with drug lord Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt) with the responsibilities of his job.
Part of all of us wants Bryan Cranston back in the drug trade. Years of “Breaking Bad” primed us for his brand of Heisenbergian ruthlessness and in the wake of the show’s conclusion, left us wanting more. Too bad that his return to the underworld is such a milquetoast affair. What could have been an engaging look into the inner workings of a business so huge they had to spend a thousand bucks a week on rubber bands to hold stacks of bills together, is instead a mishmash of clichés, tough-talk and 80s-style excess. Not content to let the story do the talking director Brad Furman errs on the side of the obvious throughout. For instance, instead of letting the implied threat of Cartel violence stand on its own, characters remind us that if things go wrong there will be grave consequences for everyone involved.
Better is the portrayal of Mazur’s complicated relationship with Alcaino and his wife. The agent and Escobar’s suave-but-deadly US representative become friends of a sort and when the sting goes down there are poignant moments that add some real drama to a film that desperately needs them.
“The Infiltrator” is held together by Cranston whose fine work is the most compelling thing in the movie. Leguizamo has the more interesting character in the street wise Abreu but isn’t given enough to do. Ditto Amy Smart as Mazur’s commanding officer. She does what she can but the character still seems to have walked straight of Central Casting Handbook and on to the screen.
Richard and CP24 anchor Nneka Elliot talk about the weekend’s four big releases, including “Finding Dory,” the buddy comedy “Central Intelligence” with Duane Johnson and Kevin Hart, and a duo of documentaries, “De Palma,” an unflinching look at the films of Brian De Palma and the self explanatory “Raiders! The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
