A new feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at Billie Jean King and retired pro Bobby Riggs in “Battle of the Sexes,” Taron Egerton’s stylish spy thriller “Kingsman: the Secret Circle” and the Jake Gyllenhaal real life drama “Stronger.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at about Billie Jean King and retired pro Bobby Riggs in “Battle of the Sexes,” Taron Egerton’s stylish spy thriller “Kingsman: the Secret Circle” and the Jake Gyllenhaal real life drama “Stronger.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
“Tennis players are like warriors who singlehandedly take on each other,” says director Jonathan Dayton.
One such warrior is Billie Jean King. As a twenty-nine-year old she was vaulted into superstardom in 1973 when she trounced ex tennis champ and self proclaimed Male Chauvinist Pig Bobby Riggs in a match billed as the Battle of the Sexes. It remains television’s most watched tennis match but more than a ratings bonanza for the network it placed King at the forefront of feminism and gender politics in the 1970s. A new film, Battle of the Sexes starring Emma Stone and Steve Carrell, aims to remind audiences of the tennis champ’s importance.
“I hope this is part of a realignment,” says co-director Dayton. “She is very celebrated but since we started showing the movie I think it has been very satisfying for her to get this new level of acknowledgement. I think she felt like she had been celebrated and that was over and now other people are getting attention.”
“She is still so active in all of it,” adds co-director Valerie Faris. “She’s still working. She’s not just out to further her legacy, she’s actually just still working on these same issues. She’s all about fairness and inclusivity. She was the one who said, ‘I want to take it away from being a country club sport and make it for everybody.’”
Battle of the Sexes is undoubtedly a sports movie. The climatic 1973 match takes up much of the last half hour of the film, but it isn’t strictly a tennis drama. Like all good sports films it’s not really about the game, it’s about the human spirit that made King a hero. It also shines a light on her personal life.
Stone plays King as warm but spunky—like Mary Tyler Moore spunky—when we first meet her. The character deepens, however, when Marilyn Barnett, played by Andrea Riseborough, enters the picture. As the married and deeply in the closet King Stone blossoms as the romance with Marilyn blooms.
“It was not a happy time for her,” says Faris. “She says she hasn’t watched the match in twenty-five years. It was hard during the process because we were nervous. We wanted to make her proud and validate who she is.”
“It was very hard for her initially to even enter this process,” says Dayton, “particularly because what was important to us was to tell the story of her first relationship with a woman but, as painful as that was, she was fine with it. She knew that was the most important aspect of it.
“We wanted to show the complexity. She saw this as an affair where she was cheating on her husband. Not only was it a huge move to act on her true sexuality but she loved Larry and didn’t want us to make that relationship seem less than it was.”
As a portrait of women’s rights and the sexual revolution of the 1970s Battle of the Sexes covers a lot of ground.
“What we didn’t want is something that is so polarizing that it would divide the world into two camps,” says Dayton. “Hopefully there are entry points for everybody. Frankly, we wanted it to be entertaining, to be a fun ride.”
“Battle of the Sexes” is undoubtedly a sports movie. The climatic tennis match between Wimbledon triple-winner Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) and ladies tennis world champion Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) takes up much of the last half hour of the film, but it isn’t strictly a sports drama. Like all good sports films it’s not really about the game, it’s about the human spirit that makes the game great. Here we see some impressive tennis but we also get a glimpse of how Billie Jean King’s perseverance helped change the game and the world.
“Watch out guys,” says a TV announcer commenting on what would become one of King’s championship matches, “there’s no stopping this little lady.” It’s 1973 and King is a wizard on the court, a focussed athlete who makes a fraction of her male colleagues. “The men are more exciting to watch,” says United States Lawn Tennis Association honcho Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman). “They’re faster. They’re stronger. It’s not your fault; it’s just biology.”
Outraged that there’s a $12,000 paycheque for the men but only a $1500 pay out for women at an upcoming USLTA tournament King and her manager Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) take action. They set up a rival, all female league sponsored by Virginia “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Slims. Their goal is to democratize tennis, take it out of the country club, and make it for everyone.
Meanwhile former world champ Bobby Riggs is now 55 years old and working in an office job courtesy of his wealthy wife’s father. At night he gambles, despite going to Gambler’s Anonymous twice a week, playing with rich men for money. Top even up the odds he does outlandish things like play with a racket in one hand and two dogs on leashes in the other. He wants back in the big time but the big time isn’t interested in him.
Always a hustler, Riggs comes up with the idea of a Battle of the Sexes match between himself and the much younger King. She declines lading him on to star player Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee). When he shellacs the top-seeded Court it does more than just shine a spotlight on Riggs, it reinforces the idea that women aren’t as good as men. On a roll he next offers $100,000 to any woman who can take him on the court. “Who else is going to beat him?” says King. “He’s backed me into a corner.”
The rest, as they say is history. A media circus follows as Riggs publicly taunts King—“I’m going to put in the ‘show’ back in the chauvinism.”—building up hype for what would become the most watched tennis match of all time.
“Battle of the Sexes” is a feel good movie but it’s about more than a pulse racing final game. Along the way it paints a convincing picture of the casual sexism that drove King to take a very public stand, against the USLTA and then Riggs. It’s also about her relationship with Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) and the quandary of gay athletes, then and now.
Stone, in a performance that has early Oscar buzz, is best when she’s off the court. She warm but spunky—like Mary Tyler Moore spunky—when we first meet her. The character deepens, however, when Marilyn enters the picture. As the married and deeply in the closet King, Stone blossoms as the romance with Marilyn blooms. Those scenes are tender and help ground an otherwise relentlessly perky movie.
Carell nails the “colourful and controversial” Riggs. He is a ball of energy, bulldozing his way through the movie. His wife Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue) says she loves the “way you walk into a room and fill it up,” so Carell does his best to fill up the screen. He has the movie’s best lines—“Don’t get me wrong. I love women… In the bedroom and in the kitchen.”—and brings a sense of old school theatricality to the role.
As a portrait of women’s rights and the sexual revolution of the 1970s “Battle of the Sexes” covers a lot of ground but does so in an entertaining although slightly overlong way.
Richard and CP24 anchor George Lagogianes have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the coming-of-age story “Edge of Seventeen” and Miles Teller as real life boxer Vinny Paz in “Bleed for This.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the coming-of-age story “Edge of Seventeen,” Miles Teller as real life boxer Vinny Paz in “Bleed for This” and “Nocturnal Animals” with Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Canada AM” film critic Richard Crouse reviews “John Wick,” “Whiplash” and “Birdman.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Every now and again a movie comes along that is so artfully weird, so unconventional in its approach and ethos, that it defies description and earns a recommend even though it isn’t completely successful in reaching its loft goals. “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” the new film from “Babel” director Alejandro González Iñárritu, is that movie.
In what may be the most meta casting coup of the year Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a former movie star whose fame floundered when he left the “Birdman” franchise of super hero movies. Twenty years later with his money running out, he makes a comeback bid in the form of a Broadway show based on a Raymond Carver novel. Surrounded by family—daughter Sam (Emma Stone)—friends—BFF Brandon (Zach Galifianakis)—intense actors—played by Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough and Naomi Watts—and a nasty theatre critic (Lindsay Duncan) who resents movie star Riggins for taking up space in a theatre that could have been used for art, he fights to reestablish himself as a serious actor.
“Birdman” could have been a stunt film. The casting of “Batman” star Keaton as a washed up former superhero is inspired but mostly because he hands in a performance that rides the line between comedic and pathos. “I’m the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question,” he says.
It doesn’t feel like stunt casting because Keaton plays the truth of the situation and not just the situation. His Riggins is obnoxious, self-absorbed and yet earnest in his desire to create great art. Keaton plays it all, wallowing in a stew of self-pity—he says he looks like “a turkey with leukemia.”—and ego while never once trying to appeal to the audience’s good graces. It’s a bravura performance that is the beating heart of this strange beast.
The supporting actors also impress. As an extreme method actor with an uncompromising attitude toward acting and fame—“Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige,” he says—the movie gives Ed Norton the most interesting and challenging part he’s had in years, and Watts is a suitably seething mass of insecurity and sexuality.
Also dazzling is the movie’s style. Filmed to look like one continuous steady-can shot, “Birdman” is as much a technical feat as it is an artistic one. Again, what could have been a stunt turns into a visual rollercoaster that propels the action forward constantly while creating a unique and stylish palette for the story.
But it doesn’t all work. Some of the insight is a bit too on the nose—“You’re no actor. You’re a celebrity.”—and labors to hammer home it’s points. The spiteful theatre critic becomes a caricature of New York intellectuals, scornful of Riggin’s accomplishments in Hollywood. ”You measure your worth in weekends,” she sneers, “and give one another awards for cartoons.” As fiery as that scene is, it feels a little too easy.
That is a small quibble, however, in a movie that takes so many chances and lampoons celebrity culture by having a reporter ask Riggins, “Is it true you have been injecting yourself with seaman from baby pigs?”
“Oblivion” is one stylish movie. Every frame could be clipped and hung on the wall to garner oohs and ahhs from your houseguests. Everything about it looks great. Morgan Freeman even wears a jaunty cape. But, I’m afraid the style took precedence over the substance. There is much to like here, but for me the story starts to go slightly out of orbit in the last hour and never quite becomes earthbound again.
Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, a security and drone maintenance man on planet earth sixty years after a war with the alien Scavs destroyed all life on the planet. Nearing the end of his mission on the desolate place, he and girlfriend Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are due to return to home base, now located in outer space. Thing is, Jack doesn’t really want to leave. He has memory jolts, little shards of recollections the life he led before the war and his memory wipe, and he wants to stay and explore them. When he discovers a human survivor, Julia (Olga Kurylenko) he begins to question everything about his existence.
This is the kind of movie Tom Cruise was born to star in, the sort of thing that made him a superstar. He understands the dynamics of anchoring a huge movie like this, and hits all the right notes in the action scenes.
Nobody outruns a fireball quite like Cruise.
The trouble is, this is a romantic sci fi movie without much of an emotional center. It’s all stark and calculated, and feels sterile.
Riseborough does bring a lot of humanity to a character who isn’t required to do much but much of the heavy lifting is left to Kurylenko’s character, and while she’s beautiful, I’m afraid she has the range of an emoticon. She does much better work in To the Wonder.
I won’t give away any spoilers from the last half because the plot thickens near the end, but it still manages to be kind of standard. Of course there is the customary scene where someone is about to be executed but is saved by an alarm, and does everyone in post apocalyptic worlds listen to classic rock? But beyond the usual Hollywood contrivances, it telegraphs virtually all of its third act reveals. Pay attention in the first hour and there’s no real need to hang around for the closing credits except for the view.
Visually director and writer Joseph “Tron” Kosinski creates an amazing world. There is a bombed out beauty to the images of New York City—you see the top of the Chrysler Building peeking up from the earth, surrounded by fields and lakes—the result, we’re told of the Scavs destroying the moon and Mother Nature destroying the rest.
Seems Mother Nature also wiped away whatever humanity was left on the planet as well.
