I join CTV Atlantic anchor Todd Battis to talk about the action comedy “The Accountant 2,” the David Cronenberg movie “The Shrouds,” the stoner documentary “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” and the family fantasy film “The Legend of Ochi.”
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 how realistic the movie “Conclave” is, some election themed movies and we talk about “The Accountant” and “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” playing in theatres.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I joined CP24 Breakfast to have a look at new movies coming to theatres, including Ben Affleck in “The Accountant 2,” David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds,” the documentary “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” and the family fantasy “The Legend of Ochi.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including Ben Affleck in “The Accountant 2,” David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds,” the documentary “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” and the family fantasy “The Legend of Ochi.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In the “The Accountant 2,” a new Ben Affleck action comedy now playing in theatres, money laundering forensic accountant Christian Wolff (Affleck), his bruiser brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) and Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) must use Christian’s special set of skills to stay alive as they track down a group of human traffickers. “Most brains seek a pattern that’s familiar,” Christian says. “My brain doesn’t work that way.”
CAST: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, J. K. Simmons, Daniella Pineda. Directed by Gavin O’Connor.
REVIEW: Appropriately released during tax season, this buddy film of two brothers, a neurodivergent accountant and a hitman, is equal parts light and playful and dangerous and dark. With a line dancing scene and a human trafficking ring run out of a pizza company, it’s complicated and messy, but thoroughly entertaining.
The key to finding the film’s entertainment value is patience. Following a standard action thriller set up involving a retired FBI financial crimes agent (J.K. Simmons), a mysterious killer (Daniella Pineda) and determined FBI agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), the movie finally gets to the heart of the matter, the dynamic between brothers Christian (Ben Affleck) and Braxton Wolff (Jon Bernthal).
The movie still goes a bit heavy on exposition, but Affleck and Bernthal are an appealing combo who dance on the thin line between danger and whimsy. Both are stone cold killers, but each brings a different flavor to the story.
Affleck plays Christian as part 007, part John Nash. A deadly mix of mathematician and tactician, stereotypically, he speaks in clipped sentences and is matter of fact in the extreme, but in his relationship with Braxton there’s a sense of history and nuance in a movie that doesn’t favor nuance.
Bernthal is volatile and vulnerable, physical and funny, but his real strength is as a foil for Affleck. His action movie bona fides give some extra oomph to the climatic shoot out, but it is the brotherly bond, and their love-hate relationship, that gives the movie a beating heart.
“The Accountant 2’s” unnecessarily complicated plot and serviceable action exist essentially to put Christian and Braxton on screen together, which is fine when the result is as entertaining as this movie.
It may be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the words Nike and basketball were not synonymous. Way back in the early years of the Reagan administration, Nike was a third tier sneaker company, better known for lagging behind Adidas and Converse than for their now famous swoosh logo.
“Air,” a new sports drama that reteams Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, tells the story of the celebrity endorsement that changed the game for Nike, sports merchandising and popular culture.
Damon is Sonny Vaccaro, a pudgy marketer who tries to convince basketball stars to align themselves with Nike. Trouble is, back then the company was best known for making comfortable shoes for middle-aged joggers.
“There’s nothing cool about Nike,” says college basketball coach George Raveling (Marlon Wayans).
When Vaccaro finds rookie Michael Jordan (Damian Delano Young), he is convinced the 21-year-old backboard-shattering phenom could be the face of the company. “I believe he is the future,” says Vaccaro. Now all he has to do is convince his skeptical boss, the elaborately toupéed Phil Knight (Affleck), and Jordan’s even more skeptical parents James and Deloris (James R. Jordan Sr. and Viola Davis) that this is a good deal for everybody.
“I believe in your son,” he says to Deloris. “And his story is going to make us want to fly. But a show is just a shoe.”
“Until my son steps into it,” she replies.
“Air” is a biography of a brand that, somehow, doesn’t feel like a two-hour advertisement for basketball shoes. That’s because it’s really not about the shoes, although there are several beauty shots of the prototype Air Jordans. Like all good sports stories, the specificity of the story, in this case Vaccaro’s journey, becomes a universal story of inspiration, determination and risk taking.
Damon is in likable puppy dog mode here, handing in an affable performance that relies on his considerable charm as an actor to buoy the movie’s never-say-die themes. We know how this story ends, but because Damon is easy to get on side with, we go along for the ride.
He’s supported by a terrific secondary cast, including Jason Bateman and Chris Tucker as the rule-breaking members of the Nike marketing team and Chris Messina as an over-the-top agent who says, “I don’t have friends. I have clients.”
As Michael Jordan’s mother Deloris, it is Viola Davis who delivers the film’s most potent message. In a performance fueled by grit and warmth, the character’s steadfast belief in knowing the value of a person is conveyed without a trace of sentiment or manipulation.
The lack of Michael Jordan, in what is essentially a Jordan origin story of a sort, is puzzling. Affleck, who also directed the movie, says because Jordan is so well known, he felt making him a character would be distracting. We’ll never know for sure, but it does feel odd that on the handful of times he appears—other than in archival footage—we never see his face, only his back and shoulders and usually out of focus.
According to “Air,” number three on Nike’s business manifesto was “Break the rules,” and certainly, in the courting and signing of Jordan, they did. Affleck breaks fewer rules, using standard montages and a lot of needle drops to establish the 1980s backdrop. We’ve seen a lot of this stuff before, usually in movies that aren’t as good as this one. But despite some familiar visuals and music, “Air’s” underdog story is still a crowd-pleaser.
“Deep Water,” the new movie from Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, now streaming on Prime Video, is an erotic thriller in name only.
Neither erotic or thrilling, it lacks the smoldering energy of director Adrian Lyne’s previous work. Movies like “9 ½ Weeks” and “Unfaithful” established him as a steamer of screens, but that was then.
This is now. A better title for “Deep Water” may have been “Cold Water.”
Affleck plays Vic, a retired software developer who made a fortune designing a chip that helps drones locate and destroy targets. He spends his days with his daughter while his wild wife Melinda (de Armas), having grown bored of their routine, entertains herself with a series of very public affairs. For the most part Vic bites his lip but when one of Melinda’s flings winds up dead, face down in their pool, cuckold Vic becomes a suspect and their already tenuous situation comes closer to the breaking point.
Lyne, in his first film in twenty years, seems unable to tease out the tension from the love-hate story, sexual or otherwise. The repeated affair/disappearance cycle gets old fast and Lyne does little to make us care about any of them, Vic, Melinda or her unfortunate boyfriends.
I can say that Affleck has one of the best scowls in movies, but that’s not enough to hang an entire performance on. A Sad Affleck meme come to life, for much of the movie it appears he’s given up, Ben, not Vic. It’s as though he stopped caring after the first reel. Vic should display hidden reserves of resolve but Affleck’s performance is as inert as the film.
De Armas, so wonderful in “Knives Out” and “No Time to Die,” is reduced to an eye-batting subject for Lyne’s male gaze.
A tepid psychosexual cuckold tale with a side of murder and loose ends galore, “Deep Water” wastes its stars in a movie that does not rise to the challenge of exploring the story’s themes of morality, murder and marriage.
Richard and CTV NewsChannel host Angie Seth have a look “The Tender Bar” (Amazon Prime), the Olivia Coleman drama “The Lost Daughter” (on Netflix) and the heartwarming “June Again” (VOD/Digital).
Watch the whole thing HERE!
There are many life lessons in “The Tender Bar,” a new easygoing drama starring Ben Affleck based on the life of journalist and author J.R. Moehringer, and now streaming on Amazon Prime. Set in and around The Dickens, a bar named after the author of “David Copperfield,” barstool wisdom about the value of books, education, taking care of your mother and “not keeping money like a drunk” in the front pocket of your shirt, abounds.
The story begins in 1973 Long Island. “Radar Love” by Golden Earring out of the car the car radio and the impressionable J.R. (played as a youngster by Daniel Ranieri) lives with his mom Dorothy (Lily Rabe) and cranky grandfather (Christopher Lloyd). His father, a radio DJ nicknamed The Voice (Max Martini), isn’t in the picture.
J.R.’s father figure is Uncle Charlie (Affleck), charming bookworm and owner of the Dickens. He is a font of advice, all of which J.R. soaks up “the male sciences” like a sponge. Charlie’s instructions range from the pragmatic—never order bar scotch neat—to the ideological—he urges J.R. to study philosophy. “You always do well in that class,” he says, “because there’s no right answers.”
Charlie’s guidance and the colorful regulars who populate the bar, like Bobo (Michael Braun) and Joey D (Matthew Delamater), help form J.R.’s young life. “When you’re 11 years old,” he says, “you want an Uncle Charlie.”
Cut to a decade later.
J.R., having inherited his Uncle Charlie’s love of storytelling and words, is a student at Yale, studying law but with aspirations to be a writer. Now played by Tye Sheridan, he falls in love with Sidney (Briana Middleton), a smart, “lower upper middle class” schoolmate who gives J.R. another lesson in heartbreak.
“The Tender Bar” is a low key coming-of-age story that works best when it has a glass in front of it. That is to say, when it concentrates on the Dickens and the life lessons young J.R. absorbs at the bar. Those scenes have a lovely nostalgic feel. Director George Clooney vividly recreates a time when ten-year-olds were sent to the local corner bar to by a pack of cigarettes for grandpa. Clooney sets the stage, but it is the actors who bring it to life.
As Affleck settles in to the character actor phase of his career, he’s doing some of his best work. His Uncle Charlie has an effortless charm, a fierce intellect and is a bit of a scoundrel. It’s a performance that feels perfectly shaped and worn in, like an old baseball glove.
The scenes Affleck shares with Ranieri provide the film’s highlights. The young actor, making his film debut, brings genuine curiosity to J.R., a kid who has been knocked around but who always has his eyes to the future. It’s a delightful performance. Sheridan nicely mirrors the character as a young adult, but it is Ranieri who makes us care about J.R.
“The Tender Bar” is a nicely crafted, circumspect look at J.R.’s life. The stakes feel low and big dramatic moments are few and far between, but this textured look at the importance of community, including the drunks at the bar, in the formative stages of J.R.’s life is an understated winner.
