Posts Tagged ‘Cameron Diaz’

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY DECEMBER 5, 2014.

Screen Shot 2014-12-19 at 3.02.42 PMCP24 film critic Richard Crouse reviews “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” “Annie” and “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S REVIEWS FOR DEC 12, 2014 W “CANADA AM” HOST MARCI IEN.

Screen Shot 2014-12-19 at 10.49.12 AM“Canada AM” film critic Richard Crouse reviews “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” “Annie” and “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

 

 

 

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ANNIE: 2 STARS. “an attempt to recreate an icon for a new age.”

rs_560x415-140305165321-560.Annie-Cameron-Diaz-Jamie-Foxx-Quvenzhane-Wallis-Rose-Byrne.ms.030514Quvenzhané Wallis, the eleven-year-old Academy Award nominee, kicks the old “Annie” to the curb in the opening minutes of the reimagined story of a spunky little orphan and her foster father.

The movie begins with a curly haired red head making a presentation in class. With a flourish, she finishes her show-and-tell with a few snappy tap dance moves. Next up is Annie (Wallis) who erases the old image of the Broadway waif with a spirited “Stomp” style opening number.

It doesn’t all work, but the update does make the old “Annie” seem as au courant as “Downton Abbey.”

Set in modern day New York City, “Annie” drops the “orphan” in favor of “foster child.” Abandoned by her parents, her only connection to them is a note scribbled on the back of a restaurant bill. That scrap of paper and her scrappy attitude sustain her as she lives with a group of plucky kids at failed singer Miss Hannigan’s (Cameron Diaz) Dickensian Harlem apartment.

Her ticket out of Hannigan’s hell hole comes in the form of a viral video shot by a citizen journalist. Chasing a stray dog down the street Annie is rescued by the city’s richest citizen and mayoral candidate Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx). Unscrupulous campaign manager Guy (Bobby Cannavale) sees an opportunity to humanize his candidate and asks Annie over for a photo op.

“It’s good PR for my campaign to be seen with you,” Stacks explains to the little girl.

“If I came to live with you, you could become president,” she shoots back.

And thus Annie is invited to live in Stacks’s deluxe apartment in the sky. They form a bond and… blah, blah, blah. You can guess the rest.

Aside from a handful of songs, an overload of cute and shards of a storyline, the new “Annie” has little in common with the original musical. Director and co-screenwriter Will Gluck takes pains to make an “Annie” for a new generation but loses the spirit that made Broadway “Annie” so iconic.

“People love musicals,” he has Miss Hannigan say at one point. “Bursting into song for no apparent reason.” Except in good musicals there is always a reason for characters to burst into song. Annie doesn’t miss any opportunity to sing and dance—it even manages to turn taking out the recycling into a percussive event—but Gluck handles the transitions from dialogue to verse awkwardly. “Are you going to sing to me?” Hannigan asks Guy. “Is this happening?”

Worse, the music isn’t particularly memorable and bland, beat-heavy new school arrangements obscure the lyrics. The music is big, but the voices aren’t. Wallis has a much more natural singing style than he Broadway trained predecessors and gets lost in the mix. Ethel Merman she ain’t. The show was filled with showstoppers—“It’s the Hard-Knock Life” and “Tomorrow” among others—that are reduced in the film to aural wallpaper with choreography that could charitably be described as curious.

Wallis does plucky very well, but is rather one note, not just musically but personality wise as well. Foxx can sing but is saddled with the film’s second worst number, “I Don’t Need Anything But You,” (the “winner” is Diaz’s “Little Girls”) and Cannavale appears to be acting in a Christmas pantomime nobody told the rest of the cast about.

“Annie” is an attempt to recreate an icon for a new age but falls flatter than Miss Hannigan’s high notes.

Richard at Just for Laughs In Conversation with Nicholas Stoller!

img168Richard hosted a “ComedyPRO In Conversation” session with director Nicholas Stoller on Thursday July 24, 2014 at Just for Laughs in Montreal.

From JFL’s websiteFilmmaker Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek) is this year’s ‘In Conversation’ subject. His latest film, Neighbors, starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, laughed its way to a $51.1 million US debut over Mother’s Day weekend, and has grossed over $220 million worldwide thus far. In Conversation with Nicholas Stoller takes place at ComedyPRO on Thursday, July 24, 3 pm, at the Hyatt Regency Montreal. It is presented by the Telefilm Canada Feature Comedy Exchange, a CFC initiative in collaboration with Just For Laughs.

 

 

 

 

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RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY JULY 18, 2014.

Screen Shot 2014-07-18 at 3.38.24 PMCP24 film critic Richard Crouse shares his reviews for ‘Sex Tape’, ‘Planes: Fire and Rescue’ and ‘Boyhood.’

Watch the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S REVIEWS FOR JULY 18, 2014 W “CANADA AM” HOST MARCIA MCMILLAN.

Screen Shot 2014-07-18 at 3.40.19 PM‘Canada AM’ film critic Richard Crouse shares his reviews for ‘Sex Tape’, ‘Planes: Fire and Rescue’ and ‘Boyhood.’

Watch the whole thing HERE!

SEX TAPE: 2 STARS. “the least interesting part of the movie is the sex.”

sex-tape-trailer-600x450Any movie with the word sex in the title and Cameron Diaz in her underwear and a newly slim Jason Segel in the all-together should be a lot sexier than “Sex Tape” is. The first twenty minutes plays more like an attempt to break the world record for using the word “sex” in a movie than an actual story. They talk about sex, have sex, then talk about it some more, but rather than being racy or slap-your-thigh funny it becomes tiresome. The only word used more often is “iPad,” which is even less provocative.

Segel and Diaz are Jay and Annie, a married couple who try to spice things up in the bedroom by videotaping themselves working through the Joy of Sex page by page. All goes well until Jay forgets to delete the video and mistakenly posts their three-hour amateur porntacular on the cloud. “Our sex tape has been synced to several devices,” he says, “all of which are in the possession of friends!” With BFFs Robby (Rob Corddry) and Tess (Ellie Kemper), the embarrassed couple try and retrieve each of the “infected” iPads, especially the one in the hands of Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), the family-first CEO of the company that publishes Annie’s G-rated mommy blog.

There are a handful of laughs in “Sex Tape.” Most of them center on the iPad retrieval from Rosenbaum’s mansion. It’s a ten-minute long farce involving cocaine, a dog on a treadmill and a sex toy used as a boomerang. The sequence is out-of-control and capped by a smarmily charming performance by Rob Lowe (who knows a thing or two about sex tapes), the straight-laced executive with a wild side.

The other Rob, Corddry, is also very funny. His wide-eyed interest in his best friend’s sex tape is amusing and feels like the most genuine thing in the movie.

The whole thing feels like a premise for a joke. The story is candid but doesn’t ever feel heartfelt. For the comedy to work the audience has to be able to buy in and while many can relate to the bedroom blues on display, the movie is more concerned with titillation than sincerity.

At one point in the film Diaz talks about her love of porn, but adds she doesn’t watch it anymore because, “the quality of the writing has gone down hill. I like it when they really feel like they’re in love.” She might have been talking about her own movie.

Diaz and Segel are OK, but despite some enthusiastic (and gymnastic) performances they don’t sell the movie’s main gag. The set up is so drawn out that despite its provocative premise it never seduces the audience.

There are laughs sprinkled throughout. Segel has razor sharp comic timing and can’t help but get a giggle even when he has to rattle off endless exposition, but try as he might, he doesn’t make the same impression he did in movies like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” or “Bad Teacher,” his previous teaming with Diaz.

“Sex Tape” is an R-rated comedy in which the least interesting part of the movie is the sex and the sex talk.

Metro Reel Guys: Sex Tape. “should be a lot sexier than it is.”

sex-tape-posterSYNOPSIS: Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz are Jay and Annie, a married couple who try to spice things up in the bedroom by videotaping themselves working through the Joy of Sex page by page. All goes well until Jay forgets to delete the video and mistakenly posts their three-hour amateur porntacular on the cloud. “Our sex tape has been synced to several devices,” he says, “all of which are in the possession of friends!” With BFFs Robby (Rob Corddry) and Tess (Ellie Kemper), the embarrassed couple try and retrieve each of the “infected” iPads, especially the one in the hands of Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), the family-first CEO of the company that publishes Annie’s G-rated mommy blog.

STAR RATINGS:

Richard: 2 Stars

Mark: 2 Stars

Richard: Mark, any movie with the word sex in the title and Cameron Diaz in her underwear and a newly slim Jason Segel in the all-together should be a lot sexier than Sex Tape is. The first twenty minutes plays more like an attempt to break the world record for using the word “sex” in a movie than an actual story. Diaz and Segel talk about sex, have sex, then talk about it some more, but rather than being racy or slap-your-thigh funny it becomes tiresome. The only word used more often is “iPad,” which is even less provocative.

Mark: Richard, this movie is one of the best Apple commercials I’ve seen in years. But it does have some laughs. I couldn’t decide, though, if it was original yet flimsy or flimsy yet original. I was glad the running time clocked in at a neat 90 min as it was wearing out its welcome fast. That’s mostly because Cameron Diaz’ smokin’ hot bod is naked only in the first half of the picture. She has a pretty good chemistry with Jason Segal, but Rob Lowe steals the show. Considering his own past, it’s a neat bit of stunt casting.

RC: The Robs are the best part of the movie. The iPad retrieval from Rosenbaum’s mansion gives Rob Lowe (who knows a thing or two about sex tapes) a chance for some off-the-wall fun as the straight-laced executive with a wild side. Rob Corddry’s wide-eyed interest in his best friend’s sex tape was amusing and felt like the most genuine thing in the movie. I thought Diaz and Segel were OK, but I didn’t buy into the movie’s main joke for a second.

MB: Yes, well, talk about a manufactured crisis! There’s lots to pick apart here, especially the subplot involving Corddry’s blackmailing teenage son. But there’s some nifty dialogue, especially at the beginning of the movie, and a scene I liked at the porn server’s with a cameo by a Famous Comic Actor. By the way, all those porn website titles they spiel off are real ones, or, umm, so I was told by the guy sitting next to me.

RC: Hey! I was sitting next to you. I take the fifth. Unlike you, I hated the first section of the movie. I thought the least interesting part of the movie was the sex and the sex talk.

MB: No one will mistake this movie for the classic comedies of Preston Sturges. The movie aims low and thereby exceeds expectations. Not very demanding, but it is summer.

Metro Canada: Sex Tape and a short history of sex tape movies

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By Richard Crouse – In Focus Metro Canada

For many people, especially those who troll around in the more unsavoury corners of the Internet, the first exposure to celebs like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian came from that most modern form of celebrity introduction: the sex tape.

Paris and Kim’s videoed sexcapades weren’t the first tapes to become public — in 1988 Rob Lowe was embarrassed when VHS images of him and two women popped up on the news — and they weren’t the last.

This week in Sex Tape, Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz are Jay and Annie, a married couple who try to spice things up in the bedroom by videotaping themselves. All goes well until Jay forgets to erase the tape and mistakenly stores it on the Internet. “Our sex tape has been synced to several devices,” he says, “all of which are in the possession of friends!”

Given how many actors have appeared in sex tapes it’s not surprising that several movies have used the raunchy videos as a plot point.

In Brüno, the titular Austrian fashion reporter (Sacha Baron Cohen) tries to make a name for himself in America by making a sex tape with another famous American, U.S. Congressman Ron Paul. Trouble was, Paul wasn’t in on the joke. “I was expecting an interview on Austrian economics,” said Paul. “But, by the time he started pulling his pants down, I was like ‘What is going on here?’ I ran out of the room. This interview has ended.”

The 2006 comedy Drop Box has production values not unlike that of an actual sex tape but despite its low budget it offers up the funny and often brutal story about Mindy (Rachel Sehl), a big-time bubblegum pop star (think Britney or Miley), who accidentally returns her homemade sex tape to her local video store instead of Glitter, the movie she rented. Realizing her mistake, she tries to re-rent the tape.

Clocking in at just 80 minutes, it’s a character study about a spoiled pop princess who butts heads with an unmovable force in the form of the uncooperative and inquisitive clerk (David Cormican).

Finally, Auto Focus exposes sex tapes’ dark side. Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane’s (Greg Kinnear) all-American public persona hid a secret obsession. “I’m a normal, red-blooded American man,” he says. “I like to look at naked women.” According to the film, he liked making sex tapes with women, usually without their knowledge. The movie speculates his 1978 murder may have been related to this unlawful pastime.