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.
The last time we saw William Shatner and Christopher Lloyd on screen together they were outer space enemies battling over a doomsday device in “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.” Reunited in “Senior Moment,” a new old-codger rom com now on VOD, their relationship this time around is more earthbound.
Shatner is retired NASA test pilot Victor Martin. He tools around Palm Springs with the love of his life, a vintage Porsche convertible. One afternoon, after spending the day with his BFF Sal Spinelli (Lloyd), he’s stopped at a light when Pablo Torres (Carlos Miranda) pulls up and challenges him to a street race. Never one to back down Victor agrees, and a few out-of-control minutes later, his license is pulled and his beloved car impounded by DA Tess Woodson (Beth Littleford).
A chance encounter with cafe owner Caroline Summers (Jean Smart) on public transit leads to romance. At least, when Victor’s jealousy of Caroline’s friendship with painter Diego Lozana (Esai Morales) doesn’t get in the way.
“Senior Moment” offers the pleasures of watching the seasoned cast breathe some life into the hackneyed material. For instance, Shatner talking dirty to his car — “A good shower before a wild ride is all you need. Ooh my, you make heads turn. I like that.”— is a joke that’s been around for as long as there have been filthy cars to talk dirty about. The jokes may be stale, but Shatner, Smart and Lloyd milk whatever entertainment value can be squeezed from a script that feels like it migrated to the screen from another era.
This week on the Richard Crouse Show Podcast: If you love records like Joshua Tree, Wrecking Ball, and Time out of Mind you know my guest’s work. Daniel Lanois has an incredible resume. His work as a producer for U2, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan, the Neville Brothers, Robbie Robertson and Neil Young among many others led Rolling Stone Magazine to say, “His unmistakable fingerprints are all over an entire wing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
Lanois has moved back to Canada and launched the brand new Maker Series imprint out of his Toronto-based recording studio. First up in the Maker Series is a solo record called Heavy Sun. A soulful, joyous album recorded in Los Angeles and Toronto that fuses classic gospel and modern electronics. He says the intent of the music is to “lift people’s spirits.”
Then, we meet Jessica Bruder, author of the 2017 book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,” and Bob Wells, a real-life nomad and one of the stars of the Oscar nominated film “Nomadland.”
Then, the man, the myth, the legend William Shatner. His career is so epic it spans generations. Some will remember him as the iconic Capt. James T Kirk of the USS Enterprise. Others know him as the veteran police sergeant in T. J. Hooker. Still others think of him as the host of the reality-based television series Rescue 911 or the “Big Giant Head” from 3rd Rock from the Sun or as attorney Denny Crane both in the final season of the legal drama The Practice and in its spinoff series Boston Legal. He’s an actor, an author a singer and now the star of Senior Moment a new rom com on VOD this week.
The romantic comedy focuses on Shatner’s character Victor, a retired pilot whose life goes into a tailspin after he loses his driver’s license, but starts looking up when he finds love with a character played by Jean Smart.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
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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 Ethan Hawke, director Brad Bird, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Roberts, Brian Henson, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. “The most interesting man in the world,” and best selling author Linwood Barclay.
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Every action movie worth their salt has a catchphrase, and “Nobody,” in theatres only, has a pretty good one. “Don’t call 911,” Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) says to his wife (Connie Nielsen) before taking on an army of baddies. It’s his “I’ll be back,” a line that tells you everything you need to know about the character’s confidence in his special set of skills.
But, when we first meet him unassuming suburban dad Hutch leads a life of quiet desperation. Under appreciated at home, a joke at work, he makes Rodney Dangerfield look like a well-respected man about town by comparison.
He is, by his own admission, a nobody.
When burglars invade his home, his son (Gage Munroe) fights back, but Hutch freezes. Later, when one of the cops of the scene says, “You know, if this was my family…” Hutch’s humiliation hangs heavy in the unspoken words.
But there’s more to Hutch than meets the eye. Turns out he’s an everyman who can kill every man. A former clean-up guy for “one of those three letter organizations,” he left the game for a normal life, but “over-corrected” and became everybody’s doormat. “I always knew it was a facade,” he says of his suburban life, “but it lasted longer than I expected.”
The aftermath of the burglary awakens a long dormant piece of his personality and when he single-handedly takes on a group of Russian toughs on a bus—to the strains of Steve Lawrence crooning “I’ve Gotta Be Me”—he earns the attention of karaoke singing crime boss Yulian Kuznetsov (Aleksey Serebryakov).
What follows is a violent, funny mix of “John Wick” and “Home Alone.”
There isn’t much to “Nobody” except for Hutch’s transformation and his ever-escalating way of offing the hordes of gun toting goons sent to silence him. Director Ilya Naishuller keeps the narrative to a minimum, doling out the exposition in the form of action instead of words. It’s fun, fast-paced and owes a nod to Guy Ritchie’s patented tricky editing and may be the most unexpected good time at the movies since terrible people killed John Wick’s dog.
From bewildered to badass, Odenkirk is an unlikely action star. Slight and wiry, he’s a like a coiled snake, and when he strikes he takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’. Unlike most action stars he gets the crap knocked out of him, but like most action stars, he’s relentless. It’s about as far away from his work on the “Mr. Show” as you could get. It’s more like a bloodied and bruised 1970s one man army character—think Charles Bronson—than anything he has done before.
It’s a compelling character, but a movie like “Nobody” is nothing without the fight scenes. Rest assured the action sequences are, as Hutch’s dad David (Christopher Lloyd) says, “just a bit excessive, but glorious.”
The trouble with making a feel good movie about a scoundrel is twofold. Either the scoundrel is neutered, which makes them less interesting, or remains a scoundrel, which complicates the feel good vibe. “Boundaries,” a new film starring Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer, tries to have it both ways and ends up in the mushy middle.
Farmiga is Laura, a single mom with son Henry (Lewis MacDougall), a house full of rescued animals and daddy issues. “I’m so messed up I can’t even tell my therapist everything,” she says. She’s been working at setting up boundaries with her father Jack—when he calls the name display reads, “Don’t Pick Up!”—but when he gets kicked out of his nursing home due to his “unorthodox“—i.e. “illegal”—ways of making money she agrees to help him by driving him to Los Angeles to live with his other daughter Jojo (Kristen Schaal).
The formerly estranged father and daughter, along with Henry and a backseat full of stray dogs set out for what should be an uneventful trip. Trouble is, Jack is the above-mentioned scoundrel and a drug dealer who fills the trunk with $200,000 of marijuana he plans on selling along the way. When he isn’t dealing they detour to visit old friends, like Stanley (Christopher Lloyd), a nudist art forger and other ghosts from Jack and Laura’s past. As dad gets up to his old tricks Laura sees a different side of the man she thought she knew. But can he really change or is her ex-husband Leonard (Bobby Cannavale) right when he says, “An elephant will always be an elephant. He will never be a monkey.”
“Boundaries” has a fine cast trapped by a conventional script.
Farmiga battles through the family dramedy clichés to portray Laura as vulnerable and protective, a woman who has filled the hole in her heart with her stray animals and a fierce love of her Henry.
MacDougall is strong as a troubled youth who, when he isn’t drawing nude portraits of his friends and teachers to reveal their true souls, is caught up in the adventure of getting to know his untraditional grandfather.
It is Plummer, however, who brings the charm. He’s likely too old to be playing Farmiga’s father but his trademarked twinkle shines through. When Laura says, “You make people fall in love with you and then you leave,” she sums up both Jack’s appeal and his selfishness. Plummer, at 88, is a formidable actor whose mere presence elevates this Cliché-A-Thon from “Old Codger on a Road Trip Part XXII” to “Skilful Actor Transcending the Material.” It’s a terrific performance that nonetheless rings hollow. Jack is a man who only ever cared about himself, who abandoned his family and calls his relationship with Henry “a temporary situation,” and is the square peg rammed into this round hole of a feel good story.
In movies like “Boundaries” (MILD SPOILER!!) everyone gets a happy ending but Jack would have been more interesting if writer-director Shana Feste had allowed the scoundrel to remain a scoundrel.
“Going in Style” is a blistering social commentary disguised as an old coot caper comedy. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin play factory workers who did all the right things only to have the system give them the middle finger in old age.
A remake from the 1979 George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg adventure “Going in Style,” the movie begins with Joe (Caine) confronting his condescending bank manager (John Pais). The older man’s mortgage has tripled and he will soon be evicted from his home. As they argue, outside the manager’s office armed masked men invade the bank, scooping handfuls of cash from the tellers. Joe is unharmed in the heist—one of the thieves tells him, “It is a culture’s duty to take care of the elderly.”—and later excitedly tells his family and friends Willie (Freeman) and Al (Arkin) about the robbery.
The afternoon’s excitement aside, Joe’s financial situation is still dire. His old company, now in the midst of a takeover, has frozen all pension cheques. He needs to come up with a way to get his hands on some cash. Ditto for Willie, who needs a new kidney and Al who can barely afford to feed himself.
When their favourite waitress gives them a free piece of pie with the truism, “Everybody deserves pie,” it dawns on Joe that she’s right. “We should be having our pie and eating it too,” he says, hatching a plan to steal back their pensions. “These banks practically destroyed this country and nothing ever happened to them,” he says. “If we get caught we get a bed, three meals a day and free healthcare.”
“Going in Style” then drops the social commentary and becomes a heist flick. Think “The Italian Job” with electric wheelchairs and you’ll get the idea.
Much of the charm of “Going in Style” comes from watching Caine, Freeman and Arkin glide—OK, it’s more like shuffle—through this material. There’s nothing particularly new here, we’ve seen loads of elderly men take back their lives on film in recent years, but subtext and actor goodwill elevate this slight story.
Caine, Freeman and Arkin are formidable actors but expertly portray the invisibility that can come with old age. As eighty-somethings they are unseen—banks take advantage of them, the police ignore them—until they take their future into their own hands. The story is implausible but by the time the heist happens you want the best for these grandpas, no matter how silly the story gets.
“Going in Style” is part knockabout comedy, part rage against the machine. Director Zach Braff adds in just enough sentimentality and slapstick to frame the film’s message of “having a pie of pie whenever the hell I want to!”
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
“My father’s a lot of unpleasant things. A murderer’s not one of them.”
That’s how Robert Downey Jr. describes his father, the titular character in this weekend’s legal thriller The Judge. Robert Duvall plays the irascible old judge, who, when accused of vehicular manslaughter, must reluctantly rely on his estranged lawyer son for a defence in court. While he’s on the bench, he’s a no-nonsense justice who doles out old-fashioned common sense along with his judgments. In one case, he makes a deadbeat dad hand over his brand-new truck to his ex-wife, joining a long list of movie magistrates who have meted out law and order on the big screen.
Remember Fred Gwynne as My Cousin Vinny’s Judge Chamberlain Haller —his classic question, “What is a yoot?” may be one of the most famous movie lines delivered from the bench — but how about Judge Doom, the much feared judge of Toontown? As played by Christopher Lloyd in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, he presides over a town of cartoon characters, punishing lawbreakers with the dreaded Dip, a bubbling vat of turpentine, acetone and benzene that “erases” them. His mission is to pin the murder of Marvin Acme on Roger Rabbit. “I’ll catch the rabbit, I’ll try him, convict him and execute him!”
Everyone has heard the term “judge, jury and executioner,” but Judge Dredd adds one more title, police officer. Set in 2080, this Sylvester Stallone movie sees the justice system boiled down to Street Judges who enforce the laws and dole out instant justice. When Joseph Dredd is convicted for a crime he didn’t commit, he must prove his innocence. “The evidence has been falsified! It’s impossible! I never broke the law, I AM THE LAW!”
Finally, a more conventional judge is seen in Anatomy of a Murder, the 1959 Otto Preminger film about an army lieutenant accused of murdering a bartender who attacked his wife. The all-star cast — defence attorney James Stewart, George C. Scott as the prosecutor, Ben Gazzara and Lee Remick as the defendant and his wife — was presided over by real-life lawyer Joseph N. Welch as Judge Weaver. Welch made several pictures, but is best remembered as the attorney who represented the Army in the McCarthy hearings and scolded the Communist-hunting senator with the famous words, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” when he verbally attacked a member of Welch’s law firm.
