Posts Tagged ‘Claire Foy’

RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS & MORE FOR OCTOBER 20.

Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at Andrew Garfield’s romantic medical drama “Breathe,” the ice cold crime drama “The Snowman” and the controversial “Una.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

BREATHE: 3 STARS. “the bubbliest movie about polio ever made.”

In “Breathe” Andrew Garfield plays Robin Cavendish, one of the longest-lived responauts in Britain history. It is, among other things, undoubtedly the bubbliest movie about polio ever made.

The opening moments of breeze are so unrelentingly chipper that as an audience member you just know the party will soon and in some sort of tragedy will happen. When we first meet Cavendish it’s 1958. He’s a young, vital man who falls in love at first sight with Diana Blacker (Claire Foy), a beautiful, rich woman he meets at a cricket match. It’s all sunshine and roses as they quickly fall in love, get married, get pregnant and move to Kenya to pursue Robin’s career as a tea merchant.

It’s a picture perfect romance until Robin’s health begins to falter. He’s short of breath, his limb ache. Soon he can barely stand. By the time he is diagnosed with polio he is paralyzed from the neck down. “The result is you become like a ragdoll,” Diana is told by the doctor. “He can’t breath for himself. The paralysis is irreversible.”

Grim news for the newlyweds. Given just three months to live Robin asks to be allowed to die but his doctors and Diana will hear nothing of it. Hooked up to a ventilator he lays motionless and despondent in a hospital ward waiting for the inevitable. Unable to find any joy in life he tries to push Diana away but she perseveres, visiting everyday.

Then the jaunty music reappears on the soundtrack and a smile returns to Robin’s face. The couple hatch a plan to move home so Robin can live out his final moments surrounded by the creature comforts of home. “No one, anywhere in the world with your husband’s degree of disability exists outside a hospital,” warns the doctor. Except that he does. In fact he thrives, living for decades, becoming an activist for disabled people and helping to design mobile life support machines to untether patients from their beds. “Do you see a creature who is barely alive,” he asks, “or a man who escaped the confines of a hospital board? I don’t want to just survive I want to truly live.”

“Breathe” breathes the same air as other indomitable spirit movies like “My Left Foot” and “The Theory of Everything.” The big difference is that this is a relentlessly upbeat film. “Are we plucky or pitiful” asks Diana. The answer is obvious but eventually there is something endearing, winning even, about its uncompromisingly buoyant tone. Perhaps that’s because director Andy Serkis paints the story as a love story rather than a medical drama or maybe it’s because of the winning performances from Garfield and Foy.

Garfield is ostensibly the lead but it is Foy who impresses. “The Crown” actress is the heart and soul of the story, providing a rock solid foundation for Garfield’s character.

“Breathe” doesn’t have the gravitas of “The Theory of Everything”—it spends too much time trying to wring all the emotion out of the story like tears from a sponge—but it does have compassion and heart.

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY NOVEMBER 14, 2014.

Screen Shot 2014-11-14 at 2.31.16 PMCP24 film critic Richard Crouse reviews the weekend’s big releases, “Dumb and Dumber To,” “Rosewater” and “Beyond the Lights.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S REVIEWS FOR NOV 14, 2014 W “CANADA AM” HOST BEVERLEY THOMSON.

Screen Shot 2014-11-14 at 11.00.34 AM“Canada AM” film critic Richard Crouse reviews the weekend’s big releases, “Dumb and Dumber To,” “Rosewater” and “Beyond the Lights.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

ROSEWATER: 3 STARS. “Stewart brings sincerity and emotion to the film.”

rosewater_2“The Daily Show’s” brand of satirical political humour has become a legit source of news for many young people and is so influential Barack Obama has been a frequent guest. But being on the show hasn’t always worked out well for guests.

In 2009, Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari (Gael García Bernal) was arrested and detained for 118 days after an interview he did on “The Daily Show” aired. The tongue-in-cheek piece featured regular correspondent Jason Jones claiming to be an American spy interviewing Bahari. Iranian officials, under the rule of newly “elected president” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, didn’t get the joke and Bahari was roused from his mother’s home and taken to jail while his pregnant English fiancée (Claire Foy) waited four months not knowing what was to become of the father of her child.

While in solitary at Evin Prison Bahari is blindfolded and interrogated by The Specialist (Kim Bodnia), a zealot who smells of rosewater. Breaking Bahari’s spirit, the interrogator convinces him to make a televised statement denouncing his actions as a “spy” for Iran’s enemies.

This is a true story, based on a memoir written by the main character, so it is no spoiler to mention that after months of physical and mental torture he is released just in time to see his child born in England.

Jon Stewart, stepping out from behind the “Daily Show” desk and into the director’s chair, divides the movie into two halves. The first half concentrates on Bahari’s coverage of the election. It’s fast, frantic and occasionally even funny mix of news and original footage that sets the scene for what is to come.

The second hour, post arrest, is slower, but more intense. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions as Bahari tries to figure out why he is there and what will happen. The blindfold adds to his fear; sightless he can’t see where the next slap might come from. The dynamic between the questioned and his questioner shifts constantly, never more so than in a scene where Bahari, Scheherazade-style, strings the Specialist along with some randy (and untrue) stories of his one thousand and one nights spent in exotic massage parlors.

Their interaction is at the heart of “Rosewater.” Stewart hasn’t opened the story up much in terms of building subtext—unlike his work on “The Daily Show,” the movie is very straightforward—but does bring sincerity and emotion to the film but the over-all “never give up” message seems trite given the backdrop of the story.