SYNOPSIS: In “Thunderbolts*,” the new Marvel superhero movie starring Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan now playing in theatres, a team of mostly of reformed supervillains must confront their past deeds when they’re lured into a deadly trap by the manipulative Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
CAST: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Directed by Jake Schreier.
REVIEW: A popcorn movie that delivers big boffo action and introspective moments, “Thunderbolts* is a welcome return to form for Marvel after a rough couple of years.
Marvel has often examined ideas of responsibility within their superhuman characters, but rarely have they delved into mental health issues as they do here.
As Yelena Belova, a Black Widow assassin whose hands are stained by blood, Florence Pugh has the physicality to play the rough n’ tumble character, but it is her meditative side that makes her interesting. She can punch, kill and quip with the best of them, but in her work is tinged with an edge of loneliness and lack of purpose that are the result of her deadly, isolating work.
Handled with maturity, the examination of mental health is sensitive, especially so in the case of Bob (Lewis Pullman), who (SLIGHT SPOILER) becomes Yelena’s guide into “The Void,” a dark place where their trauma is endlessly enacted. These vividly rendered scenes of mental anguish are as vivid and suspenseful as any of the film’s battle scenes, but they also provide backstory that deepens the characters and relationships.
“Thunderbolts*” is meditative up a point, but this isn’t a Marvel movie à la Ingmar Bergman.
The character’s self-analysis fuels the gritty action as the entire misfit team—Belova, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (a very funny David Harbour), John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen)—learn they are stronger together than apart.
One for all and all for one.
It’s pop psychology, but it provides a welcome entryway into exploring larger themes of psychological trauma left from a lifetime of killing and personal loss.
Is it too soon to say that “Thunderbolts*” harkens back to “classic” Marvel on the big screen? It’s back to basics, doing away with multiverses and the onerous weight of crossovers with the other films, to deliver an entertaining, relatively straight-ahead blockbuster with action, humor and heart.
On the Saturday March 8, 2025 edition of “The Richard Crouse Show” we’ll meet Paul Sun-Hyung Lee. You know the Canadian Screen Award winner as family patriarch Appa on “Kim’s Convenience,” and as Inspector Albert Choi, the new head of Station House No 4, on “Murdoch Mysteries” and as Captain Captain Carson Teva on the Star War series “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Ahsoka.”
Today we’ll talk about all that and his new film “Night of the Zoopocalypse,” a new animated adventure now playing in theatres, a space virus turns the animals at Colepepper Zoo into gummi-bear looking zombies. As an animal apocalypse develops, a timber wolf and a mountain lion search for a cure and a way to stop Bunny Zero, leader of the mutants.
Then, we’ll meet British actor Lucien Laviscount, star of “Emily in Paris” and the new rom com “This Time Next Year.” It’s the story of two Londoners, Quinn and Minnie who meet by chance and realize they were born in the same hospital on the same day, a minute apart, but their lives have gone in different directions since that day.
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 Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
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Sometimes truth is truly stranger than fact. “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” a new anything-is-possible movie, now playing in theatres, is the unlikely, but true, story of Jann Mardenborough, a gamer who defied expectations in the real world. “Listen son,” says his father Steve. “You think you’re going to play your stupid video games about cars, and you’re going to become a race car driver?”
When we first meet Jann (Archie Madekwe) he’s a nineteen-year-old underwear salesperson, who, when he isn’t selling briefs, spends his time playing Gran Turismo, a racing simulation video game that emulates the experience of elite car racing. He dreams of getting behind the wheel for real, but will his thousands of hours on the simulation translate to the real world?
He gets a chance to find out the answer to that question when Nissan motorsport executive Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) proposes a wild marketing idea. He wants to gather the best Gran Turismo players, train them at Nissan’s GT Academy, and, under the watchful eye of crusty trainer Jack Salter (David Harbour), enroll them in real life races. The winners of the competition will earn a spot on Team Nissan and a “place in history.” Jann’s high scores catch Moore’s attention, and after a qualifying simulation, Jann is off to the races. Literally.
Despite initial setbacks, the disdain of pit crews and the other drivers who consider him a novelty, a simulation driver playing in the big leagues, Jann excels and finds himself pitted against Europe’s finest drivers.
“Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story” is essentially a series of races with some family drama, a hint of romance, some twisted metal and flying tires and heaping loads of product placement and sports cliches wedged in between. It’s a crowd pleaser with some fist-in-the-air moments, but emotionally, it’s on cruise control.
Director Neill Blomkamp never strays from the traditional underdog sports movie formula.
Mardenborough’s story is remarkable. Unfortunately, the telling of it isn’t as remarkable. It goes pedal to the metal on sports cliches—“I’m going to push you harder than you’ve ever been pushed before,” roars Salter.— and follows the same path to the big race as many others have taken before.
But sports movies are never really only about the sport. They are about universal themes, like, in this case, an underdog following his dreams. On that score, “Gran Turismo” works well enough. The story itself is manipulative, but when the movie is speeding around a track at 200 miles an hour, it is an exciting manifestation of Mardenborough’s dreams coming true. When the characters are talking, it is more a cavalcade of cliches and easy exposition.
Of course, there are exceptions. For example, Mardenborough listens to soft rock to psyche himself for races, leading Salter to bellow, “You take all that Kenny G anger and you release it.” It’s a good, funny line and it ranks up there with my other favorite movie line, “I’m from Waterloo, where the vampires hang out,” from “Blackberry” earlier this year.
It’s hard to dislike a movie as relentlessly upbeat as “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story.” As the cars whiz around the track it is all forward momentum in service of the inspiring story. It’s just a shame that the human parts of the tale aren’t as immersive as the racing scenes.
The ghost played by David Harbour in the new Netflix movie “We Have a Ghost” may not be quite as friendly as Casper, but that’s only because his life, and afterlife, were grave affairs.
An adaptation of “Ernest,” a “socially mediated ghost story” by Geoff Manaugh, originally posted in Vice, the new film begins with Frank (Anthony Mackie) looking of a new start for his family, including his lonely, guitar obsessed son Kevin (Jahi Winston). A rambling old home appears to be calling out for a new family, but there is one problem. The place is haunted by the spirit of Ernest (Harbour), a restless, bowling-shirt wearing ghost who, attracted to Kevin’s guitar playing, materializes in the home’s attic.
“You moved into the house of death?” asks Kevin’s neighbor (Isabella Russo) incredulously.
Ernest can’t speak, but the two connect, sensing the trauma that has touched each other’s lives.
When Frank finds Kevin’s video of Ernest he senses a chance to make money off the wayward spirit. He sets up a YouTube channel, and soon Ernest’s story has attracted the attention of millions of viewers, a television psychic (Jennifer Coolidge) and a C.I.A. agent (Tig Notaro) determined to get to the bottom of this ghostly story.
What begins as a way for Frank to make some quick cash becomes a heartfelt investigation into Ernest’s life before the afterlife.
“We Have a Ghost” is not really a ghost story. It’s more a story of fathers and sons, of tragedy and truth, of connection and disconnection, with a side order of the supernatural. The set-up sounds slapsticky—“There’s a ghost in the house!!”—but soon settles into its own vibe, part introspective, part bittersweet and part “Scooby-Doo. The elements don’t all easily fit side-by-side like puzzle pieces, but Harbour binds them together with a silent performance that brings both pathos and absurdity to Ernest.
The hard shifts in tone give “We Have a Ghost” an uneven feel. It feels scattershot, as though it is trying to make up its mind about what it is trying to be. The mash-up of horror, comedy and family friendly never gels, but there are highlights like Jennifer Coolidge, who brightens things up as a parody of an ambitious television psychic.
With its teen leads, sentimental underpinnings, paranormal experiences and family dynamics, “We Have a Ghost” aims for an Amblin kind of feel. It misses the mark, but provides enough good fun—although not for the youngest members of the family—to earn a recommend.
If you were to make a Venn diagram of “Black Widow,” now on Disney+ with premium access, and the recent animated film “The Boss Baby: Family Business,” you’d be surprised by the overlap. Both movies are about estranged families coming together and siblings finding a path forward after years of bitter feelings. One is much louder than the other, but underneath it all they are both all about family. “I chose to go west and become an Avenger,” Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) says. “They treated me like family.”
The story begins with a flashback.
It’s 1995 and sisters Natasha (played as a child by Ever Anderson) and Yelena (Violet McGraw) are separated from their Soviet sleeper cell family in Ohio. Removed from their undercover agent parents, scientist mother Melina (Rachel Weisz) and super-soldier father Alexei (David Harbour), they are placed under the supervision of evil Soviet General Dreykov (Ray Winston) in a training camp called the Red Room where they are brainwashed and taught the deadly ways of the Widows.
Jump forward twenty-one years to the gap between the events of “Captain America: Civil War” and “Infinity War.” Natasha (Johansson) is cut loose from her Avengers pals after breaking the Sokovia Accords. The superhero clan have gotten “divorced,” and Natasha is hiding out in Norway. When she is attacked by Dreykov’s bodyguard, the mysterious Taskmaster, she reunites with her estranged “family” to take on the Russian general.
“Black Widow,” the first Marvel Cinematic Universe solo outing for Johansson’s character, has spent a year bouncing around the pandemic release schedule and brings with it high expectations from fans.
Directed by Cate Shortland, Romanoff’s convoluted backstory is handled in a fairly straightforward way, part Marvel, part “The Americans.” The movie does offer up a fair amount of fan service but still provides eye-scorching action and basic, relatable themes of the importance of family and responsibility for the casual viewer.
Despite the wild CGI action and Jason Bourne style one-on-one combat, the film feels more grounded than most other Marvel movies. Perhaps it’s because Natasha and Yelena (Florence Pugh) don’t have super powers (although they are VERY resilient) or perhaps it’s because the story details the dysfunctional, tragic past that put Natasha on the road to becoming an assassin or maybe it’s because the villain Dreykov barely makes an impression, but the usual stakes—saving the world—take a backseat to more personal concerns.
“Black Widow” is a swansong for Natasha. The character jumped off a cliff in “Avengers: Endgame,” sacrificing herself so her superhero buddies could acquire the Soul Stone and help defeat genocidal warlord Thanos. Johansson sends her off with a suitably steely yet vulnerable performance, and when she isn’t running, jumping, punching or shooting, she brings some real humanity to the quieter scenes.
Pugh and Harbour bring some much-welcomed levity, the former as the eye-rolling sarcastic younger sister, the latter as the insecure wannabe super soldier who is just a bit too concerned about his legacy. Their bickering and subtle character touches help add life to the family vibe so important to the story the movie is trying to tell.
Like so many of the Marvel films, near the end “Black Widow” succumbs to overkill, noise and frenetic CGI action scenes. The family is united, à la “The Boss Baby” but the onscreen fireworks overwhelm the compelling family story that lies at the heart of Natasha’s journey.
“No Sudden Move,” a new Steven Soderbergh film starring Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro and now playing on Crave, is a film noir that gets lost in its knotty plot, but is kept on track by a top-notch cast.
Set in 1954 Detroit, the action begins with Jones, a shady character played by Brendan Fraser, recruiting three low level criminals, Curt (Cheadle), Ronald (del Toro) and Charley (Kieran Culkin), for a job that pays too much to be as easy as he says it will be. They all agree, just so long as someone named Frank (Ray Liotta) won’t be involved.
Their job is to invade General Motors accountant Matt Wertz’s (David Harbour) home, keep his family quiet for an hour while he retrieves a document from his boss’s safe.
Sounds simple, but this is Detroit in 1954. Industrial espionage between the Big Three car companies is a dangerous game, and, of course, Frank is involved. “Everybody has a problem with Frank these days.”
As things spin out of control, greed kicks in and the fast cash the small-time criminals hoped to make causes big time problems.
Soderbergh immerses his characters and the viewer in a world that where secrets propel the action. No one is who they seem and motives are even murkier. It makes for a twisty-turny story that is part crime story, part social history of the spark that ignited the slow decline of Detroit.
To add to the disorientation, Soderbergh shoots the action through a fish eye lens that blurs the edges of the screen, mimicking the script’s moral fog.
“No Sudden Move” almost bites off more than it can chew. It’s occasionally clunky, with too many double-crosses and characters vying for screen time, but the star-studded cast cuts through the script’s noise with ease. The result is a caper that flier by, buoyed by surprises (including a big-name uncredited cameo), snappy dialogue and a great debt to Elmore Leonard.
How does the new, rebooted “Hellboy” differ from the Guillermo Del Toro films that introduced the hell spawn character to filmgoers? The title character looks basically the same, red skin, sawed-off-horns and wise cracks his way through battles with supernatural creatures, just like the older movies. What is different is the attitude. Del Toro’s films were idiosyncratic action adventures with a supernatural twist. The new movie, directed by Neil Marshall, feels more like playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons as Judas Priest blares in the background.
This time around “Stranger Things” star David Harbour plays the wise cracking half-demon, an employee of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.), an organization founded by his adopted father (Ian McShane) to combat various occult threats. Several battles with undead English giants, a vampiric Lucha libre wrestler and a massive, angry pigman lead him to the world’s biggest threat, Nimue the Blood Queen, played by Milla Jovovich. From her Big Red learns of his true origins as she tries to convince him to embrace the dark side and help her bring on the apocalypse.
“Hellboy” Mach 3 feels more down-and-dirty than the other films. It plays up the “boy” part of Big Red’s name as he comes of age. He’s a motor mouth with a devil-may-care attitude. “I met [Egyptian deity] Ra once in the underworld,” he says. “He was a close talker.” Beneath the bluster—and his giant stone arm—however, is a more complicated guy, someone born a monster with noble aspirations. Covered in layers of make-up, Harbour hits the right mix of smart aleck and conflicted guy, giving the character an aura that falls somewhere between grandeur and silliness, superhero and supernaturalhero.
But the movie is not all Sturm und Drang. Marshall makes sure Big Red is frequently raising hell and often covered in buckets of blood. “Hellboy” gory and grimy, loud and proud, more horror than fantasy. It’s fun, if a little wearing after the ninety-minute mark.
Tired of good guys? The Captain Americas, ‘yer Iron Men or Wondrous Women? If their virtuous acts and heroic posing are wearing thin or not to your liking, along comes a crew of anti-heroes willing to bend the rules to protect the planet. “We’re the bad guys,” says Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), “it’s what we do.”
Based on the DC Comic of the same name, the Suicide Squad a.k.a. Task Force X, is a ragtag team of death row villains sprung from jail by a secret government agency run by ruthless bureaucrat Amanda Waller (Viola Davis). “In a world of flying men and monsters,” she says, “this is the only way to protect our country.” Waller’s counter-intuitive idea is to utilize their specific sets of skills—essentially creating mayhem—to quell large-scale threats against humanity. In return they are awarded clemency for their crimes. “I’m fighting fire with fire,” says Waller.
The all-star cast of baddies include assassin Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn, a crazed former psychiatrist with a love of beating people with baseball bats and Joker (Jared Leto), deadly boomerangist Boomerang (Jai Courtney), fire-conjurer El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and the reptilian Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).
To keep the baddies on the straight and narrow they are led into battle by righteous team leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). Also they are implanted with micro-bombs to encourage them to do the right thing. Complicating an already complicated situation is the Joker’s plan to extract Harley from the group and the appearance of Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), an archaeologist possessed by an ancient evil force.
For the first forty minutes or so “Suicide Squad” is loopy fun. Zippy, it rips along setting up the story and the characters in an extended origin sequence that gives us all the information we need to understand the rest of the movie. It’s a catch-up that non comic book lovers will appreciate. It is also the strongest part of the movie.
When it gets down to the nitty-gritty of the team in battle against “non-human entities” the C.G.I. kicks into high gear, covering every inch of the screen, and “Suicide Squad” becomes considerably less interesting. Set to a classic rock soundtrack the large-scale action scenes are muddled, dark and rather generic, especially given the special skills of each of the combatants.
About the Squad. For a group of psychopaths they sure seem to be OK people. The worst thing they do—minus the wholesale carnage the government allows them to create—is go temporarily AWOL for a drink in between battles. Over cocktails they discuss life, love and motivations. There are rom coms with more edge.
Much has been written about Jared Leto’s commitment to the role of Joker, and I’m sure the stories are true—he apparently sent a live rat to Robbie and a dead hog to the crew—but it’s hard to see the payoff in his method. His take on the character is weird but not as wild as you might want, and considerably less present on screen than you might think.
Smith makes more of an impression simply through the sheer strength of his charisma. Like the rest of the team he isn’t given much to do but he makes the most of it. Robbie makes an impression in a dangerous and flirty role but her New York accent comes and goes with the frequency of a rush hour subway train.
The rest are placeholders, not given enough to do to actually be interesting and even when they are in action, it’s so dark it’s hard to tell exactly who is shooting/stabbing/punching who.
On the plus side “Suicide Squad” doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously as “Batman v Superman.” On the downside director David Ayer took a premise that gave him permission to go as far overboard as he wanted and yet the movie feels familiar, like it is trying to echo the very movies it should be an antidote to.
To prepare for his role in Suicide Squad method actor Jared Leto went full Joker.
“I had to be committed beyond belief,” he says. As the third Oscar winner to play The Joker, after Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, he said, “We knew we had to strike new ground. There had been such great work we knew we had to go in a different direction.”
An adaptation of the DC Comics antihero series, Suicide Squad sees supervillains like El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) as well as Leto’s Harlequin of Hate perform perilous black ops missions in return for clemency. Director David Ayer describes it as a “comic-book version of The Dirty Dozen.”
Leto immersed himself in the role to the point his cast mates didn’t know where the actor ended and the Joker began. Jai Courtney said, “Let’s put it this way. I haven’t seen him, since we started working, out-of-character.” Margot Robbie and Scott Eastwood, who is Leto’s friend in real life, both say the actor’s on-set behaviour scared them.
To create his take on the Clown Prince of Crime he mixed-and-matched influences from the Batman comic Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth along with shamans and Mexican cartels. “The Joker is fantastic because there are no rules,” he says.
The only rule Leto subscribed to was to never break out of character, whether he was filming or not. His conduct made headlines when it was reported that he gave the cast and crew some Joker inspired presents.
“He did some bad things, Jared Leto did,” said co-star Viola Davis. “He gave some really horrific gifts.”
Robbie, who plays the baseball bat-wielding villain Harley Quinn, received a love letter and a live rat in a black box. She kept the rodent, which she named Rat Rat, for the duration of the Toronto shoot because, “If Harley got something from Joker, she’d probably cherish it.” When filming was complete Guillermo del Toro adopted the rodent renaming it Vestuniano.
Will Smith, who plays sharpshooter Deadshot, was also sent a letter accompanied by a bullet and Killer Croc portrayer Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje received a “used” Playboy magazine.
Leto’s first day of the shoot gift was an eye opener. He missed the first few days of filming, so to let everyone know he was thinking of them he sent over a dead hog and a video of the Joker.
“Basically, what he said was, ‘Guys, I can’t be there but I want you to know I’m doing my work as hard as you guys,'” Adam Beach said. “The video he showed is in character. It blew our minds away. We realized that day, this is real.”
Viola Davis was spared Leto’s twisted gift giving. “I did not receive any personally, or else I would have got my husband, who was called ‘Headache Ball’ when he played football, and I would have said, ‘Take care of the Joker,’” she said.
Did his methods pay off? Seems so. Ben Affleck describes Leto’s performance as “genius” and Ayer declares, “I think it’s going to be hard for anyone to ever imagine anyone else as the Joker.”
Leto thinks his process was worth it. “Other people can show up and are genius but I did what I needed to do to deliver. And we had a good time with it.”
