Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the misplaced heroics of “Sharp Corner,” the character study of “The Luckiest Man in America” and the wild action of “Fight or Flight.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to talk about the infamous Western “Rust,” the misplaced heroics of “Sharp Corner” and the character study of “The Luckiest Man in America.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I review the game show drama “The Luckiest Man in America,” suggest some fun and games drinks to enjoy with the movie!
Listen as Shane and I talk about Gandalf and his giant eagle airport experience, William Shatner’s solution to the 51st state problem and why Bella Ramsey doesn’t think award shows should get rid of gendered categories HERE!
Click HERE to hear about the fun and games of “The Luckiest Man in America” and a drink to enjopy with the movie!
SYNOPSIS: Set in 1984, “The Luckiest Man in America,” a new drama now playing in theatres, stars Paul Walter Hauser as Michael Larson, an unemployed ice cream truck driver who was accused of cheating, to the tune of $110,237, by the producers of the game show “Press Your Luck.”
CAST: Paul Walter Hauser, Walton Goggins, Shamier Anderson, Brian Geraghty, Patti Harrison, Haley Bennett, Damian Young, Lilli Kay, James Wolk, Shaunette Renée Wilson, David Rysdahl, Ricky Russert, David Strathairn, Johnny Knoxville, and Maisie Williams. Directed and co-written by Samir Oliveros.
REVIEW: Loosely based on real life events, “The Luckiest Man in America” is a slight story with a kitschy 1980s sheen.
A thriller set against the backdrop of “Press Your Luck,” “the most Vegas game on television,” the action hinges on Paul Walter Hauser and his itchy performance as Michael Larson. “He’s got nerves of steel, this guy,” says showrunner Bill Carruthers (David Strathairn) as Larson’s jackpot grows. Thing is, he’s more desperate than confident. “All I want to do is have breakfast with my family,” he says, “but the only way I can do that is if I’m on the television set. Tune in on the right time, on the right day.”
Show host Peter Tomarken (Walton Goggins) calls Larson “an ordinary man from Ohio,” but there’s more to him than meets the eye. Estranged from his family, Larson figures out how to game the system by memorizing the so-called “random” patterns on the game board. As the prize money grows Larson sees a way out of his financial hole and a way back into his family’s embrace.
But, as the jackpot swells, so do suspicions about his “lucky” streak.
As we learn more about Larson, director Samir Oliveros structures the story as a thriller, carefully doling out info and clues. But Hauser’s character study is the film’s most interesting aspect. Although “The Luckiest Man in America” smooths down some of Larson’s real-life edges, he’s still not particularly likeable. Instead, he’s a delusional dreamer, a guy who has messed up his life and found a far-fetched way to fix things.
Hauser gives him layers. He’s cocky and confident, desperate and determined. Most of all, he’s in over his head. When Carruthers accuses him of memorizing the board, Larson sheepishly replies, “Is that cheating?” He is, as “Press Your Luck” host Tomarken says, “dumbly great,” a guy who stumbles into his fifteen minutes of fame. Hauser embraces Larson’s brokenness, his heartbreak and awkwardness, but adds in a dollop of optimism to add a layer of emotional complexity. He’s a cypher, but an interesting one.
“The Luckiest Man in America” succeeds because of Hauser and the strong supporting cast. Oliveros vividly fashions the flash and trash of the game show set, paying careful attention to the period details, to create a slightly surreal backdrop for this human story of dreams, hope and greed.
“Where the Crawdads Sing,” the Reese Witherspoon-produced movie, based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Delia Owens and now playing in theatres, is a bildungsroman. That may sound like the name of a frenetic Hobbit wedding dance or a syrupy-sweet Klingon dessert, but it’s actually just a fancy word for a study of a person’s formative years or spiritual education. Ripe with themes of abandonment, solitude and, ultimately, independence, the movie is a unique coming-of-age story that covers spiritual growth and more earthy concerns.
Set in and around the small North Carolina town of Barkley Cove, the story focusses on Kya, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones. Abandoned as a child (played by Jojo Regina as a youngster), she raised herself in the nearby coastal marshlands. Nicknamed “Marsh Girl” by the locals, she is almost completely isolated. With no formal education, she learns to survive by observing the marsh wildlife.
Resilient and clever, she says, “The marsh taught me how to survive, but it didn’t teach me everything.”
When her head is turned by two young men from town, the kindly Tate (Taylor John Smith) and chauvinistic football star Chase (Harris Dickinson), she enters an unfamiliar world. Regarded with suspicion, laughed at and harassed, her life takes a dire turn when Chase turns up dead. Charged with murder and facing the death penalty, Kya must draw on all her experience to endure.
“In spite of everything trying to stomp it out,” she says, “life persists. Where out yonder, where the crawdads sing, the marsh knows one thing above all else; every creature does what it must to survive.”
“Where the Crawdads Sing” is a lot of things. It’s a love triangle, a murder mystery, a story of overcoming the odds and yet, none of it really sticks. What could have been a steamy Southern Gothic, ripe with sex and death, is, instead a sleepily paced melodrama that doesn’t deliver on the premise of female empowerment promised by the film’s intriguing lead character.
Kya could have been an electric, autodidactic character, persevering against overwhelming odds—abuse, heartbreak and abandonment—to blossom spiritually. Edgar-Jones conveys some of that through her wide-eyed performance, and her intelligence is obvious, but the resilience needed for Kya to survive and thrive is lacking.
Without a galvanizing lead character, the heart and soul of “Where the Crawdads Sing” is lost, leaving behind warmed over intrigue and melodrama.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Angie Seth to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the latest from your friendly neighbourhood crimefighter in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the dark carnival of “Nightmare Alley” and the ex-porn star drama “Red Rocket.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Don’t go to “Nightmare Alley,” a remake of the 1947 Tyrone Power film noir, now playing in theatres, for the warm fuzzies. Guillermo Del Toro’s new movie is as cold and icy as the season in which it is being released. Any movie that begins with the burning of a corpse and ends, well, you’ll have to buy a ticket to find out, isn’t exactly geared to make your season bright, but film fans should find this to be a gift.
Set in the days leading up to World War II, the story begins as drifter-with-a-dangerous-past Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) takes a job at a travelling carnival. Paid a dollar a day plus a hot meal, he does grunt work, putting up the big top tent and doing physical labor.
His gift of the gab soon earns him a promotion, working as a barker for the theatrical mystic Zeena (Toni Collette) and her magician husband Pete (David Strathairn). Stan is a quick study, and becomes an expert on how to bilk folks out of their hard-earned cash.
Longing for something bigger, he takes his own mentalism act on the road with the help of assistant and love interest Molly (Rooney Mara). It’s all fake, the two communicate through a series of veiled verbal clues, but audiences eat it up. They are making money performing at upscale nightclubs, but the offer of doing private readings for prominent people comes with a price tag Stan can’t resist.
Del Toro is known is creating intricate worlds populated by amazing people and creatures but don’t expect a replay of “Pan’s Labyrinth” or his Best Picture Oscar winner “The Shape of Water.” There are no supernatural elements in “Nightmare Alley.” The monster here is Stan’s cold hard ambition.
Cooper is in slickster mode here, playing Stan as a smooth-talking manipulator whose bad deeds stack up like some sort of ethically challenged Jenga game. He is an enigma. Willing to do whatever it takes to survive. He is a flawed but coldly ambitious man whose eyes are always trained toward the future. It is his biggest asset and, ultimately, his downfall.
Cooper does a good job at exposing Stan’s layers. He’s a complicated character, an amoral seducer with a seemingly charming disposition and Cooper only allows brief peaks at his desperation and brutality.
As good as Cooper is, it’s Cate Blanchett as the femme fatale psychiatrist Lilith Ritter who steals the show. From her overpainted red lips and seductive nature to her quick intelligence and vulnerability, she is the film’s most interesting and dangerous presence. Nice office too. It’s an Art Deco lover’s paradise.
Above all though, “Nightmare Alley” is Del Toro’s film. He doesn’t need one of his trademarked creatures like the Pale Man or The Asset to shock. Here he takes a methodical, detailed approach to the story, gradually building to some shocking violence and psychological horror. His interest here is the sinister, not the supernatural, and while the first hour gets bogged down with set-up and a major plot point is telegraphed (NO SPOILERS HERE!), his ability to create atmosphere is singular. Nobody casts a shroud of menace like Del Toro.
“Nightmare Alley” takes its time to set up its dark pleasures, but emerges as a memorable tribute to film noir whose images will stick in your mind long after the theatre’s lights are switched on.
Let’s meet 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.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A blend of fiction and nonfiction, “Nomadland,” the melancholy new Frances McDormand drama, is a timely story of a woman who learns to adapt and survive after losing everything she held dear.
Just as Fern (McDormand) cuts herself off from the norms of regular society, “Nomadland” is not tied to traditional storytelling structures. Its unhurried 107-minute running time is leisurely, not plot driven but utterly compelling. Director Chloé Zhao follows the widowed Fern as she leaves Empire, Nevada, a small company town now bleeding residents after the closure of the U.S. Gypsum Corporation factory. So many people have fled to greener pastures that the post office discontinued the local zip code.
Leaving all that she has known behind, Fern loads up her beat-up old van and hits the road, crisscrossing America looking for seasonal work at every stop. She’s not homeless, just unencumbered, solo but not solitary. “I’m not homeless,” she says. I’m just houseless.”
Along the way she discovers a community of fellow nomads, people who teach her the ropes of life on the road. Here’s what I learned: If you have bad knees you need a taller bathroom bucket for your van.
Fern does what it takes to get by, working at an Amazon fulfillment center or taking on caretaker gigs at rec parks, but her iterant lifestyle isn’t about disconnection or colored by loneliness. Her journey is one of self-discovery, of survival, of serenity. She is gritty, but open and friendly, independent and generous. She’s not an exile from “The Grapes of Wrath,” she’s simply living life on her own terms without a drop of self-pity and McDormand never overplays her. There is an authenticity to the performance, aided by Zhao’s casting of real-life nomads like “van-dwelling evangelist” Bob Wells, and travelers Linda May and Charlene Swankie, that never feels less than real, sometimes almost uncomfortably so.
At times “Nomadland” feels like a documentary. Zhao and McDormand have created a beautiful character study about the flipside of the American Dream. As Fern makes her way from gig to gig Zhao decorates the screen with eye-popping visuals courtesy of Joshua James Richards’s cinematography of the landscapes that form the backdrop to Fern’s journey. The story is poetic but never cloying and always reaching for the horizon.
