Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including “Gemini Man,” “Dolemite is My Name” and “Lucy in the Sky.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest and most interesting movies! This week Richard looks at “Gemini Man,” “Lucky Day” and “Lucy in the Sky.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the high frame rate of “Gemini Man,” the high violence of “Lucky Day” and the high flying theatrics of “Lucy in the Sky” with CFRA morning show host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Lucy in the Sky” is the only movie I can think of that would have been improved by the addition of adult diapers. Loosely based on the exploits of former naval flight officer turned NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak, the new Natalie Portman movie recreates the troubled astronaut’s cross-country drive minus one juicy detail—the diapers she allegedly wore to eliminate the need for rest stops.
Portman plays Lucy Cola, an astronaut having trouble to adapting to life on terra firma. After being in space, witnessing the vastness of the world while floating far above it, her eager-to-please husband (Dan Stevens) and teenage niece Blue Iris (Pearl Amanda Dickson) seem hopelessly earthbound. “You go up to space and see the whole universe,” she says, “and then you come back and everything is so small. What are you supposed to do? Go to Applebee’s?”
She finds a kindred soul in Mark Goodwin (Jon Hamm), another NASA vet described as “a divorced action figure who likes to go fast.” Casual chats soon turn into an affair, although while Lucy falls deeply head over heels, Mark sees it as a fling and continues to date other women, including new recruit Erin Eccles (Zazie Beetz).
As her mental state erodes Lucy throws herself into training for a new mission until she becomes a danger to herself and others. Cut loose from the only job she cares about the frantic Lucy drives cross country to confront—or worse—Goodwin. “You’re going to lose,” she shouts, “because I’m a winner.”
“Lucy in the Sky” is a character driven drama that offers up only the scantest insight into Lucy’s psychosis. Director Noah Hawley plays around visually, changing the aspect ratio and focus to convey Lucy’s loosened grip on reality but it is all surface and while there are some striking images, the insight never transcends cliché.
Portman isn’t given much to work with. She’s a walking cliché, a character who ticks a number of “interesting” traits off a check list only to have them add up to a less than compelling character. She isn’t aided by a script that requires her to say things like “All systems go!” when asked about her mental state.
The supporting actors don’t fare much better. As Lucy’s husband Stevens is a one note goody two-shoes, annoying to the point where you begin to understand why she wandered away from the marriage. Ellen Burstyn is a bit of fun as Lucy’s potty-mouth mother, but she seems to have drifted in from another movie. Only Hamm emerges more or less unscathed, handing in the kind of tortured leading man performance that allows him to have moments of introspection, like when he watches footage of the Challenger explosion over-and-over before heading to space, and be a bit of a playboy. There’s not much to his character but at least Hamm breathes some life into him.
The story that inspired the film is ripped straight from the tabloids, all lurid details, but “Lucy in the Sky” glosses over most of them (i.e.: the adult diapers) in favor of an oversimplified look at mental illness that never takes flight.
Richard’s CP24 reviews for “The Age of Adeline,” “The Water Diviner” and “Ex Machina” with host Nneka Eliot.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “The Age of Adeline,” “The Water Diviner” and “Ex Machina” with host Beverly Thomson.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
The new Blake Lively movie The Age of Adaline sees its star play a woman who was frozen in time at age twenty-nine, never to age another day. No laugh lines, stiffness in the bones or grey hair for her. She drifts through life, an eternal twenty-something as her pals age and eventually die.
How does she compare to friends and family? Well, in the film the youthful centenarian Lively has a daughter played by Ellen Burstyn, a veteran actress fifty-five years her co-star’s senior.
It’s a romantic fantasy that brings up an interesting question. Sure, the idea of defying age sounds intriguing, but why would you want to fall in love when there is no possibility of growing old together? That’s the dreamy question at the heart of the film; the notion that allows director Lee Toland Krieger to explore the mushier side of the story, but what about the engine that drives the tale—immortality?
With characters like Wolverine and Edward Cullen pulling in big box office bucks it’s not shocking that movies seem infatuated with eternal life. Nor should it come as a shock that actors are drawn to immortal characters. The obsession with youth is one thing, that’s a job requirement—perhaps that’s why the USA, with Los Angeles at the epicenter, is the world capitol of plastic surgery—but I think it goes beyond that.
With visions of an ageless Adaline dancing in my head I posed a simple question to Alex Garland, the director and screenwriter of this weekend’s artificial intelligence drama Ex Machina: “Why have movies about immortality been so popular with actors and filmmakers?” I got an intriguing answer.
“There is an interest floating around which is as much to do with longevity, as it is immortality,” he said, “but it contains immortality as a long-term goal.
“Broadly speaking what I would say, at least where filmmakers are concerned, is that they’re subject to the same zeitgeist things that everybody else is so what they will do is manifest it in their job.”
Perhaps that’s why in the coming months we’ll see eternal characters in everything from The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Terminator Genisys to Pan and Crimson Peak.
The rich and famous have always dreamed of extending natural life. For instance, although it’s an urban legend that Walt Disney was frozen cryogenically to be thawed later it makes a good and almost true sounding story. While doing working on Ex Machina Garland says he discovered tales of wealthy people looking to find immortality through science.
“The researchers might be quite realistic about what artificial intelligence can promise but the funders may be less realistic about it. One of the things that some of the funders are looking for, and I’ve heard this expressed very explicitly, not in a coded way but an absolutely straightforward way, is the ability to download yourself and for you to survive long as a result of your enormous wealth.
“Powerful people don’t want to die. Everyone else figures they don’t have a choice but the really powerful people figure they do have a choice and they are going to explore it just in case.”
I think Hollywood may be obsessed with immortality for one other reason. Film stock offers it’s own kind of eternity, where one never ages and on the screen Blake Lively will be the twenty-nine-year-old Adaline forever.
“The Age of Adaline,” a new romantic fantasy starring Blake Lively, asks a simple question: Is falling in love worth the trouble when there is no chance of growing old together?
Love, and almost everything else is tricky for Adaline Bowman (Lively). For nearly eight decades she has been frozen at age 29. Her daughter (Ellen Burstyn) looks like her grandmother while Adaline has been immune to the ravages of time. Over the years she has become closed off, rarely making friends and never dating lest she be found out and experimented on to discover the secret of eternal youth. Every ten years she moves, changes her identity and starts all over again.
Just days before a move from San Francisco to Oregon, her life is thrown off schedule when she meets Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman), a handsome philanthropist who falls in love with her at first sight. Despite her better judgment she becomes involved with him, but as their relationship deepens a revelation threatens to reveal the truth about her strange life.
“Age of Adaline” is a movie that requires a serious leap of faith on the part of the viewer. It’s ripe with Nicholas Sparks style clichés—a woman who never thought she’d love again finds happiness, but at what cost?—and fantastical elements that would even test even Ponce de León’s belief in eternal youth.
Then there is a plot twist of sorts. They’ll be no spoilers here, but suffice to say Adaline has had a complicated love life and the repercussions of decades old romances echo through time affecting her present day relationship. It’s a weird turn that dips into creepy/absurd territory and is an unsatisfying climax to the film.
On the upside Lively is, well, lively, bringing pathos and vulnerability to Adaline. Her mannered speech sounds right for someone who came of age in a different time and she almost manages to pull off most of the film’s groaner dialogue. There’s a laugh in her voice when a random himbo tries to throw her a line, and then embarrassed says, “I guess you’ve heard that before…” “I have,” she giggles, “from a young Bing Crosby… type.” It’s a cheeseball line, but she pulls it off… barely.
“The Age of Adaline” is a silly movie that requires an almost impossible level of suspension of disbelief but somehow the metaphysical melodrama, with its lovely design and strong performances over comes the ridiculous plotlines to become an almost timeless romance.
Richard’s movie reviews with CP24’s Rena Heer. They talk about “Draft Day” with Kevin Costner, Jude Law in “Dom Hemingway” and the haunted mirror movie “Oculus.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
