Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” an awkward wedding night in “On Chesil Beach” starring Saoirse Ronan and a documentary on one of fashion’s leading figures, “The Gospel According to Andre.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
From BNN.com: “Solo: A Star Wars Story” has opened in theatres around the world and Richard Crouse, film critic and host of “Pop Life,” is giving it 3 out of 5 stars. And while a long list of Star Wars standalones and spinoffs are reported to be in the works, Crouse is not really seeing signs of Star Wars fatigue. However, he does say that “the hairs on the back” of his hands don’t stand up like they used to when he hears the Star Wars music.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Did you ever wonder what Rick Blaine was up to before he opened a fancy nightclub and gambling den in Casablanca? What Katniss Everdeen was like as a child? How Tyler Durden came to make the rules for his fight club?
Some classic movie characters come with backstories, others simply exist for the moments in time we spend staring at the screen. Others earn origin stories while others are best left as one offs.
Still others, like Han Solo, also exist in our imaginations and are the subject of much speculation. For forty years fans have wondered how Solo zipped through through hyperspace to do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, how he got his last name and why the Space Cowboy and Chewbacca are as tight as two Porgs in a space pod. The “Star Wars” smuggler ranks up there with the most popular characters of all time and a new film, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” fills in the blanks on the legends never before detailed on film.
The story begins with Han’s (Alden Ehrenreich) daring escape attempt from his hellish life on Corellia and the Imperial Guards who reign over him. With dreams of becoming a pilot dancing in his head the street urchin makes it out, vowing to return to rescue his girlfriend Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). In quick order he enlists in the Imperial Army, gets kicked out and falls in with a gang of thieves led by the charismatic Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson). “Let me give you some advice,” Beckett says, “assume everyone will betray you and you will never be disappointed.”
Later, betrayed and thrown into a squalid death pit, he meets Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), the 190-year-old Wookie who will soon become the Sundance Kid to his Butch Cassidy. A heist gone wrong brings the newly minted band of misfits into the orbit of intergalactic boogeyman Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). He offers them a chance to settle their score with them but to do so they’ll need a new ship. Enter space scoundrel Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) and his magnificent flying machine, the Millennium Falcon.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” is an old fashioned mix of action, adventure and romance with loads of “Star Wars” mythology woven into the story. There’s no force, no Jedi just a straightforward story populated with likeable (and purposefully not so likeable) characters. Director Ron Howard, who took over after Phil Lord and Chris Miller were let go, keeps the action fluid, injects plenty of humour—“You will never have a deeper sleep than curled up in a Wookie lap,” says four-armed pilot Rio (Jon Favreau) wistfully.—shaping the story, after a slow start, into a bit of a romp. He’s hampered by a story with very low stakes. We know (THIS IS NOT A SPOILER UNLESS YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN OR EVEN HEARD OF THE STAR WARS MOVIES) that Han, Chewie and Lando go on to greater adventures so there doesn’t seem to be much at risk. It’s fun to get a glimpse of the young versions of characters we all know but “Solo: A Star Wars Story” feels slight, less consequential than the other films in the series.
Ehrenreich tackles the impossible job of filling in the gaps left by Harrison Ford. He’s all swagger. A fearless, fast-on-his-feet, walking-talking attitude, he’s solid but doesn’t bring the charisma that so effortlessly flowed from Ford.
The supporting cast, however, delivers in spades. Glover oozes charm, playing Calrissian as a swaggering pirate with a fashion sense and a “what’s in it for me” bearing that makes him eminently watchable.
Chewie is given a backstory and more to do than simply act as a sidekick. Given the chance to help his family, who have been torn apart by the empire, the 7′ 6” fuzzball goes his own way, disobeying Solo. He has his own mind and asserts himself in a way he hasn’t before. Suotamo, with his deft physical work, also provides some of the film’s biggest laughs.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” has some nice moments but relies on adrenalin when it should trust its characters.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show host Andrew Carter to talk about the origins of one of the most famous characters in movie history in “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” an awkward wedding night in “On Chesil Beach” starring Saoirse Ronan and a documentary on one of fashion’s leading figures, “The Gospel According to Andre.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
After twelves years of regular “Canada AM” movie reviews, Richard and host Beverly Thomson get together one last time to talk about the weekend’s four big releases, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows,” “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” “Me Before You,” and “Into the Forest.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard andCP24 anchor Nneka Elliot talk about the weekend’s four big releases, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows,” “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” “Me Before You,” and “Into the Forest.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
These days Jojo Moyes is a bestselling author with a movie adaptation about to hit screens.
But before she wrote her best-known book she says, “I had not troubled the bestseller charts.”
The former journalist, who has written 13 novels, hit publishing pay dirt with Me Before You, a romance about a young woman who has a life-changing relationship with a paralyzed man.
“I was driving my kids home from school,” says Moyes, “and I heard this story on the news about a young athlete who had been left quadriplegic after an accident.
“Several years into life as a quadriplegic he had persuaded his parents to take him to Dignitas, which is a centre for assisted suicide in England to end his life.
“I was just really shocked by this story because as a human and a parent I could not envisage how a parent would agree to do that.
“I kept thinking I would fight to the death to keep my kids alive. Because I am an ex journalist, I started to read around it and read more about this young man and read more about the issue and I discovered it wasn’t as black and white as I wanted to believe. Then it got me thinking, what would I be like if I were him? What would it be like to be his mother? What would it be like to be his girlfriend?”
The book sold north of 5 million copies and is now a movie starring Games of Thrones dragon lady Emilia Clarke. The 29-year-old actress plays the relentlessly cheerful Louisa, caregiver to quadriplegic Will, played by The Hunger Games star Sam Claflin.
“I read the amazing book first,” the effervescent Clarke says. “I was reading it to see if I wanted to be in it. In the first couple of pages of Lou (I thought) this is who I am. This is so much me in every way. Then there was the story itself and the beauty within it; the heartbreak, the joy and the laughter fell on top of one another and I just said yes.
“I understand (Louisa) innately because if things ever get too dire I’m going to crack a joke. We’re going to laugh through this. In those moments, at that peak when something bad has happened, and you’re like, ‘Let’s laugh about it,’ as you’re laughing you start crying.
She also says she had a rigorous rehearsal process with co-star Claflin, so she got to know her character and their story really well.
“When you’ve got all that knowledge someone only has to say one thing and you are there because you have built her within you. You’ve built the story around you.”
Moyes says finding the right person to play Louisa was important to not only the success of the film, but also to keep the fans of the book happy.
“I felt a huge responsibility to those people because it’s not like this has only been read by 20,000 people,” says Moyes.
“This is a much bigger thing. I will defy anybody to see Emilia as Lou and not feel this is a true representation of the character.
“When I picture Lou, I can’t help but picture Emilia. That is how fully she has taken root in my imagination.”
In “Me Before You,” a new three-hankie weepie based on the bestselling novel by Jo Jo Moyes, Emilia Clarke leaves behind her “Game of Thrones” persona as Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen—a.k.a. First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons and The Unburnt—to play Louisa Clark, an unambitious former Buttered Bun waitress who takes a job that changes her life forever.
Louisa is a wide-eyed 26-year-old with no great plan for her life. After six years of serving tea and scones to the elderly clients of The Buttered Bun Café she loses her job when the place shuts down. Jobs are scarce in the village—“There are no jobs. I should know,” says her under employed father (Brendan Coyle).—and her family desperately needs the money she brings in.
Prepared to take any job she visits the local employment center where they have just the thing for her. “There’s nothing about having skills so it’s perfect for you,” says the staffer as he tells her about the position of care assistant and companion to Will Traynor (“The Hunger Games’s” Sam Claflin), a recently paralyzed man so wealthy he lives in the local castle.
For most of his life Will was Louisa’s opposite, a robust go-getter who lived life to the fullest. Now, confined to a wheelchair with a spinal chord injury, he feels so lost he strikes a deadly deal with his parents. He will give them six months to help him find happiness, and if that doesn’t happen he’s off to Dignitas in Switzerland to die with dignity and put an end to his pain and constant exhaustion. That’s where Louisa comes in. “It would be nice if he thought of you as a friend,” explains his mother (Janet McTeer), “and not a paid professional.” Her primary purpose is to convince him that life can be just as rewarding as it was before the accident. Of course, before you can say Nicholas Sparks three times really fast, they fall for one another, but is love be enough to keep Will alive?
“Me Before You” is a fairly standard tearjerker with a lineage that can be traced back to ”Love Story” and beyond. The thing that elevates it above the usual sob story is the effervescent Clarke in the lead role. Her relentlessly upbeat charm—she has a smile so broad director Thea Sharrock almost needs a wide-angle lens to capture it—coupled with the character’s complete comfort in her quirky skin shows a much lighter side of Clarke than is ever evident on “Game of Thrones.” She proves she doesn’t need to command dragons to hand in a commanding performance.
Clarke has good chemistry with Claflin. He’s solemn enough to pull off a line like, “I sit and just about exist,” and gushy enough to breathe life into stilted dialogue like, “I just…want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.”
Good casting makes “Me Before You” an engaging enough romance that subtly deals with larger issues like class and assisted suicide. Unfortunately by the time Ed Sheeran warbles, “Loving can hurt… It is the only thing that makes us feel alive,” in the long, drawn out final section, the movie gets a little too on the money. The “you only get one life and it is your duty to live it as fully as possible” message isn’t quite as original as the movie thinks it is, but certainly, writer Moyes and Company have their hearts in the right place.
Welcome to the House of Crouse. Fifty episodes! Over 100 interviews! That’s a lot of talking. We continue the HoC tradition of bringing you the best in wordy ramblings and informative recitations as we welcome Emilia Clarke and Jojo Moyes, the star and author, respectively of “Me Before You,” a three hanky romantic film in theatres now and Phillip Norman, the legendary biographer who tells us everything we need to know about Mick Jagger. Stop by, have a listen and get some satisfaction.
