On this episode of the Richard Crouse Show we get to know, all the way from Cornwall in South West England, Jeremy Brown and Jon Cleave, two of the founding members of the sea shanty singing group Fisherman’s Friends. They have incredible story of being discovered by a music producer who visited their small fishing village of Port Isaac, and propelling them to stardom. Their recordings of traditional sea shanties have topped the charts and they’ve played on the main stage of the Glastonbury Festival in front of 100,000 people and for royalty at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Their story has inspired two films, “Fisherman’s Friends” and the sequel, which is in theatres now, “Fisherman’s Friends: One and All,” starring James Purefoy and now it’s a stage show called “Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical which has just touched diown at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto after a successful run in the UK.
Then, Enrico Colantoni stops by. You know the talented actor from portraying Elliot DiMauro in the sitcom “Just Shoot Me!,” Keith Mars on the television series “Veronica Mars.” On the big screen he has appeared in the films “Galaxy Quest,” “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” “Contagion,” and “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Today we talk about his latest film, a comedy about four stoners, the self-proclaimed “Vandits”, have a bright idea to knock over a senior citizens bingo hall on Christmas Eve. In this segment we talk about the unusual way he paid for theatre school in New York City and how the cast and crew of “Vandits” persevered after all their equipment was stolen the night before they were to start shooting.
Finally, we’ll meet Elegance Bratton, the film director who turned his story of being a young gay man, who found unexpected strength, camaraderie and support when he joined the Marines, after being rejected by his mother, into a critically acclaimed film called “The Inspection.” It is a classic against-all-odds story that paints a vivid picture of life inside the boot camp, the dehumanization, the violence, but also the brotherhood. The movie carefully builds the world of the boot camp, creating a palette of claustrophobia, brutality and tension that adds layers to the telling of his survival story.
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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Based on writer/director Elegance Bratton’s experiences as a queer Black man in the Marines boot camp, “The Inspection,” now playing in theatres, avoids the jingoistic tone of so many films set within the military. Instead, it is a painful, cathartic tale of overcoming oppression in order to survive.
When we first meet Ellis French (Jeremy Pope), he’s a queer, 26-year-old Black man, cut loose from his disapproving family. “I will love you till the day that I die,” says his prison guard mother Inez (Gabrielle Union), “but I can’t love what you are.” Her deeply held religious beliefs have led her to reject her son, so much so, she even puts down a newspaper on the couch before he sits. With no home to call his own, he has spent years living rough, in and out of Trenton, New Jersey shelters.
With no money and no family support, he makes the choice to join the Marines and do whatever it takes to create a future for himself in the military. At boot camp Ellis, nicknamed French by the other recruits, is a disciplined candidate, even under pressure from his strict drill sergeant (Bokeem Woodbine) who promises, “I will break you.”
Although French never formally announces his queerness, his sexuality puts a target on his back. At the barracks, despite beatings, bullying and outright bias, he excels, proving to himself, the other jarheads and possibly even his homophobic mother, he has found his niche.
“The Inspection” will likely bear the weight of comparison to “Full Metal Jacket,” but despite the obvious similarities in location and the presence of a harsh drill sergeant, these are two very different films thematically. Bratton’s film is not an anti-war film. Instead, it adopts a neutral stance to most of the questions about the duality of war Stanley Kubrick raised in “Full Metal Jacket,” preferring to concentrate on the more introspective note of one man’s transformation in the face of adversity.
This is a classic against-all-odds story that paints a vivid picture of life inside the boot camp, the dehumanization, the violence, but also brotherhood, in the form of instructor Rosales as played by Raul Castillo. Bratton and cinematographer Lachlan Milne carefully build the world of the boot camp, creating a palette of claustrophobia, brutality and tension that adds layers to the telling of French’s survival story.
Bratton brings a personal touch to the filmmaking that feels therapeutic, the kind of storytelling that can only come from his lived experience. The director is aided by a raw and powerful performance from Pope and an unrelenting Union, whose work helps elevate the occasionally cliched aspects of the story.
“Strange World,” the new animated film from Walt Disney, starring the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal and Gabrielle Union, is a colorful ode to making the world a better place.
The story centers on the Clades, led by intrepid explorer Jaeger (voice of Dennis Quaid). The Clade clan is devoted to finding a way out of Avalonia, their home and small nation, tucked away between unpassable mountains.
On one of their journeys through the snow-capped mountains—“Exploration is ‘snow’ joke,” Jaeger snorts as he leads the crew through an icy patch.—Searcher (Gyllenhaal) discovers a glowing plant that has a pulsing energy all its own.
Jaeger is unimpressed. Conquering the mountains is his dream, a victory he sees as his legacy. “Avalonia’s future is beyond the horizon,” he says. Determined to move forward, he leaves Searcher and crew behind with the glowing plant. As he disappears into the wintery wilderness he also leaves behind any semblance of a relationship with his son.
Cut to twenty-five years later. Searcher is now grown up and resembles a cartoon John Krasinski with a bulbous nose. His discovery has literally energized the country. Called Pando, it’s a wonder plant that supplies the power that transformed Avalonia into a kind of steampunk paradise. It fuels their airships and keeps the lights on in their homes. “No Pando,” they say, “no power.”
Searcher is a Pando farmer, alongside his wife Meridian (Union) and son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White), a teen who is more interested in catching the attention of a local boy named Diego than harvesting the crops.
When the Pando crops begin to fail, Avalonia president Callisto Mal (Lucy Liu) reaches out to Searcher looking for help. The crops all across the land are related by an interconnected root system. When one field fails, eventually they all will.
Getting to the source of the trouble means taking a trip to a strange world that lies under the surface. Callisto Mal recruits Searcher to undertake an expedition but it soon becomes a family affair when Ethan stows away on board and Meridian comes to rescue him. Together they enter a surreal subterranean land, home to amorphous, cute-but-not-so-cuddly blobs, hungry phosphorescent creatures and walking mountains. “We are definitely off the map now,” says Callisto Mal.
As they attempt to discover the cause of the Pando plight, they also come across another unexpected find, Jaeger, still searching for whatever is on the other side of the mountain.
“Strange World” puts the action adventure right up front, never missing an opportunity for the characters to take a wild ride of some sort or another. These sequences are imaginative and over-the-top with their stylized action and crazy creatures, but screenwriter and co-director Qui Nguyen isn’t just interested in making your eyeballs dance. He’s crafted an emotional story about legacy, and how the burdens and expectations of one generation can inadvertently passed to the next. Jaeger and Searcher have obvious father son snags, but the friction between Searcher and Ethan isn’t as pronounced, but the issues are the same.
The film does a heartfelt job of essaying the rifts that became chasms over time. Progressive and creative, it casts its eye to a world where respect and acceptance are a balm for troubled relationships.
By the time the end credits roll “Strange World” has established itself as an exciting adventure that values its character-driven messages just as much as the action.
Is the third time a charm for “Cheaper by the Dozen,” the story of a “big family, full of big dreamers”?
Based on the 2003 Steve Martin film, which was based on the 1950 Myrna Loy movie, which was based on the autobiographical book of the same name, the new version, now on Disney+, stars Gabrielle Union and Zach Braff as Zoe and Paul Baker, parents of a large, adorable Brady Bunch style blended family of 10 kids and two dogs, Joe Bitin’ and Bark Obama. “As hectic as our life can get,” says Paul, “it always seems just right.”
In addition to raising the kids, Paul and Zoe run an all-day breakfast restaurant but are running slightly behind on the rent. Their hopes for the future are pinned on Paul’s new invention, Paul’s Hot, Sweet and Savory Sauce. If they can make a go of it, and realize his dream of being bigger (and richer) than Chef Boyardee, they can finally get square with the landlord, put together school tuition and get a bigger house so the kids won’t have to share rooms anymore.
But they soon discover that a big family is one thing, but in business, bigger isn’t always better.
“Cheaper by the Dozen” is formulaic and sweet enough to give you a toothache but has just enough edge in its storytelling to give it, well, an edge over the earlier, even more saccharine versions.
It’s a good-natured story about the importance of family that tap dances around issues of racism, privilege—”A few times in your life you felt like you didn’t belong,” Zoe says to Paul. “I feel like that all the time.”—and teenage rebellion. Ultimately, however, whatever problems they have will be solved by a love and a goofy-yet-heartfelt speech from Paul. It is the kind of movie about an “perfectly imperfect family” that you know will end with a pop song and smiles.
Braff, Union and the army of precocious kids are likeable, if a little bland. Your tolerance of “Cheaper by the Dozen” will be directly linked to your appreciation of movies that can only be described wholesome.
Emilio Estevez became a Brat Pack star hanging around in a library in 1985’s “The Breakfast Club.” Years later he returns, this time as a grown up with grown up concerns. As writer-director-producer-star of “The Public” Estevez presents the socially aware story of what happens when people stand up for themselves and speak truth to power.
“The Public” sees Estevez play Stuart Goodson, head librarian and de facto social worker at the Cincinnati Public Library. Inside the library is an oasis of warmth for the city’s homeless community who use it as a drop in centre during the cold winter months. Outside, when the frigid weather claims one of the library regulars, the patrons, led by Jackson (Michael K. Williams), turn the building into an emergency homeless shelter. “There’s some situation at the central library,” says Detective Bill Ramstead (Alec Baldwin). “Probably somebody had a melt down over an overdue book.”
Behind the scenes the stand-off escalates as the sensationalist media, in the form of a TV news reporter played by Gabrielle Union, misrepresents the act of civil disobedience as a possible hostage situation or active shooter. A self-righteous mayoral candidate (Christian Slater) stokes the fire while library administrator Anderson (Jeffrey Wright) tries to keep the situation from boiling over. “Wat’s the downside to having them stay there for the evening,” he asks.
“The Public” takes a long hard look at pressing social concerns. Estevez based part of this story on a Chip Ward essay about public libraries as asylums for the homeless and drives home the point with all the subtlety of one of Cincinnati’s icy winters. Lack of shelter space for the homeless population coupled with governmental cutbacks to social programs are urgent needs brought to life here in a colorful if somewhat cliched way.
The idea that, as Anderson says, public libraries are the last bastion of democracy, truly a place for everyone and anyone, is an important one but delivered with a heavy hand. By the time Goodson reads a long excerpt from “The Grapes of Wrath” to a reporter the noble efforts of the screenplay give way to the stagier aspects of Estevez’s vision.
“The Public” features good performances from Slater, Baldwin, Estevez and Taylor Schilling as a flirtatious building manager but is weighted down by the burden of its good intentions.
It may be a warmer than usual November, but at the movie theatres, it’s already Christmas. It’s not a Christmas miracle, it’s a movie hoping to grab double digit grosses to go along with the month’s double-digit temperaturesDanny Glover is Walter, the recently widowed patriarch of a large family. Retired and lonely he invites his four children, daughters Rachel (Gabrielle Union) and Cheryl (Kimberly Elise) and sons Christian (Romany Malco) and Evan (Jessie Usher) and the extended family home to Birmingham, Alabama for the holidays. “This is our first Christmas without your mother,” says Walter. “Just five days for you all to act like a family.” It’s not the twelve days of Christmas, it’s five fraught filled days as the family tries to get along. Cheryl and Rachel can barely stand being in the same room together for reasons neither of them can remember and Christian can’t seem to stop working long enough to enjoy the visit. “We’re not going to make it to Christmas are we?” “Not a damn chance,” sighs Aunt May (Mo’Nique).
“Almost Christmas” is like a Bollywood movie. There’s action, tragedy, a dance number, comedy, romance, humour, infidelity and even a slightly risqué bit of slapstick. It has something for everyone and if you can hold on tight as it rockets between heart warming and humourous with the speed of Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve, you’ll have a pretty good time.
It’s barely a movie in the strictest sense. It’s more a collection of moments strung together as old ghosts rear their ugly heads during the few festive days the family spends under the same roof. It’s episodic but melodramatically likable as it careens toward a funny and over-the-top dinner scene that involves everything from hurt feelings and guns to Danny Glover’s most famous line from “Lethal Weapon.” The siblings—and everyone else—learn that despite their differences they are stronger together than individually.
Not that you need to be told that. The story telegraphs everything that’s going to happen—there are no surprises under this Christmas tree—but does so in a way that is as sweet as the Potato Pie the family enjoys at dinner.
Out of Sundance “The Birth of a Nation,” a biopic of slave, preacher and revolutionary Nat Turner written, directed and starring Nate Parker, was being touted as an Oscar contender. It set a record as the biggest distribution deal ever made at the Sundance Film Festival and won rapturous reviews.
Then the news broke that Parker was accused of raping a drunk, unconscious 18-year-old Penn State University student in 1999, orchestrated campaign of harassment and that although he was cleared in a 2001 trial, the alleged victim was so traumatized by the incident that she went on to commit suicide in 2012 at the age of 30.
Word around Tinsel Town is that these revelations have torpedoed any Oscar hope the film might have had, but the question is, will Nat Turner’s tale prove more potent than Parker’s own story?
From a young age Nat Turner (Parker) is told he is a child of God, someone with purpose. Growing up on the Turner plantation, he is taught to read but nonetheless is sent to work as a field hand. As a young man the seeds of his discontent are sewn when he is sold to unscrupulous plantation owners, sent out to teach the godly value of servitude to his fellow slaves. “Slaves submit yourself to your masters,” he preaches. His words make his owner rich and lift some broken spirits, but soon the hypocrisy of his proselytizing seeps in after a series of unspeakable events. He witnesses rape, brutality and after he baptizes a white man he is whipped to within an inch of his life. Beaten but not broken, he decides to fight back just as David, Goliath and Sampson did. Where he was once a spiritual leader he is now a rebellion chief. “With the help of our father we will cut the head off the serpent!”
It took Parker seven years to bring “The Birth of a Nation” to the screen and his passion is writ large on every frame. He has made an audacious film, a brash epic that borrows its name from D. W. Griffith’s racist 1915 blockbuster.
It is Turner hero’s moral journey from slave to rebellion leader. It’s a coming-of-rage story that spares few details. We are shown the casual cruelty that turned Turner from a peace-loving preacher to a man pushed to violence. On screen Parker is at the center of the action, appearing in almost every scene and bearing the emotional brunt of the narrative. He is the story’s engine and with an understated, powerful performance he keeps us along for the ride.
It’s the filmmaking that falls short. There are moments of singular imagery—a slow tracking shot of bodies hanging form a tree set to Nina Simone’s “Strange Fruit” is unsettling and unforgettable—but Parker has paced the film at a deliberate, monotonous tempo that doesn’t do the story any favours. It feels like a missed opportunity to not build tension, to not allow the remarkable story to lead the way.
Turner was a remarkable man, whose actions led directly and indirectly to the Civil War. Parker fails to fully place the man into historical perspective and by doing so ignores dramatic opportunities.
“The Birth of a Nation” is an important story of a man in an inhuman world. Parker treats the material and the man respectfully but could have used more urgency.
The idea of turning self-help books into movies isn’t new. Fifty years ago Helen Gurley Brown’s guidebook “Sex and the Single Girl,” which featured advice on “How to be Sexy,” among other useful tips, was made into a film starring Natalie Wood and “Mean Girls” was an adaptation of the high school survival manual “Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughters Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence.”
So the idea of the 2012 farce “Think Like a Man” based on Steve Harvey’s best-selling book, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man,” wasn’t a stretch.
But now a sequel? The question is: How do you conjure a second story out of a book with no plot? Set it in Vegas and let Kevin Hart do all the heavy lifting.
The idea of Harvey’s tome is to give women an inside look into the workings of the male psyche and take control of their relationships. It’s typical battle of the sexes stuff and on film they play it for laughs.
The four couples from the original movie— Maya and Zeke (Meagan Good and Romany Malco), Dominic and Lauren (Michael Ealy and Taraji P. Henson), Jeremy and Kristen (Jerry Ferrara and Gabrielle Union) and Tish and Bennett (Wendi McLendon-Covey and Gary Owen)—plus the almost single Cedric (Kevin Hart) reunite in Las Vegas—“The number one destination in the world for people who do the craziest thing… get married.”—for “Think Like A Man Too.”
They’ve gathered for the wedding of Candace (Regina Hall) and Michael (Terrence Jenkins) but you know as soon as someone says, “I’m going to give you the perfect wedding… nothing is going to go wrong,” that, of course, everything is going to go wrong. The romantic getaway is jeopardized when the bachelorette and bachelor parties spin out of control.
“Think Like a Man Too” plays like a tamer version of “The Hangover.” There’s even a cameo from a world champion boxer but “TLAMT” doesn’t have the cynical edge of the Bradley Cooper movie. Instead, it plays it safe, making Sin City look like a wild but not terribly dangerous place to get married. All the usual Vegas clichés are well represented, from the gambling montage to the glaring neon lights to flaming cocktails to skimpy bikini-clad women to male strippers. What happens in Vegas also happens in the movies… quite often. The only thing missing is an Elvis impersonator or two.
Director Tim Story moves the story—what there is of it—along faster than a spinning roulette wheel. Montages and music video interludes keep the pace up, disguising the fact that there isn’t much going on. The story is thin, despite the multiple storylines crisscrossing throughout.
Kevin Hart seems to be trying to singlehandedly make up for a dearth of story by pulling out all the stops. No pratfall or face pull is beyond him. He even recreates Tom Cruise’s “Risky Business” underwear dance. His hyperactive performance stands in stark contrast to the more laid back work from his co-stars, but it does add a splash of life to every scene he’s in. Only his enthusiastic reading of a line like, “I’m sick of this non-tourage,” could pull laughs from some of this material.
“Think Like a Man Too” is a thin story bolstered by a few laughs (courtesy of Hart) and good-looking people navigating the choppy waters of modern romance. The advice contained within has more Hart than actual heart and is unlikely to provide much self-help, but has the same kind of bland appeal as its predecessor.
On this episode of the Richard Crouse Show we get to know, all the way from Cornwall in South West England, Jeremy Brown and Jon Cleave, two of the founding members of the sea shanty singing group Fisherman’s Friends. They have incredible story of being discovered by a music producer who visited their small fishing village of Port Isaac, and propelling them to stardom. Their recordings of traditional sea shanties have topped the charts and they’ve played on the main stage of the Glastonbury Festival in front of 100,000 people and for royalty at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Their story has inspired two films, “Fisherman’s Friends” and the sequel, which is in theatres now, “Fisherman’s Friends: One and All,” starring James Purefoy and now it’s a stage show called “Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical which has just touched diown at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto after a successful run in the UK.
