A new feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Going in Style” and “Song top Song.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Going in Style,” “Song to Song” and the documentary “Giants of Africa.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies, the “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Going in Style,” “Song to Song” and the documentary “Giants of Africa.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits.
I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true.
For most of his career he was a tease, a mythic J.D. Salinger type who burst on the scene in a blinding flash of brilliance, made two of the best films of the 1970s, then left us hanging. Like spurned lovers we waited for him to return for two decades and at first were happy to see him again. He told wondrous stories about personal connections and the nature of relationships.
Then he started repeating himself. In the beginning I didn’t mind but soon his whispered philosophical asides became tiresome and I began to look for reasons to avoid him.
Now I have one.
It’s been said that the essence of cinema is beautiful people saying interesting things. In his new film Malick gets it half right, parading good-looking heart throbs like Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman around in a pointless exercise called “Song to Song.”
Fassbender plays a Machiavellian a record producer who uses his wealth and power to seduce those around him, including aspiring musician Mara, rising star Gosling and waitress-turned-wife Portman. The willowy women and mumbling men run barefoot through the loose story—which often feels cobbled together from scraps of film found on the editing room floor—pondering philosophical questions in hushed tones. “How do you know when you were lying to yourself?” they whisper. “Is any experience is better than no experience?” All the while Malick’s camera, light as a feather, floats above it all capturing his puzzling whims. For the entire running time nobody looks like they’re having any fun even when they’re dancing, being goofy or laughing. They’re not having any fun and neither will you.
Airy and disjointed, it’s a collage of feelings and shards of life strung together on a fractured timeline. Malick indulges himself to the point that the film is less a movie and more like an experience, like going to “Laser Floyd.”
There are highlights. Val Kilmer singing to a festival crowd, “I got some uranium! I bought it off my mom!” before hacking off his hair with a giant Bowie knife is a memorable moment and cameos from Patti Smith and John Lydon are welcome, but at its heart “Song to Song” is a movie about people trying to connect that keeps its audience at arms length.
There’s a quick shot of a tattoo in the movie that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. “Song to Song” is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies.
I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
Richard and CP24 anchor George Lagogianes have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Doctor Strange,” the fourteenth film in the Marvel Universe, “Trolls,” the return of a 1970s pop culture phenomenon, Andrew Garfield as real-life WWII hero and pacifist Desmond Doss in “Hacksaw Ridge” and the Iggy and the Stooges documentary “Gimme Danger.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s new movies, Benedict Cumberbatch in “Doctor Strange,” the fourteenth film in the Marvel Universe, “Trolls,” the return of a 1970s pop culture phenomenon with Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick, Andrew Garfield as real-life WWII hero and pacifist Desmond Doss in “Hacksaw Ridge” and the Iggy and the Stooges documentary “Gimme Danger.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
By 1973 Iggy and the Stooges had imploded, leaving behind three commercially unsuccessful records and a slug trail of decadence and unfulfilled expectations across two continents. “Gimme Danger,” Jim Jarmusch’s grotty documentary about the life, death and influence of The Stooges is a first hand account of what the director calls “the greatest rock and roll band ever.”
The Stooges’s story is the stuff of rock and roll legend. Jim Osterberg a.k.a. Iggy Pop started his musical career as a drummer in Ann Arbor garage rock bands like The Iguanas and The Prime Movers but switched from drums to front man when he got tired of looking at people’s bums. As a singer he formed an avant garde rock band originally known as the Psychedelic Stooges. Early experiments with homemade instruments like rigged-up vacuum cleaners and oil drums, lead to a more streamlined, although not commercial sound, that is now seen as the noise that birthed punk rock.
Three albums—a self-titled debut produced by former Velvet Underground bassist John Cale, “Fun House,” and “Raw Power”—and a handful of now classic songs like “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “No Fun” established their legend, even if the band almost drowned in a sea of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll clichés.
“Gimme Danger” is an affectionate look at a band of rebels. A tour through 70s rock and roll landmarks and legends like the Chelsea Hotel, Elektra Records, Nico and Andy Warhol, who asked Iggy, “Why don’t you just sing what’s in the newspaper,” it paints a picture of a band on the outside of the mainstream looking in. They wanted to make hit records but guitarist James Williamson says, “We were delusional. We really only liked the things we liked.”
Along the way we learn that John Wayne almost ran Iggy over in Los Angeles, that his “25 words or less” lyrical style was inspired by Soupy Sales and that one time manager Tony DeFries wanted Iggy to play Peter Pan on Broadway. DeFries suggested it, Iggy rejected it. He thought he should play Charles Manson.
Iggy Pop tells the tale, a rock and roll survivor who surprisingly outlived most of his band. He’s eloquent, funny and has a surprisingly good memory for a sixty-nine-year-old who lived on the edge for most of his life. The doc is perhaps a little too slickly made to really flaunt it’s garage rock ethos but Pop is an engaging storytelling who has always walked his own path, and that is the stuff of legend.
“I don’t want to belong to the glam people,” he says at the end of the film. “I don’t want to belong to the hip hop people. I don’t want to belong to any of it. I don’t want to belong to the TV people, alternative people. I don’t want to be punk. I just want to be.” Amen.
Welcome to the House of Crouse. Here edited audio from a press conference I hosted with ‘Gimme Danger” director Jim Jarmusch and his subject, Iggy Pop. By 1973 Iggy and the Stooges had imploded, leaving behind three commercially unsuccessful records and a slug trail of decadence and unfulfilled expectations across two continents. “Gimme Danger” is Jarmusch’s grotty documentary about the life, death and influence of The Stooges. It’s a first hand account of what the director calls “the greatest rock and roll band ever.” C’mon in and sit a spell!
Richard sits in with afternoon host Merella Fernadez to talk the end of TIFF, the highs, the lows, Iggy Pop and who won the festival’s People’s Choice Award.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
