I join CTV Atlantic anchor Todd Battis to talk about the pandemic drama “Eddington,” the smurfy “Smurfs” and the legacy sequel “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I joined CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to have a look at new movies coming to theatres, including the pandemic drama “Eddington,” the smurfy “Smurfs” and the legacy sequel “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
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 pandemic drama “Eddington,” the smurfy “Smurfs” and the legacy sequel “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: Set in a small, dusty New Mexico town, the satirical neo-Western “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal and now playing in theatres, sees a humiliated man pushed to extremes in the early days of the pandemic.
CAST: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, and Emma Stone. Written and directed by Ari Aster.
REVIEW: No one will accuse writer-director Ari Aster of a lack of ambition. “Eddington” throws a handful of genres—neo-Western, political satire, dark comedy, and thriller—into a blender to tell a chaotic story of the early pandemic era. At 145 minutes Aster digs deep into a specific time in the summer of 2020 when the world was turned up-side down by COVID, social distancing, George Soros conspiracy theories, Bitcoin, post truth and any other number of hot button topics. It was a time of ideological whiplash that Aster essays in a film that addresses those powder-keg topics without completely lighting the fuse.
Joaquin Phoenix is Joe Cross, sheriff of the sleepy little town of Eddington, New Mexico and husband to Louise (Emma Stone), a complex woman who suffers from anxiety. Her fragile mental state is exacerbated by her mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), a conspiracy obsessed who never met a bit of misinformation she couldn’t embrace.
Joe’s anti-mask stance—”There’s no COVID-19 in Eddington,” he says—puts him in conflict with Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), Eddington’s incumbent mayor now running for re-election.
As outside influences take hold in Eddington, anti-racist protests break out on their lone main drag in response to the death of George Floyd, and calls to de-fund the police ring in Joe’s ears.
As Joe and Ted’s personal and professional animosities grow, the sheriff takes matters into his own hands and announces his bid to run for mayor. With slogans like “Joe Cross for Air! Joe Cross for Mayor!” and “Try No Corruption for a Change,” Joe’s run at public office leads him to down a dangerous and deadly path.
The action described above plays out against a background of news and social media reports of the turbulent social, political, and economic climate that were the earmarks of the era, adding to the film’s unsettled feel.
Unlike most Westerns, even recent neo-Westerns, this isn’t a story of good guys vs. bad guys. In “Eddington,” everyone is morally ambiguous, and while you may like some characters over others, all are damaged, driven by ego, selfishness, greed or ideology.
As Sheriff Joe, Phoenix is a weak man in a job that requires strength and decisiveness, qualities that seem foreign to him until he is pushed up against a wall. A flip on the usual, stoic main figure in a typical Western, this is a guy whose character flaws make up his character. Phoenix isn’t afraid to make him pathetic, and in doing so, delivers another interesting, edgy performance. He’s a walking metaphor, an emasculated man emblematic of the fears and concerns that defined the uncertain, divisive summer of 2020.
He’s a complex guy, an attribute that can’t be said of any of the film’s other characters.
As the smooth-talking mayor, Pascal’s laid-back performance is an antidote to the film’s intensity, but the character doesn’t give him much room to maneuver. Ditto Emma Stone, whose limited screen time reveals a committed performance but little else.
On the plus side, “Eddington” is a confrontational experience, a provocative recreation of the unsettling chaos of the pandemic years and its effect on humanity. On the debit side of the leger, Aster’s reluctance to dig beneath the film’s unsettled surface puts a dull edge on the film’s satire.
I wrote about the fantasy, obsession and the ordinariness of evil in the new, tuneful “Joker: Folie à Deux” for CTVNews.ca.
“After 2019’s “Joker” nabbed $1 billion box office dollars and a Best Actor Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix, a sequel was certain. What form that sequel would take, however, was less certain…” Read the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the musical sequel to 2019’s Oscar winning “Joker,” and now playing in theatres, Joaquin Phoenix stars as failed-comedian-turned-murderer Arthur Fleck. Incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital, he awaits trial for his crimes as Joker, when a chance encounter with Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (Lady Gaga) gives him a chance at finding true love.
CAST: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz. Directed by Todd Phillips.
REVIEW: After 2019’s “Joker” nabbed $1 billion box office dollars and a Best Actor Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix, a sequel was certain.
What form that sequel would take, however, was less certain.
In the risk averse entertainment landscape that is 2024 Hollywood, one would have expected a continuation of Joker’s reign as Gotham City’s most unhinged agent of chaos.
Well, no one will accuse director Todd Phillips, and stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga of being risk averse.
For better and for worse, “Joker: Folie à Deux” mixes romance and show tunes with law and order in what may be the bleakest jukebox musical ever made.
Question is, Is the risk worth the reward?
From its animated 1950’s Looney Tunes style opening—a recap of the Joker’s killing of talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert de Niro) on live television—to its starkly staged musical numbers, it is a study in fantasy, the ordinariness of evil and obsession that is sure to deeply divide audiences.
Phillips, working from a script he co-wrote with Scott Silver, wedges big ideas about the commodification of Joker as an entertainment celebrity—underlined by the use of the tune “That’s Entertainment” from the 1953 musical “The Band Wagon”—obsession/delusion and betrayal, into a film that blurs the line between reality and fantasy.
It’s ambitious, like Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” filtered through a funhouse mirror, but it’s also frustrating. Frustrating in the sheer volume of underwhelming musical numbers that feel jammed into the story, in its laboured courtroom drama and its underuse of Lady Gaga.
The musical numbers are mostly fantasy sequences and vary from full production numbers to intimate renderings of love songs. Each tune acts as a substitute for dialogue or an inner, emotional soundtrack that only the characters can hear. When it works, it’s a neat trick, but often the songs feel a bit too on-the-nose, as in Gaga’s performance of “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” sung during a prison visit as a thick plate of plexiglass separates them.
The musical numbers are plentiful, performed with a lack of polish—because, the press notes say, neither Arthur or Hartley are professional singers—that works for the authenticity of the characters, but is less interesting for the audience. It’s a device, and, if used sparingly, it could have been a nifty one. As it is, however, when Arthur says, “I don’t wanna sing anymore,” near the end of the film, it seems like the best decision he’s made all along.
As Arthur/Joker, Phoenix transforms himself physically; his slight, bony frame a testimonial to the years of abuse Arthur suffered at the hands of his mother. However, when he puts on the Joker outfit—the garishly coloured suits, shirts and make-up—his shoulders square up and he becomes a different person. It’s an interesting shift and Phoenix embodies it, creating two characters from one source.
Unfortunately, Lady Gaga is given less to do.
The film’s broken heart is Lee’s attraction to Joker. In the film’s first hour, she’s a compelling character, a kind of Mansonesque follower whose curiosity with Arthur/Joker as a rebellious folk hero blossoms into the shared delusional disorder of the title (Folie à Deux). It’s a shame then, when she fades from view during the bulk of the courtroom scenes, discarded in favor of a focus on Arthur’s antics.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” is a bold comic book movie that breaks free of the shackles of the comic book genre, but in doing so blunts the power and the danger of its title character.
Director Ridley Scott and star Joaquin Phoenix team to present a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte you are unlikely to find in any history book. Both epic and intimate, “Napoleon,” now playing in theatres before moving to Apple TV+, chips away at the character’s historical veneer to reveal an insecure, lovesick, petulant, pompous man with an emperor complex.
Covering roughly twenty years, the film begins in 1789 with the beheading of Marie Antoinette, the queen who lost her head during the French Revolution as the people rose up to abolish the monarchy. In the crowd is Napoleon Bonaparte (Phoenix), a young Corsican soldier with a plan to reclaim the port of Toulon by forcing the Anglo-Spanish fleet to withdraw. It is his first great triumph, revealing his strategic genius and setting him on a path to become the Emperor of France. “I’m not built like other men,” he says.
The small man in his ever-present, big bicorne hat has none of the social graces of French aristocracy, but his power gets him noticed by Josephine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), a widow whose upper-crust husband fell victim to France’s Reign of Terror. For Napoleon, it’s love at first sight, for her, it’s an opportunity that may one day be accompanied by real feelings. “Has the course of my life just changed, Napoleon?” she asks seductively when they first meet.
Despite not being able to produce an heir and very publicly cuckolding her husband, Josephine has a tight grip on Napoleon’s emotions. “You’re just a tiny little brute that is nothing without me. Say it,” she commands as he nods in agreement. Emotionally she is every bit the tactician as her spouse is on the battlefield and Kirby nails both her ruthlessness and her vulnerabilities.
When his dreams of controlling Europe incur massive loss of life on the battlefield, Napoleon finds himself exiled from the country and woman he loves.
It is hard to decipher exactly what Scott and Phoenix had in mind for “Napoleon.” The battle scenes are undeniably epic, shot on a grand scale while retaining the up-close-and-personal horrors of war. The Battle of Austerlitz sequence, in particular, is horrifying in its execution, brilliant in its design. Scott’s camera captures not only the ambush on a frozen lake, but the cunning mind it took to plan and implement a mission of that size. It’s the kind of thing that could reasonably be expected from the director given the subject.
Less expected is the portrayal of Napoleon, which often borders on satire. The obvious cliches are avoided—he is never seen slipping his hand into his coat, for example—but other choices make for choppy viewing. The general who is a strongman in battle, is also played for laughs in several scenes and I can’t figure out whether the humor is intentional or not.
When he flees the French Directory, the staid committee that governed France until November 1799, his physicality and shrieks of, “They’re trying to kill me,” are more Benny Hill than battleground hero. During another kind of battle, a food fight with Josephine, he throws a hunk of meat her way, bellowing, “Destiny has brought me this lamb chop.” Later, he “seduces” his wife with an odd humming sound that is the opposite of sexy.
Those playful, lighter scenes are intermittently entertaining, but feel at odds with the impassive warrior portrayed in the rest of the film. Perhaps the rumored four hour cut, slated to stream on Apple TV+ after the theatrical run, will add more context, but as it is, these scenes give the two-hour-forty-five-minute theatrical cut a choppy, inconsistent feel as its main character flip flops between stoicism, emotional openness and frivolity.
“Napoleon” will not be accused of being a reverent depiction of its subject, but neither will it be regarded as the definitive portrayal.
I hosted a live Q&A with director Ari Aster in front of a sold-out crowd at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto on Wednesday night. For a taste, check out my radio show on the iHeartRadio Network Saturday night at 8 pm t0 9 pm for a recorded interview with the director.
On this week’s edition of the Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet Martha Hall Kelly, the New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls, Lost Roses, and Sunflower Sisters. With more than two million copies of her books sold and her books translated in fifty countries, Martha joins me today to talk about her new book “The Golden Doves.”
It is a gripping historical novel, inspired by true events, about two former female spies, bound together by their past, who risk everything to hunt down an infamous Nazi doctor in the aftermath of World War II.
We’ll also meet Ari Aster, the writer and director of challenging hit films like”Hereditary” and “Midsommar.” Today we’ll talk about his latest movie, “Beau Is Afraid,” a three hour film starring Joaquin Phoenix as a mild-mannered but paranoia-ridden man who embarks on a surreal odyssey to get home to see his mother. I’ve seen a lot of movies, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this one. Find out what it means when I call it a “three hour panic attack.”
And we’ll get to know we’ll meet British comedian, actress and television presenter Lorna Watson as we talk about how a one off character she did on a show called “Father Brown” a decade ago is back with season two of a show built around that very same character on the “Sister Boniface Mysteries,” which is is now available to stream on BritBox.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!
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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