CTV ATLANTIC: RICHARD AND TODD BATTIS ON NEW MOVIES IN THEATRES!
I join CTV Atlantic’s Todd Battis to talk about the bloody “Mortal Kombat II,” the family murder mystery “The Sheep Detectives” and the road trip “Omaha.”
Watrch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘John Magaro’
CTV NEWS TORONTO AT FIVE WITH ZURAIDAH ALMAN: RICHARD ON WHAT TO WATCH!
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about new movies in theatres including the bloody “Mortal Kombat II,” the family murder mystery “The Sheep Detectives” and the road trip “Omaha.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 14:56)
CTV NEWSCHANNEL: RICHARD’s MOVIE REVIEWS FOR FRIDAY MAY 8, 2026!
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Renee Rogers to talk about the new releases in theatres, including the bloody “Mortal Kombat II,” the family murder mystery “The Sheep Detectives” and the road trip “Omaha.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
CFRA IN OTTAWA: THE BILL CARROLL MORNING SHOW MOVIE REVIEWS!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with guest host Andrew Pinsent to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the bloody “Mortal Kombat II,” the family murder mystery “The Sheep Detectives” and the road trip “Omaha.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
YOU TUBE: THREE MOVIES/THIRTY SECONDS! FAST REVIEWS FOR BUSY PEOPLE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make your bed. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the bloody “Mortal Kombat II,” the family murder mystery “The Sheep Detectives” and the road trip “Omaha.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
OMAHA: 3 ½ STARS. “packs an emotional wallop it packs in its final moments.”
SYNOPSIS: Set against the 2008 recession, “Omaha,” a new drama now playing in theatres, sees a father facing foreclosure on his home. In response he takes his kids Ella and Charlie on a road trip across the American West.
CAST: John Magaro, Molly Belle Wright, Wyatt Solis, Talia Balsam, Christina Cooper. Directed by Cole Webley.
REVIEW: An intimate, haunting portrait of desperation, “Omaha’s” quiet road trip is worth the journey to experience the emotional wallop it packs in its final moments.
Director Cole Webley, working from a sparse, poetic script by Robert Machoian, begins the story with a father (John Magaro) waking his young daughter Ella (Molly Belle Wright), instructing her to grab her things and meet her little brother Charlie (Wyatt Solis) and family dog in the car. “Pretend that there is a fire in the house,” he says, “and we have to get out as quick as we could.”
The girl grabs a few things, including a picture of her late mother, and the family is off on a road trip.
“Where are we going, Dad?” Ella asks repeatedly, without ever receiving an answer.
The family’s destination is eventually revealed, but no spoilers here. It’s the key to the story, the payoff for accompanying a father on the most difficult journey of his life. Webley and Machoian carefully calibrate the story, allowing an air of melancholy to envelope the action.
It is slow and meditative with a paucity of plot, but the deliberate pacing allows the audience, like a fly on the wall, to experience the family’s dynamic up close and personal. As the brief runtime (it’s a quick 84 minutes) counts down to the third act reveal, empathy and tenderness build, which adds extra oomph to the film’s climax.
Naturalistic performances from Wright and Solis are by times heartbreaking, by times all too real as they quickly come-of-age. Magaro shows restraint and emotional depth in the face of an unimageable choice. It’s a breakthrough performance; quietly powerful as the character—known only as Dad—puts on a stoic front to mask his desperation.
Like any long road trip, there is some downtime, moments where the story feels pushed, but patient viewers will be rewarded with an emotional intensity that feels authentic and a devastating payoff.
IHEARTRADIO: JOURNALIST CAROL OFF + DIRECTOR TIM FEHLBAUM + ELIJAH WOOD
On the Saturday November 30, 2024 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet multi-award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster Carol Off. For almost 16 years, she co-hosted CBC Radio’s flagship current affairs program, As It Happens. As a television journalist, writer and radio host it’s estimated she did 25,000 interviews with newsmakers and noticed that as politics became more polarized than ever before, words that used to define civil society were being put to work for completely different political agendas.
In her new book, “At a Loss for Words: Conversation in the Age of Rage,” she analyzes six terms—freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice and taxes—and how their meanings have been twisted.
Then, we meet a guest who began his career as a child actor, appearing in everything from “Back tio the Future II” to Internal Affairs opposite Richard Gere. He became an international star after playing Frodo Baggins in the acclaimed “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. He’s Elijah Wood, and his extensive filmography now includes “Bookworm,” an intriguing film about a 12-year-old named Mildred whose life is turned upside down when her mother lands in hospital and estranged, American magician father, Strawn Wise, played by Elijah Wood, comes to look after her. Hoping to entertain the bookish tween, Strawn takes Mildred camping in the notoriously rugged New Zealand wilderness, and the pair embark on the ultimate test of family bonding — a quest to find the mythological beast known as the Canterbury Panther.
Finally, we meet director Tim Fehlbaum. He’s an award-winning Swiss filmmaker whose previous films, like “Tides” and “Hell,” focused on post-apocalyptic and science fiction stories. He returns to the real world with “September 5,” a new thriller starring Peter Sarsgaard and Ben Chaplin, and now playing in select theatres, an American sports broadcasting crew finds itself thrust into covering the hostage crisis involving Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
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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SEPTEMBER 5: 4 STARS. “It’s not about politics, it’s about emotion.”
SYNOPSIS: In “September 5,” a claustrophobic new thriller starring Peter Sarsgaard and Ben Chaplin, and now playing in theatres, broadcast executive Roone Arledge oversees the ABC coverage of the terrorist attack on Israeli Olympic team members at the 1972 summer games in Munich, West Germany.
CAST: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Zinedine Soualem, Corey Johnson, Georgina Rich, Benjamin Walker, Rony Herman. Co-written and directed by Tim Fehlbaum.
REVIEW: Early on in “September 5” television producer Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) says this about his television coverage of the Olympics: “It’s not about politics, it’s about emotion.”
The same could be said about the film.
Of course, echoes of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine reverberate throughout, but this is more a frantically paced, behind the scenes look at high-stakes newsgathering and the ethics of how the stories are told.
It rewinds the clock to a time when society was more a monoculture, when the news was watched by, well, pretty much everyone. We’re told that more people watched the ABC coverage of this terrorist attack than watched Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon.
The eyes of the world were on them, and in a brisk 94 minutes, director Tim Fehlbaum tells the story of a complicated terrorism situation the ABC crew, by virtue of their proximity to the action, were in a unique position to cover and broadcast the first acts of terrorism ever shown on live TV.
It’s a closed room drama where 90% of the action takes place in a broadcast control room. Tensions fray, shots are called, and news is made, but what Fehlbaum doesn’t concentrate on is the act itself, the massacre by the group Black September.
Instead “September 5” asks if, by showing the hostage situation live on television where the terrorists could watch themselves and the police’s response, they were fulfilling the public’s right to know or making the situation worse. Screenwriters Moritz Binder, Alex David and Fehlbaum present this and other big ethical questions regarding the job and responsibility of journalism but leave the task of answering them up to the audience.
However you feel about the decisions made on that day, in our era of “fake news” and an eroded trust of mainstream newsgathering it’s thrilling to see the nuts and bolts of how breaking stories unfold and the quick decisions that form the news we see on television.
On the downside, “September 5” is more interested in whip fast editing and forward momentum than characters. The main cast effectively hold our attention, but don’t offer up much in terms of characterization. They are the blunt instruments Fehlbaum uses to create tension, and while it works, it would have been nice to have more of a sense of who these people are.
Perhaps “September 5’s” most interesting aspect, however, is in its ability to wring suspense and tension out of well-known historical events. We know how this story will end, and yet Fehlbaum and editor Hansjörg Weißbrich have us inching toward the edge of our seats as each minute of this tautly rendered story passes. They clearly took Arledge’s maxim, “It’s not about politics, it’s about emotion,” to heart.
BIG GEORGE FOREMAN: 3 STARS. “BY THE BOOK BIOPIC. Raging Bull” this ain’t.
To some people he is an “as seen on TV” pitchman who spent much of the last thirty years shilling for the Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. To others he is an indestructible two-time world heavyweight champion and an Olympic gold medalist. To still others, he is Reverend Foreman, a man of faith who preached on street corners before becoming the minister of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Houston.
He’s George Foreman, the subject of “Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World,” a new biopic now playing in theatres.
When we first meet Foreman (Khris Davis) he is a young boxer from an impoverished background with a mighty punch and anger issues. “George should change his name from Foreman to Poor-man,” taunt the kids at his school.
Scarred by a troubled past, and narrowly avoiding being arrested, he leaves Houston to find “his unrealized potential” with the Job Corps, a government run vocational training center.
It’s here, under the tutelage of trainer Doc Broadus (Forest Whitaker), that he learns to channel his anger into a winning streak in the squared circle. “Listen to me George,” says Broadus, “you got a punch like I’ve never seen. But in every battle, the greatest foe we will combat, is in here,” he continues, pointing at the fighter’s forehead.
After the 1968 Summer Olympics, where he won a gold medal in the boxing/heavyweight division, he followed a string of knockouts to the big time, a 1972 match against the undefeated and undisputed World Heavyweight Champion Joe Frazier. He walked into the ring a 3:1 underdog, and left it with a champion belt.
Two years later he lost the belt to Muhammad Ali (Sullivan Jones) at the historic “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire. With no title, he spent the balance of the 1970s chasing a rematch and another chance at the belt before a near death experience set him on a spiritual path that saw him spend ten years as a minister. “It’s like He reached inside me and took all my anger,” he says. “I can’t even make a fist anymore.”
When his church and community center fall into financial trouble, he laces up the gloves again. “There’s only two thongs I know how to do,” he says, “box and preach. And preachin’ won’t pay the bills.”
Sports commentators call him an old man in a young man’s game, but he is a minister on a mission, and unbelievably, becomes, at age 45, the oldest World Heavyweight Boxing Champion ever.
“Big George Foreman” is a by-the-book biopic, by the way of the good book. It’s a standard, faith-based cradle to grill biography that hits the highs and some of the lows—like hiding under an open sewer pipe to avoid police—in service of its messaging.
“Raging Bull” this ain’t.
Davis captures the glower, born out of internalized anger, that characterized Foreman’s early career, and the lighter attitude that came to the fore in his later life. He makes Foreman a compelling, charismatic character, despite a script that plays it safe and without a hint of grit.
“Big George Foreman” shaves down all the rough edges of the boxer’s story, replacing them with uplift and life lessons. It never feels entirely authentic, but its messages of the importance of faith are heard loud and clear.
