Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Groff’

NEWSTALK TONIGHT WITH JIM RICHARDS: DOES RICHARD CROUSE LIKE THESE MOVIES?

I join NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards on the coast-to-coast-to-coast late night “NewsTalk Tonight” to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the light-hearted Jane Fonda sports comedy “80 for Brady,” the new M. Night Shyamalan nail-biter “Knock at the Cabin” and the Anna Kendrick drama “Alice, Darling.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

CFRA IN OTTAWA: THE BILL CARROLL MORNING SHOW MOVIE REVIEWS!

I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the light-hearted Jane Fonda sports comedy “80 for Brady,” the new M. Night Shyamalan nail-biter “Knock at the Cabin” and the Anna Kendrick drama “Alice, Darling.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

YOU TUBE: THREE MOVIES/THIRTY SECONDS! FAST REVIEWS FOR BUSY PEOPLE!

Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to change a lightbulb! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the light-hearted Jane Fonda sports comedy “80 for Brady,” the new M. Night Shyamalan nail-biter “Knock at the Cabin” and the Anna Kendrick drama “Alice, Darling.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! THURSDAY FEB 02, 2023.

I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres.  Today we talk about the light-hearted Jane Fonda sports comedy “80 for Brady,” the new M. Night Shyamalan nail-biter “Knock at the Cabin” and the Anna Kendrick drama “Alice, Darling.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

KNOCK AT THE CABIN: 2 STARS. “the tension slacks as repetition sets in.”

“Knock at the Cabin,” the new wannabe nail-biter from director M. Night Shyamalan now playing in theatres, forces its characters into a decision that makes the famous Sophie’s choice seem easy by comparison. A combo of the cabin-in-the-woods genre and a home invasion movie, it demands to know, “Would you sacrifice a loved one to save humanity?”

Based on Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 award-winning novel “The Cabin at the End of the World,” the set-up is simple. A young family, Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and their seven-year-old daughter Wen (Kristen Cui), are on get-a-way in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

It’s idyllic, relaxing, a much-needed break from the pressures of the outside world until one afternoon as Wen is collecting bugs and is approached by a burly man named Leonard (Dave Bautista).

“Why are you here?” she asks.

“I suppose I’m here to make friends with you,” says Leonard, “and your dads too. But my heart is broken because of what I have to do today.”

Freaked out, Wen runs back to the cabin to tell her dads about the strange man she just met. A second later there is a loud knock at the door.

On the other side of the door are heavily armed invaders, the makeshift Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Leonard, hot-headed Redmond (Rupert Grint), a nurse named Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and the nurturing Adriane (Abby Quinn).

Leonard explains they are not there to hurt them, “but you have to stay in the cabin with us.”

The quartet say they are tasked with “the most important job in the history of the world,” as they present the family with a decision that will change the future, for them and the rest of humanity.

“Families throughout history have been chosen to make this decision,” says Leonard. “Your family must willingly choose one of the three of you (to die) to prevent the apocalypse.”

As the clock moves closer to permanent midnight, Eric, the logical lawyer and Andrew, his spiritually minded husband, must decide whether this is a game of murder, manipulation or divine prophesy.

“Knock at the Cabin” drills down on some very hot button topics. The option of making a great personal sacrifice for the greater good thematically echoes the issues of societal responsibility that arose during COVID lockdowns, and vaccine and mask mandates. Shyamalan plays up the story’s rationality vs. uncertainty angle, which is perhaps the defining theme of the COVID conspiracy era, and yet the movie has none of the richness these themes would suggest.

It’s an intriguing premise, but the tension slacks as repetition sets in. I don’t want to give anything away, but Shyamalan establishes a series of events that repeats, sapping the suspense with each cycle.

The talky script hammers home the belief system that brought Leonard and his disciples to the cabin to the point of exhaustion. There are so many avenues for this material to explore, and yet Shyamalan sticks to the narrow lane established in the first ten or fifteen minutes. He plays up the obvious aspects of the story (NO SPOILERS HERE) while working his way toward the play-it-safe ending.

“Knock at the Cabin” mostly wastes an interesting cast and good performances on an underwhelming, hollow story that doesn’t dive deep enough into the collective sense of unease that fuels Leonard and Company’s apocalyptic visions and zealotry. Its single note story without the emotional basis to become a symphony.

RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL REVIEWS FOR DEC. 17 WITH LOIS LEE.

Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Lois Lee to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the virtual reality of “The Martrix Resurrection,” the coming of age dramedy “Licorice Pizza” and Denzel Washington in “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and the jukebox musical “Sing 2.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

CFRA IN OTTAWA: THE BILL CARROLL MORNING SHOW MOVIE REVIEWS!

Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with guest host Matt Harris to talk the new movies coming to theatres, VOD and streaming services including the virtual reality of “The Martrix Resurrection,” the coming of age dramedy “Licorice Pizza” and Denzel Washington in “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and the jukebox musical “Sing 2.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

YOU TUBE: THREE MOVIES/THIRTY SECONDS! FAST REVIEWS FOR BUSY PEOPLE!

Can Richard Crouse review three movies in just thirty seconds? Have a look as he races against the clock to tell you about the Neo’s return to virtual reality in “The Matrix: Resurrections,” the coming of age dramedy “Licorice Pizza” and Denzel Washington in “The Tragedy of Macbeth” in less time than it takes to buy a pack of Twizzlers.

Watch the whole thing HERE!

THE MATRIX: RESURRECTION: 2 ½ STARS. “recontextualizes existing mythology.”

These days movies are regularly remade, rebooted, reimagined and regurgitated. But none of those terms capture how Warner Bros has brought back one of their most famous and ground breaking franchises.

The new Keanu Reeves movie isn’t simply a return to the Matrix, the simulated reality created by intelligent machines to pacify humans and steal their energy, it’s a resurrection. After eighteen years, Neo has been raised from the dead by Lana Wachowski in “The Matrix: Resurrections,” now playing in theatres.

The last time we saw Neo (Reeves) he made the ultimate sacrifice, giving himself to create peace between machines and mankind. His death would allow people to finally be free of the virtual world of the Matrix.

In “Resurrections” it’s twenty years later. Neo now goes by his real name, Thomas A. Anderson. He is the “greatest videogame designer of his generation,” with an ordinary life, save for the visions that plague him. “I’ve had dreams,” he says, “that weren’t just dreams.” His analyst (Neil Patrick Harris) has him on a steady diet of heavy therapy and blue pills, meant to quell the strange delusions.

Anderson’s regular life is turned upside down when his business partner Smith (Jonathan Groff) announces that their company will be making a sequel to their most popular game, “The Matrix.” As his team works on the new game—“It’s a mindbomb!”—his memories become more intense and soon he has trouble distinguishing fact from fiction.

Or is it all real?

When people from his past, like computer programmer and hacker Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), an alternate reality version of the heroic Matrix hovercraft captain who first believed Neo was “The One,” appear, Thomas fears he is losing his mind.

Things become clearer—Or do they?—when the new Morpheus offers Thomas/Neo a choice of pills. The blue ones will keep Thomas’ state of mind status quo. The red ones, however, will take him down the rabbit hole, into the heart of the Matrix. “Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia,” says Morpheus.

Pill popped, the simulated world opens up to reveal a dangerous place in need of a hero. Teaming with a group of rebels, Neo battles a new enemy and secrets are revealed. “The Matrix is the same or worse,” says Neo, “and I’m back where I started. It feels like none of it mattered.”

“The Matrix: Resurrections” may be the most self-aware movie of the year. No instalment of “The Matrix” will ever match the whiz bang excitement of the first film, and “Resurrections” knows it. It comments on itself and consistently winks at its legacy.

“This cannot be a retread, reboot or regurgitation,” says one of the “Matrix” videogame designers.

“Why not?” says another. “Reboots sell.”

Like the movie’s story, the film itself attempts to blur the line between the reality of the story and the very act of watching the movie. It is simultaneously self-depreciating and cynical. It’s OK to have a bit of good fun with the story, especially given the oh-so-serious tone of the previous “Matrix” movies, but by the time Thomas meets Trinity at the Simulatte Café, the jokes have worn thin.

The meat of the story, a search for truth, is the engine that keeps the movie motoring along, but the endless exposition, a torrent of words, seems to be the fuel that keeps things running. When a character says, “That’s the thing about stories, they never end,” it’s hard to disagree as the movie gets mired in mythology and world building.

It becomes a slog, without enough of the trademarked Wachowski action scenes to help pick up the pace. When the movie does dip into bullet time and the action that made the original so memorable, it feels like a pale comparison. There is nothing much new—“I still know Kung Fu,” says Neo—just frenetic action and nostalgia for a time when a slow-motion bullet made our eyeballs dance.

“The Matrix: Resurrections” does try to recontextualize the existing mythology. This time around the all-you-need-is-love-story between Neo and Trinity is amped up and there is some timely social commentary about control, whether it’s from the government or a virtual reality machine, but, and there is a big “but,” as much as I wanted to enjoy another trip to the Matrix, I found it too meta, too long and yet, not ambitious enough.