What Did Richard Crouse Think? It’s a weekly game played on NewsTalk 1010’s Jim Richards Show. It’s simple. Richard gives the synopsis of a new movie and Jim and others try and figure out if Richard liked it or hated it.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CP24 anchor Nathan Downer have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “Coco,” the Vietnam reunion movie “Last Flag Flying” and the festive flick “The Man Who Invented Christmas.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “Coco,” the festive flick “The Man Who Invented Christmas” and Roman J. Israel, Esq.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the Pixar film “Coco,” the Vietnam reunion movie “Last Flag Flying” and the festive flick “The Man Who Invented Christmas.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Around this time of year “A Christmas Carol” is omnipresent. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge’s journey of redemption, courtesy of three mysterious Christmas ghosts, runs on an endless Yuletide television loop and has been adapted as an opera, ballet, a Broadway musical, animation and even a BBC mime production starring Marcel Marceau.
A new film, “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” aims to tell the story behind the story. “Downton Abbey’s” Dan Stevens plays Charles Dickens, the Victorian writer who, when we first meet him, is out of ideas and money. “My light’s gone out,” he moans. When he devises a Christmas story, his publishers, who have gotten rich off his previous works, scoff. The holiday season isn’t a big enough deal for their readers, and it’s only six weeks away. How can he finish a novel and how can they publish it in such a short time? He perseveres and we see how real life inspiration and his imagination collide to create the self-published book that redefined Christmas celebrations for generations to come.
Using flashbacks to Dickens’s childhood in London’s workhouses and dramatic recreations of encounters with the characters—including Christopher Plummer as Scrooge—that would soon populate his book, the film attempts to show “the blessed inspiration that put such a book into the head of Charles Dickens.”
Often more literal than literate, “The Man Who Invented Christmas” is handsome film that plays like a series of “a ha” moments than a serious exploration of the creative process. What it does, however, is entertainingly paint a picture of life in Dickens’s Victorian home, and the external influences that sparked his imagination.
As Scrooge Plummer hands in a performance that makes us wish he’d play the character for real. In a very likable portrayal Stevens links Scrooge’s transformation to Dickens as he battles his own personal demons on his way to personal redemption. All bring a light touch and even when the going gets tough there is an endearing quality to the material. Even the condescending critic William Makepeace Thackery (Miles Jupp) isn’t played with malice.
“The Man Who Invented Christmas” is a festive film, a movie for the holidays that reminds us of the spirit of the season. No “Bah! Humbugs” here.
“Hysteria” could easily have been called “Desperate Housewives (of 1880).” Set in 19th century London, the story centers around Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) — a young handsome doctor whose carpal tunnel syndrome led directly to the invention of the vibrator.
The year is 1880 and hysteria is “the plague of our times,” according to Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), a doctor whose magic fingers bring relief to London’s upper class ladies. His solution to their dilemma is simple. He offers manual stimulation until his patients achieve “paroxysm.”
In those days hysteria was a catchall phrase used to encompass all manner of female ailments. According to Wikipedia, “women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and ‘a tendency to cause trouble.'”
Enter Granville, an idealistic doctor who keeps losing jobs at old-fashioned hospitals because of his new-fangled ideas about germs. He accepts an apprenticeship with Dalrymple and soon his nimble fingers and good looks have attracted the attention London’s desperate housewives and daughter Emily Dalrymple (Felicity Jones). She’s an English Rose who stands in contrast to her sister Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a live wire suffragette who is passionate about working with the city’s disadvantaged.
Business booms at the doctor’s office until Granville suffers hand and wrist ailments from vigorous overuse. In short order he co-invents the world’s first vibrator with the help of his friend Lord Edmund St. John-Smythe (Rupert Everett). He also discovers true love and the true nature of hysteria.
Despite its racy premise “Hysteria” is rather tame. As social commentary it’s lightweight, shedding little light on the repressive Victorian attitude toward women and sexuality. Sure, the female patients know exactly what the cause of their so-called hysteria is and Gyllenhaal speechifies on women’s rights, but a movie about the invention of the tool that revolutionized sexuality should focus on that and not the predictable rom-com love triangle.
As a comedy it misses the opportunity for big laughs by under-using Everett, whose hammy performance breaks through the stodgy Englishness repressiveness of the setting. The slapstick and masturbation hat make up much of the movie and wears out their welcome early on.
Still, there is something inoffensive about the movie. It’s a sweet attempt to tell an unusual story, but feels like a missed opportunity — which is why “Hysteria” didn’t work for me as well as it might have. I expected more than a comedy of manners with an off-colour edge from the story. This is a rental, not a night out.
