SYNOPSIS: Almost thirty years since his last Californian adventure, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), the street-smart police lieutenant from Detroit, Michigan, returns to Beverly Hills after threats are made on the life of his criminal defense lawyer daughter Jane (Taylour Paige). With the help of a new recruit, Detective Sam Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and old friends John Taggart (John Ashton) and Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), his investigation uncovers a deadly conspiracy.
CAST: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon. Directed by Mark Molloy.
REVIEW: A better name for “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” would have been “Beverly Hills Cop: Déjà Vu.” It’s been decades since Axel Foley’s last visit Los Angeles, and not much has changed. This time around, Foley has a daughter, which adds a new dramatic dimension for Murphy to play off of, but most everything else, for better and for worse, is straight out of the “Beverly Hills Cop” playbook.
The resulting burst of nostalgia doesn’t offer anything new. It does provide enough crowd-pleasing laughs—mostly courtesy of Murphy’s wisecracking, charismatic presence—and, like “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” from earlier this summer, some kick ass, old school action, that recalls the good times of 1980s funny action flicks.
The fourth instalment, now streaming on Netflix, is marred by a dull (and obvious) villain and by sticking a little too close to the established franchise formula. But the combination of Murphy’s fast talk and Harold Faltermeyer’s synth score, of action and laughs, is comforting, like a newly discovered artefact returned from the 1980s to soothe our frazzled 2024 neurons.
On the October 6, 2023 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet actor Peter Facinelli. You know him from roles on TV shows such like Six Feet Under, Damages and Nurse Jackie but he’ll likely always be best known as Dr. Carlisle Cullen in the wildly popular Twilight franchise. Today we talk about his new film On Fire, the story of a family who lives in a trailer home in the woods who are suddenly confronted by a wildfire.
Then we’ll meet John Carney, the Irish musician and director of Flora and Son, a new Apple TV+. comedy about a mom, played by the fabulous Eve Hewson, who tries to connect with her rebellious son with music. The director of the Academy Award winning film “Once” tells me about his music saved his life and why he didn’t include my favorite Dublin pub in the film.
We’ll also meet Michael Crummey, an award-winning poet and novelist from Newfoundland and Labrador. The Toronto Star called his latest novel, The Adversary, a story about two rivals who represent the largest fishing operations on Newfoundland’s northern outpost, a masterpiece. We’ll talk about the novel and how it begins with one of the best opening lines I’ve read in recent memory.
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!
Listen to the show live here:
C-FAX 1070 in Victoria
SAT 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM
SUN 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
CJAD in Montreal
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
CFRA in Ottawa
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 610 CKTB in St. Catharines
Sat 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1010 in Toronto
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1290 CJBK
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
AM 1150 in Kelowna
SAT 11 PM to Midnight
BNN BLOOMBERG RADIO 1410
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed!
The musical dramedy “Flora and Son,” now streaming on Apple TV+, is a tribute to the power of music as an emotional salve, and hits all the right chords with a breakout performance from Eve Hewson as a single mom trying to connect with her rebellious son.
Hewson is the title character, a party girl and parttime nanny, raising her rebellious 14-year-old son Max (Orén Kinlan) in a tiny Dublin apartment. Their relationship is so fraught, she wonders aloud what it would be like if he wasn’t around.
After forgetting his birthday, she plucks an abandoned acoustic guitar from a dumpster, has it repaired and gifts it to him. “Don’t want to play,” he says dismissively. “Since when am I a guitarist?”
Instead of returning the guitar to the dumpster, Flora decides to take on-line lessons and learn the instrument. She comes across Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a charming 1970s singer-songwriter throwback, who teaches from his sun dappled studio in Los Angeles.
“What are you hoping to get out of this?” he asks.
“I thought this guitar might make my son think I’m cool,” she replies.
As Flora studies the guitar, Max is in the small flat’s other room creating rap beats on his laptop.
“How did you make that?” Flora asks. “That sounded epic.”
They’re coming from different corners of the room—she’s Joni Mitchell to Max’s Dr. Dre—but music just might be their middle ground.
“Flora and Son” is a small movie with a big performance that provides its beating heart. As Flora, Hewson is tender and terrible, delightful and disagreeable. She’s made mistakes, and has a hard shell, but in Hewson’s capable hands, her innate goodness shines through. It is, simply put, a star-making performance, chock full of soul.
Gordon-Levitt, Kinlan and Jack Reynor, as Flora’s ex, complete the picture with strong performances, each representing a piece of the puzzle that is Flora’s life.
At its core, “Flora and Son” is a love story, but it’s not a rom com. This is about the love of family, music and self and is a rousing crowd-pleaser that breathes the same air as director John Carney’s other films, “Sing Street” and “Once.”
Was thoroughly charmed by “Flora and Son” (coming soon to Apple TV+) and its Dubliner director John Carney. We talked about the healing power of music and his star Eve Hewson. Full interview coning soon!
Following the introduction of the indeterminate intonations of his Col Tom Parker character in “Elvis,” Tom Hanks now goes Tuscan, continuing his exploration of world accents with “Pinocchio,” a live-action CGI hybrid musical, now streaming on Disney+.
Hanks is Geppetto, an Italian woodworker who carves a puppet named Pinocchio out of a block of white pine. The elderly, lonely man treats the marionette like a son, and lo-and-behold, after he wishes on a star, Pinocchio (voice of Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), with a little help from The Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo), comes to life.
But is he a real boy? Nope. “To be really real,” says the Fairy, “he must pass an ordeal. He must prove that he is brave, truthful and unselfish.
To point the puppet in the right direction, the Fairy appoints the wisecracking Jiminy Cricket (voice of Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to be his moral guide. It’s his job to teach the newbie right and wrong, to be his conscience. “Conscience,” he says, “is that little voice that most people choose not to listen to… and that’s what wrong with today.”
With good intentions and endless curiosity, the pair set off but are sidelined when Jiminy is imprisoned in a glass jar. Left to fend for himself, Pinocchio experiences the ups-and-downs of life as a puppet cut loose in the world. He first falls under the control of a cruel puppeteer named Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston), meets Lampwick (Lewin Lloyd), a mischievous boy with an eye for trouble, and even gets eaten by a sea monster called Monstro the Whale.
Pinocchio is getting loads of life lessons, but is he learning life’s most important lesson? “The most important part of being real, isn’t what you’re made of,” said the Blue Fairy. “It’s about what’s in your heart.”
“Pinocchio,” directed by Robert Zemeckis, is a respectful retelling of Disney’s 1940 animated classic. The edgy details from that movie and the 1883 book by Carlo Collodi have been smoothed over—Pinocchio does not, for instance, smoke a cigar in this version—but visually, Zemeckis takes his lead from the classic Walt Disney Animation style. From the puppet’s yellow hat, blue tie and red lederhosen, this Pinocchio is strictly traditional.
It’s a vibrantly colored romp, an action adventure that, despite the up-to-the-minute technology involved, feels old fashioned, dare I say wooden, in its approach. Good messages about the importance of family and learning from your mistakes abound, the peril is kept to a family-friendly minimum and, like its main character, the movie is just a little naïve.
Following in the footsteps of other Disney live-action remakes like “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King” and “The Jungle Book,” the latest version of “Pinocchio” adds new technology to the story, but no new ideas.
“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” now playing in theatres, sees Aaron Sorkin return to the courtroom twenty-eight years after he put the words “You can’t handle the truth,” into Jack Nicholson’s mouth. This time around he’s re-enacting one of the most famous trials of the 1960s, using transcripts from the actual proceedings as a basis for the script. There is no one moment as powerful of Nicholson’s “truth” declaration but there is no denying the timeliness of the film’s fifty-two-year-old story.
Here’s the basic story for anyone too young to know the difference between Yippies and Yuppies.
The trial, which was originally the Chicago Eight until Black Panther leader Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) had his case severed from the others, saw 60s counterculture icons Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) of the Youth International Party (the aforementioned Yippies), and assorted radicals David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), John Froines (Daniel Flaherty), and Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins) charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot stemming from their actions at the anti-Vietnam War protests in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Behind the prosecution desk is the young and meticulous Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) acting as assistant to the truculent chief prosecutor Tom Foran (J. C. MacKenzie). On the defense is lawyer William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), a boldfaced name in civil rights litigation. On the bench is Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), a conservative judge who once presided over an obscenity case against Lenny Bruce.
Those are the players and to a person they deliver solid performances, making the most of Sorkin’s snappy, rapid-fire dialogue. Of the ensemble cast Baron Cohen stands out, handing in a straight dramatic role; there’s no Mankini in sight. He’s too old by half to play the character who once famously urged kids to, “Never trust anyone over thirty,” but maintains the edge that make his comedic characters so memorable.
Sorkin, who also directs, has made a period piece that reverberates for today. A bridge that spans the five decades from the actual events, it’s a bit of history that comments on contemporary hot button topics like protest, civil rights and police brutality. The sight of Seale, the lone African American defendant, bound and gagged at the judge’s order, is a potent reminder of racial injustice in the penal system. Re-enactments of police brutality during the riots and the consequent discussion of who is to blame for the violence, the protestors or the bill club swinging cops could be ripped from today’s headlines.
“The Trial of the Chicago 7” isn’t perfect. Gordon-Levitt’s character is a cypher, a prosecutor who breaks with his colleagues at a crucial moment and Hoffman is played as a pantomime villain, but as a reminder of how history is repeated, it is a compelling watch.
If there ever was a story tailor made for Oliver Stone’s sensibilities, “Snowden” is it. Polarizing in the extreme, Ed Snowden, an American computer wiz who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency to The Guardian, was called a traitor by Donald Trump and a hero by the New Yorker. Two hours into this biopic it’s not hard to see which side of the fence Stone falls on.
It’s 2003 when we first meet future whistleblower Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) he’s a grunt in the US Army struggling through basic training. The deeply patriotic high-school dropout wants to serve his country but his body doesn’t cooperate. Honourably discharged for medical reasons he turns to the CIA, hoping to find meaningful work as a computer specialist and because, “it sounds really cool to have a top security clearance.”
Hired on, he learns the tools of today’s warfare. “The modern battlefield is everywhere,” he’s told while designing and building computer systems he believes will keep his country safe. Meanwhile the secretive nature of his work is slowly driving a wedge between he and girlfriend Lindsay (Shailene Woodley), a liberal leaning photographer who doesn’t always support Ed’s views but always supports him.
Over the next decade his efforts to prevent terrorists and cyber attacks leads him down a rabbit hole of intrigue and double-dealings. Partially responsible for running a dragnet on the whole world he helps gather information—using cell phone and computer cameras—on regular everyday citizens as well as the baddies and begins to question his mandate. The NSA, he says is tracking the cell phones of everyone. “Not just terrorists or countries,” he says, “but us.”
In June 2013 he decides to go public by leaking classified information from the National Security Agency to The Guardian. “I just want to get the data to the media so people can decide whether I’m wrong,” he says, “or if the government is wrong.”
A title card at the beginning of “Snowden” reads, “The following is a dramatization of events that occurred between 2004 and 2013.” That gives director Stone ample leeway to tell the story his way. In other words, this ain’t a documentary. It is clear he is on Snowden’s side, that he doesn’t see him as a traitor or snitch but a hero. His thesis seems to be that you don’t have to agree with your politicians to be a patriot. Stone supports his view visually—Snowden literally comes out of the darkness and into the light when he leaves the NSA building for the last time—and through the actions and words of several of his characters. Rhys Ifans plays a CIA trainer/master manipulator who feeds Snowden’s naïve patriotism with defence mantras. “Most Americans don’t want freedom,” he preaches, “they want security.” Later Snowden’s NSA supervisor Trevor (Scott Eastwood) argues that a job like the one Snowden is doing, can’t be criminal “if you’re working for the government.”
But hey, this isn’t CNN or Fox News, it’s a big screen entertainment and on that score it works. Gordon-Levitt transforms into a monotone über nerd, equal parts sweetness and paranoia. What he lacks in warmth Woodley more than makes up for, handing in a performance that is all emotion and concern.
When Ifans leaves a video conference call with the sign off, “I’ll see you soon,” those simple words take on a sinister feel when it is clear that he really can see you, whether you know it or not. Stone may not be able to shape the way you feel about Ed Snowden, but if nothing else he’ll make you want to cover the camera on your computer.
At it’s very core, Snowden is about privacy and how much of it you can expect to enjoy every time you turn on your computer or pick up your mobile phone.
The story of Edward Snowden — an American computer whiz who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency to The Guardian — has been reimagined for the big screen and premiered at TIFF on Friday.
“Unfortunately,” says controversial director Oliver Stone, “Edward Snowden has warned us, more than once, about privacy and he says in the movie the next generation won’t know what privacy is.”
Snowden uncovered widespread snooping by the U.S. government that may have violated the civil liberties of millions of people. Zachary Quinto, who plays journalist Glenn Greenwald in the film, says working on Snowden made him think differently about even simple Internet searches.
“I became more aware of our vulnerability while working on this film and took specific measures to protect myself in ways I hadn’t before,” he said.
“I had this experience the other night. I was shopping for a washer and dryer online. I was Googling the consumer ratings. I left that search and went to another website and immediately the pop up ads on this other website, which had nothing to do with consumer reports or shopping, were about washers and dryers. What we are willing to sacrifice in our privacy without even thinking about it for convenience sake, what we’re willing to give up in our own freedoms and interests just in sitting down at our computers is shocking.
“You can take precautions. You can take steps to enact two-step verifications and put tape over your laptop (camera) and strengthen your passwords but all you need to do is shop for appliances and you are exposing yourself to some kind of tracking, a collection of data.”
Co-star Shailene Woodley, who plays the whistleblowing title character’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills, takes simple precautions to ensure privacy. “I have a Band Aid over my computer (camera),” she says. “Privacy is a privilege now and it is only a privilege if you are privy to the fact that it is a privilege because it is not something you inherently have as a human being in 2016.”
What Joseph Gordon-Levitt has to say about ‘Band-Aids’
“Working on this movie made me much more thoughtful about how the whole internet works. Everyone has asked me about the Band-Aid over the webcam. I think that is a weird metaphor, an unintentional metaphor. ‘Oh yeah, this will fix it,’ but I don’t think it will,” said star Joseph Gordon-Levitt about people putting Band-Aids over their web cams to ensure privacy.
Richard hosted the press conference for the TIFF 2016 film “Snowden.” From left to right, Richard, Melissa Leo, Shailene Woodley, Oliver Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zachary Quinto.
Oliver Stone: “This is really a secret underworld and no one in the NSA has come forward in its 70-year history,” Stone said.
“We only saw a sliver until Ed Snowden. No one saw into that thing, so it’s really an undercover detective story. And for me it’s exciting because it’s like JFK, it goes into something that we don’t know. Americans don’t know anything about it and they still don’t because it’s tricky.
“The government lies about it all the time and what they’re doing is illegal and they keep doing it. And it gets better and better, what they do, so this a very upsetting story.”
