A new feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at the Tom Cruise War on Drugs movie “American Made,” the real-life-royal dramedy “Victoria & Abdul” and Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in the late-in-life love story “Our Souls at Night.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
The opening title card of “Victoria & Abdul,” a new historical dramedy starring Judi Dench and Ali Fazal, states that the movie is “Based on real events… mostly” sets the tone for what is to come. What follows is a true-life tale that doesn’t let the facts get in the way of telling a good story.
Dench returns to her Oscar nominated role of Queen Victoria. She is a frail older woman, ill of health and scheduled at society functions at a pace that would tire someone a third her age. It is her Golden Jubilee in 1887, an endless round of meetings and dinners. At one of these dinners she, as the Empress of India, is gifted with a special coin presented by Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal) and Mohammed (Adeel Akhtar), two young men brought in from the North Indian city of Agra for the occasion.
Both are given strict instructions. “The key to good service is standing still, moving backwards,” they’re told, “and don’t ever look at her.” Of course Abdul catches her eye, otherwise there’d be no story.
“I thought the tall one was terribly handsome,” says the Queen as she requests they become for personal footman. It’s a move that causes consternation at the palace. Racism and jealousy rear their ugly heads as Abdul is given more and more responsibility, soon becoming her Munshi, a tutor who teaches her how to write and speak Urdu.
She sees him as a breath of fresh air from the “aristocratic fools” who jockey for position around her. She’s lonely—”Everyone I’ve ever loved has died,” she says, “and I just go on and on.”— and his a chatty, amiable manner comforts her.
The staff and Victoria’s son Bertie (Eddie Izzard), next in line to be King, want Abdul gone and look to get dirt on him. When the monarch gets wind of the palace skulduggery she makes it clear her confidant is not going anywhere.
“Victoria & Abdul” is based on a recently uncovered story. In the days following Victoria’s death Bertie ordered all traces of her relationship with Abdul destroyed and he and his family deported back to India. It wasn’t until a hundred years later when journalist Shrabani Basu dug deep and discovered previously unseen information that the story became public.
What could have been a fascinating look at Victoria at the height of her colonial power—she is 81 years old, 62 of which have been spent ruling over almost 1,000,000,000 citizens—is instead shaped into a light weight crowd pleaser and virtual remake of 1997’s “Mrs. Brown.” In that film Billy Connolly played John Brown, a servant who provided comfort to Victoria (played again by Dench) creating a scandal that almost lead to monarchy crisis. “He’s the brown John Brown,” sneers Lady Churchill (Olivia Williams) in a nod to the sense of déjà vu that hangs over the proceedings.
The big difference between the two films is the underling role. Brown was clearly defined. The Scottish servant is strong-willed, a rebel with little respect for the propriety that surrounded Victoria’s every move. Abdul is less defined. He is unquestionably devoted to the Queen, but we don’t ever really learn why. Was he a social climber, a Rasputin or a truly dedicated acolyte? We’re led to believe the latter but that doesn’t give Fazal much to work with other than his easy going on-screen charm.
Not that “Victoria & Abdul” doesn’t have enjoyable elements. It mines humour from the ridiculous royal protocol. Queen Victoria eats quickly and everyone else at an elaborate state dinner must keep pace because when she’s done, they’re all done. It’s a funny scene, made more amusing by Dench’s skilful handling of the situation.
She is by times comedic, by times touching, often in the same scene. She is masterful as Victoria, a lioness in winter grasping for a last stab at happiness in a life filled with decorum and responsibility.
If the recent film “mother!” was an attempt, as one writer suggested, “to shock its audiences out of complacency,” “Victoria & Abdul” is an attempt to lull its audience into complacency.
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the true-to-life thrills of “Deepwater Horizon,” Tim Burton’s X-Men-esque “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children,” the thriller “Imperium” and the ripped-from-the-headlines documentary “The Lovers and the Despot.”
Watch the whole ting HERE!
From director Tim Burton comes “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children,” another story of outsiders trying to find place in the world where they belong. Or in this case a place in time.
Teen years are for making friends and having fun but for Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield) they are a hardship. He’s the weird kid in class, friendless except for his grandfather Abraham (Terence Stamp) who keeps the boy entertained with wild stories about a life spent travelling the world and the Home for Peculiar Children where he was raised. He grew up side-by-side with a boy made of bees, a teacher who could turn into a bird, and a balloon girl, lighter than air who had to wear lead shoes so as not to float away.
When his Abe is attacked Jake arrives in time to catch his last, strange words. “I know you think I’m crazy but the bird will explain everything,” he says before urging the youngster to venture off to find out who, what, he really is. “I should have told you years ago. I thought I could protect you.”
Thus begins Jake’s adventure, a journey that leads him to a small island where Miss Alma LeFay Perigrine (Eva Green) a.k.a. The Bird Lady, attends to her brood of peculiar child. She has created a time loop, reset every day, to keep her peculiar safe and protect them from growing old. Every day is September 3, 1943 all day. An attack by Hollows (Samuel L. Jackson and others), evil creatures who steal the eyeballs of peculiar children, upsets Perigrine’s orderly time loop and gives Jake a chance to learn why he was sent to the island.
The first hour of “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children” is pure Tim Burton. He creates a fanciful world—imagine quirkier “X-Men”—with all his trademarks—mid-century kitsch, topiary sculptures, weird creatures and characters straight out of the outer regions of the imagination—and a mythology all its own. World building is a fantasy director’s strongest asset, and Burton paints a pretty picture, it’s just too bad he gets bogged down in the story in the second half.
The mushy second half erases the charm of the first sixty minutes as fanciful dreaminess and unique stop motion effects give way to CGI overload. The film’s long climax seems to go on forever—as though the audience is in one of Miss. Perigrine’s endless time loops—in an orgy of digital trickery that betrays the feel of the piece. An army of skeletons is a cool homage to Ray Harryhausen and setting its macabre sequence to weird amusement park dance music is a nice Burton touch, but it pales by comparison to the smaller, more intimate touches that give the movie much of its personality.
“Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children” has some beautiful images—like Emma Bloom (Ella Purnell), tethered to Jake like a balloon as he walks and she floats through an amusement park—but like many of Burton’s recent films the story feels like an afterthought.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
Visionary Tim Burton values his time alone.
One writer called the director of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetle Juice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands and this weekend’s Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, “the most widely embraced loner in contemporary cinema.”
“I always try to at least spend time, as much as I can everyday, staring out into space; staring out a window,” the director says. “I find that sometimes you get the most ideas and the most feelings when you’re not involved in things you have to do everyday; especially these days when technology is such that you can be reached any time. I try and avoid that.”
Unsurprisingly as a filmmaker the characters he champions tend to echo his sensibility. From warped Mad Hatter in his Alice in Wonderland to the grieving child in Frankenweenie who reanimated a dog’s corpse, Burton’s heroes are often misfits and outsiders.
From his debut, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Burton has showcased people on the fringes of society. “You don’t wanna get mixed up with a guy like me,” says man-child Pee-Wee (Paul Reubens), “I’m a loner. A rebel.” Loosely based Vittorio De Sica’s classic film The Bicycle Thief, Burton’s story sees Pee-Wee on a mission to retrieve his stolen fire engine-red customized 1940s Schwinn. David Letterman was a fan, describing the anti-social character as having, “the external structure of a bratty little precocious kid, but you know it’s being controlled by the incubus, the manifestation of evil itself.”
In his next film Burton breathed life into Betelgeuse‘s rancid lungs. In the haunted-house comedy Beetlejuice Michael Keaton plays a “bio-exorcist” with crazy hair, giant teeth and an attitude, hired by two ghosts to scare away the insufferable new owners of their old house.
“I think Beetlejuice shows the complete positive side of being misperceived and being categorized as something different,” Burton says. “He can do whatever he wants! He’s horrible and everybody knows it, so he’s a complete fantasy of all of that.”
Burton’s two greatest misfits, his most intrepid folks on the outside looking in, are the off-kilter Eds—Wood and Scissorhands.
Edward Scissorhands is the strange-but-sweet story of a man with scissors for hands. The first collaboration of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, the movie is a funny, romantic and moving fantasy was inspired by a sketch Burton created as a teenager. “One look at that drawing was all I needed to understand what Edward was about,” says Depp. “I felt very tortured as a teenager,” says Burton. “That’s where Edward Scissorhands came from. I was probably clinically depressed and didn’t know it.”
Ed Wood, played by Depp in the film of the same name, is the story of one of Hollywood’s great outcasts. Wood wrote, produced and directed low-budget anti-classics like Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda. Burton says he was a fan of Wood’s films and after reading some of the director’s letters was touched by how Wood, “wrote about his films as if he was making Citizen Kane, you know, whereas other people perceived them as, like, the worst movies ever.”
Burton links his best-known creations, labelling them as “semi-antisocial, [having] difficulty communicating or relating, slightly out of touch,” and adds, “I feel very close to those characters. I really do. I feel like they are mutated children.”
Canada AM’s film critic Richard Crouse with a rundown of this year’s nominees and snubs. Plus, his picks for best actor, actress and picture.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Doogal, a new animated film about a rambunctious, candy-loving dog, has a great pedigree. It was derived from a popular French children’s TV show which was shown in England with great success under the title of The Magic Roundabout; it features the voice work of Judi Dench, William H. Macy and Whoopi Goldberg and is being released by former Miramax head honcho Harvey Weinstein. With such good breeding too bad it won’t be winning any awards at the Westminster Dog Show.
Like Curious George, another recent animated movie, Doogal is geared for younger kids who will likely take delight in the silly story, the bright colors—Doogal lives in a village where everything seems to be made of gingerbread and icing—and goofy characters. I’m not sure, however, how many times even the most patient of parents will be able to endure the adventures of Doogal—who I thought looked like a member of the 1970s band Slade, with his shaggy hair and droopy eyes—and his band of friends. The unlikely group—a train, a love-struck snail, a singing cow and Karate master rabbit, characters that seem ready-made to become merchandise if the movie is a hit—must retrieve three diamonds from far flung places, keeping them out of the hands of the evil Zeebad who will use their power to freeze the sun and earth. If they are successful they will be able to free Doogal’s owner Florence from the icy jail that imprisons her.
The filmmakers have thrown in the obligatory pop culture references in an effort to keep parents on board—everything from Pulp Fiction, to Lord of the Rings and Mission Impossible is included—but I don’t think a few in-jokes will be enough to keep older eyes interested.
One drawing point for older viewers is the addition of the funniest man on television, Jon Stewart, to the voice cast. Stewart is Zeebad, and all I can say is that it is a good thing that he’s hosting the Oscars this year because that is as close to an acting award as he’ll ever get.
Although it is packed with good messages for kids about tolerance and co-operation, Doogal isn’t as clever as Hoodwinked, as gentle as Curious George or as touching as last week’s dog movie Eight Below.
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is predictable and a bit stuffy but it is hard to dislike this movie’s lost in translation story because it is so obviously aiming to please.
Featuring a cast which includes most of the senior members of British Equity, the movie quickly introduces us to Evelyn (Judi Dench), a widower whose husband left behind a great debt, Douglas and Jean (Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton), a retired couple without a nest egg, the infirm Muriel (Maggie Smith), Supreme Court judge Graham (Tom Wilkinson) who impulsively leaves the bench, aging lothario Norman (Ronald Pickup) and Madge (Celia Imrie), a much married woman in search of a sugar daddy.
Their common link is uncertainty over how to spend their golden years. Individually they come up with he idea to outsource their retirements to a senior’s hotel in Jaipur, but what looked like an Eden on the brochure turns out to be a dilapidated guesthouse run by the feckless Sonny (“Slumdog Millionaire’s” Dev Patel). Together and individually this band of ex-pats explore life in their adopted country.
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” offers up of fish-out-of-water clichés—“If I can’t pronounce it, I’m not eating it!”—mixed with a story about rebirth, regrets and the Kama Sutra. Despite the setting, it’s a bland blend, but the likes of Dench, Nighy, Smith and Wilkinson salvage some real humanity from the script’s saccharine offerings.
Wilkinson, as a gay man who travels back to India to find his first love, is particularly effective. He effortlessly underplays the character of Gordon, the staid lawyer who bears guilt for an indiscretion that may have ruined another’s person’s life, portraying a man who sat in judgment of others all the while judging himself. It’s a marvel of subtlety, richly detailed, yet simultaneously delicate.
The rest of the cast of old pros hand in good work, but aren’t given the same caliber of material to work with.
Perhaps it’s because there are too many stories colliding on screen, filling up the running time with details and unnecessary scenes–in addition to the retiree’s stories there are also Sonny’s subplots about love, family and trying to save the hotel. Or perhaps it’s because the filmmakers are tying to present something for everyone, but “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” feels like there is a really good movie hidden away in the layers of the film struggling to get out.
